Side-By-Side Dreamers

by Iori Miyazawa

  I was late to the party.

  There was an endless line of sliding panel doors on the right-hand side of the hall, and a garden on the other side of glass doors on the left. The garden was full of crocodiles, so I had no intention of heading out there.

  The end of the hall also had a sliding panel door, and many pairs of slippers were cast off in front of it. I opened the sliding panel door, out of breath. Inside was a tatami mat room with a high ceiling, and there was a line of low dining tables, stretching off so far in the distance I could barely see where they ended.

  I pushed a trolley into the room, approaching one of the tables. Kaede was selling doujinshi at it.

  “Sorry for making you wait,” I said.

  “Nah, it’s all good. Well, you want to get started?”

  I sat, kneeling in the formal style, next to Kaede, and we began preparing for today’s direct sales event. The doujinshi Kaede had drawn was laid on the low table. The title was Animal Sasamishi. “Sasamishi” apparently meant that, on a five-level scale, it was about a level-four tearjerker.

  “Looks promising.”

  “I know, right?” Kaede said proudly, and the sales event began.

  Soon, Hitsuji, Midori, and Ran came as customers, and us five regulars faced each other across the low dining table. Ran picked up Animal Sasamishi. “May I look?”

  “You sure can. Go right ahead.”

  With Kaede’s permission, Ran opened the book, and all of us looked at it. The whole thing was a manga about Kaede and Midori becoming lovers and flirting with each other.

  Midori looked embarrassed. “So this is what you’ve been drawing...” she said.

  “Yeah, it kind of is. Sorry. I meant to keep it a secret from everyone, especially Midori, but—Huh?”

  Kaede’s perfect smile gradually wavered, confusion spreading across her face.

  “Wait. Hold on. No. I didn’t mean to say that—”

  “Kaede?”

  “No, no, nonononono, it’s a lie! Don’t look, I’ll die!”

  Kaede had been in human form on this rare occasion, but her body now swelled up, turning into a pitch black beast. The table, the tatami room, the inn—it was all blown away by her transformation. The flames the spouted from Kaede’s large, split mouth swallowed us up, and—

  “Ahhhhh!” Kaede’s scream snapped all of us back to wakefulness in an instant.

  Sitting bolt upright in the bed, Kaede stiffened as the other four looked at her. She was like a deer caught in the headlights.

  “I-It’s not like that.” Looking cornered, Kaede shook her head. A slightly bewildered Ran tried talking to her.

  “You don’t need to panic... You’re like Konparu-san and Hokage-san, it’s just in the dream—Right?”

  “...” Kaede’s inability to immediately respond spoke volumes. Before they could come up with some words to make her feel less awkward, Kaede rolled out of bed, and ran away without even tidying her clothes.

  “Ah! Wait!” Midori hurried after her.

  It took the four a full hour and a half, working together, to coax a crying Kaede out of the restroom she locked herself in.

  “I mean it. I honestly never drew any of that stuff.”

  “I know. It’s okay. Don’t cry, all right?”

  Sitting next to a sniffling Kaede, Midori spoke to her in soft whispers. Ran, Hitsuji and Saya spoke to her, too, sometimes patting her back or head, all of them nestling close to her.

  Eventually, as Kaede calmed herself, Saya hesitantly opened her mouth.

  “We aren’t losing control of the dream, are we?” Everyone raised their heads as she said that. “Someone said it to me before, right? Sleepwalkers can fight the Suiju because they can control the dream. But today, we didn’t just fail to find a Suiju, we didn’t even realize we were dreaming.”

  Ran thought it over as she responded. “It’s not unusual for one of our members to fail to become lucid, but normally the other members have been able to support them. Even Midori failed, today, right?”

  “It was no good. Normally, I’m able to become lucid 100% of the time. That’s why I go in as a Bedmaker to support all of you. When was the last time this happened...?”

  “Konparu-san? Did you notice it was a dream?” Saya asked. Hitsuji furrowed her brow.

  “It felt kind of weird...”

