Right after Matthew fell asleep, he had to make his choice.

Choose someone's dream to enter or wake back up. Matthew frowned, lingering in the gray in-between world of sleep and wakefulness. He knew that he could take as long as he needed to make his choice, but there really was no point. One time when he was younger—about twelve—he had attempted to break his strange dream system by staying in the 'Gray World' for what felt like hours and hours. Then he chose to woke up, thinking that maybe he'd slept he whole night without inserting himself in anyone's dream.

Matthew vividly remembered the bitter disappointment when he realized the entire process had taken less than a second. No matter how long he spent in the Gray World, no time was passing in reality at all. So to get through the night by sleeping, he had to find someone's dream to enter.

Though science argued that the whole thing was impossible—first of all, dreams don't last for hours, that's just how humans experience them—Matthew knew better. For his own experiences, at least. Perhaps he was just incredibly abnormal.

Matthew stayed up. He was actually pretty hyped off the coffee he'd bought with Gilbert. He'd purposely chosen a caffeinated drink so he'd be able to stay up and avoid anyone's drunken dreams.

Hanging out with Gilbert at the open-24/7 coffeehouse had been fun. Very fun. Though Matthew had approached several topics with weariness after seeing Gilbert's seemingly sad mood, Gilbert appeared fine for the rest of the night, making jokes and asking questions about Matthew. Alfred called Matthew around 12:30, letting the Canadian know that Arthur had gotten home safe and sound. Matthew realized how late it was and Gilbert dropped him off at home, chuckling over Matthew's carelessness.

Around three in the morning, Matthew fell asleep, decided to enter his neighbor's dream—his neighbor was notorious for being an early riser—and spent the next three hours trapped in his neighbor's imagination, sitting in a tree and watching his neighbor perform some kind of bizarre rain dance.

Much to Matthew's amusement, when he woke up (six on the dot), it was raining.

Weeks passed.

Late summer blended into autumn, and the trees in town turned lovely shades of fiery red, bright orange, and crisp gold. There was a particularly beautiful maple tree by the front entrance of the school, and its leaves were such a bright red it made Matthew dizzy. In a good way. Occasionally, Gilbert would pick a few of the tree's fallen leaves off the ground and present them to Matthew in a joking manner, pretending like they were precious artifacts all the way from Canada.

Matthew had grown extremely close with Gilbert, perhaps even closer than he was with Alfred, Arthur, or Francis. He started eating with the Prussian once a week, then twice, until finally he was joining Gilbert so frequently that Arthur asked if Matthew had another set of friends he preferred to eat with. Sarcastically, of course. Matthew didn't share any classes with Gilbert, but he quickly realized as solitary and strong as Gilbert pretended to be, he did not like being alone so much.

Matthew also discovered that Gilbert and Ivan Braginsky had some kind of long running feud going on with each other, but Gilbert refused to go into much detail. However, since Matthew started interacting with Gilbert, Ivan seemed to have backed off a bit. Matthew made a mental promise to try to find out more about that without being too invasive, if he ever got a good opportunity.

In the tail end of October, though, something truly unusual happened.

Matthew got ready for school at 6:30 AM on the third Wednesday of October. The night before, he hadn't bothered going to sleep, knowing he was too tired to deal with someone else's dreams. But this wasn't a problem. He didn't need that much sleep.

He dumped most of his stuff off in his locker, then dropped off his binder and textbook in his first class (English). He still had a good twenty-five minutes before class actually started, so he wandered down to the music wing of the school, knowing Gilbert would probably be in one of the practice rooms.

Matthew heard a piano and flute duet drifting out from behind a closed door. He waited until the instruments died off before knocking on the door.

"Come in," Matthew heard Gilbert call.

"Sounds great," Matthew said, clapping a little.

Gilbert snorted. "Thanks, Matt." Gilbert turned to the pianist—a stern-faced, dark-haired guy with one unruly hair tarnishing his otherwise neat appearance. "This is Roderich Edelstein. We're in music theory together. As annoying and obnoxious as he is, he's freaking amazing on the piano."

