7

When the other four rose from their seats, Saya timidly followed suit.

Turning to the three beds that had been pushed together, Kaede asked, “Hey, leader, are we gonna use these beds again today?”

“Is there a problem with that?” Ran asked.

“Well, we’ve got Sayacchi, so I was thinking we could change them.”

“Oh... Hokage-san, are you a clean freak? You’re not, right? We’re good here.”

“Why did you ask? I don’t like that you decided my answer for me before I could even give one,” Saya murmured.

“You went to sleep hugging Konparu-san, so you’re clearly not,” Ran scoffed.

“Urgh...”

Saya ended up looking to Hitsuji for help, but Hitsuji acted like it wasn’t her problem. Thinking about it, expecting Hitsuji to bail her out was wrong. If anything, Hitsuji had been the victim in that situation.

“Um, what kind of bedding do you like, Hokage-san?” Midori asked. “It can be a bed or a futon. If you have a preference on the stuffing of your pillow, or the material of your sheets... Anything to do with the type of bedding you like, I think I can get pretty much anything you want.”

Oh, yeah. This girl was the equipment expert, wasn’t she? While internally she was relieved by the change of topic, Saya still cocked her head to the side.

“Hrmm... I don’t really know, to be honest,” Saya admitted. “I tried changing my pillow, along with a bunch of other things, while I was trying to overcome my insomnia, but none of it had any effect.”

“I see, I see. Well, I guess Hitsuji-chan’s your favorite sleeping accessory now, huh.”

“Wha...!”

After having said something incredible as if it was no big deal, Midori smiled and handed a new toothbrush to a now speechless Saya.

“You should brush your teeth before bed. I’ll give you this.”

“I’ll be using the sink first.” Hitsuji produced a tooth-brushing set from her bag and headed for the kitchen. Saya was standing there vacantly while holding the toothbrush, but she finally snapped back to her senses and turned to Ran.

“Just how long are we going to sleep? How many hours...?”

“Good question. Why don’t we do three hours for a start? Everyone is a little different, but generally sleep works in 90-minute cycles, going from shallow to deep and back again. If we plan our Sleepwalks around that as a guideline, it works out well.”

Saya looked at the clock. It was 4:00 P.M. Three hours from now, it would already be dark out.

“Will your folks be okay with that? You should contact them before you go to sleep,” Kaede said, flicking her finger across the display of her smartphone. Saya did as suggested, and fired off a message to her sister saying she’d be late getting home.

Brushing her teeth with the toothbrush provided, she rinsed out her mouth, then came back over to the beds. Everyone took off their coats, undid their ribbons or neckties, loosened their collars and sleeves, and got ready to sleep. They each had a basket for their clothes, and they discarded the clothes they had taken off into them.

“Here, use this.” When Midori gave her a basket, Saya hesitantly began undressing, too. Midori was moving around and working busily, changing the sheets for new ones, setting the alarm clock on the bedside table, and more. She was looking up, with a serious expression on her face, as she adjusted the angle of an air circulator. That made Saya look up, too, and she noticed there was a large industrial air conditioner installed up on the high ceiling. It seemed Midori was making adjustments to keep the air from blowing directly on the beds.

Kaede jumped right into bed. “Sayacchi, you good now? C’mon, c’mon!”

“R-Right.”

I have no idea how to handle this! Saya thought. When she was being asked to sleep with people she was meeting for the first time, how was she supposed to act? It was true that they were just going to be sleeping side-by-side, but she’d gotten more and more tense as she prepared to do so.

“Pardon me...”

“Come in, come in,” Kaede urged.

Hesitantly, Saya got in bed. From the lower point of view, the bed felt awfully wide. There were three queen sized beds lined up with no gaps between them, covered by a massive sheet she could only assume had been custom ordered. There were pillows of various sizes, blankets, and towel-blankets of many colors placed randomly on top of the beds.

“There’s five of us, so it’s probably gonna get hot, but you should put something over your belly at least. You’ll get the runs if you don’t,” Kaede, who was already lying on her back, said.

Ran got into bed next. She was dressed lightly, wearing a sleeveless top and shorts.

“You got changed,” Saya said to Ran.

“My uniform gets wrinkled otherwise. You should bring a set of pajamas, too, Hokage-san. Or you could have Midori pick one out for you, too.”

