Sweet Dreams

The Heavenly Punishment were a fellowship of the pitiful.

Their pasts were squalid without exception, and their minds were nowhere near whole. They had nursed every resentment a tormented life can breed, and they ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were losers who had set out to destroy the world more times than anyone could count.

The Twelfth Apostle was a fairy by birth. Not human. He had been living out a happy, ordinary life when the thoughtless destruction and hunting of humans tore his home apart, and a life that had come within a breath of an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠iron cage and a sale was saved by the First Apostle.

He cast off his original name and became the Twelfth Apostle.

The Eleventh Apostle had been an excessively good man — diligent, and hopeless at looking after his own body. That was why evil found him so easy to eat into, and why he found evil so easy to feel. At some point he understood that every good deed he had ever done was useless.

When he woke to a revulsion for the world, the First Apostle reached out a hand. That day he killed his family and his kin, every last one of them, and became the Eleventh Apostle.

The Ninth Apostle and the Fifth Apostle were twins, brother and sister. Born as some organization's experimental subjects, the first thing they ever saw was not a mother's arms but culture fluid.

The Fifth's body was too frail to be of any use in the experiments, so they rebuilt her out of machinery. The Ninth, gifted with a remarkable power of division, did what he could to keep his older sister alive.

What brought one of those ruined days to an end was neither a hero nor the police. It was the First Apostle, who happened to be passing by.

In time, they became the Fifth Apostle and the Ninth Apostle.

The Eighth Apostle was an eccentric shaman, a true researcher who never hesitated to use his own body as the experiment. He had come to that because he was born to the wrong parents. Convinced they themselves were perfect, they tried to make their son into someone far more excellent than they were.

I won't bother setting down the life that followed. I will note only this: the Eighth Apostle's first human test subjects, and his last, were his parents.

As he lay dying of a botched experiment, the First Apostle saved him and made him an apostle.

The Seventh Apostle had been a university student, a dragon risen out of a ditch and the pride of his family. His days were ordinary. He kept ordinary company with his friends, got along ordinarily with his professors, and studied in an ordinary way.

That ordinariness broke because a friend who had always looked at him with distaste decided to torment him. The friend merely had a little money.

Fine grades, fine character — the Seventh Apostle learned what it was to watch everything he had built come down in a single instant. When he had lost it all and been reduced to trash in the street, the First Apostle saved him.

That was the day a great corporation fell.

The Sixth Apostle was a scarecrow. A rather peculiar scarecrow: it could think, and it could move. In the village where it lived, people honored the scarecrow as a guardian deity.

It liked playing with children. Watching the little ones grow was the sight it loved best, and the village's prosperity was its pride.

That peace ended in a war that came out of season. The scarecrow lived, because a scarecrow is what it was. The village died. It watched the whole of it as it happened, and it stayed faithful to its role.

The First Apostle mended the broken scarecrow where it lay rolling on the ground. That day, the Sixth Apostle was born.

The Fourth Apostle was a giant — a human who had become a giant through a superpower. Unable to live among people, he lived like a man of the wilds in a place set far apart.

The only ones who ever treated him kindly were an old couple he met in the mountains. They took his circumstances to heart, made him clothes, and cooked for him.

He thought of them as his parents, and they cherished him as a son. The happiness did not last.

The couple he had taken for parents sold him. A man with an ability like his was worth an experiment for the mere fact that he existed. In his rage, the Fourth Apostle smashed flat the mountain where he had lived.

The one who took him in, while he wandered, was the First Apostle, who had come to recruit him.

The Third Apostle was a ghost. A ghost who had lost the person he loved. To him, drifting through the underworld, the First Apostle offered a chance.

The Second Apostle had been a woman with her future already assured, a genius in whom it was hard to find a single flaw. Because she was a genius, her confidence overreached. Though only a civilian, she had ridden with a vigilante band to catch villains, and the news praised her as a model citizen hero.

She thought she would go on rising just like that. Her dream was politics. She meant to set a sorry country to rights.

The dream fell in overnight. Villains nursing a grudge ambushed her and killed her family and her friends, all of them. She was dying in a burning house, clutching a neck that had been half torn away, when the First Apostle saved her.

She had not wanted to become an apostle. She meant to climb over the pain, go back to an ordinary life, and take her revenge...... The world, none too glad she had come back alive, hurt her instead.

In the moment she despaired of reality, the First Apostle came again, and she became the Second Apostle.

And the First Apostle was, well...... a madman who had simply been lucky enough to meet his chance.

Line them up one by one, and really. What a miserable goddamn bunch.

I didn't want to talk about it anymore. Enough time had passed. It was time to go into the dream again.

"Going in."

I laid a hand on the smiling old man's head. And what, I wondered, was this one dreaming now?

A slight headache came with the sensation of my mind being pulled under. When I opened my eyes I was sitting alone on a street, and the bench warming my backside was unfamiliar.

I looked around. It was the sort of street you see on any ordinary day — cars going about, people going about, buildings packed tight and growing up like weeds.

