I wondered why, unlike them, I had come in such normal clothes. The incline was too steep, and the stairs that I could see in places were practically walls.
The number of people coming out of the gate rose and the mountain path grew crowded. Pushed along by the crowd, I began climbing the mountain, as I had no other choice.
I advanced on all fours for a while. When I looked down by chance, the station I had left before was now way down below. My arms and legs froze up. This was scary. I couldn’t go another step.
Ignoring me as I clung to the wall, the climbers passed me one after another. While I remained unable to ascend or descend due to the fear, a ladder was erected beside me, and Hitsuji climbed up.
“Hey there, Hitsuji.”
“Saya, you’re always afraid, aren’t you?”
“Heheh, that’s not true at all.”
“There’s no need to put up a strong front, my beloved. I do love that part of you, though.”
“I’m no match for you, am I, Hitsuji?”
“Look over there. There’s a Suiju nest on the mountain. If you just keep climbing like a straightforward idiot, you’ll be playing right into its hands. Let’s go together from here. I’ll put up a ladder for you.”
Looking where she pointed, I saw a structure that looked like a bird’s nest with iron scaffolding wrapped around it. There was a Suiju that looked like a mix between a train and a three-headed bald eagle inside it, and it was gobbling up the climbers one after another as they arrived.
“That’s it, huh? Okay!” Having gotten worked up by having Hitsuji next to me, I floated into the air with ease.
“Saya, just a moment?”
“Don’t worry, leave this to me. I’ll smash it all up.”
I tried to imagine the strongest weapon I could. A gun... A cannon... A bomb... Oh, yeah, a nuclear bomb! If I dropped a nuclear missile on the summit, the Suiju was bound to be obliterated instantly. Why did no one else ever think of this?
I envisioned it. The nuke going off, and the Suiju’s nest being vaporized.
Just as I had imagined, there was a bright flash above us. A ball of toxic red and yellow flames was born, expanded, swallowed up the summit, and trimmed years off our lives with the Crispy Clark-kun effect.
The banks failed one after another.
Fish vanished from the marketplace.
While watching the explosion grow larger and larger on TV in a child’s room, we were stricken with uncertainty.
“What’s going to happen from now on?” While I cried uncontrollably, Hitsuji scrutinized me for a moment, then reached out and bopped me on the back of the head.
“Ouch.”
“Okaaaay, come back to lucidity now, please.”
“Huh?”
Having whacked me back into lucidity, Hitsuji elaborated. “Just being powerful isn’t everything, Saya. Try to create something beyond your ability to imagine and you’ll lose control in no time. That’s why each of us fights in a way that’s easy for us to understand, right?”
Now that she mentioned it, Ran used an RPG-style sword and bow, while Hitsuji fought with her gauntleted fists. Kaede was good at transformation, so she used animal fangs and claws.
“What about Midori?”
“That girl isn’t good at imagining fighting at all. That’s why she supports us as a Bedmaker.”
“I don’t think I’m all that good at it, either, you know. I had a big gun during the tiger hunt, but that felt like I was just using something that had already shown up in the dream.”
“You brought out that sea urchin bomb thing, didn’t you? You have some aggression in you, Saya. Now it’s just a matter of giving it a form that’s easy to use. It’d be easiest to build a template, then adapt it when you want to use it, I guess.”
“Right...”
While I was mumbling, the walls of the child’s room got blasted away, and the Suiju stuck its three heads in.
“Wahh!”
Hitsuji reacted by punching the thing. One of the heads flew away, and two more grew in its place. Now with four heads trying to force their way inside, we were pushed back against the wall.
“Come on, Saya! Can’t you think of anything familiar to you that you could probably use in a fight?”
“O-Okay, then...”
Something easy to imagine... Something I was familiar with... From my daily life, that I could use in a fight... Driven into a corner, my imagination finally forced itself to come up with a weapon. In the next instant, I had a can of bug spray in one hand and a BBQ lighter in the other. When I lit up the lighter and sprayed the bug spray, the line of flames grew longer and longer, enveloping the Suiju’s whole body. The Suiju swung its heads around like crazy as it rolled out of the child’s room. I leaned out through the broken wall to watch the Suiju that had become a fireball roll down the mountain and out of sight.
I was overjoyed to have finally come up with a weapon, and filled with a sense of accomplishment at having taken down the Suiju, so I turned my best smile towards Hitsuji.
“Heehee. Well?”
Hitsuji summed up her impression in one phrase:
“So plain!”
Depending on how the members felt, they would change up the bedding in the bedroom from time to time. The beds in the warehouse each had palettes under them, and Midori would operate the forklift herself to swap them out.
“We can sell the beds we’ve used for a high price,” Ran said as the exchange was completed and they were watching the previous beds be carried off by the forklift.
“Huh...?”
“There’s a marketplace where beds that have been used by Sleepwalkers are sold at a high price.”
“That’s creepy, you know?!”
“Many of the people who were attacked by the Suiju suffer from sleep disorders. They have trouble getting to sleep, or are tormented by nightmares... If the beds and bedding that we Sleepwalkers have used can be even the slightest use to them, don’t you think it’s worth it?”
“...”