“No, it’s not like it’s a sure thing I’ll be joining yet...” While Saya was mumbling to herself, Hitsuji energetically plopped herself down next to her, making the bed shake.

“You don’t know when to give up, huh, Saya.” Hitsuji had at some point apparently changed into a pair of Chinese-style pajamas.

“Midori! You hurry up, too!”

“O-Okay!”

Ran must have decided she was satisfied that their sleeping environment was in order, because she called for Midori, who got into bed with them, too. Even with all five of them in bed, there was plenty of space, and they could move around.

“Now then, you take the center, Hokage-san,” Ran suggested, and Saya got flustered.

“Huh? Me?”

“Of course she means you,” Hitsuji said. “You’re the guest of honor at this party, Saya. Come on, come on.”

With Hitsuji rushing her, too, Saya was pushed into the center of the beds.

“Uh... What do I do here?”

“Please sleep in whatever position you want. On your back, your belly, your side, anything goes. Do you want to use a hug pillow?”

“No, I don’t need one... probably.”

She lay on her back, her head resting on a large pillow. The other four lay surrounding Saya, each in the position they preferred. The one thing in common though was that their heads were all turned towards Saya.

When Midori reached out and fiddled with a remote control on the bedside table, the lights went out one after another. Once it was dark, only a small lamp on the coffee table a little ways away continued to cast a soft light.

Hitsuji was right beside her, so Saya had anticipated falling asleep right away, but the drowsiness just wasn’t coming for some reason. Even once the lights were turned out, she was too excited to sleep—it was almost like she was on a school trip. When she thought of it that way, the way they were in a group of nothing but girls trying to get sleep was similar, too.

“...Um,” Saya opened her mouth and broke the silence. “I’m not falling asleep in seconds like last time, huh.”

“Are you taking it easy today, Konparu-san?” Ran asked, still lying down.

“Since we’re lucky enough to have Saya joining us this time, I was thinking there’s no need to hurry,” Hitsuji answered. “I mean, doesn’t rushing to get to sleep feel like such a waste?”

“It is our first time going to sleep together, after all.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Konparu-san’s Blanket ability is really something. She’s suppressing it most of the time, but I bet if she wanted to, she could have it affect as wide an area as she wants.”

“I’ve actually gotten pretty good at controlling it, you know,” Hitsuji said, sounding just a little proud. Ran turned to Saya and smiled.

“Don’t worry, just relax. The drowsiness will come soon enough, so just let it carry you away. You don’t have to think hard about anything. Just sleep normally...”

“I don’t even remember how to do that anymore,” Saya mumbled.

“It’s okay if you want to keep talking. No matter what you do, as long as I’m here, everyone’s going to end up sound asleep,” Hitsuji replied.

“She’s right, you know. Hokage-san, if there’s anything you wanted to ask, now’s a good time. I’m sure you have all sorts of questions,” Ran offered. Saya thought for a moment.

“Okay, then... How long has all this been going on for?”

“You mean the Sleepwalkers? There have been people serving the same role since ancient times. At my place, there’s ancient documents from the Heian period that talk about spells to be cast on a dreamer’s pillow and more.”

“At your house, senpai?”

“Right. My house is a shrine. I hear we’ve had ties to the Sakaimore family since long ago, but...”

“When my grandmother—the previous owner of this store—passed on, I was forced to take over the business in a hurry,” Midori finished for her. “Ran-chan had inherited knowledge about Sleepwalkers, so we started working together. That’s why it was just me and Ran in the beginning.”

“What about Konparu-san and Tokishima-san?”

“They rescued me and Hitsuji when we were about to get taken out by Suiju. That’s why our situation’s just like yours, Sayacchi.”

“So that’s how it was...”

With that discussion dying off, silence descended for a short while. When she opened her mouth to speak again, Saya’s voice sounded a little drowsy.

“Why is it just girls, though? I was wondering that, at first.”

“...Right.” There was a slight pause before Ran responded.

“Considering we all sleep side-by-side like this, I can see why it’s this way, of course, now.”

“Yeah...”

“So, I was thinking. We’re all girls here, but if there are other Sleepwalkers, and they’re in the same sort of group, do you think there’s a group of boys somewhere sleeping side-by-side like this?”

“Yeah, that! That’s the stuff.” Kaede said, raising her voice. Her speech was maybe a little slurred, though. “I want to see that so bad. An all-male group of Sleepwalkers. Hey, I could even draw them myself. As a doujinshi.”

