[GSGW] my good friend (6146 words)

[shamera]

Title: my good friend
Fandom: Got Dropped into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Work
Character/Pairing(s): Kim Soleum & Braun
Rating: PG
Warning: spoilers up to chapter 208
Summary: a very long and overdue talk between two Good Friends.

The night sky above him was infinitely vast, with stars twinkling down from every corner and an array of colours that could only be seen the deepest and darkest hours, when all the world was asleep and the lights turned off until a hush fell upon the earth to herald the end of a day undefined by hours.

It was, of course, a darkness that is almost never seen within the busy and ever bright city of Seoul. Streetlights, advertisements, offices, and night businesses flooded their glow through the streets and up into the clouds, the light pollution that one could not escape even miles away from the city. At best, most nights someone looking up on a cloudless night would see the moon and some scattered array of constellations that struggled to glow against the backdrop of LEDs and neons.

Yet as Kim Soleum lay upon the soft grass of an open field, he could see thousands of stars shining down on him. Each light but a pinprick in the dark blanket of the atmosphere, creating a swirling pattern of art that spread its skirts in a dance across the sky.

The night air was as warm as a midsummer dream, and Kim Soleum breathed in deep to stretch his lungs, and then slowly exhaled to enjoy the sensation of having clear air passageways. He lifted one hand from his side, and then the other, to stare at the silhouette against the backdrop of stars.

Five long fingers on each hand, joints slightly knobby, and wide, strong palms. They were hands that served him well.

Human hands.

He moved those hands to touch at his face, at his jaw, and slid down lightly with his fingertips down to the shape of his chin. A little sharp, but the skin was soft enough to compensate for that. He then moved his hands up and felt his forehead, his brows, the slope of his nose, and the curve of his cheekbones. The exploration ended with both hands over his lips, as if to prevent himself from speaking aloud, even as Soleum continued to watch the stars.

“Are you surprised?”

Kim Soleum tilted his head slightly to the side, his hands following with his movements, and spied the dark silhouette of a person seated on the ground next to him, an arm resting upon a drawn up knee, torso turned to face him. The person looked to be wearing a sharp suit, although details other than the shape escaped him in the dark oblivion.

Atop the silhouette, where the head should be, there was a large rectangular shape, like a box.

Braun, Kim Soleum mouthed underneath his fingertips, recognising the figure.

How could he not?

Despite not speaking the name aloud, there was something about the box shape that looked pleased at the recognition. This was not the small bunny figure that Soleum was intimately familiar with, but rather the larger than life host of a very dangerous Darkness. A star from the deepest dark of his own right, sitting on the grass next to him.

Braun, the terrifying television host, with his screen of a face darkened in solidarity with the quiet night, waited patiently for Kim Soleum to answer him.

Soleum didn’t know if he could. He patted at his own cheeks again, and dropped his hands to the grass beside himself. Ten fingers curled into the dewy grass, the soft blades scratching lightly against his skin. He moved his wrists, and then his elbows, and rotated his shoulders to squeeze against his back. His ankles moved as though to a soundless tone, and then he shifted around on the grass like a wildcat trying to scratch an itch where they couldn’t reach, twisting his spine and his hips and his knees, to one direction and then the other, almost like a slithering snake.

Each movement was slow and measured. Each movement was a small burst of joy as his toes curled in pleasure.

He opened his mouth, then shut it again. Open, shut. He tested turning his neck, and then made a humming noise, delighting when he heard the sound.

The feel of clothes encasing his skin. Hair curled behind his ears.

He was himself, familiar and whole.

“Are you Braun?” He asked, his voice cutting through the silence of the night. For such a beautiful scene, it was not accompanied by the familiar sounds and smells of the night, cutting through the illusion. “Am I dreaming?”

The silhouette of the television head came closer, and Braun replied in that smooth, charismatic voice that was little more than a rumbling whisper with an undercurrent of electrical hum. A voice literally made to be heard by thousands, “I am your Good Friend, come to visit.”