“Don’t worry, we’ll make sure they’re properly cleaned before they’re sold.”
“Well... If that’s the case...” Saya said hesitantly. Hitsuji leaned in to peer at her face.
“You’re sure you’re okay with that, Saya?”
“I don’t even know anymore.”
After utterly failing in the attempt to stuff and preserve my pet dog, only the ambiguous form of the dead body of the animal remained. The eyes of the marbles filling its head, which had collapsed like a manju looked at me accusingly, so I turned to the stuffed animal and tried to explain myself.
I’ll get it right next time, I said, faltering, but the stuffed animal tore into me with a harsh tone, saying, There won’t be a next time. This happened because you didn’t take it seriously.
Ahh! What are you going to do about this?! I’m finished because of you! How are you going to take responsibility?!
“Sorry. I thought I could do it. Sorry.”
If you want my forgiveness, trade bodies with me. You be the stuffed animal. You be the failed stuffed animal!
The stuffed animal actually chased me down and cornered me against the wall. I don’t want to be a failed stuffed animal! Even as I thought that, I knew I was the one in the wrong, so I couldn’t argue back. When I tried to accept it, crying, the stuffed animal was torn in two vertically, and fur and stuffing scattered everywhere. Hitsuji clapped her gold gauntleted hands, leaning over to peer at my face.
“You okay, Saya?”
“Hitsuji... Fancy meeting you here.”
“Why is it you’re so strangely bold whenever we meet in Nightland?”
“Because seeing your face makes even the worst troubles go away.”
“You’re putting on airs, too. Okay, lucidity, lucidity.”
When Hitsuji slapped my cheeks, I became lucid.
“Sorry to always trouble you.”
“Yay.”
Leaving the classroom with the stuffed animal, we began
walking down the cold beach by the sea. Beneath cloudy skies, faded grass blew in the chill wind from the sea, as did Hitsuji’s airy hair as she walked in front of me.
“Hey, Hitsuji?”
“Whaaaat?”
“Why did you show up in front of me?”
“I could ask you the same, Saya. You know, I never thought I could like someone this much.”
“Same here. Even though we both know it’s only in our dreams.”
“Ahaha... Yeah, you’re right.” Hitsuji laughed in a low voice.
“Why is it we like each other?” Saya asked. “From the moment we first met in the dream, we were suddenly lovers.”
“It’s because we slept together, don’t you think?”
“You’re making that sound worse than it is.” I laughed despite myself, but Hitsuji went on.
“I mean, lying down in the same bed, our eyes closed, feeling one another’s warmth, our breathing slowly synchronizing... It’s like we’d become one being, don’t you think?”
“Sure, but isn’t it the same with the others? We’re all sleeping together.”
“True. We’re all comrades sharing the same sleep. That’s why we’re all super close.”
I nodded. It might have been hard for anyone who hadn’t Sleepwalked to understand our closeness.
From what I had heard, Ran and Midori were both from families that had inherited the secrets of the Sleepwalkers. Midori and Kaede were otaku friends who had met online. Hitsuji’s abilities as a Blanket were readily apparent, so she was scouted by Ran shortly after starting high school, and they had hung out together since.
The reasons they’d met were all different, but once they all Sleepwalked together, there was no way they could part.
I could digest all of it quite easily now. Like them, I had been turned into a Sleepwalking “addict” and dragged into this, but I don’t think it was just a hunger for sleep. The closeness between people, the warmth, the desire to touch another... Once a person was able to touch those things with a high degree of purity, they would lose the ability to let them go.
“Still, you and I are special, aren’t we?”
When I spoke, Hitsuji stopped, turned around, and leaned her head against my chest.
“You’re right. I wonder why. I love you, Saya.”
“Me, too. I wish it could be the same in Dayland.”
As I embraced her fluffy head, Hitsuji went silent for a moment, then answered in a quiet voice.
“Yeah. That really would be nice.”
I understood that these warm feelings I felt in sleep would dissipate in Dayland. As soon as we woke, Hitsuji would look away from me, and our bodies that had nestled close would awkwardly part. Even so, in this brief moment, she was unbearably dear to me.
Over the course of many Sleepwalks, Saya gradually got used to it. It was still common for her to need help from her comrades to become lucid, and the weapons she created were still plain, but she got used to fighting in Nightland. Before she realized it, she was so absorbed in the fight against the Suiju that it felt like she had been doing this forever.
However, she still couldn’t get used to her relationship with Hitsuji. In Nightland, they were close lovers. In Dayland, strangers. No, strangers was a bit much; they were friends, or perhaps comrades was the better word. Still, the emotional gap between when they were asleep and awake was confusingly vast.
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. “H
old 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?”
11
On their next Sleepwalk—a solitary one—they encountered a lone Suiju.
The next time after that, there was also one.
The next time after that, there were two.
Then it returned to one again, then two... They were witnessing irregular behavior from the Suiju one in three times.
At the same time, their Suiju-hunting success rate fell. It grew more common for them to be caught off guard and have to retreat, even when there was only one to deal with.
I walked down a long hall at the inn. Sensing a boisterous feast at the end of the hall, I felt a need to hurry.
Side-By-Side Dreamers Page 8