  “Weird?”

  “I mean, looking at the content, that was Kaede’s nightmare, wasn’t it?”

  “I-It was... mine, I think.” Kaede nodded, still trembling.

  “I figured. In all the time we five have been Sleepwalking together, I don’t think we’ve ever been caught up in someone’s dream before.”

  “Normally, if we’re in someone else’s dream, we notice, yeah,” Saya agreed. “When motifs of the dream don’t come from inside you, something feels off about them.”

  “But it didn’t feel off this time. What does it mean?”

  “Could it have been the same dream?” Saya’s words made Hitsuji’s eyes go wide.

  Looking dubious, Ran asked, “What do you mean by the same, Hokage-san?”

  “Oh, basically, I was wondering if it was possible that everyone was dreaming the same dream.”

  “Everyone...” Ran echoed.

  “You know, we should notice when we’re in someone else’s dream, but even the rest of you, who have far more experience than me, didn’t think it was a dream. That means, while it ended as Tokishima-san’s nightmare, we can think of it as one big dream shared by all of us.”

  “I’ve been on quite a number of Sleepwalks up to now, but not once has anything like that happened,” Midori hesitantly interjected.

  “Well, I don’t know about that, but recently, the Suiju have been acting weird, haven’t they? We didn’t spot the Suiju at all this time, so it might have been doing something against us.”

  “So, you’re saying that was a Suiju attack?” Hitsuji cocked her head to the side at what Saya had been saying. “Is that possible? Those guys never seemed that smart.”

  “Not before now, no.”

  “We need to check. If something like that were to happen again...”

  Ran looked at the clock. “We’ll have to wait for next time to verify. It’s getting late, so let’s break for the day.”

  The five left the warehouse, returning home well after the sun had set.

  “I don’t feel like I’ll be sleeping today.”

  Saya heard Kaede mutter those words as she was leaving. She stopped despite herself, feeling forlorn as she watched Kaede walk away.

  When I woke late at night and went to the toilet, there was light leaking out from the living room. I poked my head in, figuring Dad might be up, but although the TV was on, the room was empty. The screen showed black and white static. I hear this is what those old analog TVs looked like, once upon a time. The curtain swayed in the wind, and I realized the window was open. Looking outside, there was a bear in the garden.

  Oh, no! I hurried away from the window, then regretted it. I’d screwed up. I needed to close the window or it would come in.

  Like I thought, the snorting of the bear drew closer, and then it came inside the house. My heart pounded as I headed for the stairs. I tip-toed up to the second floor. The bear was stomping around on the second floor as it searched for me. It was only a matter of time before it came up here.

  Returning to our room, I shook my little sister Midori awake.

  “What’s wrong, Saya-onee-chan?”

  “Shh. There’s a bear in the house. We’ve gotta run.”

  “Huh? What about Mom and Dad?”

  “I dunno. Maybe they got eaten.”

  “Nooo, I’m scared.” Midori started weeping, and she buried herself under the covers. I could hear the creaking steps of a bear on the stairs. Midori wasn’t coming out, so I decided I’d have to run for it.

  Opening the window and heading outside, I started to walk across the sloped corrugated iron of the roof. Behind me, I sensed the bear ente
r the room. I was worried about Midori, who I’d left behind. If she stayed under the covers, I figured she’d be all right, but if she couldn’t resist coming out...

  I continued across the roof. I wanted to run, but my legs were shaky and had no strength. I jumped down to the ground in front of the entrance, and pumped my legs desperately trying to get away from the house. I climbed the hill road through the dark pine forest with everything I had. I could sense the bear closing in on me from behind. Was that big, black, scary thing really a bear?

  Unable to turn around and look, I was forcing my body onward when someone leaned over me from behind.

  “Onee-chan, why did you leave me?” the thing with Midori’s voice whispered in my ear.

  Saya awoke drenched in sweat; throwing the towel blanket off of her, she got up. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might burst, and it took some time for her to catch her breath.