That both answered and didn’t answer his questions, which confirmed his identity to Kim Soleum. Braun the television host would answer just as such, with smooth declarations and dubious intent. Even his voice was different from that of the plush bunny, akin to deep vibrations over silk. While the Good Friend plush soothed and cajoled, the sheer presence of Braun the television host was an electrifying rush that could not be ignored.

“Then you already know how I feel.”

“I would like to hear it from you directly. I would like you to give me permission to hear those words.”

Permission? Now Kim Soleum was starting to doubt Braun’s identity again.

Permission was not something Braun had ever asked of him. He decided, he manipulated, he led, and he sidestepped. As a creature from the Darkness, Kim Soleum realised it was unfair to judge Braun by human standards, but he didn’t have any other standards to judge him by. Braun was a person, an entity, that more often than not got exactly what he wanted.

In human terms, he might be an arrogant, conniving, manipulative asshole.

Next to him, Braun sighed, as much as a television set could sigh.

“I feel perhaps I have been misrepresented once again.”

“Maybe stop listening to my thoughts,” Kim Soleum suggested audaciously, something he would not normally do outside the safety of a dream. Even within dreams, he was terribly aware of his own vulnerabilities. Methods of pain and death nipped at his heels nearly every night, unless there was the off chance he collapsed from an exhaustion so deep that his mind couldn’t spare the strength for dreaming.

“I merely hear what you want me to hear, and what is necessary to help you as a friend should.” Braun excused. “If there are thoughts about me, directed at me, then it is of course my duty to hear my friend even when he has no voice to use, no tongue to speak with.”

The words were as ominous as a threat, but Kim Soleum was too jaded to fear it. What was the lack of a voice to him, the lack of a tongue? He was well aware he was in a dream, and that outside the dream—

The lack of a voice and tongue was the least of his worries.

More than just that, he was very nearly gone. Very nearly liquid and clumps of flesh, everything physical about himself collapsed under the mental strain of his inhumanity.

And wasn’t that just the sweetest irony?

Kim Soleum was only human so long as he believed he was human, no matter what reality might say. When faced directly with the truth, his entire being melted away like wax presented with fire.

He curled his fingers through the blades of grass and down into the soft, damp earth, feeling grains of sand dig under his fingernails. Outside of this dream, he was… untethered. Mere gas in a balloon, shaped only by the suit he was wearing and his new contract to Daydream.

Without it, he was… nothing.

“Why are you still here?” Kim Soleum whispered the words into the swirling abyss of stars and deep spaces between. Did it even count if it was merely in a dream? “I must have disappointed you. I didn’t listen to you, I didn’t take your advice. I decided against every entertaining choice and did things the way I wanted to. I ignored you. I resented you.”

“Did you really?” The silhouette of the television tilted in an almost human fashion. “I found our latest interactions far more entertaining than before. You’ve truly transcended your previous self, my friend. You have gained perspective enough to develop your own methods, even without my help. In fact, not once have you needed my aid!”

“I asked for it, though,” Kim Soleum gritted out.

The television head once more gazed down at him, moving in closer. Closer. There was a slight static within the black glow, darkened to not disturb the night but filling out bit by bit until it was just bright enough for Soleum to see the outline of his own form reflected in the faintly glowing screen.

“But you did not need it.” Braun told him, the screen now centimetres from his face. There was a flicker of static, of rainbow noise, dripping down to his eyes like shooting stars. “Why cling to the end of a show that has long since lost its audience? You are meant for bigger and better things.”

“But that’s not up for you to decide!”

“It is, so long as I am your Good Friend.”

Kim Soleum bit back his biting remark. It was petty and it was thoughtless (and dangerous) to renounce the status of friends. Even amongst humans, friends argued and fought, and they often continued as friends despite that. He knew that.

He knew that.

In the calm of the dreamy night, Kim Soleum let out a deliberately slow breath, trying to feel the movement of his lungs. He turned his head away from Braun, staring out instead into the endless dark of their surroundings, nothing but a grassy field that went on forever in all directions, leaving only the two of them in this world under the starlit witnesses.

An audience akin to Braun’s shows, flickering with curious light upon an endless expanse caging him in.

