Commander, Nightmare (1)
In the end, I spent the whole night wide awake.
It couldn't be helped. No normal person could have simply closed their eyes again after that. The bed was soaked through with my own sweat, clammy and clinging, and I'd taken a shower to wash it off — which had only pulled me further from sleep. But more than any of that: if I drifted off again and that woman killed me in my dreams once more... I had the feeling something would break beyond any hope of repair.
"...Hahh."
Perched on a chair in nothing but a bathrobe, I gave a shallow shiver. It had been nothing more than a dream — and yet the sensations had been vivid past the point of strangeness, so raw they felt almost wrong. And for the first time in my life... no. The second. I had felt the terror of dying.
It was more than enough to call a nightmare, and unlike any other dream, it refused to leave my head. Tangled up with the memory of the first time I'd met her, it tormented me through the entire night. The nightmare itself had long since ended... but even with my eyes shut, the visions played on. Even with my ears covered, the phantom sounds wouldn't stop.
...So this was all I was. Someone this weak.
...Damn it.
I'd thought I'd gotten past it, more or less. Apparently I still wasn't strong enough to overcome what happened that day.
And now the questions I'd barely managed to bury came crawling back up my spine. Did I still... not have what it took to be Commander? I'd talked such a big game about becoming a Commander in the truest sense of the word — and I couldn't even fill half of what that presence demanded. Was I just some talentless ordinary person who'd lucked into a body far too good for me, throwing everything around me into pointless disarray? Would this place I loved more than anything collapse... because of me?
"...What am I supposed to do?"
I tossed the question into empty air, but of course no answer came. What filled the silence instead was doubt — doubt aimed squarely at myself. It felt like being trapped in a darkness without a single point of light, the same as the nightmare I'd just crawled out of. Overwhelmed by that helpless feeling, I buried my face in both hands.
...And I stayed like that, silent as the grave, until the morning sun through the window found me.
...And the price for that, well, was exactly what you'd expect.
"Commander, are you quite all right?"
"...It's nothing. I just didn't sleep well."
I answered Hitsuko's question and knocked back the coffee sitting beside me. I was tired. Not sleepy — tired. How to put it. My body was one thing, but it was my mind that hadn't gotten any rest. So drowsiness and exhaustion were separate beasts. I hadn't particularly wanted to learn that this way.
...Bitter.
An iced Americano slammed down in weather already turning toward winter, and the fatigue still wouldn't budge. The cold of the ice and the bitterness of the coffee lingered in my mouth, but my locked-up brain refused to wake. Even the modern person's miracle cure was useless. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Then again, my sleep had been cut in half, so not being tired would have been the strange part. The real problem was that it hadn't been by choice. Still — nightmares weren't exactly a common occurrence.
If I can just get through today... I'll be fine.
I took the documents from Hitsuko, who was watching me with openly suspicious eyes, and had another sip of coffee. Right. Let's look on the bright side. My condition had been off lately, so I'd had a bad dream for a bit. It just happened to overlap with my trauma, which was why it had turned into a nightmare so viscerally realistic it made my skin crawl.
No — if you actually thought about it, it wasn't even that realistic. Our girls, taken down by a single person? That didn't make any sense. She'd shown up as a clone back then, sure, but even accounting for that, she'd been cleaned up that easily. So who was supposed to be killing whom, exactly?
Besides, I had to think about Rielly, who changed the bedsheets. I'd managed to talk my way out of her trying to frog-march me to the Medical Department first thing in the morning... but if it happened twice, wouldn't she actually start worrying about my health? Not that she would. Yeah.
So tonight would be fine.
"...Hahk!"
...It was not fine.
"Ah— hhk, haah..."
I clutched at my chest with hands that wouldn't stop shaking and dragged in a ragged breath. Again. That nightmare again. The repertoire was identical to yesterday's. Darkness on all sides. A body that wouldn't move. A nameless woman in black, claiming she'd already slaughtered every operative who'd stood in her way. And then the terror of dying — vivid, immediate, something I couldn't get used to no matter how many times I faced it...
...And when I came to, my clothes and the bed were plastered to me, soaked through with sweat. As if someone were toying with me, everything was exactly the same as the night before.
"...Damn it."
The one thing that was different was the way I'd died. Last night my throat had been cut. Tonight, my heart had been run through. Of all the countless details, that was the only one that had changed. A nightmare that killed me however it pleased — what even was this? I'd always figured if you had a recurring nightmare, it would be the same dream over and over... apparently not.
...Tonight will be fine, I'd said. Had I been too optimistic?
"...Why."
