14

While I was lying in bed, Mom called from downstairs. She was going to go see my grandmother in the hospital, so she wanted me to drive with her.

It was a pain, but my grades had been less than stellar of late, so I wasn’t in a good position to refuse. In any case, it wasn’t like I was doing anything I couldn’t walk away from at the moment, so I dragged myself downstairs, and left the house with Mom. I went into the garage, got in the car, turned the key in the ignition, somehow managed to get out onto the street without hitting anything, and drove towards town.

I quickly regretted it. I didn’t have a license, after all.

Why in the world had I told her I would drive? I was going to crash, and crash hard. There was no way I wouldn’t. With a frightened grip on the wheel, I drove along, swerving occasionally, as I did my best to imitate the other drivers on the road. I could just barely understand the brakes and the accelerator, but I had no grasp for exactly how much force to put into either. I’d think I was stepping lightly on the gas, only to go far faster than I’d ever expected, and then when I hurriedly pressed the brake we screeched to a stop. The way I was driving was terribly awkward, and I could tell the cars around me were bothered by it.

While I was busy breaking into an unpleasant sweat, we headed onto a bridge over a river. The bridge was congested with traffic, and there were a lot of cars separated into a number of lanes slowly progressing across it.

That’s when my driving finally fell apart.

In a situation with cars both ahead of and behind me, with nowhere to go, I stepped down on the accelerator too hard. I panicked, and spun the wheel. That spared me from a collision with the car in front, but I rammed into the bridge’s railing instead.

That I didn’t do it at high speed was a small saving grace, but the engine stopped, and the car stopped moving entirely. More and more cars stopped behind me, creating a traffic jam, and I could only watch on with a feeling of despair.

It started to rain lightly. The layer of water running across the windshield blurred the scenery outside as I watched.

I heard the rear door closing. Looking in the rear-view mirror, there was no sign of my mother, who should have been riding in the back. In the rain-blurred scenery outside the vehicle I could see a familiar silhouette getting further and further away. She must have gotten out because she was angry at me for crashing.

While I was listening to the sound of the rain on the car’s body, feeling lonely and in a dazed lonely stupor, there was a sudden hurried knocking on the window right beside my face.

When I turned to look in shock, a fist hit the glass again, right in front of my eyes. Knock, knock, knock! When I recoiled in fear, this time it wasn’t a fist, but a metal tool—a long wrench meant for tightening the nuts on the wheels—which slammed into the window. The glass shattered, and I covered my face without meaning to.

“Saya! This is a dream!”

I was relieved when I saw the face that popped in through the hole in the glass: it was Hitsuji standing outside the car. Without waiting for my reply, she went about using the wrench to remove what glass had remained after the shattering. Like I was coming up out of the water, my consciousness cleared rapidly.

Hitsuji looked at me right in the eye. “Hurry and get out. It’s dangerous here.”

Maybe it was because of the force of the impact, but the door was warped and wouldn’t open. I wriggled my way out through the broken driver’s seat window instead.

I fell to the road where shards of glass were scattered and then stood up, brushing my hair back behind my ear. “Hitsuji, what a coincidence. Fancy meeting you in a place like this.”

“Come on, get it together. If you aren’t lucid, we’re going to have problems.”

Her angry face was adorable, too. I wanted to hug her. Just as I was about to do so, a steam whistle sounded somewhere.

From beyond the girders of the bridge, through the curtain of rain, there was a massive, many-decked luxury cruise liner approaching. The ship was coming straight for the packed bridge.

With no sign of it attempting to stop, the prow finally made contact. There was an ear-rending screech of metal as the bridge broke and cars poured out of the open gash one after another and fell.

The ground at my feet rapidly tilted, and both my body and Hitsuji’s started to slide along the asphalt, too. Before there was any time to respond, we were cast out into the air, the black surface of the water fast approaching.

There was an intense splash, and a shadow the size of a whale jumped out of the river. Looking like what you might get if you combined a nuclear submarine with a person, it was Kaede in mermaid form. She caught us with her chest. “You awake?” she asked.

“Clearly not.”

When Kaede opened her mouth wide to laugh at what I said, shark-like teeth peeked out from inside.

