A Dream Within a Dream
“Just talk to them. No, you don’t even have to talk. Begging is enough.”
“Did Baril’s fool’s disease rub off on you or something? A peddler’s hardly going to hand us food for free.”
“Right. Of course he won’t. Instead, he’ll be watching Titu, won’t he? While he’s distracted, Jon, you make your move and swipe the goods fast.”
And then there was Jon.
Skinny Jon was the fastest on his feet out of all of them.
Even in the back alleys, there weren’t many who could catch Jon once he really put his mind to running.
“Baril and Haman, you wait at the corner of the alley. You know old man Verun’s house, right? If the peddler chases after Jon, rile up old Verun. Make it so the old man can block the peddler’s path.”
It was a simple story.
Numbers meant strength.
If they worked together, stealing this much wouldn’t even count as a proper hardship.
“……”
For some reason, his friends were looking at Lawrence strangely.
“Are you really Lawrence?”
“That’s not what I was thinking. That’s supposed to be the leader’s idea….”
“Oh, enough with that leader this, leader that. Fine, I’ll do what you say.”
Haman was the first to side with Lawrence.
He always grumbled, but when it mattered, he was always there to lend a hand.
“If Haman says so… then I’m in too.”
“Honestly, doesn’t it sound fun?”
“Yeah. We won’t know until we try, right?”
Everyone nodded as if in agreement.
“As for us, then. Lawrence. What about you?”
“We’ve got to make sure the peddler doesn’t catch you.”
Lawrence said it while looking at Titu.
….
…….
The plan went ahead exactly as intended.
Titu drew the peddler’s attention, and Jon stole the goods.
To cover any unlikely mishap, Baril and Haman stood ready in the alley, and Lawrence led the peddler, who had lost sight of Titu, down the wrong path.
That was the end of it.
Hilton Village might have been small, but there was no way a peddler visiting for the first time could have picked out boys like them as the alleyway kings.
“You little bastards!”
The peddler’s furious shout was almost laughable now.
There were plenty of places to hide in the alleys.
And plenty of ways to blind the peddler’s eyes.
“Long live Lawrence!”
“You little punk. Where the hell did you hide a brain like that? Here? Here?”
The plan had succeeded beautifully.
Lawrence and his friends held up their victory spoils.
“It was nothing. You all did great.”
“That’s true enough. I knew Jon was fast, but I didn’t know he was that fast.”
“Fast? I just ran.”
“You should’ve seen the look on the peddler’s face.”
They chewed on oat bread, one piece each.
Because they’d won it together, the taste felt all the sweeter.
“There’s still plenty left, so eat slow, all of you.”
“We’re eating all of it today?”
“We should. What if someone takes it from us?”
“No. Let’s leave some behind. There’s no guarantee things will go this well every day.”
That wasn’t some vague hunch.
The friends, staring quietly at the bread, slowly lowered their hands.
….
…….
Things always went smoothly.
Lawrence made the plan, and together with his friends, they pulled it off.
They ate until they were full and laughed together afterward.
It was nothing special at all, just an ordinary little thing.
And yet even that was enough to bring smiles to everyone’s faces.
“You think we’ll all grow up someday?”
“What the hell are you babbling about now?”
“No, it’s just—seeing the inn made me think of it. They got married recently, didn’t they?”
The inn.
There was only one inn in Hilton Village.
“Edrick and Greta?”
“Yeah. Lucky them. Not only do they get to stay somewhere comfortable, they can eat good meals every day too.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it was that comfortable of a place….”
Not comfortable?
But he’d never even been inside the inn, had he?
His head throbbed.
With the ache came a scene that shouldn’t have existed.
A cramped storage room where the night sky never showed through the window.
A room where he’d lived alone, without his friends, so cold and lonely it hurt just to remember it.
No.
No, no. That had never happened.
Living alone? Weren’t they all right here together?
“You’re dreaming big for a bunch of starving kids. I’d be jealous enough to die if I could just eat one of the sausages from Edrick’s inn.”
“Sausages? What good would that do? Someday we’ll go to another village, try the local specialties. We’ll even go to the royal capital and eat meat dishes there.”
“There you go again. Meat, meat, meat.”
“Let him be. Lawrence starts with meat and ends with meat.”
The friends burst out laughing.
In that laughter lived a hope he had never seen before.
Yes. For now, this was enough.
Lawrence shoved aside the unease in his chest and forced a smile.
