Dreamtide

Section One – “Whispers of the Tide”✨

The winter cold slipped through the workshop window, carrying the scent of damp earth and a faint trace of smoke. Kokuto wiped his hands on his clay-stained apron, cast one last glance at the glazed pots lined up on the shelves, and switched off the light. His hands felt heavy after a long day’s work—exhausted, aching—but he’d grown used to that weight.

When he closed the door behind him, the sound of wood hitting the wind echoed down the narrow alley. He drew in a deep breath; the Hokkaido air tasted of the sea, sharp and clean, stinging his cheeks with its icy bite. The warm yellow lights of the nearby shops glowed through the thin evening mist, flickering like scattered little stars. A shopkeeper stood behind a window display, arranging gold and silver gift-wrapped boxes.

Kokuto lowered his head and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. The muted steps of his boots on the slick stone pavement carried through the quiet alley. Two narrow lanes stood between him and home—paths that always left him with a strange mix of calm and emptiness, peaceful yet hollow.

The old street lanterns, symbols of Hokkaido’s island towns, burned faintly, just enough to stretch a long shadow of him across the stone walls. The wind smelled of the sea and shells—the distinctive scent winter coaxed out of the island.

When he reached the door of his small house, he pulled the key from his pocket and paused. He tilted his head up at the clouded sky. Thin snowflakes had just begun to fall. With a soft sigh, he turned the key and pushed the door open. Darkness greeted him—cold and silent, mirroring him a little too well.

He shrugged off his jacket, set a kettle on the stove, and dropped onto the old couch in the corner of the living room, still wrapped in his scarf. His eyes grew heavy, but his mind—as always—refused to let him rest.

His gaze drifted to the small pot on the table beside him, the one he’d made himself—plain, unglazed. He’d placed a tiny pine branch inside it, as if that was his only attempt at feeling something like Christmas. A faint, bittersweet smile tugged at his lips. Looking at it tugged loose a memory: last year, around this same time, his mother had shown up after a full year of silence and stayed with him for a few days in Hokkaido. As always, her presence was all quietness and heavy looks, and her departure—well, that had been sudden, too. Just like always.

The kettle shrieked sharply from the stove.

He pushed himself up, poured the boiling water into a cup, and dropped a teabag inside. The rising steam warmed his face, easing some of the cold lodged deep in his bones. Cup in hand, he walked to the small window overlooking the back alley.

Outside, snow settled gently on the roofs of old houses and the pine trees. The lanterns cast their dim light across the narrow lane, stretching the shadows on the ground like faint dream-images. With his fingertip, he wiped a patch of fog from the glass and looked out into the alley.

He liked to imagine that maybe one day, someone would be there—waiting in that dark little street.

Someone who wouldn’t be in a hurry to leave.

He gave a small smile, but it faded almost instantly. He set the cup on the windowsill and muttered to himself, “Daydreaming again?”

His eyelids felt heavier than usual. He turned back toward the couch and, still wearing his clothes and scarf, stretched out across the worn cushions.

The ticking of the wall clock carried through the quiet house. His eyes slowly drifted shut, though his thoughts kept slipping between reality and something softer, stranger.

For a moment, everything went dark—then… light. A distant, glowing light.

His eyes opened, unhurried.

He wasn’t home. He wasn’t on that old couch. He was back there again—back in the place he always ended up. The space between dreaming and something deeper. The soft sand beneath his feet felt familiar. The sky was dark, scattered with bright stars, and the gentle hush of waves reached him like a memory.

He dug his hands into his jacket pockets and started walking. He was always alone here. No faces. No change. Just himself, the beach, the sand, the tides. Sometimes it felt more like home than the real one—a place where the outside world couldn’t reach him.

He whispered to no one, “Back again… but why?”

Wandering along that endless shoreline always loosened the weight in his chest, but tonight something was different. A strange pulse stirred inside him, a feeling that something—or maybe someone—was waiting. The stars seemed brighter, nearer. The sea breeze lifted his hair, the same familiar chill, yet there was a shift in the air—subtle but unmistakable.

He sat on a flat rock near the point where the waves broke against the shore. The sand shimmered under the starlight, and the sea’s rhythm seeped into him, quieting everything. He pressed his head into his hands and drew in a long breath.

Every time he came here, one question lingered: Was this place real, or just the dream that never ended?

But tonight… it felt like something new was unfolding.

The wind off the ocean carried its usual salt and moisture, but there was something else beneath it. A sharper coolness, a faint crackle—like tiny sparks of static floating in the air, restless and alive.

Kokuto stayed seated on the rock, scanning the shoreline for the source of that shift. A short distance away, a dark silhouette broke the clean silver-gray glow of the stars—strange and magnetic, like the hidden side of the moon.

A man sat on the sand, right where the dying waves reached the shore and dissolved into frothy white. His long fingers played through the fine grains glinting under the starlight, scooping a handful and letting it fall. The sand slipped between his fingers like silk sliding over the skin of some quiet goddess—soft, fluid, soundless. The shore wrapped around him like a warm blanket, holding his tired, tense body and draining the exhaustion from him. Each time the warmth sank deeper into his skin, his eyelids fluttered shut, slow and heavy, as if he were trying to absorb that comfort and store it somewhere deep inside.

