Chapter 0 "Dreaming"

"When do you think he'll wake up?" A voice rang on the blackened sea.

A man, barely meeting the status quo to be called so, spoke to the sole other awake person on the boat — a small boat, fitting for the small group.

Waves rowed them whichever way and their destination was whatever destiny would bring them to.

"I don't know, but it's best to let him sleep for a while," a girlish and stoic voice replied.

The man-boy heard her, grimaced, then turned to look at the last of the three. "I wonder what's going through his mind right now... his face isn't good." He noticed the unbending frown on their sleeping companion's face.

"Don't worry, he'll get better... and I didn't take you as one to worry about others? Especially him…?" Her face stayed neutral as she raised a brow — eyes as if nothing could ever bother her.

"What type of man you think I am?!" The boy became beet-red. "I can acknowledge when someone has helped me a great deal! And don't try and come at me as if he hasn't done the same to you, you leech!" He pointed a finger at her irritatingly stoic face, teeth grinding. He really hadn't a shred of likeness for her.

The girl shrugged her shoulders at his tantrums and turned to face the other side, face unchanging.

The boy clicked his tongue and sat looking at the opposite side in petty rebuttal.

"...you're so annoying…"

And so waves continued to row them in the carefreeness of a still and black-tinted sky. Wind and sploshing were the only sounds for their ears. Some occasional heavy huffing too.

The third member and last of the group rested uncomfortably on the wooden boat… far too small for him, the two had long noticed. They should've been greedier back at the shore, but what good was regret now.

They were only three together, but they had enough stories to keep crowds up for nights, comparable to fishermen who told tales for their or the audience's amusement. Though, theirs weren't tales really.

It was night and the moonlight shone at the numerous injuries and bruises-turned-scars covering their bodies. Hard-earned trophies some would call them; others would say those were permanent reminders of a time of blemish.

"He's probably thinking the burden is for him and him only, and that isn't true at all," the boy started suddenly. The woman shifted in her seat when she heard him but said not a word. He breathed, recalling it all. "No one was able to move a finger at that time. No one."

A few long seconds passed and were more than enough for them to reminisce the picture of a gruesome past.

Huff— An unknown feeling surged in her chest and the girl spoke before late: "Or it might only be that it was a long night... for all of us." She tried to dismiss melancholy at this time and hour.

Hearing some heavy breathing, she looked behind her, pondered a bit, sighed, and rose up from her seat. She then quietly approached the one sleeping.

She sat by his side and began to examine that innocent face with a taint now unwashable. Words didn't come out for a while until: "Living is... harsh," she spoke, words and tone heavier than her usual.

It was all she could say as she changed her gaze up at the sky. She kept looking, wishing for something, for minutes while the sound of feet tapping talked to her — the boy's.

Until she blinked, and not a single star blinked back at her.

—

The world was enveloped in black. His eyes twitched out of his control, face scrunched... it was time he entered those things again. This time he felt they would last for a long time... these nightmares — nightmares borne out of his own reality.

He knew he would never forget that past, that throe in his heart, the feeling back when all of his was killed and what was left was a metallic tang of depression and rage, waiting clogged in his veins until it would calcify his blood and he'd die from the misery. But he had to mend himself as one again. Somehow. Piece by piece. Or how exactly was he supposed to enact revenge?

The boat shook more violently and water pellets gently landed on his face.

He was never a lucid dreamer. Until it happened.

Inertia caught him by the feet and his face hardened, heartbeat fastening...

Here we go.