  In the darkness, she could make out the silhouettes of her companions, each lying down on the futon, sleeping in their own ways. They had put down tatami mats in the bedroom, and spread a sea of futons on top of them. The futons had a big mosquito net hung around them, creating a gap between them and the surrounding darkness.

  The area was filled with the scent of mosquito coils. The bedside lamp left out on top of the tatami was shaped like a paper lantern. The pale light that filtered through the rice paper created light green waves on the mosquito net as it swayed gently in the wind created by the air conditioner.

  She couldn’t get the impression left by the dream she’d seen just now out of her head. Unable to become lucid, she’d been toyed with again. Was that her own dream? Or...

  Moving her head, she looked toward Midori. Midori was lying with her face turned in the opposite direction. She wasn’t moving at all, so Saya got worried and tried to take a look at her face.

  When she did, something moved outside the mosquito net.

  Walking slowly through the warehouse, she saw something that looked like a composite entity made of window frames cross the light of the lamp. The thing that appeared on the tatami was...

  A Suiju.

  Was this still Nightland? Saya looked down to her own hands, pulling her finger. In a dream, it would stretch without resistance, but now it didn’t budge.

  This was definitely Dayland.

  In front of Saya’s eyes, before her thoughts could catch up, the Suiju slipped inside the mosquito net. It was half transparent, and didn’t look like it had a concrete form, but the smoke from the mosquito coils hugged the outline of it.

  The Suiju bent its legs, approaching Midori’s body as if to sniff her.

  That did it. Saya was finally set free from her sleep paralysis.

  “Sakaimori-san! Wake up!” She practically jumped towards Midori, shaking her shoulder with a hand.

  “Huh?! Wha?! What?!” Midori let out shrill cries as she awakened; at the same time, the Suiju leaning over her dissipated like mist.

  Between Saya and Midori’s shouting, the other three woke up, too.

  “Nnngh? What? What’s up?” Hitsuji sat up, rubbing her eyes.

  “You’re so noisy. We were just about to—Huh?” Kaede’s voice wavered with confusion. “Uh, don’t tell me I went and did something again...?”

  “...It wasn’t you, Tokishima-san. This time...” Ran said in a raspy voice, then cleared her throat. She might have been trying to clear her head, because she squeezed the bridge of her nose before opening her eyes again. “We lost control of the dream again. Worse, the five of us didn’t even manage to gather...”

  “That’s not all, Aizome-senpai,” Saya interrupted Ran. “I saw it. A Suiju, in Dayland.”

  They didn’t accept what Saya said at first. It was Ran’s interpretation, as their senpai, that there was a clear line between Dayland and Nightland.

  “It’s true, when you wake from a long dream, you can be unsure whether you’ve left Nightland or not,” Ran said.

  “But they’ve been acting strange lately, haven’t they? The Suiju work together, and we haven’t been able to act with lucidity... If this is a Suiju attack, they may be trying to come out into Dayland.”

  “What would their goal be?”

  “I couldn’t tell you that.”

  “Um... The Suiju you say you saw, Hokage-san, it was leaning over me, right? What do you suppose it was trying to do?” Midori asked, sounding worried.

  “Hmm... If they were animals, I might say it was sniffing you, or trying to eat you, but with Suiju it’s hard to even tell what part is the head.”

  While Saya was groaning in thought, Kaede, who had remained quiet up until now, hesitantly raised her hand.

  “Can I say something? It might have nothing to do with what Sayacchi’s talking about, though.”

  “Go ahead?”

  When suggested she continue, Kaede spoke up hesitantly. “Sayacchi, you were saying something about an egg before, weren’t you?”

  Saya sat up straight in surprise. The mysterious Egg that she knew she had brought up several times, both in Dayland and in Nightland. This was the first time that any member other than Saya had touched on that memory which, for some reason, they all forgot.

  “You know how your voice suddenly woke us up, Sayacchi? Well, just before leaving Nightland, I feel like I saw it, too. That Egg.”

  “What was it like?”

  “I don’t remember exactly how it went, but I feel like it involved Hitsujicchi.”