A faint smile tugged at his lips—small but unmistakably content.

The sound of the sea was a lullaby he’d never grown tired of, still as soothing as the very first time he heard it.

The surface of the sea in the distance was dark as tar—deep, mysterious, yet somehow calming.

Kokuto froze in place, breath locking in his chest. His palms pressed hard against the cold rock. The silhouette of the man sitting on the sand wasn’t something he ever expected to see here. In truth, he had never expected to see anyone here.

This world had always belonged to him alone—a world built for solitude. In all the times he’d wandered this place, he’d never seen even the faintest trace of another presence. But now… there he was. A man. Sitting right there in front of him.

His thoughts darted wildly:

What is this? Or… who is he? How long has he been here? Why have I never seen him before?

His heart kicked hard in his chest. It felt like danger, but not enough to make him run. More like a strange, unfamiliar anxiety. His hand moved instinctively to his chest as he tried to breathe deeply, but every time he looked at the man, something inside him twisted tight.

I’ve really lost it now, he whispered to himself. He dragged his fingers through his hair and murmured, “No… it’s just a dream. That’s all it is. A dream. I’ll wake up and it’ll be gone.”

But the longer he looked, the more impossible lying to himself became. The soft rustle of the man’s hands shifting the sand reached his ears—clear and real. The smell of the sea, the dampness of the sand, the breeze tugging at his hair… everything was far too vivid for doubt.

He wanted to say something—anything—but the words wouldn’t form. He felt that if he spoke, the man might vanish. Or worse… he might turn around and look at him. The thought of those eyes meeting his made his hands go cold.

But curiosity, deeper and heavier than fear, rooted itself inside him. He needed to know who this man was. Why he was here. And why his presence felt so inexplicably right and wrong at the same time.

He slid his foot off the rock. The faint crunch of sand under his shoe broke the quiet, yet the man didn’t move. Still sitting there, as if nothing in that world mattered more than the feel of sand between his fingers.

Kokuto hesitated, standing there in the dim starlight, then spoke—softly, almost unsure of where his own voice came from:

“Who… who are you?”

The man’s hand, which had been holding a loose handful of sand, stilled midair. His fingers loosened at the sound of an unfamiliar voice behind him. The grains slipped through, steady and unhurried, falling back to the shore one by one.

He didn’t turn. And he didn’t answer. As if he wanted to convince his own ears that he’d imagined it—because he feared that if he saw someone standing behind him, the fragile peace he had built on that beach would shatter. That he’d feel that old urge to run again, to disappear, to hide somewhere so deep that not even the sound of his own breathing could reach him.

He kept his eyes fixed on the horizon—the place where sea and sky dissolved into one. He listened to the rhythm of the waves, a rhythm thrown slightly off by the soft, uneven steps of the stranger approaching.

Anxiety curled around him like a vine, but strangely—shockingly—the vine’s leaves carried the faint, fragile shape of something that felt like safety.

He planted his hands in the sand behind him and stretched his legs out, letting himself sink deeper into the soft warmth of the shore. He drew in a slow breath—the scent of moisture and salt filling his lungs, tickling something familiar and tender inside him. He still hadn’t turned to show his face to the stranger behind him, but he could feel his presence now, closer—close enough to disturb the stillness around him.

In a voice that felt oddly out of place yet carried a deep, striking resonance—mysterious to Kokuto’s ears, woven into the breeze and the hush of the waves—he asked:

“Are you here running from something… or looking for peace?”

He said it the way someone might speak to a person they’d known for years, someone whose reasons and patterns they understood. But something inside him whispered that maybe none of those reasons fit this stranger at all. And with that thought, curiosity began to dry out the roots of the anxiety tangled inside him.

Kokuto’s breath caught.

That voice… it felt like it rose from deep within his own mind, and yet it was unmistakably foreign. The man’s tone—quiet, steady, carrying that strange undercurrent—felt like a melody he’d heard a thousand times but could never place. His heart thudded harder—not with excitement, but with a fear he couldn’t pin down.

He stepped closer. The crunch of his footsteps on the sand sounded louder than the waves. They were no more than ten steps apart, but each step felt like crossing a trembling bridge over a dark ravine.

Under his breath—so quiet even he barely heard it—he murmured,

“This place… I built it. Why would I run from it?”

He stopped. His hands curled into fists, his head shaking once as if trying to dislodge a thought he didn’t want to face. He tilted his head toward the man and, still wavering, asked:

“Did I… did I create you too?”

His eyes, the same soft, searching eyes he always had when trying to understand something, lowered briefly then lifted again—wide, uncertain, almost childlike in their sincerity. He looked at the man the way someone might study a mysterious painting: struck by its strange beauty, yet unable to decipher what lay beneath.

But even with all that curiosity, he kept the ten-step distance between them. He didn’t want to move closer—or maybe he wasn’t able to. A strange tension gripped him, somewhere between fear and attraction, trapping him halfway between reaching out and turning back. For the first time in a long time, this world—his sanctuary—felt foreign.

