Nightmare and Light (1)
I blinked slowly.
All I could see was a tiny space lit by a faint wash of light.
The floor was rough beyond belief, and a slight vibration kept humming through the air around me.
In that gray space, it felt as though I was the only one there.
It was a place I didn’t know at all, something I’d never seen before, and yet it felt strangely familiar.
The silence was absolute. There was nothing here that would startle anyone, nothing but a dead, empty stillness.
About the only things visible were mana scattered everywhere, and bright blood mixed in among it.
Mold-slick dampness and fresh blood with the rusted smell of iron.
A crawling chill that rose through my whole body...
I stared blankly around me.
Bugs scurried busily along their own paths, rustling softly.
This was a place that had never existed in my memories.
And yet, as if I were familiar with the sight, I was breathing more calmly than ever before.
No, not calm. More like a breath taken in resignation, as though I had already given up on reality and felt nothing at all.
I blinked again, dazed.
Where in the world was this?
Why was I curled up tight, holding my breath, in such a disgusting, filthy place?
What had I been doing in a space stalked by this cold?
Was this a dream?
It had to be a dream.
Didn’t people usually forget their dreams once they woke up?
Right. This was a dream.
Thinking that, I recalled what had happened just before.
It had only happened moments ago, and the memory was so vivid that everything came flooding back.
A seizure on the way here after being surrounded by people.
Fainting twice through Hanriere.
Arriving at Sielm Academy and being hit by panic, then clinging to Hanriere.
The entrance ceremony, which I’d somehow managed to reach in time.
The attention that came with being a special admit, followed by the intense envy and jealousy it drew.
The exhibition match between Hanriere and Mielle, the academy’s top students.
Their sword dances, revealed through mana ingestion, and the clues they left behind about my own lost memories.
Then, while I was absorbed in that, I shattered the safety device, and the silver chandelier came crashing down on me.
The violent blast, and my body slammed into the wall.
...Hah.
I was dumbfounded.
All I could do was let out a helpless sigh inside.
Who would have thought I’d have such rotten luck, that even with a safety device in place, it would still fail to withstand Hanriere and Mielle’s mana and break through?
And of all times, it had to hit me dead-on while I was still carefully taking in mana, just as I was starting to question my memories...
If only a little more had passed, I might have gotten something out of it. But at the crucial moment, I got smashed into a wall and blacked out.
Was there even a more absurd way to get screwed over than this?
Passing out at the most important point made it feel as if the tower I’d built up so far had collapsed all at once.
Did the whole world hate just me or something?
It was a miserable feeling that made a sigh rise up on its own.
And then there was the other problem: the fact that the dream had brought me to such a gross place.
Honestly, it wasn’t as though I ever had any sweet dreams to begin with, but this was just too much. Some completely unknown, disgusting place like this appearing in a dream felt wrong.
I’d heard dreams come from the most intense and stimulating parts of your mind, and I did have plenty of stimulating, vivid memories...
So why, of all things, was this what surfaced in my dream?
"Where the hell is this..."
I opened my mouth quietly.
Stale, unventilated air poured into my nose.
When the foul smell hit me, I coughed against the sudden dust-choked air.
"Cough, cough... ngh..."
Why was a place like this here, of all places?
"Ah, ahem... ahh..."
I tried making a sound quietly.
What came out was a squeaky, high-pitched voice.
Even so, the voice was rough, scraped raw.
It must have been one of my childhood memories.
A voice less polished than the one I had now echoed through the cramped space.
I lowered my gaze at my body in silence.
No matter how small my hands were now, they still weren’t comparable to the hands I’d had as a child.
Small arms, and...
Bandages were wrapped all over my arms, and my body was covered in numerous cuts.
And more than anything else...
"Huh, why do I feel so empty..."
I couldn’t feel the abundant mana that had been filling me just moments before.
So this memory meant that, when I was young, I hadn’t yet been afflicted by mana erosion.
It felt strange not to sense the mana around me, which I’d always felt on my skin.
Usually, even when I tried to block it, the surrounding mana kept being drawn into me, and that had always given me chills. But now, with nothing there at all, I felt chilled for an entirely different reason.
I should get out of this dream first...
From what I’d seen, once you realized you were dreaming inside a dream, you were supposed to wake up from it.
I’d read somewhere that the moment you became aware of the dream, every figure in it rushed toward you, and you woke in a cold sweat.
I already knew this was a dream, and I was trying to find a way out, so why wasn’t I waking up?
As the incomprehensible situation and this unpleasant, uncanny space pressed in on me, fear welled up all at once.
If I couldn’t wake up here and ended up sleeping forever, wouldn’t that mean I’d die?
- Buzzzzz
Then, in the darkness where nothing had been visible, a tiny light appeared.
A familiar noise seemed to brush past me as the light quietly fell over me.
- Step, step, step
Footsteps in a steady rhythm sounded through the stillness of the space.
A meticulous cleanliness clung to them, so out of place in this disgusting room that it almost felt alien.
