Chapter 15 – Dreams That Choose Us
Airi hadn't written anything new in three days.
She sat by the window of her new room, pen tapping rhythmically against the desk. The sky outside was pale with late summer light, clouds drifting like forgotten pages.
Her desk was scattered with notes: ideas, outlines, dialogue fragments. Nothing felt right.
The story she was trying to write—a solo piece for a regional literary contest—seemed to unravel each time she tried to hold it together. Her words kept drifting back to Akira.
And the question he'd asked on their last call.
> "What would you write if no one ever read it?"
---
It haunted her.
Because all her life, she'd written to be understood. To connect. To be seen.
But writing without an audience?
It was like talking into a dream.
---
That afternoon, she left the house and walked to a nearby park with her journal. The one Akira had given her.
She sat beneath a gingko tree and opened to a blank page.
No expectations.
No plot.
She simply wrote:
> "Today I saw a boy crying on the bus. He wasn't loud. Just quiet tears, like his body remembered something he couldn't stop. No one else noticed. I wanted to hand him a story, but I didn't have one yet."
She paused.
Then added:
> "Maybe some stories aren't meant to be published. Maybe they're meant to be given, like folded paper birds."
---
That night, she emailed Akira.
> "I think I'm remembering why I started writing. It wasn't for contests. It was for moments that don't fit anywhere else."
He replied two hours later.
> "Then write for that. And I'll do the same."
---
Akira, meanwhile, had fallen into a rhythm.
Every evening after dinner, he returned to his green journal and added one page to his new story. He didn't edit. Didn't overthink.
He just wrote.
The story was simple: two writers who meet once at sixteen, then don't see each other again until they're twenty-two. They recognize each other by a story they once wrote together.
He named the girl Kaori.
The boy didn't have a name yet.
Because Akira was still figuring out who he wanted to be by the end.
---
On Saturday, his phone buzzed with a message from Airi:
> "I have news. Big. Important. Terrifying. Call me?"
He dialed her immediately.
She answered on the second ring.
Her voice was breathless. Excited. Nervous.
"Okay," she said, "So I submitted something to the contest."
Akira blinked. "The regional one?"
"Yes. But not the story I was supposed to write."
"What did you send?"
She grinned. "Our novel."
There was silence.
Then Akira whispered, "You sent Dream Frequency?"
"Only the first half," she said. "I added a note saying it was co-written and unfinished. But I wanted someone to see it. Not to win. Just to share it."
He was quiet again.
"Are you mad?" she asked softly.
"No," he said. "I think it's brave."
---
Two weeks passed.
The days were slower. Classes dragged. The heat lingered into the evenings. Both Akira and Airi kept writing, but less often. Not because they were drifting apart—just because life was expanding around them.
New responsibilities.
New thoughts.
New fears.
But the thread between them held strong.
A thread made of ink and trust.
---
One evening, Airi's inbox lit up.
Subject: Regional Youth Literature Contest – Response
Her hands trembled as she opened the message.
> Dear Airi Nakamura,
We are delighted to inform you that your submission, "Dream Frequency," has been selected as a finalist in the fiction category...
Her breath caught.
> We understand the manuscript is a collaborative work and unfinished. We would like to invite both authors to submit a completed version within the next two months for final judging.
Congratulations.
She stared at the screen.
Then called Akira.
---
His reaction was simple.
Quiet at first.
Then: "So… we finish it?"
Airi laughed. "Yeah. Together."
---
They made a schedule.
Two pages a day. One chapter a week. Nighttime calls to brainstorm. Weekend voice messages for scene reads.
It was like old times, only tighter.
Focused.
And sweeter.
---
Chapter 25 began with a letter in the dream:
> "This is the last note I'll leave.
If you find it, follow the light through the window.
I'll be waiting on the other side."
Airi wrote that one.
Akira followed with a scene of the girl arriving at a train station made of glass, the sky outside shifting like an aurora. She walks until she finds the boy reading a book that doesn't end.
When she asks him what it's about, he says:
> "It's about two people who refused to stop writing."
---
As they approached the final chapter, their calls grew longer.
They talked about more than the novel.
College applications.
Future cities.
Favorite lines from books they read as kids.
And once, on a night when the moon was sharp and silver, Akira asked:
"Do you think we'll ever write something better than this?"
Airi paused.
"Maybe," she said.
"But not with anyone else."
---
The last chapter came like a breath held too long.
They wrote it together in a shared document, editing in real time. The final scene had no big goodbye. No kiss. No tears.
Just the boy and girl, sitting side by side, their hands brushing lightly as they wrote.
No more dreams.
Just this:
> "They wrote one word each day, and never stopped.
Not because they had to.
But because they finally wanted to."
---
They sent the finished manuscript with quiet hearts.
Not expecting victory.
Just ready to let it go.
---
The results came in three weeks later.
Airi called him, crying.
"We didn't win," she said.
Akira smiled. "I didn't think we would."
"But," she added, "we got published."
He blinked. "What?"
"They're printing the finalists in an anthology. Our story's going to be in it. With our names."
Akira sat down on his bed.
All he could say was, "Wow."
---
Later that night, Airi sent him a photo of the acceptance letter, with a caption:
> "So... should we call ourselves authors now?"
Akira replied:
> "Only if we never stop becoming one."
---
That night, they wrote nothing.
They didn't need to.
They had already written what mattered.
And now, the rest was waiting—like a blank page that wasn't empty, just full of promise.
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