Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who reviewed my last story ("Indelible"). You really make it worthwhile! I guess you could call this one a follow-up to that one, but it doesn't have to be. Oddly, the idea for this one came before the idea for "Indelible". I guess I should add that I write oneshots almost exclusively… Sorry if that disappoints anyone, but I feel like I can make a shorter story a better story.
Premise: Some people were meant to be together. If that's so, they'll always find a way.
---
"Somebody-I-(Don't-)Know"
Light. Light from somewhere and nowhere and everywhere. Light that made everything merge together in blinding brightness, shrouded in shadows.
Music. Music dancing from every non-existent corner of the circular room. Music that soothed the mind and grated the ears.
Was someone sitting there? The light was too bright, too dark to tell.
Roxas opened his eyes. Had he fallen asleep again? He sat up and looked around, coaxing the sleep out of his blue eyes with his hands. The sky was a solid wall of pale periwinkle whose continuity was broken only by a handful of small, puffy clouds, peacefully drifting in the warm afternoon breeze. Roxas checked his surroundings. He sat against a tree on the edge of the woods outside of town. The afternoon sun filtered through the trees leaves and danced in patches across his lap. How long had he been out here?
Far off, Roxas heard the chime of the clock tower. He counted one, two, three, four bells. So it was getting late. He stood himself up and stretched before setting off to town.
---
Naminé took her usual seat in the white room. Something about the disturbing symmetry of the room comforted her. Maybe it was because it reminded her of her own existence as a Nobody, the perfect replica of some other person somewhere. Or was it the emptiness that made her feel so whole, mirroring the bottomless pits she felt where her emotions should have been?
She rummaged through the drawers in the white desk and brought out a worn yellow sketchbook and a small aluminum case of colored pencils. As she opened the case and placed the pencils out beside the book, she noticed how strange the color looked against the stark white of the entire rest of the room.
Naminé leafed through the pages, pausing shortly at each sketch to remind herself of it before passing on to the next one. She reached the end of the sketches and spread the book flat on the table.
"What for today?" Naminé had been feeling drained of inspiration lately, for some reason she could not place. So she had taken to letting her hands wander over the paper, letting her mind draw whatever it wanted to. She closed her eyes and grasped a pencil. She set the tip down on the white paper and let her hand find its own path.
---
"Roxas? What's up with you, today?"
Roxas looked up and suddenly noticed that his ice-cream had started to melt all over his hand. The usual spot was empty but for the two, both Hayner and Pence having had somewhere else to be. Olette was squatting on her heels, her green eyes worriedly studying his face.
"Oh… h-huh?" Roxas began, sitting up and stretching a smile on his face.
"You seem a little down today," Olette said, tilting her head on her left shoulder. She stood up put her right hand on her hip.
"R-really? Y'think so?" He forced a weak laugh.
She didn't buy it. She never had. Of his friends, Olette was his oldest and the one who knew him best. Sometimes it was scary how well she knew him. Her jade eyes were like microscopes, seeing straight through his bravado, his façade, straight down to the heart of the matter.
She was giving him that laser-targeted gaze now, that one against which he knew he had no defense. He let out a resigned sigh of defeat as he got up from his seat on a crate and walked across the room to retrieve a napkin. "I've been having this weird dream lately," he began, wiping the ice-cream off his hand and sitting back down.
He sat back down on the crate resting his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees. He felt Olette sit down next to him and lean back on her hands. He could still feel her gaze boring into the back of his head.
"It starts with a white room. It's blindingly white, so much that I can barely see anything in it. And there's someone in the room. I can't really see them, but I know someone's there. A girl, I think."
"Who is she?"
"I don't know. I've never actually talked to her. But I think her name's Naminé."
---
The door to the white room opened. Naminé only noticed because a spot of burgundy suddenly appeared to break the monotony of the white walls. She focused her vision on the spot of color as it began to walk closer.
"Naminé," came the voice through the layers of bandages. "It's getting late. You should go to bed."
Naminé nodded. She looked down at what her hands had drawn. The picture was a simple one, not particularly well drawn, but not badly drawn either. It was one she had become quite accustomed to over the past days.
"You seem to really like this scene," the bandaged man said.
"Do I?" She looked at the scene. It depicted a boy with brown hair sitting under a tree and a clear blue sky.
A finger covered in a crimson glove pointed at the boy. "Who's this?"
"I don't know," Naminé said, shaking her head slightly. "His name is Roxas."
"Did you make him up?"
"No." She was certain of that.
---
Light. Light from somewhere and nowhere and everywhere. Light that made everything merge together in blinding brightness, shrouded in shadows.
But this time, Roxas was prepared. He steeled himself against the blinding light and moved forward towards the silhouette he could just barely make out. When he got close enough that he could make out some of the figure's features, he saw that he had been right. A blonde-haired girl sat quietly at a desk, her hand doodling on a sketchpad while her eyes looked off to the nowhere of the circular room's corners.
Roxas stopped when he was standing not a half-foot behind her. Somehow, the light seemed less blinding here.
"Hello," she said.
"H-hi."
"You're the boy in my drawing, aren't you?" she said, not turning around.
"And you're the girl in my dream."
"Roxas." "Naminé."
Each said the other's name simultaneously. Naminé turned in her chair to face him. Her cheeks were blushing slightly, her blue eyes confused but confident.
"It's strange, y'know," he began, putting his hand behind his head.
"That we should know so much about each other."
"It's almost like I know you…"