He didn’t think about which entry record this dream would match, because it didn’t matter anymore. Why even think about the <Dark Exploration Records> when none of that mattered, anyway? Before, he thought himself held victim to its entries, chained high and captive to the overwhelming authority that those stories had on his life. He imagined himself a regular person caught up in the tides of some grand plot, like a novel protagonist, with only his foreknowledge to light the way toward escape. Toward a way home.

It turned out he wasn’t like that at all.

Maybe he wasn’t even real.

Just a concept brought to life by others, another failed experiment, with holes in his mind where holes should not be. Perhaps in that manner he was truly comparable to a novel protagonist: ever trapped on the page of horrors. He was not outside the <Dark Exploration Records> navigating its strange mazes, but inside it and puppeteered by those he originally thought were characters he enjoyed reading.

Foreknowledge did not help him when those ‘characters’ were smarter than he could fathom. He thought he had a grasp on things— he thought knowing the characters on the page would make them predictable, yet he was blindsided by all the brilliance of those from the shadows. Those who knew better than to be named on the <Dark Exploration Records>, instead marionetting from above with strings that rose higher than his eyes could see.

Who could move in the face of such staggering horror?

He wasn’t strong enough.

“But you are.” Braun said, the words smooth as butter. Coaxing. Melting. There was a style of mechanical purr to his voice, like a gravel produced by older and grainier recordings. The Darkness creature had given up on the pretense that he could only hear the thoughts directed at him. “And that is why I came back.”

“And you saw my weaknesses then.”

It wasn’t until Braun’s return, until the subsequent narrowing of the road, of paths blocked and doors shut, that Kim Soleum started to understand the depth of his own despair in this world. Everything narrowed down to one line, to one point:

I need to go home.

He burned his bridges with the Disaster Management Bureau, burned his bridges with Daydream Inc., all for the chance to make it back home. All because his anxieties and his dread grew hour by hour, day by day. In his sane mind, he might have taken more time to decide on things… would have visited more friends to tell them goodbye, would have tied up more loose ends because this world had become more than a story to him, more than government styled documents whispering of horror stories to haunt the late hours.

Up until the point of Braun’s return, until the point where he was driven into a corner by a fox, Kim Soleum held onto a faint and wispy hope.

Should anything happen to him, he had a lifeline. He could do anything.

Part of that bravado was contamination, but the other part was the belief that he had a friend watching over him. He had people who believed in him, including himself, and even as things got worse and worse, he could still reach out, reach as far as he could, and almost taste success on the tip of his tongue. He was falling, and in that fall he was brought ever closer to his end goal.

But falling is descending, not ascending, even as he fooled himself into thinking that the increase in speed would break through the barrier to get him home.

But the thing is…

He didn’t really have a home to begin with, did he?

If that were the case… if everything he did was for nothing, all those moments of highs and lows and sacrifices and despair… none of that paid out. It all led him down to this point. To this place. Not the grassy field underneath a starlit sky, but down into the pitch black basement of Daydream, with broken glass under his hands and knees, and a rapidly fading wish.

Kim Soleum closed his eyes. Yet despite that action, he could still feel the tears escape, the wetness disappearing against his hair and then tickling his ears.

He was so confused.

He was so tired.

“Braun,” Kim Soleum says within the fullest depth of a dark and broken dream, “can we just stop?”

“If you need a break, then this dream is the place for it.”

Soleum slowly shook his head. No.

“I can visit you each night.”

Soleum laughed, the sound wet and broken. “And then what? What would change? I’d still wake up in the mornings, I’d still have to face the truth of my reality— I’d still be falling apart every moment. Can’t we just… stop?”

He opened his eyes again to the light of the stars, to the audience twinkling in this sky, now frozen by his words.

“What if I don’t wake up?”

There was a period of time, after he was found out as a spy within the Bureau, that Kim Soleum seriously entertained that notion. Everything had become too much, all at once, it felt like there was no escape. No happy ending waiting for him. He felt like everything he touched was brought to ruin, and that it was better for him to hide away like a wounded animal, and just find a private place to spend the last of his days.

