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"Eli, do you know what the most beautiful thing in this world is?"
The question burned in her ears as she ran, drawn to the ebbing shadows that crept, panther-like, at the very edges of the landscape that was her reality. Nightmarish scraps of cloud were marbled across scarlet skies, stained with coal black plumes that rose into the everlasting twilight like a phoenix made of ash.
Run away, her instinct insisted. While you still can.
But she slowed to a walk, and continued onwards regardless. The shades of darkness that had come together to form a distinct, towering shape shifted into a scene that was not altogether unfamiliar to her. There was the sound of a whirring machine in the background, but it was the only distinct noise in her immediate vicinity. The colours were soft and subdued; the curtains were drawn tightly against the late afternoon sun. There was the faint smell of dying flowers in the air, and vases of wilting flowers caught her eye.
It was then she noticed the sound of quiet crying, and her gaze was drawn to a girl just a few feet away who was sitting on a rocking chair across from an empty hospital bed that looked strangely out of place. It was impossible to discern her age from just a few moments of looking at her, but she couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen. Her left arm was hooked up to a large machine in the room, the spot where the tubes disappearing into her skin was mottled with bruises. There were dark shadows under her eyes and her breathing seemed shallow and laboured.
In the background, she thought she could hear sobs, but the sounds were muted. Mostly, there was silence apart from the rhythmic sound of the dialysis machine.
She had done this before. She had done this enough times to know that the dark shadows that lingered in the very corners of the scene that threatened to form claws and wraithlike monsters were not here for her. She had done this enough times to know that there was only one thing she needed to do.
Eli gently put a hand on the girl's head, tenderly caressing her hair, knowing that she couldn't see or hear her. She closed her eyes and thought of peace that came with a night that wasn't filled with fear nor uncertainty in the future.
"You're going to be safe," she murmured softly. "There are people right here that love you." Even though she couldn't see them, she knew that the girl's family was there, somewhere in the background, sitting in chairs that didn't quite register in her field of vision.
She stayed with the girl until her dream dissolved into the aether, leaving nothing behind.
The dream plane. In essence, the shadowlands between sleep and wakefulness, life and death. It's a funny place… almost like a catalyst for everything that happens in the real world. There are only two concepts that still hold meaning from reality to this world: hope and despair.
What most people don't know—or believe in— though, is that it's possible to walk through the world of dreams without getting lost. If you understand how the dream plane works, it's possible to leap from one dream to the next, from person to person, just like the stuff of legends. In the realm of the subconscious, anything can happen. People generally don't remember, however, the stories of their dreams because the line between these two planes is so divided and polarized. But people can become anything in their dreams. People can experience anything in their dreams. It's a fascinating place… if you know how to control how you navigate the dream plane. For those that can't, however, they're at the mercy of the shadows that run wild in this dimension, seeking out unsuspecting dreamers who do not have the ability to manipulate their dreams. Shadows can create nightmares. Hope dispels them. And in this unending cycle of hope and despair, it drives the very essence of both our fears and the deepest desires in our hearts.
"So did you save her?" A voice distracted her from her thoughts as Eli looked behind her over her shoulder.
The young woman that had insisted on following her stood there, flicking through her deck of tarot cards. She pulled one out, and then pouted at it as she waited for her answer.
"I wasn't saving anyone," she muttered, resisting the temptation to cross her arms. "You know that."
"Sure I do," the other girl replied. "It doesn't make what we do any less significant though." She twirled a lock of dark hair in one finger as she replaced the tarot card in her deck. "If they could see you, they might think you're their guardian angel or something." Underneath the bright tone of her words, there was a bitter bite of sarcasm.
Eli could feel her temper rising, despite her exhaustion both physically and mentally. "What are you trying to say?"
The plum-haired woman that stood three feet away from her met her fierce ice-blue gaze equally. "I'm asking you if you've found an answer to my question."
I didn't ask to come to the dream plane indefinitely at first. But the truth is, I was scared of my own reality. Of loving something I did so much yet being unable to succeed in it. I remember watching the other dancers being picked, of them standing on the stage I wanted to stand on so much. I remember practicing the dances I wanted to do over and over, but still not being able to perform them at a level that was better than anyone else's.
It was a lonely, painful existence. I found my refuge in sleep. In my dreams, I found that, with practice, I had the ability to be anything I wanted. I could control what I saw, what I did, who I was. I could be the prima ballerina of the dance I loved so much. I could be attending the ballet shows across the world, seeing things that I would never get the chance to see in real life. It was a world I wanted to be a part of so much, but it wasn't a part of my reality.
My dreams became an escape from the reality I no longer wanted to be in, because I could control what I saw, what I did, who I wanted to be. It was the escape that I so desperately wanted. It was the dream—ironically—that I always wanted to live. I began to spend more and more time sleeping, wanting to go back into the dream world that gave me what my reality could not. My parents, my teachers, even the classmates that I didn't know because I had spent so much of my free time at the studio, didn't and wouldn't understand. I didn't bother replying to their questions and concerns because I had always acted that way. I was still Ayase Eli—just perhaps always tired from her ballet practice. And in turn, that behaviour led them to believe I was fine.