The luxury cruise liner, which was still going, finally bisected the bridge. The bridge should have been made from a steel frame, but it was as cheap as crafts made with wooden chopsticks and it kept falling to pieces. The train up on top of the bridge had lost its detail, too, and now it just looked like a wad of scrap paper. When I saw all the little legs coming out of it flailing around, it finally hit me that it had been a swarm of Suiju.

Ran and Midori flew in from the air, setting down on Kaede’s shoulders. Ran looked around to each of us. “Everyone’s lucid, right? Pay attention to what the others say. If someone’s acting weird, raise the alert immediately. There’s no question the Suiju are trying to cripple our minds.”

“As a general rule, I’ll be monitoring everyone, but it’s highly likely I’ll be affected myself without realizing it. So... while I’m sorry to have to ask this of you, please subtly check on me occasionally, too...” Midori added.

“Gotcha. So, what do we do from here?” Hitsuji asked.

“Let’s search for where the Suiju are coming from,” I replied. “They’re appearing somewhere, and heading to Dayland through our sleep. We find where that is, and crush it.”

Leaving the bridge to collapse and fall into the river, we made landfall on the shore of the river. A swarm of car-like Suiju kept coming in from somewhere, and they stopped where the bridge had once been. With the traffic congestion getting worse, the Suiju up front started to get pushed and fall in.

“It’s gonna be a real pain in the butt taking them all out, huh,” Kaede said with a troubled look as she transformed into a four-legged centaur-like creature. She created a long lance out of the void, and started poking at the swarm of Suiju, but there was no end to them.

Ran clambered up onto Kaede’s back. “Let’s leave them for now. I think it would be a bad idea to let them take up our time here. We have to figure out where these guys came from, and eliminate the source of the flow, or it won’t matter how many we kill.”

“I agree. So long as we remain lucid, the Suiju can’t get into Dayland. Conversely, if we’re drowning in our dreams, our sleep will become a passage to Dayland,” Midori said.

“Uh, hey, if we get too obsessed with hunting Suiju, could that make us lose lucidity...?” When I interjected, Midori looked up, seemingly taken aback.

“That could be possible. The act of hunting Suiju might itself have been a trap to make Sleepwalkers indulge in their dreams...”

Hitsuji cocked her head to the side. “Wait, do you mean we’ve been caught in their trap for a long time now?”

“I’d prefer not to think so. It was just recently that the Suiju changed how they acted, too.”

“Hey, hey, do we have time for idle chit-chat like this? If we’re gonna find where the Suiju are coming from, shouldn’t we get moving?” Kaede said impatiently.

“You have a point. Let’s go. Don’t split up too much... We should probably stick close together.”

“You can ride on me. I’ll carry you!”

When Kaede took off running on four legs, I hurriedly jumped on her, too. The metal plating that had carried over from when she was half-submarine was, kindly enough, outfitted with ladders and handrails.

With the four of us on her back, Kaede raced across the asphalt. When Suiju came at her sometimes she avoided them, while others she stabbed them with her spear, or trampled them under her mechanical hooves as she ran towards the interior lands of Nightland.

There was a single road, atop the reddish brown soil, in a wasteland with scattered patches of dried grass, stretching on forever. Every once in a while a swarm of Suiju walked toward us from the other side, passed by, and vanished into the distance.

Eventually, the once straight road began to twist and turn. The slope of the ground grew more difficult, rising and falling, forming big waves. The number of trees in the area went up, and the next thing we knew we were racing through a deep forest.

Up on Kaede’s back, we were sitting around a tea set. Midori brought a cup to her lips and frowned.

“It’s no good, after all. There’s no flavor.”

“When did you make that...? Sakaimori-san, are you okay? Are you lucid?”

“Sorry, I am lucid. I thought the flavor would let me know I was in a dream.”

“Oh, I see.”

“You can have some, too, if you’d like, Hokage-san.”

“Nah, I’m good. Even if I know it’s a dream, drinking stuff makes me want to go to the washroom.”

“Oh, that happens to me, too,” Ran enthusiastically agreed. “It doesn’t taste like anything, so I don’t know what makes my bladder think it can make me want to go to the bathroom. It’s not fair.”