The man, who had been listening with a quiet intensity, let a faint crease form between his brows, born from the thoughts flickering behind his eyes. He lifted his hands from the sand and brushed off the fine grains clinging to his damp palms. Then he pulled himself forward a little, an invisible, magnetic thread tugging him to finally turn—just enough—to show Kokuto the hesitant profile of his face.

His eyes, long and half-lidded, carried an unnerving depth—shadowed with doubt and distrust, yet luminous. Darkness pooled behind his lashes, stretching like a thin stroke of ink toward the corners of his eyes. His hair was neat, pushed back with a kind of meticulous care. Moonlight traced the bridge of his nose, leaving half his face in darkness, while his lips—full and flushed—stood out in sharp, almost unsettling contrast, softening a face that looked strangely familiar.

With a voice that rang clear and deep, settling into the listener like a mark they wouldn’t forget, he asked:

“You created me?”

There was surprise in his tone, but edged with a bite of mockery that made Kokuto flinch. Yet that sting vanished as soon as the man let out a short, breathy laugh—real enough to momentarily warm the cold air between them.

“Do I not look real enough to you?” he said, a lazy shrug rolling off his shoulder. “What even makes you think you created me and not the other way around?”

The laugh faded, his expression sharpening as curiosity tugged at him. For the first time, he let himself be openly intrigued. He tilted his head, studying the boy behind him from the corner of his eye—slowly tracing over him, pausing on his face.

He took in every detail: the velvet softness of his hair, the narrow pink lips, and eyes that seemed even more star-filled than the sky above them.

The boy was a wonder—nested inside another wonder.

Kokuto didn’t look away—not even for a heartbeat. It was as if his whole being had locked onto that half-lit face, something both familiar and frightening. He took a step back, breath stuttering, swallowing hard as if his throat had gone dry. His lips parted, and a thin, uncertain voice slipped out—like someone speaking without knowing why:

“This place… I built it.”

Silence settled between them, brief but heavy.

Kokuto stared at the sand for a few seconds before lifting his head again. His voice came out a little steadier this time, though a tremor still clung to it:

“So… of course I created you too. Because… because this is the same beach. The same one I came to when I was eight. That summer with my family. Before they…”

His words faltered.

He swallowed, eyes squeezing shut for a moment, fighting back a memory that surfaced like a bruise touched too suddenly. He shook his head, barely moving his lips as he forced the rest out:

“Before they left me at the hotel.

We were here for three days. I played right here every day. I loved this place. That’s why I think about it every night before sleep. That’s why I dream it.”

He hesitated, his breathing uneven.

“My house—the one I’ve been renting for years now—it’s only twenty minutes from here.”

His gaze drifted back to the man—who watched him with sharpened attention, saying nothing, but seeing everything.

Kokuto’s fingers curled into fists. When he spoke again, his voice dropped to something quieter, something almost private:

“So… I made you. Right?

Or… no…”

A deep tremor shook through his words. He stepped back again, pressing his hands to his temples as if trying to scrape a thought out of his mind.

“I’m… probably losing it. Aren’t I?”

His eyes snapped back to the man, holding him in a stare that trembled between fear and pleading. He needed an answer—needed the man to say something, anything, that could ground him again, pull him out of this thick, disorienting haze.

But the man’s silence only made the weight of the moment settle heavier around them.

Kokuto drew in a shaky breath, still staring, still waiting—his entire body tight with the desperate need for a response.

The man’s gaze had changed—still familiar, but now tinged with something like shock. As if he understood the boy’s words on a visceral level, even if he hadn’t lived that exact kind of abandonment himself. He rose to his feet, brushing the sand from his pants, but he didn’t break eye contact. He studied Kokuto’s face carefully, searching his expression for meaning. His eyes had softened, carrying a quiet recognition, maybe even a shared ache. And yet… something still held him back from trusting.

His lips pressed together before he spoke, hesitant:

“If you created this place… then you must be a part of me.”

His brows drew together, a thin line creasing between them, though it faded quickly as he continued:

“But it’s strange… where have you been all this time? Even your story doesn’t sound familiar to me.”

He turned away from Kokuto then, letting his eyes settle on a part of the shore now swallowed by water—waves tumbling over it restlessly.

When he spoke again, his voice was deep, melodic, sliding effortlessly into the rhythm of the ocean:

“The first and last time I came here was the summer I was six. But I remember it like it happened yesterday. I came here to run—to run from cameras, from flashes, from all those adults who thought a gifted little kid belonged to them.”

His words were quiet, but heavy—like a sigh pulled from the deepest part of him, thick with longing and an old sorrow that seemed to pulse through his fingertips, his eyes, his throat, even the shell of his ears.

“During low tide, my grandmother and I would look for crabs along the shore. It was the best summer of my life. But after she died, I never came back. There was no one left to help me escape… so I kept this beach only for myself.”

He glanced at Kokuto as he said it, a look sharp with the startling realization that this boy—this stranger—had somehow stepped into the most private place he owned. A place buried under years of dust, grief, and forgotten tenderness.