And then he was chosen as the village sacrifice, and…

Kim Soleum felt… relieved.

He was okay with that, okay with dying in place of someone else. It wasn’t that he truly wanted to die, but he thought that perhaps if there was a bit of meaning behind his death, then he could accept it. Even if it was for Baek Saheon, and even if he was angry about being deceived, there was… relief in knowing that maybe this time…

He felt trapped. Like the Abyss Transpo train had never ended for him. The nightmare never stopped, only continued, gradually becoming worse and worse with each stop.

To be sacrificed, to die like that… it felt like he was finally allowed to get off the train.

It would have been alright if he just… stopped right there.

(Except the Bureau had come to save him, and for one sun-lit moment, Kim Soleum imagined that they had come to save— him, from the darkness he had been building around himself. That perhaps there was a chance they were really able to pierce through the mire of despair and pull him out by the hand.

After falling to the darkest despair, for one brief, brilliant moment, he thought…

It’s going to be okay.

That moment did not last long.

He had been wrong about being in the darkest despair, as his reality proved he could still go down from there.

Down, and down, and no matter what he did, it just got worse and worse. No matter how he tried to salvage the situation, tried to keep his morals and his boundaries, tried to— hold it all together. Hold himself together, and do what needed to be done without hurting anyone else.

“If my friend does not wake up…” Braun’s silhouette turned toward the sky. He stayed quiet for a moment, truly contemplative. “...Is this where you would like to stay?”

“I don’t have to stay here,” Kim Soleum responded, growing more confident with each word. Yes. It didn’t have to be here. It didn’t have to be in a dream. Weren’t dreams just giving false hope, the way he clung to that false hope when he was last rescued?

Kim Soleum would rather die than feel that again.

He would rather…

“You do not want to die.” Braun told him bluntly. This time, he dropped the charisma, dropped the soothing and the lulling, the siren-song lilt that made Soleum unconsciously lean in his direction. “Soleum. You are here because you do not want to die.”

It was a terrible thing to say. It was the truth.

Kim Soleum had been dying, and he… panicked.

After all the highs and lows… thinking everything was going to be okay after the Good Friend summoning, being found out as a spy only to be placed under a prohibition that would kill him within a month, to being saved from that prohibition, to then imprisoned by the very ones who saved him… and then after all that, finally walking away for the Wish Ticket and the sheer giddiness he felt combined with the sadness of leaving everyone he connected with him this world… the overwhelming relief of finally being done, of going home…

To have all of that crashing down on him, and the truth revealed.

At that time, he could have died. It would have made sense for him to die. Even if not physically, the emotional burden was tearing him apart. His very mental strain was melting his physical form.

It would have made sense to give up right there, to lie down and ride out the end.

Instead, Kim Soleum struggled. He pushed back, and he accepted Daydream’s contract in order to survive, without even looking at the fine print.

At that moment, he wanted to live.

Yet rather than victory, rather than some some well-timed epiphany to rewrite his very being, all he felt in that moment was…

Defeat.

Somehow, during the days when he accepted his own death, there had been a peace that came along with it. His mind would tell him, slow down. We’re at the end. And it felt like the worst of the fear, the overwhelming sense of anxiety and notion that everything would go wrong, always, forever, bottling up until he exploded outwards from pressure… it all.. Relaxed, just a little bit.

Those moments when he thought it was okay to just give up, he felt like he could breathe just a little bit easier.

And then… and then…

“I do not want you to die.” Braun said to him, drawing Kim Soleum from his spiraling thoughts. The ghostly television host’s presence was daunting, yet comforting in its threat, like a weighted blanket growing heavier and heavier. “I will not allow my Good Friend to die. Mr. Roe Deer, if you just say the world, then there is a stage prepared just for you. I have done it before, haven’t I? A show for you to be comfortable, to be safe. Where you’re allowed your curiosity, where I can help make you shine.”

“...That’s not what I want.”

“No.” And the silhouette seemed to grow larger, all encompassing, blocking out half the night sky. The television screen turned to him, looked at him, only at him, like Soleum was the only thing in the world left to gaze upon. Like a flower drawn to the sun, yet it was the opposite— a show drawn to dark delights within the shadows. “You have said as such. As you believed it at the time, I agreed with you.