* * *
He noticed Baril was missing late in the evening.
Even though mealtime had long since passed, Baril still hadn’t come back.
“This is bad. Baril went up the hill and hasn’t come down.”
“Why would he go there at this hour? Under Wolfs come out at night!”
“Well… I think he must’ve gone to gather herbs. You know how the villagers have been climbing the mountain lately because they can sell them for money.”
Lawrence’s face darkened as he covered his mouth with one hand.
Orel.
The herb Baril had gone to gather was Orel.
They harvested the stems and leaves for medicine, and threw away the roots because they were poisonous.
Threw away the roots?
No. If the roots were simmered properly, they could be useful to a mage….
“Lawrence?”
“Huh?”
“What’s wrong? Baril’s in danger!”
“Ah—ahhh…. Sorry. Right. This isn’t the time for that.”
There was no time to waste.
When he looked up, the sun was already setting.
Night belonged to monsters.
It was not time granted to human beings.
“I’ll go check the situation first.”
“Say one more thing about going alone and I’ll knock you flat.”
“If one of us goes, we all go.”
“Yeah. I’m going too. I’m rescuing Baril.”
“……”
Everyone felt the same way.
Worry filled his friends’ eyes.
“Fine. We’ll go together. We’ve got to bring Baril home.”
Lawrence rose to his feet and looked back at the house.
Their flag fluttered on the roof, a knife and fork crossed over a loaf of bread.
For some reason, the words I’ll be back never quite made it out of his mouth.
….
…….
The hill behind Hilton Village was the home of the Under Wolfs.
It was safe enough for people to roam there in the morning and afternoon.
But once the sun went down, the Under Wolfs appeared as if nothing had ever happened.
It was the same now.
After a long and difficult search, they had managed to find Baril.
But in the darkness, they could see the monsters prowling around.
“There’s one over there too!”
“Keep your voice down, idiot!”
“And how’s that going to solve anything?”
At night, it was a dangerous place even the villagers avoided.
So of course it wouldn’t go easily when children who could barely protect themselves had climbed all the way up there.
He knew it well enough.
Going up the mountain at this hour was suicide.
He should have talked everyone out of it and come up alone.
Unlike the others, he at least could protect himself.
Could protect himself?
Yes. He could.
Lawrence could do that, and no one else.
No.
Don’t think about it.
What mattered now was that he couldn’t abandon Baril.
The boys he had met in these back alleys might not have shared blood, but they were his one and only family.
No one abandoned family.
Not even in a place this dangerous.
“Damn it. If I was gonna die like this, I should’ve at least finished all the bread first.”
“Can you really joke right now?”
“That’s exactly why I can joke!”
“Still, it’s a relief. If we all go together, maybe we’ll be fine.”
The Under Wolves that appeared were five in total.
Even if each one singled out a different friend, there was nothing they could do.
Their gazes, almost pleading, turned to Lawrence.
As if asking him for a good plan, he lifted his eyes.
The sky was dark, moonless.
Beyond the dim clouds, he could make out a castle that shouldn’t have been there.
A castle?
Was that really a castle?
What he saw through the mist was undeniably….
Suddenly, everything came back to him.
Blurry memories took on sharp, clear edges.
The truth he had wanted to look away from spread out before his eyes.
“……”
Lawrence stepped forward.
“Lawrence?”
“What are you doing? Hurry back here, idiot!”
He understood now.
Where there is a beginning, there is an end.
No dream can be dreamed forever.
The truth was, he had known all along.
That all of this was nothing more than a dream.
And yet he didn’t want to wake.
He could call it greed if he wanted.
He could call it weakness too.
He just wanted to stay with his friends from those days a little longer.
He didn’t want to look away from these brilliant memories.
“Beware the dream within a dream.”
“A dream within a dream. It’s too dangerous.”
Now he understood.
The dream within a dream that Acheron and Arwen had spoken of.
This was the very phenomenon those two neighbors had warned him about.
Illusion became reality.
And a dream more wonderful than reality beckoned him closer.
It was so comfortable that even knowing it was a dream, he still didn’t want to wake.
Because memories that would never return had become reality.
But dreams always wake in the end.
The only thing that ever continues without becoming a dream is reality itself.
Even now, when he closed his eyes, everyone rose up before him.
Back then, the orphan boys who had nothing were too busy surviving each day to even imagine the adults they might become.
Just making it through today was hard enough.
No matter how hard they tried, all they could do was cling with all their strength to the shadow of tomorrow.
