I.L.Y. - A MewGulf AU

Chapter 20: Tua-aeng

What do you do when you're separated from everything you love? When everything you have worked your entire life for, suddenly doesn't matter anymore. What do you do when you're cut off from your life and are suddenly left all alone in a place you can't recognize? What do you do when you're forced to live someone else's life?

What do you do when the man you love is a universe away, yet the same exact man is so close but is completely unreachable?

Would you reach out and be content with the man who doesn't love you? Loving a man, who doesn't love you back? Or would you stop at nothing to return to the man who does love you but has lost his way back to you?

According to Gulf, one would do anything to return. You would search day and night for a possible way back home, even it would cost you sleep and food. You would go through all the books and all the internet pages you find just to get a clue on how to return. You would do anything but give up hope.

But after a while, you can't help giving up hope. Time passes by, until months have gone by and you still don't have any clue on how to return.

When you don't even know how you got here, it's even harder to return. The ways back are unclear if you've never left a bread trail to follow in the first time.

Thinking about it like that, you might find it overly dramatic, but it isn't when you live it.

Gulf never wanted to lose hope, but at some point, he had to realize how unlikely it was for him to return home. Every day he spent in this universe was a day lost in the other. Instead of putting all his time on matters which seemed more useless day after day, he had another life here to get to which he couldn't ignore any longer. It scared him how easily time passed when he just went with the flow. Hope became a luxury, instead life began to weigh down on him.

On dark days he even thought it was better that he disappeared like that, because Mew finally doesn't have to be with him anymore. He wasn't bothering the elder with his presence anymore.

But he still wanted to be with Mew.

He wanted to be with his Mew.

So as life passed by, Gulf never stopped having that tiny sliver of hope that he could return. Every night, he would look at the ceiling and wish to wake up somewhere else than here. Every night, he would imagine himself lying there next to him, instead of feeling cold in this bed. But every morning, he would open his eyes in the same place he had fallen asleep in. The same small bed that had become his life.

Until one night, he had been so tired from work and football practice that the moment he touched the bed, he'd fallen asleep without a thought about his husband. That night, he dreamed about all he had ever wished for. In this dream, he woke up in that familiar place with that familiar smell, with his warm husband lying next to him and that nostalgic song that he recognized as his husband's alarm.

Deciding to indulge in the dream, he spent the morning returning back to his old familiar rhythm. As if the dreaming gods had somehow answered all his prayers, he soon noticed he was going to work with Mew like in the old days. It was as if everything was back to how it used to be. Everything was the same, yet somehow different. Mew was a little more distant, but also at the same time as sweet as ever. The set had a familiar feel and was filled with familiar faces, yet the script was something completely unknown. Still, Gulf decided to go with it, enjoying the dream to its fullest. Every now and then he stumbled over things he never would've done in the past – he was definitely out of practice – but since it was just a dream there was nothing to worry about. He just enjoyed himself to the fullest.

When lunchtime neared, Gulf started to realize that this dream of his was getting very long. Even more, it was getting weirder and more complicated with each minute. Mild was there, talking about meetings in the past weeks he hadn't attended. People he didn't recognize greeted him as if they were close friends. The weirdest thing was the text he had received from an old friend he hadn't talked to in ages, suddenly as if they were close again. (At least, he hadn't seen the nong in years in his universe. Maybe his new life and his old were somehow colliding in his dream.)