Ah. And now and then, angels in the sky, singing hymns.

Anyone who heard the singing dropped at once to their knees and prayed. A few angels, beautiful as if they had been painted, lifted trumpets, and out of the sky bulged the First Apostle's face, big as a double gate.

The citizens bowed their heads in solemnity. Even the ones driving. Naturally they were not looking ahead, and so the accidents came — a collision, a car exploding — and the citizens did not spare it a glance.

"All right. That's enough."

Sick of it. Sick to death of it.

"Sloppy doesn't even begin to cover this."

Well. That's why it's a dream.

I appeared behind the First Apostle in the middle of that useless address, caught the head of the man still expounding with such zest, and drove it into the ground. Fragments sprayed in a shower.

"First Apostle!"

The Second Apostle appeared in a rush. With her neck whole and that ravaged air gone from her, she was a considerable beauty.

"Nngh. I'm fine. I'm all right."

The First Apostle got up, a hand pressed to his brow. His gaze was clear. There was not a trace of blame or resentment in it.

"How good to see you. It has been some time."

Smiling, he offered his hand. I kicked it.

"Forgive the interruption. I've come because it's time this ended."

"......I can't say I'm inclined to agree."

He looked troubled.

Sparks jumped in the Second Apostle's eyes.

"How dare you! O sole Apostle! Slay that man at once!"

"Calm yourself, Gordon. I will see to it."

The First Apostle drew her back behind him.

"You knew it was a dream, and yet you are not shaken."

"I knew from the start. That it was a dream."

"How?"

"I have never dreamed. Not once, from the day I was born until now."

The First Apostle scratched his cheek.

"I see. Even so, it is about time you woke."

"......Is it."

He let out sigh after heavy sigh.

"It was good, experiencing the Ideal World. It seems this will not go on to the end."

"Because it's a dream."

"A dream. Yes."

He sighed once more, and then lifted his head with a look of relief.

"Let us go. It seems I have lost to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the prophecy after all."

"No regrets?"

"I have consoled myself for a hundred years. I ought to be satisfied."

He stepped out as proudly as a general coming home in triumph.

"Only, grant me one promise."

"What."

"End the apostles. Let them suffer no further than this."

His eyes were bright and hard. On this alone, he did not look as if he could yield.

"Well, now."

I let the silence hang. Did I really have to?

"The sin is mine. Let it end with me. They are already dead. Must their souls suffer as well?"

"Hm......"

His air had turned savage. Even inside a dream, the will to stake his life on this was something to see.

"You'll bear their sins too?"

"Yes. I will."

"Well, then......"

"First Apostle? What in the world......"

At her lost expression, he looked straight into the Second Apostle's eyes.

"I must go somewhere for a little while. Until then, stand in my place."

"W-wait! First Apostle!"

A soft slide. Melodrama is no fun, so I hauled him straight outside.

The world he had drawn as his Ideal World opened beneath our feet. He looked over it with sorrowful eyes.

What was he thinking. Regret? Resignation? Satisfaction?

Like a sage who had stepped clear of the world, he accepted death with perfect calm. A hundred years must have given him plenty to feel.

"Shall we go."

The First Apostle trudged on ahead, and I followed with the feeling of a man escorting the condemned. In place of that brilliant world, what he reached was a sky with nothing in it. And so his dream came to an end once more.

"Do you know something, First Apostle?"

Into that fading consciousness, I told him something I had lost count of saying.

"What is it?"

To a face that was calm enough, in its way, I delivered a heartbreaking truth.

"......What are you saying?"

"I'm only mentioning it because you forget."

"Your dream."

"You've had it hundreds of times more."

"............Pardon?"

The world ended on that uncomprehending face.

Now the next world would begin.

"This script is dull."

No catharsis in the story.

"And the rest writes itself."

In the collapsed world, the First Apostle would chew again over every despair he had lived through, and after that he would begin once more, knowing nothing. I turned my back on the night sky. The stars stitched across it had multiplied.

"All right. Taking the next script. Screw up your courage and apply."

I put it to the stars. Did they want to see something better? Then they could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠put in the effort and take part. One star fell, and a sheaf of paper filled my hand.

"Yes. Received. Oh. This one's pretty hardcore."

A pure-love yuri gender-bender...... I don't know whose taste that is, but I don't particularly want to watch it.

The alarm I had set. Time to go.

"Sorry, everyone — hate to leave you hanging, but I'm out. The rest of you can amuse yourselves with this."

"Hm? You want to see my script? This is my script. This person's story ends here."

"You can coax me all you like. It won't work. I've got too much to do."

I put behind me the space I had occupied for so long. Before I left, I framed the First Apostle's ending.

"It turned out the way you wanted, First Apostle."

"A great many heavens want you."

"It's Heaven's will, so of course it ought to be obeyed, wouldn't you say?"

"You, and the ten who are so very fond of you."

"You won't suffer. Not down to the soul."

"Infinity's bound to have one or two good things in it."

"I'll be off to finish my own script."

"That's all from me."