“I’d like to read it.” The drowsy voice belonged to Midori.

“Ehh, I dunno.”

“Then why did you say you’d do it...?”

“I mean, that was just, you know...”

With a little help from the idle banter, Saya’s mind was starting to feel more and more drowsy and indistinct. It was as if her consciousness was sinking into the center of her head, creating a sort of dizzying sensation.

Seeming to pick up on that, Hitsuji whispered, “Good night.”

And with those two words serving as the trigger, a moment later, Saya’s consciousness was pulled down into sleep.

In between the mountains, there lived a dragon. And yet, for the longest time, the villagers had remained unaware of that fact.

One evening, a pharmacist was trying to take a shortcut home through the dry gulch. That was the first time anyone noticed the great flying lizard laying there. The pharmacist was scared stiff, but the dragon merely looked on, uninterested, its eyes only half open.

The pharmacist—relieved to find she had not been burned to cinders by the creature’s fiery breath and that it didn’t seem like it was about to reach out with its neck and devour her whole—hesitantly approached the dragon. She was interested as to why the dragon did not move. When she asked what it was doing here, the dragon replied.

“It has been a long time since flowers bloomed in this valley. As I am sure you know, we dragons eat flowers. I have lived for thousands of years feeding on lilies, but if the flowers will not bloom, then there is nothing I can do. Nothing but rot away in this fruitless valley.”

The dragon telling this sad story had scales that were a beautiful white, and its long tail and wingtips were a pale yellow. Its deep yellow eyes sparkled. When she looked upon it, the pharmacist said, “You should take a look at yourself. In devouring all the flowers of the valley, you have become the flowers yourself,” the pharmacist said when she looked upon the body of the dragon.

Peering into the hand mirror proffered by the pharmacist, the dragon said, “I see, so that’s it. It’s no wonder there are no flowers left to eat. I already am the lilies. However, I wonder... What am I to do now? I have lived many long years as a lily-eating dragon, so I know no other way of life. Human, if you know, could you tell me?”

By the time those words had finished being spoken, the dragon was no more, and what had been the dry gulch was now a field full of flowers.

“This is a lily flower from that valley,” I told Hitsuji as I handed her a single lily. Hitsuji accepted the lily, closing her eyes and bringing it close to her face.

“What a lovely scent. It’s so thick it’s making me dizzy.”

“Are you all right, my beloved, my shining wool that swaddles me?” Saya asked. “It’s all right if you want to lie down. The grassy mattress will embrace us gently, I am sure. There is no bed in the world better than the one on which the flower-eating dragon once rested.”

“My precious Saya, you are truly wonderful. But let us save that for another time.”

“Whatever makes you say that? We are all alone in this valley of lilies. What is there to be embarrassed about?” Saya asked.

“Ohh, Saya, my darling, take note of the mirror you carry.”

When she said that to me, I peered into the mirror. Nothing was reflected on its silver surface; I tilted my head to the side inquisitively.

“What does this mean, my beloved?”

“Give me your hand, Saya.”

Doing as I was told, I offered my hand to Hitsuji, who then pulled my finger, causing it to stretch with no resistance. Ten centimeters, then twenty centimeters, it stretched without any pain or anything seeming odd about it. Suddenly, I had an epiphany and shouted out loud.

“Ah?! This is a dream!”

“Ah!” Saya awoke with a start.

In a dark warehouse, illuminated by a lamp on the nearby coffee table, there were four bodies lying on a bed. Saya’s panting intermingled with their quartet of soft breaths.

Hesitantly, she looked down to Hitsuji, who was next to her. Hitsuji furrowed her brow in her sleep, before she reached out to place her hand lightly on Saya’s chest.

“Not yet... Don’t run away...”

Saya’s whole world tilted, and she was dragged back down into slumber.

I had fallen, my cheek pressed to the sandy ground of the Colosseum. The weighted net meant for fighting wrapped around me more and more as I struggled with it. When the gladiator—my opponent—raised a three-pronged spear, the crowd went wild.

Finish her! the crowd roared. When the emperor, who was sitting up in a reserved seat, raised a hand, a hush fell over the crowd as their shouting receded like the tide. Then, as thousands looked on breathlessly, the emperor gave the thumbs down, and the crowd let out another great cheer.

The gladiator saluted the emperor, then walked over to my immobile self and thrusted the three-pronged spear into my back.