"Amazing?" Roderich mimicked, shuffling through his sheet music. "Not awesome?"

"Nah, awesome is more of a me adjective," Gilbert said. "And are you going to ignore the fact that I called you annoying and obnoxious?"

"Hi, I'm Matthew," Matthew said. "We're in calculus together, I think."

"Oh, that's right," Roderich said. "I heard you're from... Canada? How do you like the United States?"

"It's, ah... fine? I'm going to go now. Sorry, Gilbert. I thought you were practicing alone. I didn't mean to interrupt anything."

Roderich tilted his head to a chair in the corner of the room. "Feel free to stay. Unless, of course, you aren't so fond of music. No offense taken."

Matthew smiled. He'd only heard Gilbert play the flute a handful of times—no, scratch that, more like once—so this was a rather rare opportunity. Matthew sat down in the chair, fascinated. He'd played the violin for, like, six months back in elementary school and that was the beginning and end of his musical experiences.

"Should we try the Tchaikovsky again?" Roderich asked Gilbert. "Or would you rather do the Shostakovich?"

"Err, Tchaikovsky is fine," Gilbert said, seeming unusually flustered.

Matthew listened to them play, beginning to space out. He was completely enthralled by the music, but his mind was wandering. He watched Gilbert playing and decided that he was going to enter Gilbert's dreams that night. Just to, you know, survey the area. Check things out. Besides, he'd already entered so many others' dreams. He was definitely close enough with Gilbert to at least see what things were like in the Prussian's mind.

"Gilbert!" Roderich shouted, jolting Matthew out of his thoughts. "Are you even trying? Verdammt! I don't have time for your excessive mistakes today."

"Then work on your goddamn Haydn solo! I can't—" Gilbert set his flute down and pretended to mark something on his music.

"Can't what?" Roderich's eyes flickered over to Matthew, and he sighed. "Okay, I see. Don't worry. I think I'm just going to go get ready for class." He exited without another word, leaving Gilbert bright red and Matthew as confused as he'd ever been.

As if the music room incident combined with Gilbert's strange behavior for the rest of the day hadn't been odd enough, things only got weirder.

Matthew went to bed that night and entered the Gray World. He knew Gilbert was asleep, because he could sense Gilbert's dream as a possibility for a place to go, almost like a presence—and that didn't happen when someone was awake and not dreaming—but when the Canadian tried to enter Gilbert's dream, he couldn't.

It was almost like Gilbert had some sort of mental block set up. Of course, Matthew knew that wasn't the case, but it sure made him uncomfortable. Matthew tried a second time, and still... nothing.

Matthew woke up. It was around midnight. Very little time had passed since his first attempt to break into Gilbert's subconscious. This is very weird, Matthew thought. In all my life, I've never been shut out of someone's dream.

He jumped when his phone buzzed. It was sitting on his nightstand. The screen lit up, brightening his room. Matthew put his glasses on and checked his phone.

12:09 AM - Gilbert Beilschmidt: Ugh, I cannot sleep. I've fallen asleep twice and woken up both times. What gives? You awake, Matt?

Matthew's eyes widened as he read Gilbert's text. He had woken Gilbert up? That was impossible. He hadn't even been able to get into Gilbert's dream in the first place.

12:10 AM - Matthew Williams: Yeah, I'm awake...

12:12 AM - Gilbert Beilschmidt: Now I'm definitely not tired.

12:12 AM - Matthew Williams: Eh?

12:13 AM - Gilbert Beilschmidt: Oh, sorry, nothing...

Matthew and Gilbert texted for a few minutes, until Matthew told Gilbert he was going to bed.

The blond wrapped himself in his blankets, frowning. Something was off. Why hadn't he been able to enter Gilbert's dream? And why had Gilbert woken up when he tried?

"I'm going to figure this out," Matthew whispered, then sank into his younger sister's peaceful dreams.