But in truth, the only thing that mattered to me anymore was sleeping. Why bother staying awake when I had the ability to create the world of my dreams in sleep?
Eventually, I stopped spending time in reality altogether.
But all things had a price, Eli mused as she paused, fingertips brushing the wet dew on moss after a fresh rainfall. Hers was that she could no longer return to reality—it had taken her awhile to convince herself that it was because she had already spent too much time in her dreams, and not because she didn't want to.
What she could admit, though, was that there were times when she wondered if her family were okay and if her sister ever worried about her. But she had hidden her weakest moments from them, not wanting to add concern to what she assumed had to be their inevitable disappointment in her. Besides, I was so distant in those last few months I remember. It's probably better this way. No. I know things are better this way.
However, her own dreams had become increasingly dull with time. There were only so many times she could relive each competition, each dance, each show. As she lowered her arms for the last time in a dance, something had caught the edge of her vision, creeping into the back of the dance hall. Shadows. They clung to the dark corners at first, and then slowly, they grew bolder, congregating to form visible facial features and claws, slowly morphing into dark creatures with glowing red eyes. With a start, Eli realized that the creatures were creeping forwards, making their way rapidly towards a member of the audience that she couldn't see. Horror seized her limbs for a few moments as she stood there, paralyzed with indecisive fear, unable to move. Her body reacted before her mind could completely process what she was doing.
With unnatural grace, she jumped off the stage, ignoring the horrified gasps of the judges that sat just in front of her. Their shouts and the embarrassed calls of her ballet master was background noise to her as her instinct drove her forwards. She pushed aside nameless, faceless people who had come to watch her dance as she reached the centre of the audience hall, finally reaching the row where the black, formless entities had come to converge.
It was a little boy with glasses, clutching a sheaf of sheet music to his chest as he sobbed. The creatures gathered at his feet, sharp appendages rearing, but the boy didn't seem to have noticed them as he continued to cry. The sound was so reminiscent of her own past that Eli reached a hand towards him, trying to shove away the shadows surrounding him when she brushed his shoulder by accident.
The moment her hand made contact with the little boy's body, she was thrust into his world, a whirlwind of memories and colours, muted with the darkness and his dread of failure, of disappointing his mother, who was his piano teacher, who expected him to come in first place in every competition. She understood his fear so intimately that she might've been right there with him as he played every piece. His thoughts, memories and emotions crowded through her mind before she pulled her hand away, staggering backwards until she bumped against the back of the seat in front of them, mind reeling from what she had just experienced.
It was in that moment that Eli understood. She was no longer in her dream—she was in his. The deepest desire of their hearts and their fears, tied to a concert hall they both loved and dreaded at the same time, had caused their dreams to collide.
She realized that she didn't want to see him go through the same thing she had. There was a desperation to reassure him that he wouldn't turn out like she had.
She found herself sinking into a kneeling position just in front of him. "Hey," she said quietly. The little boy didn't seem to hear her. She didn't know if he was supposed to or not. "It's going to be alright," she continued softly. "Your mother just wants to see you do your best. It doesn't matter if you don't win every competition… what matters is that you tried. That's all she ever wanted." She paused for a moment. "She loves you." She wanted her words so badly to be true—her chest ached as she spoke the syllables because there was no way that someone this small should have go through the same things she had and share the trepidations that still haunted her like predators waiting to strike from the darkness.
Eli tried to calm her racing heartbeat as she gathered the scattered sheet music around her. "You'll be okay. Don't be afraid of the future." She repeated the words gently as she held his hand.
Even though he had given no indication that he'd heard her, the little boy sniffed and wiped away his tears with a clenched first, raising his head and staring ahead at the brightly lit stage that she'd recently abandoned. The despair in his gaze had been replaced by another look—one of determination.
The shadowy wisps and demonic creatures that had been created by his nightmare cringed back from where they had been gathered, just out of reach of the boy until they had retreated back to the corners of the room, slipping underneath the exits that led out of the auditorium until they disappeared.
The dream began to dissolve, shifting back into familiar colours as the last vestiges of the image of the little boy dissipated into the twilight sky of her own dream.
For the first time in her life, Eli had found a purpose she could fulfill.
It was a rather unfortunate day in her life when she'd realized that there was someone—or something—following her. She'd had the sneaking suspicion of being watched for awhile now, but she hadn't quite been able to put her finger on it. Eli wasn't quite sure why someone would feel the need to follow her, and it bothered her that she wasn't able to figure it out.
She had no doubt that she was not the only lucid dreamer within the dream plane, but for someone to actually follow her? That just meant that whoever it was had more than a mild investment in her activities and the thought nagged at her like a thorn in her side. The presence wasn't always there, but came and went on a fairly regular schedule: she assumed that this meant whoever it was still returned to reality upon waking.