There was no pain— it was just hard to breathe. I was ready to cry from the sense of powerless and shock that I was going to die like this, and then the gladiator spoke.

“Uh, hey Sayacchi. You all right there?”

“...Huh?”

Looking up, there was Kaede in the form of a gladiator, crouching and looking down at me. The spear that I was sure she’d stabbed into my back was nowhere to be seen.

“Tokishima... san.”

“That’s me, Sayacchi. I finally caught you. This is a dream— do you understand?”

“I get it, but it’s hard to breathe,” I said through labored breaths.

“She says she’s having trouble breathing. Midoriiii.”

No sooner did I think I'd heard the sound of a siren than an ambulance drove out onto the sandy floor of the arena. Stepping out of the driver’s seat in a paramedic’s uniform was Midori. She knelt on the ground and began speaking to me.

“It’s okay—this happens all the time. If there’s a hand resting on your belly in Dayland, the slight discomfort is amplified in your sleep, and it can give you awful nightmares. Just calm down and breathe easy.”

Breathe in... Breathe out...

Breathe in... Breathe out...

“That’s the way. When you have trouble breathing, just remain calm, and focus.”

“O-Okay.”

“You’ll never suffocate in your dreams. The worst that can happen is you wake up. It looks like you should be fine now.”

When she told me that, I noticed that, at some point, I had stood up on the sand. There was no one in the audience now— only the emperor, up in a reserved seat.

The emperor, who was actually Hitsuji wearing laurels and a toga, jumped nimbly down onto the sand. Striding over, she looked up at me.

“I told you it was a dream. It wasn’t nice of you to run away like that.”

“Sorry. It surprised me.”

Thinking her pouting face was cute, I planted a kiss on Hitsuji’s forehead.

“Oh, my.” Kaede’s eyes bulged out, and she let out a cry of surprise.

“Huh? Huh? Were you two always that close?” Midori asked, surprised. Hitsuji and I looked to one another with a laugh.

“Yeah,” Hitsuji told her. “I wonder why.”

“I know, right?” I agreed. “I wonder, too.”

“Oho, I seeeeee...” Kaede brought a hand up to her mouth. She seemed to be having fun.

“Saya, I’ll teach you a simple technique to find out if you’re in a dream. Let’s call this lesson one.”

“Sure. What is it, Hitsuji-sensei?”

“This is a famous method for having lucid dreams. Look at your own hands.”

“My hands?” I did as she said, opening both my hands and looking down at them.

“There aren’t many things you’re more likely to look at on a day-to-day basis than your hands, right? But their shape is super complicated. When you look at your hands, I think it probably puts just the right amount of strain on the brain. If you pull on a finger, it will change shape easily, so you can find out if you’re dreaming right away.”

“It’s true!” I cried out despite myself as my index finger stretched to double its normal length. When I let go of the hand I’d stretched out, my finger snapped back to normal, like the power cord on a vacuum cleaner reeling itself in.

“Looking in a mirror like you did the first time works, too. In most cases, mirrors in dreams don’t work. No clue why, though.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“I think messing around with your hands is good practice for learning how to transform in dreams, too. Once you get used to it, you can even do stuff like this!” Kaede said, spreading her arms wide. They sprouted feathers in an instant, turning into the wings of a bird of prey with a wingspan of about three meters. Now there was a beautiful monster with the face of a woman and the body of a bird standing on the sandy floor of the arena. Kaede beat her wings, creating a sandstorm as her body floated into the air. When she set down on the roof of the ambulance, her scaly talons easily opened holes in the body of the vehicle. Her monstrous weight blew out all four tires, and the vehicle sank.

“Heheh, how’s that?” Kaede asked smugly.

“Wow... You’re so pretty,” I murmured.

“I know, right?” Kaede puffed up her avian chest with pride.

“Please, don’t be such a show-off, Kaede-san,” Midori said, exasperated.

“I’m not!”

“Setting that aside... Where’s our leader?” Hitsuji looked about busily.

“I’m here.”

The response came from surprisingly close by. Turning around with a start, there was Ran, crouching down on the sand. She wore a hooded cape, with a large bow and a quiver of arrows slung over her back.

“Take a look at this.” Looking at the spot she pointed to when she had spoken, there were several small tracks in the sand. It looked like the trail of a many-legged creature, much like a centipede, having crawled by.

“What’re those?” I asked.

