4

Atsuko slept late and started her treatment the following afternoon. Shima’s condition improved dramatically in very little time.

Atsuko ate a light dinner and fed her two patients. Then, as Paprika, she accessed the dreams of the now slumbering Shima. Past memories of treatment by Paprika must have been etched deeply on Shima’s mind, together with a sense of nostalgia.

In readiness for the expected intrusion by Inui and Osanai, Atsuko attached the DC Mini to her head by applying a bead of adhesive to the point and placing it on her scalp. Now the device could be used in parallel with her treatment using the collector.

Shima’s subconscious was contaminated with the same schizophrenic dreams as had been used to infect Tsumura. The Nazi salute symbolized submission to a father figure, but as this particular complex had never been one of Shima’s personality traits, it had quickly been destroyed. What Atsuko needed now was for Shima to talk as much as possible in his dreams. Even if his speech was full of nonsensical delusions, expressing those delusions would help him recover his own ego.

Shima dreamt he was in the student canteen of his old university. The university canteen?! thought Paprika. Not that the real Atsuko had turned into Paprika; she merely had to assume Paprika’s personality for the dreamer to recognize her as Paprika.

In real life, the student canteen had been modernized, expanded, and made brighter during Atsuko’s time at the university. What appeared in Shima’s dream was the old canteen, when it was still cramped and dingy. Shima was still a student. He was peering inside, timorously, through a gap in the partition separating the canteen from the corridor. He seemed hungry, perhaps because he hadn’t eaten much dinner just now. Or was it a visceral memory of chronic starvation in his student days?

In the canteen, part-time director Owada was eating with the other students. He looked like a student, but Paprika knew for a fact that he hadn’t studied at that university. Shima seemed to fear him; perhaps that was why he couldn’t enter the canteen.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Shima called loudly. But Owada seemed not to hear him.

It would have been highly inconvenient were Shima to suffer a recurrence of anxiety neurosis. To make sure that couldn’t happen, Paprika sat at one of the tables and beckoned him over. She would try to make him forget his feelings of guilt toward the other directors, symbolized by Owada.

“Hey, Shima! Over here! You don’t have to apologize!”

“It’s a quarrel between friends,” Shima said to excuse himself as he went to sit opposite Paprika. “That shouldn’t be possible. You seem to be a woman.”

“That’s right,” Paprika replied, smiling agreeably. “We are not the same person.”

Shima was beginning to recognize that he couldn’t identify himself with Paprika, but he persisted in remaining on the boundary between the two personae. In his own words, it was as if Paprika was “quarreling” with his obsession over “friends.” A side effect of using the DC Mini was that she could read Shima’s dreaming thoughts with absolute clarity. Visual clarity was also enhanced; her field of vision had widened to include blurred areas on the periphery.

Shima leant toward Paprika. “It started with someone putting on airs,” he muttered timidly. “There’s a demon in the kitchen.” They were sitting in a theater, in a corner of the dress circle.

“I said don’t worry! Is there anyone else in the kitchen?” she asked.

“Paprika!” The provocative nature of her question seemed to stimulate his memory. He at last remembered Paprika’s name, and his love for her. “Ah. Paprika. After you put the empty juice bottle down and went home, I shaved my head and you were angry. Because young Tokita fought and was courageous, you went away. But the house of Mejiro hasn’t gone under yet.”

As she observed Shima’s speech patterns, Paprika felt something untoward in his oddly dreamlike mood. She turned her attention to the stage. Seijiro Inui was standing in the center, wrapped in what looked like priestly vestments. An altar appeared, the only lighting provided by hundreds of candles flickering on candlesticks. The scene had changed to the inside of a chapel. The congregation all rose in unison.

Again Shima called out in a voice of fear. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

The dreams of Inui and Shima had merged. Paprika guessed so. Either that, or Inui was deliberately interfering with the treatment. Whatever the case, Shima was frightened, and the two had to be separated. Paprika decided to leave herself in Inui’s dream and confront him there. It was the moment she’d been waiting for.

Paprika remained in her half-sleeping state while her experienced fingers pressed the keys on the PT console, breaking the connection with Shima via the gorgon. Shima would have to dream on alone.

The chapel resounded with music that was not at all solemn, but more evocative of debauchery. Inui was continuing to incite his congregation with the oratory of one who railed against the world. Paprika issued a loud yell of opposition from the gallery above. Momentarily surprised as he looked up to see her there, Inui forced a derisory smile, then pointed straight at her and hurled words of abuse in her direction.

“There is a ***** of science, a brazen ****** who knows no shame!”