“I feel you. Any time there’s a toilet in my dreams, I get tense. Even in Dayland, there are times I get confused. It’s scary.”

Maybe it was because Hitsuji said that with a straight face, but Kaede got uneasy. “Whoa, don’t any of you go wetting yourselves on my back, okay?!” she shouted.

The way she sounded genuinely worried about it made us all laugh.

“You’ve never experienced anything like that, Kaede?”

“I always transform when I’m Sleepwalking, so I can tell it’s a dream. If you’d all do it, too, you wouldn’t wet the bed.”

“We’re just not as good at transforming as you, Kaede.”

“You all lack imagination.”

While Kaede puffed her chest up with pride, Hitsuji pursed her lips. That pouty face was so adorable I couldn’t help but interject.

“Hitsuji, I won’t laugh at you even if you do wet the bed.”

I nailed it. That was a cool line, if I do say so myself...

Or so I thought, but then I realized Hitsuji was squinting her eyes and scrutinizing me.

“Hey, I’m pretty sure she’s not lucid right now.”

“Hasn’t she always been like this?” Midori asked.

“Sayacchi’s always been this kind of girl, hasn’t she?”

“I think Hokage-san acts weird any time she’s around Konparu-san.”

Hearing them assess me, I wasn’t sure what they meant, but it was kind of embarrassing, so I scratched my head. “Aw, c’mon. Don’t compliment me so much. It’s embarrassing.”

“Ah! I knew she was no good! Hold her down!”

“Hold on! Don’t fight on my back!”

The tea in our dreams had no flavor, but the forehead flicks in our dreams hurt like crazy. It got me lucid, sure, but it wasn’t fair.

Beneath a sky full of bright stars, lucid and causing a ruckus, we continued down the twisting path. Into the inner lands of the dream, towards the Suiju’s nest... After each and every one of us had started to lose lucidity three or four times, we finally reached our destination.

In the forest, there was a slope that formed the shape of a mortar and a spring at the bottom of it. If you squinted through the trembling of the water, there was an egg that appeared to be made of hewed crystal. The egg shone from within, and the diffused reflection of that glimmer took form on top of the water, rising out of the spring as a variety of Suiju. Big ones, small ones, pretty ones, ugly ones. The Suiju crawled up the slope with awkward movements, setting out on the long road to Dayland.

“This is... a Suiju nest,” Ran whispered. For a while, we stared, entranced, at the spring. “So this was how they work.”

“You mean Suiju are born from that egg?” Kaede asked.

“That’s how it looks, but... Does it actually work the way it looks like?”

“Phenomena in Nightland often work differently than they appear to, but we can at least be sure that the Suiju are coming out of there,” Ran explained.

“Okay, so we just bust them up and we’re good, right?” Kaede let out the growl of a carnivorous beast. It seemed certain that the one with the most direct grudge against the Suiju was Kaede.

This was when I finally noticed Hitsuji had been keeping quiet. When I looked beside me, she was leaning so far off Kaede’s back it looked like she might fall, staring intently at the spring.

“Hitsuji? That’s dangerous.”

When I went to hug her close from behind, Hitsuji suddenly spoke up. “That’s it.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve... been looking for those.”

In that moment, my head was filled with a burst of memory.

The egg! Right! That was the egg Hitsuji had been searching Nightland for all this time!

Even though I had been so desperate to make everyone remember, at some point I had forgotten about them myself. Though that fact shocked me, I tried to warn everyone. “Hey, everyone, it’s the thing! The thing I kept bringing up!”

“I just remembered, too...” Ran said, sounding bewildered.

“Me, too. I think we’ve been doing the same sort of thing over and over,” Kaede added.

“It’s the same for me... Why? We should be lucid now,” said Midori.

“This memory is weird. It’s like someone’s trying to hide it. No matter how many times we try to remember, we forget.” While saying that, I looked back down and every hair in my body stood on end. The Suiju that showed no sign of recognizing us before all stopped where they were, focusing their attentions on us. The atmosphere around the spring under the moonlight, something I would even have called beautiful, changed to become tense in an instant.