“The footsteps of the Suiju that infected you, Hokage-san,” Ran said, standing up. “I had wanted to finish it here, but it may have noticed that something was going on, because it ran away.”

“If it ran away, then have I been set free from the Suiju?”

“That would be nice, but if we leave it be, it will come back,” Ran was quick to say, snuffing out my happiness.

“If it noticed us, could that be because I left the dream?”

“I think that’s part of it, but don’t worry. Suiju are cautious of Sleepwalkers to begin with. No matter what the reason is, if we chase it down, that will solve the problem.”

Kaede beat her wings impatiently. “Yeah, that’s right! So let’s hurry!”

“Right. Hokage-san, this arena is a scene created in your head. This is a good opportunity for a lesson, so let’s try erasing that wall.”

“Huh? You mean me?” I asked in confusion. There was a wall, or a giant building rather, that wrapped around the area. The seats for the audience, which were arranged in a mortar-shape, seemed to be made of solid stone, and I couldn’t see myself being able to erase them on demand.

“This is lesson two. Things may look sturdy, but everything in Nightland was made with the power of imagination. If you want to destroy something, you can break anything. You could wipe it out with an eraser, blast it with a bomb, melt it with a beam. Use whatever’s easiest for you to imagine.”

Something easy to imagine... I walked to the edge of the arena and touched the wall, feeling the rough texture of stone on my palm. It should have been warmed by the sun, but there was no warmth at all.

Using my finger, I traced a square on the surface of the wall, which was sheer, with nothing for my hands to hold onto. That carved a thin line into the stone, so I thrust my nails into it and pulled. A block of stone about the size of a brick popped out and fell to the sand.

The moment it did, the rest of the walls around us began to collapse as if they had lost all structural support. The destruction continued unabated, increasing in intensity as it spread like a domino effect. In all of ten seconds, the seats of the audience and the reserved seats fell apart and scattered across the sand.

Before I could cover my face against the onrushing cloud of dust, a powerful wind blew from behind me. When I looked back, Kaede was flapping her big wings, creating a wind to keep the sand and dust away.

The falling blocks of stone were sucked into the sand, and in no time, there was nothing but desert as far as the eye could see.

“What do you think?” I asked, feeling satisfied. Hitsuji cocked her head to the side.

“It was kind of plain,” she replied.

“Whaa?”

“I think you could have done something way showier.”

“It’s not all about making it showy, you know. For her first attempt, I think she did quite well.” Midori tried to reassure me, but I was so shocked I missed my chance to thank her.

“It doesn’t need to be flashy at all, but if you make a conscious attempt to broaden the range of your imagination, it will give you greater freedom in your sleep. When your dreams are poor, that’s a warning sign, so keep that in the back of your mind.”

I nodded, despite not really getting it yet.

“Anyway, we’ve got a better view now. We can chase the Suiju.”

When I looked in the direction Ran pointed, the footprints extended beyond the place where the Colosseum stood, continuing far into the distance over the sand.

“Well, shall we be off, then? Let’s try calling out vehicles this time. Hokage-san, please give it a try.”

“Call one out...? What do I do now?”

“This is lesson three. In dreams, you can make anything. Weapons, tools, vehicles... Anything within the realm of your imagination. It’s the same technique as before.”

“It’s hard to make complicated stuff, but if you don’t focus on the details, you’d be surprised what you can pull off,” Kaede added.

“What do you mean?”

“Hmm, so... Let’s say you wanted to pull out a gun, okay? But the way guns work is actually pretty complicated, isn’t it? Can you picture it in your head?”

“No way.”

“Didn’t think so. If you get caught up on that, you’re stuck. But if you just have this fuzzy image that bullets come out of a gun when you pull the trigger, making one’s a cinch.”

“I see...?”

I thought for a little bit, trying to come up with a means of transportation. Cars... Planes... Sleds... Grasping at just one of the many vague images that passed through my head before fading away, I tried to fill in more of the details.

When I heard heavy stamping on the sand, I looked up. There were five horses standing there.

“...They came,” I said, relieved.

“We’re in a desert, and you didn’t go with camels?” Kaede said, sounding amused.

“Oh! Yeah... That didn’t occur to me. Should I do it over?”

“No, this is good. They’re lovely.” It seemed I had managed to satisfy Hitsuji this time.

“But won’t it be hard to run on sand with their hooves?”

“You can just change the ground.”