"Mm... your condition is worse than I expected."
A human presence, felt from far away.
Instinctively, I pulled my body back from him, but for some reason there was no seizure this time.
A long white coat, a stack of papers tucked against his side, glasses and a mask arranged so that his eyes could not be seen.
I had never seen him before, but dread rose in my chest before I could even think.
"Director, if we inject any more drugs, the body won't be able to take it..."
"Then neutralize it with another drug. Stop talking and do it."
"B-but even so... if we put in that many drugs at once, the side effects will be severe."
"Hey, researcher, are you going to disobey your superior's orders? If I tell you to do it, you do it. Understand?"
"...Yes."
The man who seemed to be the researcher objected for a moment, only to have his objection crushed with force.
In his hands was a basket that looked full of various medicines.
And then he slowly came closer. To me...
Now I understood, at least somewhat, the meaning of the bandages wrapped all over this body.
The mana that had run backward, and this vivid blood.
That all of it was blood from my own wounds...
"...This will hurt a little... no, a lot."
With trembling hands, the man who seemed to be a researcher drew up medicine from a vial into a syringe.
The instant that tiny syringe came into view, my body seized and began to tremble.
My head throbbed, a cold shiver ran through me, and I shook all over while tears spilled down my face.
Ran-ah...
I want to run.
It feels like it’s going to hurt.
Quietly, the iron bars opened, and the researcher grabbed my arm.
He dragged me toward him as though my desperate backward struggle meant nothing at all.
- Pa... ah!
My whole body writhed in agony.
It meant nothing.
The syringe needle sank into me.
And then overwhelming pain came crashing down o—
.
.
.
"- Paran!"
"...!? ...???"
The sound hammering directly into my ears, calling for me, rescued me from that nightmare.
Someone had my shoulders in their grip, shaking me lightly.
Over my body was the soft touch of a blanket, and beneath that, the gentle feel of a bed; as my eyes slowly opened, the scene before me was nothing like the one from before.
Pink, blue, white, and pale blue.
There was no sign of gloom or emptiness here. I could hear grass brushing in the wind and baby birds chirping.
The ringing in my ears was gone.
"- Ran-ah? You’re awake?!"
What...?
This place, full of white, was clearly part of a hospital room.
Then why was Hanriere half-climbing on top of me, shaking my shoulders so fiercely...
She seemed to be shouting at me about something...
"Paran? Wake up! Breathe! Breathe!"
".....? ...?!?!"
Breathe? Confused, I tried to move my body, but it wouldn’t budge, as if bound by something.
I opened my mouth to sort out the confusion, but no sound came out, as though my throat had been sealed shut by something hard.
"Hah! Ngh... kuhh..."
"Pa, Paran?!"
As I forced my throat, a tremendous pain struck me.
Right.
Now that I looked, I wasn’t breathing!
The instant I recognized that I was holding my breath, my whole body reacted violently.
I couldn’t exhale the air filling my chest, nor could I draw in fresh air.
"Unh... gk! ...hup!"
After barely getting out of that pain-filled state, my throat locked up again and pain surged back over my body.
Why was this happening? Wasn’t this too much? My body jolted, and the ringing in my ears returned.
Damn it, one thing after another, and now the panic was closing in on me too.
It hurt...
It really hurt...
Why are you doing this to me?!
My breathing grew ragged, hallucinations began to appear, and the nightmare from before started replaying inside my head.
Hanriere, frantic as she looked at my suffering state, immediately wrapped her arms around me tight.
The familiar embrace made every muscle in my body go slack.
"Paran, take a slow, deep breath. Slowly..."
"Hup... ngh... ha..."
"That’s it... you’re doing fine. Slowly, one more time..."
"Fhuup... ha..."
Experiencing the embrace that had wrapped around me in the morning once again, my stiff, rigid body gradually loosened.
"You’re doing fine, you’re doing fine..."
The warmth of her body before me was so gentle, so comforting.
Her warmth slowly melted the ice-cold chill that had gripped my body.
Held in her arms, listening to the quiet, trembling breath she used to guide mine beside my ear, I exhaled again.
Inhale... exhale...
"Hoo... ha..."
The panic was still clinging to me a little, so I reached out and clung to whatever was in front of me.
"It’s okay... it’s okay..."
Hanriere comforted me as she slowly stroked my back.
As I finally began to calm down, tears started dropping from my loosened eyes.
"Hngh... hoo..."
"Our Rani, are you feeling better? You can cry a little more if you want..."
Once I calmed down, her face came into focus. Still holding me in her arms, she looked down at me with eyes full of concern.
Her pale golden hair, touched by the long stretch of sunlight, wrapped me in warmth.
And those clear red eyes, holding warmth of their own, shone like rubies as they watched over me gently.
I burrowed deeper into the arms that had been sheltering me all along.
Those arms were nothing like the space from the nightmare; they were filled only with warmth.
Not a place full of cold and chill, but a warm place...