Paprika knew what Inui was trying to say, since she could read his dreaming thoughts. It was his usual dogma; that made her angry. Had it been her own dream, she would have soared through the air, down to where Inui stood before the altar, and laid into him there and then. But sadly, it wasn’t her dream. It was Inui’s dream, and his resistance would probably have rendered such an attack impossible. To make it her own dream she would have to enter a deeper sleep, but then she would lose all control over her actions. There was nothing for it. Paprika would have to use the stairs.

Paprika ran to the bottom of the bizarrely twisting, crazily winding staircase, but still couldn’t reach the altar. She passed through a corridor, a hotel lobby, and a shopping mall, then found herself inside a shop that looked like a beauty salon. Why the detour? It could have been because Inui was trying to prevent her from approaching him, she thought, or because she herself didn’t want to approach him. But in this case, she concluded, there was another explanation.

It was because there was something she had to do before she could confront Inui directly. Facing the mirror, sitting in a chair with his hair in curlers, was Morio Osanai. He must have come to protect Inui. That’s right. She needed to deal with this man first.

“It’s Doctor Chiba … Isn’t it?” Paprika’s image was reflected in Osanai’s eyes. He observed her warily. “As I thought. It’s Doctor Chiba.”

“How did you know?”

“Poison. Unmistakable. But why the little girl act? Oh, I know. You’re Paprika. Right? You’re Paprika … aren’t you!”

Paprika wondered how he could smell her perfume when he wasn’t sleeping with her. Perhaps people who used DC Minis to share the same dream could even smell each other’s body odor, even when they weren’t sleeping together. These were Paprika’s half-sleeping thoughts. To her, the bizarre no longer seemed bizarre. She may have been falling into a deeper sleep, and that may have been Osanai’s plan.

Sensing danger, Paprika laughed aloud and started to fight back. “Yes – I’m Paprika! I’m young and I’m coming to get you!”

Osanai analyzed the shock he felt on hearing these words from Paprika. Why was he so startled? Because it meant danger. Yes, that’s right. What was so dangerous? The woman was too confident. Access seemed to be working both ways. If she was only using the collector, she would merely have been observing, not taking part. In that case … Surely not?! … She must be using a DC Mini!

“Oh? I thought you’d stolen them all?”

But of course, Osanai could also read Paprika’s thoughts, since he was also using a DC Mini. This was an attack from someone unaccustomed to using the device. She hadn’t had time to familiarize herself with it.

Osanai was visibly unsettled. He stood up and tried to run away. Damn it! She’s using a DC Mini! Where did she find it?

“I won’t let you get away,” Paprika said with a suggestive laugh, designed to make him sleep more deeply. “Don’t forget – I can always follow you, no matter where you run!”

Osanai picked up a plastic makeup bottle and hurled it at her. Reading his thoughts, Paprika knew his intention was to wake himself up. He would wake up and think out a new strategy. Paprika clung tightly to his will to prevent him from doing that. Now, if ever, was the time to deploy a woman’s disregard of logic.

“I’m awake!” Osanai shouted, almost shrieking.

Osanai was in his apartment on the fifteenth floor. His bedroom was full of PT devices. On the bed, Paprika was grappling with him in his pajamas.

“How can you be here?!” Osanai yelled in terror. “I’m awake! I’m not dreaming anymore!”

He hadn’t returned to reality. In reality, she was Atsuko, but in Osanai’s dream she was still Paprika, clinging to him like a bad girl fooling around. Odd, she thought, that she could sense a smell exactly the same as his breath when he’d tried to rape her.

“You only think you’ve woken up,” said Paprika, “but that’s a dream too. You’re dreaming that you’ve woken up.”

Paprika laughed as she reached out toward Osanai’s head. She knew perfectly well that she was in a dream, but she simply had to remove the DC Mini from Osanai’s head. “Hand this over. I’m confiscating it.”

She felt the sensation of something solid in the palm of her hand. The device was attached to Osanai’s head with sticky tape. She pulled it off. She seemed to have grabbed some of his hair in the process, but what the heck – it was just a dream. She wrenched it out with all her might.

“OWWWW!” cried Osanai. “What are you doing? You said it was just a dream!”

In acute pain, Osanai pushed the dream detective away. She hit her hip on something hard and awoke as Atsuko.

She was sitting in front of her PT equipment. Shima was sleeping on the patient’s bed to her right, and Tokita on Atsuko’s own bed to her left. The room was dark, the only light issuing from the monitor screen.

Atsuko’s hip hurt. She must have had an actual pain there, which had registered as pain in the dream when Osanai pushed her away. Atsuko looked down at her clenched right hand. Human hair was protruding from between her fingers.

Atsuko opened her fist and caught her breath. If her two patients hadn’t been sleeping there beside her, she would have screamed aloud. She was holding a DC Mini, together with some sticky tape and a clump of hair. It was the one Osanai had been wearing. “I brought it back with me,” she said to herself. A shudder went through her. “I brought it back.” From the middle of a dream, to the waking world.