Intertwining Path

The Dream (Ricardo/Riku)

Birthday Party

Ric and Anna had been preparing Alek's birthday in secret for weeks. Just as they had finally finished decorating the room and preparing all his favorite meals, they received a message from Ernesto that Alek was on his way. They shut down the lights and hid in the darkness until they heard the knob turning and immediately turned the lights back on.

"Happy Birthday Alek!" Ric and Anna yelled together while popping the firecrackers

"I thought you guys completely forgot about my birthday" Alek looks at them dumbfoundingly

"How could we ever forget" Ric pats on Alek's shoulder

"Come on there are more surprises waiting for you in the living room" answered Anna excitedly.

"Happy Birthday Alek!" Everyone who was hiding in the living room shouted

Alek looks at the decorated room and the table was buried with all his favorite foods with all his old friends welcoming him to the table.

"Oh my god I can't believe you guys did this for me" Alek starts crying into his arms

"Of course we did, your family" Ric hangs his arms around Alek to comfort him

Everyone smiled as Alek started bursting into more tears. After Alek was done crying everyone celebrated his birthday by cutting the cake, giving him his presents, and talking with each other. Ric managed to slip away halfway through the drinking contest the adults were having. He went onto the balcony and looked up to the stars until he realized that Anna had opened the sliding door and joined him.

"What are you thinking about?" Anna asks Ric when she notices the sad expression he is making

"I was just thinking that I was the luckiest guy on earth for having such great friends and family." Ric smiles back to her

"Your lying. Tell me the truth" Anna sighs

"I'm telling you the truth,"

"Then why do you have such a sad smile on your face," Anna asks with her voice filled with concern

Ric was flabbergasted but then again, he should have realized that he could never deceive any of his friends.

"I really do think that I'm the happiest man, but sometimes I feel like I'm missing something," Ric answered looking towards the stars with longing for something he feels like he lost.

Anna did not know what words to use to comfort him after all she never knew and hopefully will not know what it feels like to be him. Before Anna could say something, Ric decides to go back to the party and stop the adults from drinking too much before they got crazy. Unfortunately, they were too late, and everyone had already passed out from drinking too much.

"Oh great, this means we're the ones who are responsible for cleaning this entire mess up" Anna slaps herself in the face when she sees the mess in front of them

"There's no way we're going to be able to clean this up tonight, let's do it in the morning and force them to help us" Ric proposed to Anna

Anna agrees with Ric. They decided to leave all of them be and drag Alek into one of the guest rooms since he is the birthday boy. After they were done Ric went into his own room and immediately jumped into his bed. He wanted to sleep after today's celebration and was too tired to take a shower. After a few seconds later his eyes shut down.

-------------------------------------------------------

The Dream: Ric Pov.

Ric opened his eyes and raises himself up. He looks around to notice that he was in a field full of flowers. He walks around for a while when he hears voices coming from nearby. Ric decides to see where the voice is coming from and finds two small children playing with each other. Ric became speechless when he saw one of the children, he looked like a younger version of himself except with no scar on his face. Ric tries to touch him but the moment he tried his hand slipped through the boy. While Ric was contemplating as to what had just happened, he could hear the other child calling the younger version of himself.

"Come on R...." The other boy waved at the red-haired boy

"Wait .....Nii" The red-haired boy ran to the other boy

Ric decides to follow them and see where they were going. When he gets closer to them, he could clearly see what the other child looked like. The other child was a pink-haired boy with pale pink eyes. Something was familiar about the boy but he didn't know what. Suddenly he felt a pang in his heart when he thought about the pink-haired child

As the two children were chasing one another a shadow suddenly appears in front of them. The shadow approaches the pink-haired child and offers his hand to him. Ric doesn't know why but he has a bad feeling about the shadow.

"Come with me and I will make you the greatest idol that Japan has ever seen, even more than Zero." the shadow proposed to the pink-haired child

Ric sees the red-haired boy grabbing onto the other boy's arm gesturing him not to leave him. Oh no, he knew where this was going he had to stop it before he leaves or else!

"I will follow you" the pink-haired child takes the shadow's hand

"Don't go!" Ric shouts at the boy

But the boy doesn't seem to hear him and he disappears right in front of him. No, no, no, no, this can't be happening!

"Wait don't go .....Nii" The red-haired boy collapses onto the ground and starts sobbing

Why did that boy go? Why did he leave that other boy alone? Why won't he come back? No, no, no, no

"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" Ric screams

"Ric open your eyes!"

Ric opens his eyes to see Anna shaking him and Alek looking at him concern

"Anna stop you're making me feel dizzy" Ric weakly replies

"Sorry" Anna immediately lets goes of Ric

"By the way what's with your faces? You guys are completely pale" Ric weakly laughs

"Of course, we are! You were having a nightmare and started screaming like a madman" Alek shouts at him

"It's nothing to worry about you guys"

"Ric, don't joke it off. We are seriously worried about you" Anna glares at him

Well, what did he expect of course they are going to be worried about him, after all, that's happened to him in the past. It wasn't exactly the first time he had these kinds of episodes. But he's been getting better and recently showed no signs of it.

"It's alright. It wasn't about that. It was about something different" Ric sighs

"Different?" Both of them looked at him with confused expressions on their face

"Yeah" Ric replies

An idea pops into Ric's head

"Hey, Anna can you give me my smartphone?" Ric asks

"Here but why?" Anna picks up Ric's phone off the nightstand and hands it to him

"I need to call Ray" Ric starts dialing Ray's phone number.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello this my first time writing 

I forgot to mention this but Anna and Riku are at around 18 years old in this story and Alek is already 23 years old. 

Edit: This is the rewrite version