Having said that, Hitsuji took off the laurels she was wearing on her head and threw them. Grass grew out of the sand where they landed. In no time, the carpet of green spread out, covering the sand. The Suiju’s footsteps were replaced by flowers of myriad colors.

“There, we’re good. Let’s go!”

We straddled our horses; Kaede undid her transformation, coming down from on top of the ambulance in human form. I had no riding experience, and these were horses without saddles or stirrups, but this was a dream, so I was able to ride without issue. But there was just one problem...

“Hold on? Whaa? Isn’t there something wrong here?”

“Heehee! This is so weird.”

Everyone started laughing. When we rode on the horses I made, for some reason everyone ended up facing backwards. In other words, we were facing the opposite of the direction we were going, and towards the horse’s tail.

“Saya, you’ve got one twisted sense of humor!” Hitsuji said happily, slapping her horse on the butt. The horse ran even faster, and everyone started cheering. The excitement got me smiling, too.

The clear skies had at some point changed to the deeper blues of night. The area around us was still bright, though, and we had no trouble seeing.

A big moon rose over the horizon. It was so big and beautiful, the kind of moon it was only possible to see in a dream. Beneath the moon it felt like we could reach out and touch, we rode our horses backwards, laughing boisterously as we raced onward.

Minutes, or days, or months went by, and then finally we saw something moving ahead of us. That thing, which looked like it was made with driftwood bound together by metal wire, moved its many legs with irregular motions, trying to flee from us. Its every step produced a bud, which swelled and blossomed into a flower.

“That’s the Suiju that’s infected me?!”

“Looks like it,” Hitsuji said.

“Isn’t it kind of big?”

As we closed in, the Suiju got bigger and bigger. It was a massive construct as big as the school building, creaking as it dashed across the grass. When our horses finally caught up and were running alongside it, its size seemed ready to overwhelm us.

“Saya! Don’t be scared!” Hitsuji shouted, louder than the sound of beating hooves. “The more afraid you are, the stronger the Suiju gets!”

“R-Right...” I said, but it didn’t change the fact it was scary. “How are we supposed to beat this thing...? Whoa?!”

The Suiju swung all of the legs on one side in unison, mowing down anything in range. It dug up the ground, making our horses fall one after another.

I felt my body, thrown into the air, get seized by something. Looking up, Kaede, who had returned to the form of a human-faced bird monster, had seized me in her talons.

She beat her wings hard, getting us far from the ground. Over top of the Suiju’s back, Kaede opened her talons.

I landed on its hairy back—it was like a big, long-haired dog. My feet sunk in up to the ankles. Unlike the mechanical impression I had when viewing it from below, I was surprised how much like a living creature it was here.

Next to me, Kaede landed and folded her wings.

“Th-Thanks,” I stammered.

“No biggie.”

“What about the others...?”

While I looked around, Midori followed us in jumping onto the Suiju’s back. “Good job, Kaede-san.”

“I know, right?” Kaede said with a bird-like cackle as Hitsuji floated lightly up behind her.

“Oh! Saya. You’re okay.”

“And what were you planning to do if I wasn’t, Hitsuji? You didn’t save me.”

“You’re not one to go out like that, Saya. I can tell.”

When she said it like that, she was right. If I had Hitsuji with me, I could do anything. Like... fly through the sky, for instance.

The moment that thought occurred to me, my feet floated up into the air without warning.

“Wah!” I cried out in surprise, losing control and flipping upside down. The Suiju’s back was above my head, and the sky spread out beneath my feet. The next moment, I began to fall. I watched Hitsuji and the others looking up at me as I got farther and farther away. When I screamed in terror with the thought that the endless blue void was going to swallow me, someone grabbed my collar, and I suddenly stopped falling.

“You have potential, Hokage-san.”

Turning my head to look behind me, it was Ran who had caught me.

“Lesson four was going to be how to fly, but did you figure it out already?”

“I-I don’t know. I was floating before I knew what happened.”

“Flying in a dream is simple. The trick is to not think of it as being anything special. Treat it as if it’s as normal as walking or talking, and it’s perfectly natural you would be able to do it.”

“I was sure I was going to need wings, like Tokishima-san.”

“If it makes it feel right to you, you can slap on wings or anything else you need. But even without them, if you want to fly, you can fly. If you panic and lose control like just now, you’ll end up doing things you didn’t intend, so you should get used to it as soon as you can.”