“Do you still believe it?”

“I do,” Kim Soleum insisted. He pushed against the earth behind him, his hands sinking slightly against the damp grass and soft dirt. He pushed himself to his elbows, and then upward into a sitting position, all the while Braun retreated just enough to give him the illusion of space with every movement.

They stayed at exactly the same distance apart.

Here, in the quiet with nothing else to distract them, he could appreciate the genius behind the Midnight Show. It was like a dream to the both of them. Braun got to shine, got to flourish under the cameras, while Soleum was allowed free reign as writer, slowly and carefully nudged into the spotline alongside the television host in brief, heart-racing moments to acclimate him to the spotlight.

This had been Braun’s plan.

A place where the two of them thrived.

Together.

But that equilibrium would never have lasted. Not when one person was human and the other supernatural. Not when Braun was charisma and dazzling delight, all spotlights and applause, while Soleum relaxed behind the protection of a screen, happier to indulge his curiosities without taking center stage. One presence was bound to flatten the other if they weren’t both centered and willing to compromise.

And Braun was not a being of compromise. He was brilliant and bright, and he wanted to bring Kim Soleum into the light as well rather than dim his own light to meet in the middle.

“Is that what you think?”

Here, Braun sounded truly upset for the first time. No cloying sultriness in his tone, no forced cheer or inherently artificial sympathy. The static was almost gone from his voice, like it had been brought forward decades in technology. From grey-scale to colour to…

“I have always compromised for you. Did I not return to being a doll, an inanimate form of cotton and fluff, for your benefit? Did I not squeeze myself into something smaller, confine myself to a form unable to speak or move all the while living at your whim, in a world unfamiliar to my own? Have I not made myself helpless to indulge your sense of safety?”

That… Soleum stared at him in the dark, at the static and noise leaking from the confines of the screen out into the surroundings. Slowly immersing the dream, until there was crackling in the earth, in the sky.

“You were never helpless.” He said, although his tone was unsure.

“No, I was not helpless the same way you were never helpless. At all times, you had a way out of every scenario you ever encountered, if only you would stop limiting yourself by your strict sense of morality. One that not even those around you follow. At all times, there were those who would move heaven and earth for you. Should I tell you I am one of those?”

“Why?” And this question was one that Soleum could never answer. During their first meeting, everything expressed was merely deception. Braun pretended to enjoy his show with dwindling viewers, while Kim Soleum, no, Roe Deer who signed up as a participant exaggerated a certain charm out of his desperate fear.

When it all went south, Soleum had manipulated— outright lied, used items against Braun, and eventually convinced the host to let them leave… perhaps at his expense.

If he could think of it, then Braun would have known of it.

“Why would you choose to come back?”

Braun leaned down until Soleum’s forehead nearly touched his screen.

“..Why did you choose to summon for me, knowing there were plenty of others vying to help you?”

“Because you would always come for me.” Soleum answered easily, and then pulled back slightly as he realised what he said.

Was that… really what he believed?

“Then you know,” Braun said, also pulling back. The static calmed, and his voice once again took on the familiar lilt of a talk show host, of the reverb included in old televisions. “I have always cared, my friend.”

“...And you let me go.”

“Yes.”

Twice. Kim Soleum hadn’t thought too hard about the second time, his head already too full of thoughts, unable to handle anything more. But he feared then that Braun would stop him, would be insincere in wishing him the best.

Yet just as before, Braun let him go. Watched quietly as Soleum left.

While Soleum struggled to remember Braun was not human, and continued to judge him under human standards… what did it mean for Braun to do that?

The silhouette of the larger than life television host remained silent as Soleum gathered his thoughts, giving him the time and space he never got while awake.

Wasn’t it funny? They spent so much time together, nearly half a year with barely any moments apart at all, and yet they never spoke in such an honest manner before? They didn’t even have to speak in those times, not when Braun could literally read his mind. Yet the communication was lacking, and after Braun returned after several months of them being apart, it hadn’t gotten any better.