“Anyway, it seems we’ve found what we’re after,” Ran said. Without taking our eyes off the Suiju, we jumped off Kaede’s back and down to the ground. “If we destroy that, we may be able to exterminate all the Suiju. Let’s take it out before we forget again.”

“Okay, let’s do this.” With a loud whooshing sound, a hatch opened up in Kaede’s back. Missile after missile launched out of it, raining down on the Suiju from above.

In the time it took them to touch down, we prepared to fight, too. Ran rode on a black lion, Midori on a polar bear, and I on an antelope with heads on the front and back of its body. Hitsuji was the only one to remain on foot, using her usual outfit with the golden gauntlets.

“Charge!” Ran raised her saber and shouted.

We rushed down the hill, slamming into the horde of Suiju. Everyone was shouting. I was firing wildly with an elephant gun as we headed for the spring, too.

With chunks of Suiju flying around like a storm, Hitsuji was the first to reach the spring. With no sign of fear, she stepped into the water, heading for the crystal egg. The Suiju that had just been born were pummeled by the golden gauntlets and blasted to smithereens.

Hitsuji’s hands lifted the egg from the water. The egg she was holding aloft in both hands began to shine even more intensely the moment it touched the air. Feeling a sense of urgency at the way Hitsuji was staring at it, as if entranced, I shouted. “Hitsuji! Smash it!”

Hitsuji had spaced out for a brief moment, but her eyes regained focus. I kept pulling the trigger to keep the Suiju that were pressing in from all sides from reaching Hitsuji. For just one brief moment, Hitsuji’s eyes met mine. Hitsuji nodded, squeezing down with both hands.

The egg was crushed, and yet more light leaked out. My vision went all white, and my consciousness rapidly grew distant—

There was a bed which spread out, with no gaps, as far as the eye could see. The sea of sheets continued all the way from my feet to the horizon. In it lay countless people. Some in pajamas, some naked, some wearing eye masks, some tied up, some covered in blood... There were people of all ages, of many races, in many positions, wearing many different outfits, but all of them, without exception, were lying down and sleeping.

Right next to me lay Ran, Kaede, and Midori. Looking a little further away, I could see some familiar faces here and there. My classmates from school, the teacher, and my parents and sister.

There was a low buzz from many people’s snores, their mumbling, and their unintelligible groans filling the air. In the middle of a scene that resembled all of humanity sleeping, Hitsuji and I were the only ones standing there, awake.

“Hitsuji, what happened here?” I asked.

“I dunno... Where is this? Nightland, right?” Hitsuji replied in a daze.

There was no way I could know that. Above us was the sky of Nightland where the moon and stars shone brightly, but I had never seen a place like this before on any Sleepwalk.

“Aizome-senpai... Kaede... Midori!” I called their names and tried shaking them, but no one woke up.

“Hey, Saya. What do you think that is?”

When I looked up in response to Hitsuji’s voice, at some point a corner of the sky had been blotted out by something big and black. Was it a Suiju? Its full form was impossible to make out, but a long, twisting, flexible structure like an elephant’s trunk was dangling from the darkness towards the ground.

Each time that nose passed through the air above one of the sleeping people, I realized it was sucking up something shiny. They looked like the Suiju egg that had been in the spring before.

When the nose approached us, there was a change in Ran, Kaede, and Midori. Unlike the people sleeping around them, concrete images were sucked out of each of them. A flying ship, a sparkling magical sword, a procession of camels, a fleet of paper airplanes, a rocket thrust into the moon, flowers of every color, students taking a class, a snow-covered mountain... These disjointed visions arose, and then were sucked up—as if being attacked with a vacuum cleaner—and vanished.

Instinctively, I thought this was bad. I didn’t have any clue what was going on, but something clearly not good was happening here. I let out an unintelligible shout, then did what I could to stop the harvesting of images. The moment I did, I was struck by a bizarre sensation, and I gasped. The gun I had to create on the spot, and the beast that was a manifestation of my hostility were torn from me before they could fully take shape.

It wasn’t just me, Hitsuji was screaming, too.

“Saya! Saya, help—They’re taking everything away!”

Doing my best to at least hold the frightened Hitsuji tight, I—