“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.
8
Saya could definitely sleep now.
Ever since they defeated the Suiju, sleep had returned to her nights once more. Her extensive struggles with it before seemed like a lie, and now she could easily get to sleep, be it at home, or at school; any time she felt sleepy.
In fact, she was almost too able to fall sleep.
Maybe it was the habit she had picked up in the last half year of trying to ride any wave of drowsiness that might come her way, but even staring off into space for a little bit during class could easily knock her right out. Still, that was way preferable to being stuck awake with a brain perpetually full of fog.
It took about a week for her body to readjust to sleep. It didn’t seem like she’d have an easy time catching up on all the subjects she was behind in, but when she spoke to the school doctor, she said she’d come with her to discuss things with her homeroom teacher. With catch-up lessons arranged and a study plan set up, she was finally able to face her family again.
“Hey, you’re looking a lot better,” her big sister Aya said after scrutinizing Saya as she was about to leave the house one morning.
“Really?”
“The bags under your eyes aren’t as dark as before.”
“Yeah, but they won’t go away entirely...”
“I kind of like them, you know. They look unhealthy.”
“They are unhealthy! That’s a fact!”
With a chuckle at Saya getting upset, her big sister retreated to the living room.
During her time as an insomniac, she’d felt like she was under assault from all directions, both at school and at home. But when she looked back at it with a clear head, that wasn’t really the case at all. If she could just sleep properly, life had a way of working itself out. That was the lesson Saya had learned after half a year in hell.
However, with each day that passed, Saya felt a sort of tension building inside her. A thirst, you might even say. She hadn’t understood the sensation at first, but when she realized it was a dissatisfaction with just sleeping ordinarily, Saya was shocked.
Compared to sleeping alone, the times she had slept side-by-side with Hitsuji Konparu had been deeper, most restful, and more pleasant. She couldn’t forget those three hours that the five of them had all slept together at that dodgy bed and bedding store.
She wanted to sleep alongside those girls again. She wanted to Sleepwalk.
When she became aware of that thirst, Saya’s feet took her to the Sakaimori B
ed & Bedding on their own. It had been exactly two weeks since her last visit.
“Welcome. I trusted you’d come again.” When Saya knocked on the door, it was Ran who greeted her as if she’d been lying in wait. “How have you been?”
“Great, but... Somehow, it feels like I’m not sleeping enough.”
Ran nodded repeatedly. “I’ll bet. I can’t say I blame you.”
“Huh...?”
“Let’s talk inside. Everyone’s here.”
After passing by the rows of bedding and through the tall shelves, Saya set foot in the Sleepwalkers’ bedroom once more.
“Oh! Sayacchi!” Kaede noticed her quickly and waved to her with a grin. Midori and Hitsuji both turned to look at Saya, too, but neither of them looked surprised in the slightest. She took a seat at Ran’s suggestion. “You managed to hold off for a long time,” Midori said. “I guess you really are a Neversleeper, Hokage-san. You might have higher resistance than the rest of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Once you’ve been on one Sleepwalk, you pick up the habit, because it feels so much better than just regular sleep.”
“Huh...” Looking at each of the other four’s faces, it seemed this wasn’t just them pulling her leg. “H-Hold on. You mean, this Sleepwalking stuff... It’s addictive?”
“Well, yes, I suppose it is,” Ran said nonchalantly.
“What have you done to me?!” Saya got up and shouted despite herself. “Were you all tricking me? Trying to get me hooked on Sleepwalking?! I can’t believe this, it’s like you’re all—”
“It was inevitable.” Hitsuji’s words made Saya go silent for a moment.
“...What do you mean, inevitable?”
“It happens to everyone. Everyone who sleeps side-by-side with me.”
“Everyone...”
Saya looked around the table to the other members once more. Ran, Kaede, Midori... Each of them nodded when her eyes met theirs.
Side-By-Side Dreamers Page 6