  With everyone’s eyes focusing on Hitsuji, she blinked as if dumbfounded.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. You brought your hands together in front of your chest, like this, turning your palms up—and there was this pale blue egg with cream-colored specks sitting on them.”

  “A-And?”

  Kaede shut her eyes tight as she continued. “Then, what was it...? Did you smash it? Oh, no, the memories fading on me.”

  “Did you fight a Suiju? When I saw it, I think it was pulled out of a defeated Suiju, if I remember right.”

  “I don’t remember fighting... Though maybe I just forgot it. Anyways, I just remember Hitsujicchi was standing there, holding something, and whatever it was was super important.”

  “Konparu-san? Do you have any recollection of this?”

  Looking Saya in the eye, Hitsuji slowly shook her head. “I don’t remember. Not a thing.”

  “Ever since becoming a Sleepwalker, I thought I was remembering what happened in Nightland properly. It would be kind of creepy otherwise, you know,” Midori said, her expression darkening.

  “Then that means it’s not just memories of Nightland, right? Our memories of Dayland have vanished with them,” Hitsuji said.

  “If you’re right that you saw a Suiju after waking up, Hokage-san, we can hypothesize that Nightland is exerting some kind of influence on Dayland,” Ran said.

  “Influence?”

  “You might be able to interpret it as an attack.”

  “The Suiju are striking back, you mean?”

  “Do all of the missing memories pertain to that Egg?”

  “I don’t know. We’re forgetting, so there’s no way to know.”

  Seeming to snap back to her senses, Kaede raised her head. “Hey, if memories in Dayland vanish, too, won’t we forget this conversation?”

  As the other four looked at each other, Saya watched with a feeling of irritated impatience.

  She was right. The fact of the matter was, the doubts and warnings Saya had brought up were forgotten during the next Sleepwalk. Even Saya herself tended to forget. There had been conversations like this in their post-Sleepwalk debriefings before, but it only ever lasted a short time.

  “Let’s leave records. We need to get to the bottom of whatever’s going on.”

  Everyone nodded in response to Ran’s words.

  12

  By the time she returned home, it was 9:00pm; even with the Napping Club as an excuse, this was clearly too late. She entered the house and shut the do
or behind her, prepared to get yelled at.

  “I’m home...”

  There was no response. The lights in the entrance hall were off, and the light from the living room was spilling out through the half-open door.

  She started to take off her shoes, then stopped despite herself.

  The dream she’d had before flashed back into her mind. The dark hall, the light from the living room. Where Midori had been her little sister, and though she’d been distracted by the illogical events that could only have happened in a dream, that scene had taken place in her own familiar home, too.

  She proceeded down the hall with quiet steps and peeked into the living room. Only the TV was on, a muted news program displayed on screen.

  No one was inside the room. Normally, at this time of day, her parents and elder sister should have been around, yet today there was no sign of anyone in the living room or the kitchen.

  Going over next to the window, she pulled back the curtains. Unlike in her dream, there wasn’t a wide yard out there, just a wall made of concrete blocks a stone’s throw away, with the parking lot beyond it.

  This should be obvious, but there was no bear.

  Checking the locks on the windows, she closed the curtain once more. The moment she turned around, she saw someone standing in the room, and she screamed despite herself.

  “Wahhh?!”

  “Woah, what?! You startled me.”

  “O-Onee-chan?”

  The one who had reached out towards the wall and flicked the lights on was Aya. The way her sister looked under the fluorescent lights was so normal, it was... disappointing.

  “What were you doing in the dark there? And hold on, you’ve been home?”

  “I just got back... Where are Mom and Dad?”

  “Didn’t you see they sent a message saying a person at work died and they’d be going to the wake?”

  “Uh... sorry, no. I didn’t notice.”

  “Saya, you haven’t eaten, right? Should I make something?”

  “Nah... Don’t bother. I’ll grab something later. Thanks.”

  About to head to her own room, the lights went out. With no time to be surprised, someone leaned over her from behind.