Why me. Why this. Whether the ending changed at the last second or not, it had still been a dream, so I hadn't felt the pain itself — not then, and not now. But it felt like a taunt. Like it was telling me that from now on, every time I fell asleep, it would kill me a different way, day after day.
...I was afraid.
"Nnh..."
A headache hit me without warning, like a needle driving into my skull. As if a nightmare weren't enough, now this — I could feel my sanity being carved away in chunks. I wrung out the last remaining thread of willpower, lifted both hands — still trembling — and wrapped them around my head. Then I curled in on myself, huddled on the damp bed.
And...
"...Please."
...A sound that, as Commander, should never have reached anyone's ears.
"Please... anyone..."
I let it out so quietly that no one could possibly have heard.
...And this time, too, I stayed like that until the sun came up.
Three days later.
"...Commander?"
"I'm fine."
After additionally dying by having my head burst and being strangled, the last method I settled on was giving up on sleep entirely. It was a solution so primitive it bordered on stupid — but in terms of raw performance, it was airtight.
"I only mention it because you do not appear to be all right."
"I said I'm fine."
This was better, honestly. If I was only going to get two hours anyway, and spend the rest of the day too busy thinking about the nightmare to focus on work... it was far more efficient to just stay awake the whole time and patch the holes in my concentration with stimulants. The fatigue...? It had been rough at first, but once I got used to it, it was bearable.
There was no coffee on my desk anymore. In its place, energy drinks packed with concentrated caffeine sat piled in a heap. I should have done this from the start. I'd given up a little sleep, and my work speed itself had changed dramatically. All that struggling to squeeze in a few hours of rest had just been a net loss.
"Um... Commander?"
Hitsuko, apparently, did not share this assessment, because she called for me again. Did I look that sleep-deprived...? She was really hung up on this. She could stand to worry a little less, though. This was overprotectiveness, I swear. Of all people, I didn't want to be looked after by a kid way younger than me. I understood where she was coming from, sure, but three times was a bit much, wasn't it? And I wasn't just saying it — I actually felt pretty decent.
"...I'm really fine. Why?"
"That isn't it. Would you look in front of you, perhaps?"
"...In front?"
Half-skeptical, I lifted my head at Hitsuko's words... and found faces I loved dearly, and at this particular moment wanted to see less than anyone else in the world.
"...Rielly? Cardia?"
...What were they doing here? Okay, yes, I'd just been confidently going on about how fine I was. But that had been about my condition in the immediate sense. A statement of confidence that my ability to do the job was not, in any way, compromised. Except that line of argument was not going to work on these two at all.
Rielly, who managed every corner of my daily life, and Cardia, who'd been watching me like a hawk ever since the last physical. The two of them showing up together — the reason was painfully obvious. Would it have killed them to be a little less transparent about it? And... uh. When it came to my health, I had way too many things that would not hold up under scrutiny.
"Commander."
"Y-yeah?"
"Don't you have something you'd like to tell us?"
...What was that supposed to mean. Was this any different from the classic girlfriend move — notice anything different about me? Did they not think this was a little ambush-y? Besides, my mental state was not exactly in a place to answer that question—
"..."
...No. If I admitted anything here, that would make me a liar in front of Hitsuko. My condition was perfectly normal. Yeah.
"Uh... hello?"
"You don't look well enough to be saying hello, Commander."
Rielly shot a piercing look at the pile of cans occupying one corner of my desk, then turned her gaze back on me. Cardia followed her eyes to the same spot and clicked her tongue, clearly unimpressed. ...What was wrong with energy drinks. People drank them sometimes.
"I hear you haven't been sleeping?"
"...No? I slept fine."
"Please don't lie. We already know everything."
I'd tensed a little when the two of them walked in without warning, but what they hit me with — for all that buildup — was a textbook round of leading questions. Fortunately, they didn't seem to know exactly how bad it was. Then I just had to deny it. There was no way a half-baked interrogation like this was going to work on me.
"I told you, I slept fine. Who's been spreading weird rumors like that?"
"She's right here, actually. Why don't you ask her yourself?"
"...Hitsuko?"
...What? Don't tell me this was an inside job...
"I do apologize, Commander."
"Did you... trick me?"
"I did not deceive you, Commander."
I whipped my head around to look at her. Hitsuko covered her mouth and let out a soft, knowing little laugh — the kind a mastermind might wear — and as I was hauled off in a princess carry, she added a few words more.
"I merely neglected to inform you, that is all."
"You... you!"
"However, everything was done for your sake. I would ask for your generous understanding."
...Commander. Morning duties: concluded.