A long, long alley.
They should have been running through the backstreets together with everyone else.
But when he looked around all of a sudden, no one was there.
“……”
Now he knew why the leader was nowhere to be seen.
Unlike the friends buried in his heart, the leader—
the one he had promised to meet again—
he had not buried with his own hands.
“Why are you suddenly acting like this?”
“Stop fooling around and come back, Lawrence!”
Their anxious voices sounded so far away.
The dream they had all dreamed together.
The dream of imagining the world even while wandering filthy back alleys.
What would they do if they could ever leave the village?
He wanted to become a knight who ruled the continent.
He wanted to become a battle-hardened mercenary who crossed battlefields without fear.
He wanted to become a mage who wielded mysterious magic.
Whenever they spoke of their dreams, they were no longer pathetic orphans.
Like the endless sky spread above them.
The picture painted by their dreams could go anywhere.
But the end of the story was always the same.
“That’d be nice and all, but I just want to live an ordinary life.”
He simply wanted to live like a person.
Without being looked down on by anyone.
Without being oppressed by anyone.
He just wanted to live a normal life, like everyone else.
Yes.
This dream wasn’t Lawrence’s alone.
It was the dream shared by all of them, the ones who had wandered the filthy back alleys together.
So stopping now was not allowed.
And yet….
Even so….
A tear slid down his cheek.
Maybe it was all right to rest for a moment?
Even the freest bird couldn’t fly forever without pause.
What is a dream, and what is reality?
It was Lawrence himself who decided.
“I don’t ever want to see you die again.”
That was enough.
Yes, more than enough.
For a brief rest with his wings folded, it was an unbearably sweet reprieve.
He would hesitate no longer.
He recited the activating word he had spoken so many times before.
“Shadow Spear.”
This was different from when he had used Shadow at home.
To Lawrence’s call, spoken after he had faced reality head-on, the law of the world answered.
Shadow Spear manifested.
It was not a magic even an Under Wolf would dare to loiter near.
The shadow spear, leaving a black trail in its wake, crushed the insubstantial illusion.
He lowered his hand.
When the explosion died down, the hill’s landscape was gone.
The mist-cloaked bridge.
At the sight of the Spirit World’s familiar scenery returning, tears welled up in his eyes.
The long, long dream had ended.
He knew it.
This was reality.
No matter how hard he cried out, his friends would not come back.
“…rence!”
Somewhere, a voice shimmered back into being.
At his friends’ shouts from behind him, Lawrence closed his eyes.
Mist leading to a sweet dream.
If he remained sunk in that dream, then surely he could stay with his friends forever.
But what meaning would that have?
Don’t look away.
This isn’t the same as abandoning you.
I’m not living as if I’ve forgotten you.
As long as I remember you, you’ll live on in my heart.
Don’t forget the vow I made before your graves that day.
What rose beneath his eyes were his friends’ final moments.
Skinny Jon, the first to go after being worn down by fever.
Slow-witted Titu, cautious in every matter and yet gone too soon.
Haman, who left in a terrible state after his body had been ruined by sickness.
Foolish Baril, who met his death alone on the hill.
The crude wooden cross he had made as best he could.
The graves, one after another as they multiplied, had all been made by these very hands.
He would not forget.
He had resolved to live for their sake as well.
He had vowed to show them everything he saw.
“Because I… I’ll take you all out into the world.”
The fist clenched tightly in his hand trembled.
His nails dug into his palm and left streaks of blood.
This sorrow.
This burning in his chest.
He would never spit it out again.
The dream he carried was the dream of them all.
“Someday, at the end of this journey, let’s meet again. When that day comes, I’ll tell you everything I saw and heard.”
This time would be the last time he paused to rest.
The alley that led us into the world was not yet over.
Lawrence bid farewell to the friends he could no longer meet.
No tears fell.
Instead, he felt something hot.
An ember that should already have gone out was stirring in the ashes.
The flame that had lost its strength flared up again.
That fire, fed by his heart as kindling, soon turned to starlight and settled within his chest.
Remember this.
You are not alone.
We go forward together.
Lawrence stepped ahead.
As though it had been waiting for that step, the thick mist scattered.
Beyond the bridge that seemed as if it would never end, a lonely wasteland appeared.
The massive tower he had seen through the mist was waiting for him there.
He did not hesitate.
At last, having awakened from the dream within a dream, Lawrence crossed the bridge.
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