In no time, my feet were pointed back towards the ground once more. Hitsuji and the others were floating upwards, coming closer to me and Ran.

Ran waited for the five of us to be together before speaking. “Okay... Now then, let’s get on with hunting that Suiju.”

Ran drew an arrow from her quiver, nocking it to her bow. When she pulled back the string and released it with sharp movements, the arrow flew straight, burying itself in the Suiju’s back.

The Suiju howled. It sounded like an electronic musical instrument, but it was probably a howl. As if on cue, Kaede tucked in her wings and went into a rapid dive. With the momentum of her descent, four legs with talons stabbed into the Suiju’s back, ripping and tearing. Fur flew, and bits that it was hard to tell if they were legs or part of its frame were sent flying all over, too.

When Hitsuji punched her fists together, they made a clunky metallic sound. At some point, she’d put golden gauntlets on those hands.

“I’m going on ahead, Saya!” Hitsuji declared, then flew at the Suiju. When she landed on its back, she started punching it ridiculously fast. I was shocked by the gap between this and how she was in Dayland. Was Hitsuji always so intense...?

Figuring it was Midori’s turn next, I looked to her, but she spoke up. “Go ahead, Hokage-san. I’m a Bedmaker, so I generally stand by to provide backup.”

Now that she mentioned it, I seemed to recall them saying something like that.

Next, Ran pointed her bow upwards, firing not at the Suiju, but far ahead in the direction it was going. Then she turned to me.

“This is lesson five, Hokage-san. Please, use all your imagination, holding nothing back, and smash it up good.”

Smash... Smash...?

I tried to turn my imagination in a direction I wasn’t used to. To something... offensive... with destructive power.

What came out could only be described as being something like warped sea urchins, or maybe spiny pieces of konpeito.

“What is that?” Midori asked, but I didn’t know what to tell her.

“I wonder...”

While I looked on in bewilderment, the sugar candies fell towards the Suiju. I watched to see what would happen, and the sugar candies all exploded at once, which shocked me. It blew a number of legs off the Suiju, causing it to majorly loose its balance.

Hitsuji thrust her fist into the air, shouting in protest.

“Watch it!”

“Sorry!”

It had looked like I’d done some good damage, but the Suiju didn’t stop walking. Its body was half broken, and its parts scattered all over, but it doggedly charged onward and onward.

Then, suddenly, there was a large shadow.

Looking up, I spotted something huge, long, and thin falling down from the sky. When it stabbed into the ground, causing tremors, it became clear that it was a spiral stone tower. The Suiju, with no time to change course, collided with the sudden spire.

The spire broke off at the base, causing massive quantities of stone to rain down from above. The Suiju’s legs were smashed, one after another, and its body was beaten into the sand.

At the same time as the other three, I hurriedly jumped backwards. The falling rocks were burying the Suiju alive.

Finally, the collapse ended, and it was quiet. Ran landed atop the mountain of stone building materials that had crushed the Suiju.

“Phew. Is everyone all right?”

Flying closer, I set down on the stone mountain, too.

“Wow... That tower, it was the arrow you fired off before, wasn’t it, Aizome-senpai?”

“I tried imitating what you were doing, Hokage-san.”

Kaede swooped down from above. “Hey, that’s plagiarism.”

“Oh, what’s the harm?”

“Weren’t you just saying it’s not good let your imagination become poor, Leader?”

Midori and Hitsuji landed, bringing the five of them back together.

“Hitsuji, does this mean we were able to take out the one possessing me?”

“Nuh-uh. The Suiju has something like a core inside it. We have to break that first.”

“A core?”

“Watch.”

Hitsuji lifted her leg up, then slammed it down on the mountain of stone. The stones broke into little pieces, revealing the Suiju trapped beneath them. It tried to lift its body, but Hitsuji’s hand stabbed into it with incredible force.

Her hand sunk in as far as the elbow, and when she pulled back out, she was gripping a pale blue, egg-like thing.

The Suiju’s body crumbled. The surface became more and more like sand, until it became indistinguishable from the ground.

Hitsuji tightened her fist. In her little hand, the Suiju’s core crumbled with a dry sound.

At the same time, a low sound like a bell ringing began to echo from nowhere in particular.

What is this!?—I tried to yell, but my voice was extinguished by the growing noise. Finally, the air itself began to vibrate, and the surface of the sand began to dance, as if it were boiling.

They awoke to the sound of a loud alarm.