Perhaps it really was wrong of Soleum to expect the easy comradery they had after everything that happened. He had hoped… he wanted the friendship, but also the help, that Braun had so freely given the first time around, despite the fact that things had changed between them ever since.

Braun had gone his own way, and Soleum… Soleum had gone down his own path as well.

“You try so hard to stay the same, yet your changes are dazzling. Brilliant. Captivating.” Braun said, once again lauding Kim Soleum’s form as if they were on a talk show performing for an audience. Soleum didn’t need that when it was just the two of them. “Change cannot be stopped, and in your case you have continually changed to be greater.”

“I don’t want to be greater!” Soleum burst out, because he didn’t want this performance, he didn’t want the false compliments, and he didn’t want to feel like the contaminated parts of himself were the greatest parts of him. “I want to be human!”

He covered his face in his hands, knees drawing up until his thighs pressed against his forearms, attempting to get a hold of himself over the feeling of dirt rubbed over his skin. His nails scratched over his temples, and he tried to calm himself in that feeling.

Human skin. Nails. Hands. Fingers. Clothes. Dirt.

He could feel it, all of it. He was still human.

“My friend,” Braun’s tone gentled, perhaps understanding that he pushed a little too fast. “Can you truly not see what you are?”

Kim Soleum made a low noise in the back of his throat, and dragged his fingers down his face until he could see again. The low light, the dark fabric pulling tight against his knees, and the shape of hands in the dark.

“I am human,” he protested. “I have to be. I…”

He couldn’t remember his previous life anymore. It must have existed! He must have had a family, friends, experiences… the more he searched his memories, the deeper the yawning pit came to an abyss of nothingness. All he could remember… all those entries of the <Dark Exploration Records>... what had his job been before Daydream, exactly? His parents were worried over his job choice, but what did they actually say?

He couldn’t have been fabricated. He must have lived as a human. He must be human.

“Have you ever…” Soleum exhaled. He licked dry lips, suddenly terrified on a primal level, deep and pulsing, not fear that triggered adrenaline, but more like a wellspring of anxiety slowly bubbling over. “Have you ever walked down a street at night, while the world sleeps under a blanket of snow? It’s silence like you’ve never heard before. Your own footsteps, your own breath, the only noise in the world. It’s like… the air itself made noise, but now it’s muffled by the falling snow.”

Soleum slowly uncurled from his knees, looking upward into the shining night sky again. The stars above them were so beautiful. He didn’t know if that beauty was real. He had never been to the countryside, far enough away from city lights, to experience a night like this.

“I can still recall it,” he said, like a whispered secret. “That silence echoes in my ears. I remember… that I never heard anything quite like it before.”

He then turned his head to face Braun. To stare straight into that dark screen.

“I know the taste of yam baked underneath a fire.” He inhaled through his mouth, smiling softly. “How it burns your hands if you’re not careful, and your tongue even when you are. The sweetness of it, the warmth. The texture.”

The dark pit in his mind gave no indication if Kim Soleum had ever eaten a yam with his family or friends like that before. He very likely had never walked alone outside in the snow, being the scaredy-cat he was. None of it fit, yet those sensations were vivid across his mind.

“The warmth of sharing space in a dormitory. The noise and the disgusting habits people would bring, but you learn to laugh it off. Eventually you become… relieved to see the mess. Like proof that others are there with you.”

He raised his hands in front of him, inches from his eyes. Extends his fingers, and then curls them back down. He could feel the give of his flesh, the warmth of his palm against chilled fingertips, the slight bite of his nails.

All of those non-memories, the sensations… they feel so human to him. Make him human. It’s a strange feeling to take pride in, but Soleum had always been the type to want to fit in. He never really wanted to be known for other-ness. He didn’t want people to look at him and think he was different. He just wanted to blend in with the crowd.

Just a normal, regular human being.

There was an electrical hum as Braun took in his words.

“You can be all of that,” the talk show host said, “and so much more. Human, yet also beyond it. Your potential is vast, and I would hate to see such a beautiful thing squandered by momentary sentiments.”

