10

The seasons changed, entering July. Because they had reached the limits of air conditioning inside of the warehouse, the party had taken up sleeping outside.

One Sunday afternoon, they erected poles on the lawn behind the warehouse, and slept on five hammocks tied together in the shade.

The dream felt refreshingly cool as they raced across a field of ice on dog sleds. They defeated a Suiju that acted like a polar bear or a killer whale, diving beneath the ice before coming back out to attack them. Then Saya overshot, fell into the water, and woke up because of the coldness.

Maybe it was because she was a Neversleeper, but occasionally, Saya would wake up all alone before the others. Moving carefully so as not to flip the hammock, she lowered her feet down to the ground. The other four still hadn’t woken up. She put on her shoes to go get a drink of water, and when she looked up, she noticed someone else was there.

It was a man wearing a parka, the hood low over his face. He looked down at Saya from his saddle on the back of a massive goat. His was shadowed and she couldn’t see it, but she could tell that he was looking at her.

“...Um?”

When Saya cautiously addressed the man, he spoke. “Beware the sheep’s egg, Sleepwalker.”

With a dull shock, Saya woke up. The hammock was swaying above her. It took some time for her to process that what she had just experienced was a dream, and she had woken up when she fell to the ground.

Hitsuji sat up in the hammock next to her and looked down.

“Huh? Saya fell out.”

“Ahaha! Lame! Whoa-oh-oh!” Kaede came crashing down beside Saya, which gave Midori a good chuckle.

“Did you hurt yourself anywhere?” Ran peered down at Saya from above.

“No...” As she stood up, Saya felt the memories coming back to her slowly.

That egg... What was it? she wondered.

Oh, right. She had nearly forgotten, but when they defeated the Suiju that had infected Saya, Hitsuji had pulled an egg-shaped core from its remains.

There was one other thing she remembered—

in all their Sleepwalks up until now, when they defeated a Suiju, Hitsuji always held the core, then crushed it. Her comrades always stood nearby, watching her do it.

That ritualized sequence, carried out just before they would return to Dayland, was remembered by no one.

The classroom was full of excited ring-tailed lemurs jumping around. They would snatch fruit from the branches of a tree outside the window to gnaw on, leaving the floor buried in hard seeds they had left behind.

In front of several ring-tailed lemurs, as well as four students who were not lemurs, I was speaking from the teacher’s desk again today. However, my voice was lost in the cacophony and didn’t reach them. I felt as though I might be crushed under the weight of the exhaustion and sense of futility, but Hitsuji finally turned to look at me.

“Hey, everyone, Saya-sensei is trying to say something.”

With her focusing their attention, the four of them were finally facing my way.

“Thanks, Hitsuji-kun.”

“You have a kind of difficult look on your face today, Saya-sensei.”

“There was something I wanted to check.”

I talked to my companions about my suspicions; It wasn’t simple to avoid losing track of the story. In sleep, the slightest lapse of caution would twist my reasoning, and the next thing I knew I’d be talking about something completely different, or maybe uttering nonsense sounds that meant nothing at all. It was, in fact, my third time trying to explain this.

I might add, I knew I had explained this in Dayland a number of times, too. The thing was, we’d forget. Not just them, but me, too. Our consciousness when we were dreaming really was different from when we were awake, so when we woke from Nightland our memories were rather vague. Of all of them, though, the memories of this Egg were the hardest to hold on to.

“I don’t remember at all. Was I really doing something like that?”

“You were. Every time. Everyone was watching.”

Even when I said this, my comrades just looked at one another in bewilderment.

“Well, okay, I get it. If you say so Saya. Let’s all be careful, then.”

“Yes, that makes sense. I’ll keep an eye out from the rear, too.”

We left the classroom, descending the spiral staircase that wrapped around the trunk of the baobab tree. From here, we could see a Suiju that looked like one of the big cats that wander the savannah.

“That’s it, huh,” I said.

Ran raised her voice. “Hold on, everyone—Over there, too.”

Looking at where she was pointing, another Suiju caught my eye.

It was an eight-legged reptilian Suiju, and it was looking up at—

It was no good.

They hung on until the alarm rang, but both Suiju ended up getting away.

It was their first time experiencing a failed hunt; The five of them surrounded the table groggily, reflecting on the hunt as they replenished their sugars.

“Those guys... they were working together. Never seen that before.” Hitsuji sounded mystified.

Any time they had encountered Suiju before this time, it had always been alone. Each Suiju had a different look and way of moving. They were unlike other creatures humans knew, more like machines than anything, and they acted in ways that defied emotional investment.

Now, not only had two of them appeared at the same time, they had worked together to obstruct the hunt.

“I thought they were like bugs,” Midori whispered. Kaede furrowed her brow and seemed to be thinking, too.

“Maybe they got smarter?”

“I don’t know, but... Let’s be a little cautious next time. Keep close watch, and see if our opponents have changed how they act.”

Saya and the others nodded in response to Ran’s words.

“In the end, we weren’t able to confirm anything about the egg, huh,” Saya said. Everyone looked at her quizzically.

“What egg?”