Saya and the other four surrounding her began to stir. Hitsuji had turned 180 degrees from when they went to sleep, and her right leg now rested on top of Saya’s chest.

Was this why she had felt so uncomfortable in her sleep? When Saya grabbed that leg by the ankle and started trying to move it off from on top of her, Hitsuji groaned in protest.

“Stoooop iiiit.”

“That’s my line!”

The rest of the members seemed to have tossed and turned in their sleep, too. Not only had Ran ended up twisted around, she had started to slip out of the bed.

Midori crawled across the bed and stopped the alarm. She should have been the closest to it when they went to sleep, but somehow moving around in her sleep had ended up putting her on the opposite side of the bed.

“Nnnnngh, that was a good sleep!” Kaede stretched before getting up and out of bed in an instant. Snapping her neck back and forth, she headed for the toilet.

Saya was the next one to crawl to the edge of the bed, then lower her feet off it. The floor was cool beneath her. When she stood up, she staggered— for a moment, her vision went dark.

“...Whoa.”

“Are you okay? You must be exhausted,” Midori said as she retrieved her glasses from the side table.

“I don’t know if I’m exhausted, but... I had a bit of a dizzy spell.”

“It’s low blood sugar. Your brain was working really hard, so your body is short on sugars. I’ll put on coffee, so try eating something sweet and resting a little.”

Not long after the fragrance of coffee began to drift through the warehouse, Hitsuji and Ran—who had been slow to rise—finally got up, too. The five of them, with their clothes slightly ruffled, settled down on the sofa again.

Dark coffee was served together with chocolates. Saya wasn’t used to drinking her coffee black, and had been abstaining from drinks with caffeine, but when she experienced the taste of chocolate being melted in her mouth along with hot coffee, she felt like she could feel the sugars soaking into her brain.

“Now you’re a Sleepwalker, too, Hokage-san,” Ran said.

“I don’t think I ever said I’d keep doing this with you.”

“I thought it went without saying. How do you feel, now that you’re awake?”

Saya was silent. She felt good. She had woken up incredibly refreshed, in a way she hadn’t experienced in half a year. No... this might well be the most pleasant awakening she’d had in her entire life. After just three hours of sleep, her head felt as clear as if she’d gotten a full eight.

“I do seem to recall that I promised you restful sleep.”

“...I remember that. Thank you.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

“But still, we defeated the Suiju that had infected me, right? I don’t have to do anything then...”

“We don’t intend to force you to, of course. I think you should be able to sleep normally from here on. Even alone.” Ran smiled, as if she saw right through Saya. “But I don’t think you’ll be able to find sleep as pleasant as today’s unless you Sleepwalk with us.”

“...”

“I think we’re fortunate to have met, so I’d like to keep working together. Take your time and think it over.”

When Saya found herself at a loss for words, Kaede spoke up. “Wow, though... I didn’t know Hitsujicchi and Sayacchi were like that.”

Midori nodded, too. “I know. I was a little surprised.”

“Huh?”

“No, not, ‘Huh?’ You two were totally lovers. I didn’t get that vibe from you at all before we went to sleep.”

In that instant, Saya had a sudden flashback to her conversation with Hitsuji while they were asleep.

“Ah... Ahhhh?!” Saya let out a weird shout and jumped to her feet, turning to look at Hitsuji despite herself. Hitsuji looked back at Saya in silence, slowly sipping her coffee as they stared into each other’s eyes.

“N-No. It’s not like that,” Saya stammered.

“What’s not like that, Sayacchi?” Kaede pressed.

“That’s was a dream! It’s only in the dream!”

“Whaa? But you were kissing her.”

“I did n—... Okay, I did, but it was on the forehead! That doesn’t count!”

“It doesn’t count if it’s in a dream? Isn’t that kind of awful?”

Midori’s tone was clearly one of bemusement, but Saya didn’t have the presence of mind to call her on it. Ran was just listening with a grin, and Hitsuji wasn’t stepping in to cover for her, either. In fact, she acted like Saya’s reaction had made her angry, and she turned her head to look away.

“Augh! Fine, whatever! I’m going home now!” Saya stood up, snatching her bag.

“Come back when you feel like it,” said Midori.

“She’ll be back... We all know it,” Hitsuji said with a yawn.

Saya left the bedroom, annoyed at them talking like they knew her, and strode towards the exit to the warehouse with quick strides.