Kim Soleum dropped his hands, his moment of dazed nostalgia and wonder gone.

“Well,” he said bitterly in response to that. “You got your wish.”

Funny how that worked— Kim Soleum spent the entire time in this world working toward the Wish Ticket, only for his wish to fall through. Yet Braun’s wish for him, against his own will, came to fruition. It felt like a bitter pill lodged in his throat. It made him angry.

It wasn’t Braun’s fault, yet Soleum still felt angry over it.

“Had your wish worked,” Braun told him. “Had you left at that moment for a home too far for me to reach, I would still be here. Waiting. As your Good Friend.”

“A Good Friend, huh?” Kim Soleum gave a bitter laugh. That reminded him. How could someone such as Braun be a Good Friend to someone such as himself? …Could one Good Friend even summon another? Daisy chain them?

“Yes. I have, and will always be, that Good Friend.” The silhouetted loomed over him, overcoming all the stars in the sky, the screen flickering until it was the starry sky instead, twinkling above Kim Soleum. “Mr. Roe Deer. I would very much like for you to be my Good Friend in return.”

Soleum startled. He stared up at the stars within Braun’s screen in a daze. The wording of it felt rather particular— not as a good friend, but as— a Good Friend. The doll. Bound to the one who summoned it.

…Who was Kim Soleum bound to?

Braun did not answer that verbally, but there was the sense, the static noise reflected straight into Soleum’s mind, that volunteered: to me.

But could he? Was that something he could be? Or was that something he already was, bound into his melted human form, restricted by all the rules of the summoning up until he could finally one day leave for home… a home that may not even exist.

His head hurt.

His heart hurt.

“...Perhaps that is enough for tonight.”

Braun’s large, looming form retreated into the size of something more manageable, still larger than life and a force to be reckoned with, yet not as overwhelming as before.

“You have a busy day ahead of you,” Braun said, and now they were two friends sitting side by side in the dark of night, watching the stars together. The dream returned to its semblance of normal, and Kim Soleum found that the starlight was so bright he could see the texture of Braun’s suit. “As do I, as it is. There is much to do for us who work, isn’t that right?”

The tone was jovial, the joke light-hearted. Kim Soleum wondered why Braun worked as he did. He always thought it was for the love of the stage, but perhaps it was something a little different from that. Even television hosts were subject to the whims of directors and producers, and Braun didn’t seem the type of person to humbly submit himself to the whims of others.

Oh.

Perhaps he did, though. To the people he likes.

Above them, the sky was starting to lighten. It was so black before, but that just went to show that the darkest hour was just before the dawn.

“I should hope,” Braun continued to say, and now the details of the television head were becoming more visible. Kim Soleum could almost see his reflection on the screen. His reflection, and nothing else. “That you’ll speak with me again tomorrow.”

“Isn’t that up to you?” Soleum asked, half bitterness and half genuine curiosity.

“It is up to you.” Braun said, the wording vague. He could be making a statement to say the power was in Soleum’s hands, or he could be answering the question to say he had the power only if Soleum wanted to think he had the power.

It was a confusing thought.

“Until then,” and here Braun leaned down again, and faintly, there was an impression of a smiling face on the screen. “I will wait, ever faithful, as your Good Friend. Until the moment you finally need me again.”

I thought I always needed you.

The opacity of the smiley face on the screen brightened, and on the horizon the first hint of light broke through the last dragging veil of night. It was an unexpected brightness that made Soleum look away from the person next to him, his eyes drawn to the brightness and warmth of what was coming.

He raised a hand, perfectly normal, a little pale, with several small scars from random scratches he couldn’t remember getting, against the light.

The world quickly brightens to white, and he can’t recall what happened before the light flooded through his dream.

Something nice, he think.

Something cathartic.

It was one of the very rare times the dark felt like… a friend coming to greet him.

As Kim Soleum woke up to stare at the blank ceiling about himself, he once again had to piece himself back together to something resembling human form, something that wasn’t melting, wasn’t hooves or scales or horns or tails, and he… despaired.

And he thought in his still-waking mind—

It would have been nice to have a good friend there.