At this point, she had wandered into more dreams than she cared to count. After the dream of the little boy, she had easily found the dream of his mother—her dreamscape had been so close to his. She had discovered that his mother had been diagnosed with a rare disease and needed to go to a different country for hope of a treatment, but she worried constantly about her son and how he would do with only his grandmother to care for him. Eli gave her dreams of reassurance, and of her son playing a beautiful sonata flawlessly in front of a large crowd in their hometown auditorium. She comforted the teenage girl who suffered from debilitating anxiety, much like herself, the young university graduate who had let his desperation to find suitable employment take over his life, and the boy that didn't know how to tell his parents he felt trapped in a girl's body.
It was when she had released the dream of a man who didn't know how to tell his girlfriend that he didn't think he deserved her anymore when she heard a voice behind her.
"Found you."
Eli whipped around, narrowing her eyes when she spotted a young woman standing a few metres away from her, wearing a knowing smile on her face. It was not someone she recognized in any capacity. She was wearing a school uniform and her long dark hair was pulled back in twin tails, but Eli had been here long enough to know that people who did have the ability to control their dreams could look like anyone they wanted.
"I've been looking for you for awhile, you know," the other girl continued, the corner of her lips still quirked upwards in a smile. "I thought there was someone else here, chasing away those shadows like it's their job."
For a moment, Eli was speechless. Struggling to regain her composure, she internally debated between snapping something at the other girl and simply turning her back and leaving. I'm… guessing this is who's been following me for the last little while.
"So… what are you doing here?" she asked, trying unnecessarily hard to keep her voice neutral as she took in the young woman's posture: she was too relaxed and seemed too happy to be in a place that should've been altogether unfamiliar to her. Even if she's a lucid dreamer, the sight of those shadows for the first time should be unnerving—to say the least—for her.
"I can't have the same capabilities as you?" the other girl inquired, tilting her head to one side, but not dropping the patronizing tone that had been present in her voice since she'd opened her mouth.
Eli resisted the temptation to grit her teeth in frustration. "No," she ground out. "I mean, why are you following me?"
The smile on the woman's lips twitched a little. "You intrigue me. You never leave this place." She paused for a heartbeat, expression unreadable. "Am I wrong?"
It was as though she was being mysterious on purpose.
Eli held her ground, biting back a retort. No need to give her more information than absolutely necessary. It's not like I'll see her again after tonight. Nonetheless, she made a mental effort to be more discreet: there was no harm in avoiding future encounters like this one.
"I guess not," the other girl continued, unfazed by her silence. Finally the smile on her face dropped from her lips, changing into a serious expression full of intensity that Eli was sure was mirrored on her own features. When she spoke again, the flippant, casual tone of her voice was gone. "I wondered who you were. You were a constant in my dreams, and you always seemed to be here, no matter when I decided to sleep. I've seen the nightmares that plague other people's dreams… and I always avoided them. Yet you seem to run towards every single one of them. Why?"
The last syllable of the young woman's monologue carried so much weighted emotion that it was like being struck on the chest by a physical blow.
Because this is the only thing I know how to do. Because this is the only thing that gives me self-worth.
But there was no way she was saying those words out loud—it was something she didn't even want to admit to herself. Trying to crowd them out of her mind, denying them was the equivalent of biting down on her own tongue.
"It's none of your business," she finally said, fighting to keep the emotion she was trying not to show out of her voice. "Are we done here? I'm sure there's a better use of your time." To her relief, those sentences sounded steadier: more like the self she had wanted others to see.
The dark-haired girl smiled again; it was starting to get on Eli's nerves that she apparently found everything she said amusing. "On the contrary, I think this is a pretty good use of my time. You're not going to stop me from following you, are you?"
She bit back a growl of frustration—it was true that she had no control over what other people dreamed about.
"Suit yourself."
Her name was Toujou Nozomi. It hadn't taken the young woman long to reveal her name to her, although Eli was careful to address her by her surname only. There was no reason to foster any semblance of familiarity with her, seeing the method in which Toujou had barged into her dreamscape— and like any unwanted guest, she was reluctant to leave.
Though their meeting had been triggered by the closeness of their dreamscapes—Eli later found out that the man who she had helped just before they'd met was one of Toujou's acquaintances, and she had been worried about him—she had learned that Toujou also came to the dreamscape by choice… not that it wasn't obvious she was also a lucid dreamer.
It had been the first question that Eli had returned. "So why did you come here to begin with? What makes you keep coming back?"
Toujou had shrugged. "I've always believed in magic." She said it as though it was an answer, although Eli didn't think it was one at all.
"I've always believed that there was something greater than all of us out there. I wanted to try lucid dreaming because it's a concept that's always fascinated me. Who hasn't heard about the legends of dreams? Even if I never found the proof for what I believed in, I could say I tried. It's taken me awhile to get the hang of it, but it paid off in the end. I believed that there was more to life than what was at the surface, in what we see every day when we're awake. There's something magical out there—and now I know that there is."
She was sure that Toujou, at least, believed in what she was saying. The woman was scarcely seen without her deck of tarot cards: while there was a certain degree of skill that came with fortune telling, Toujou insisted that the cards drawn were also guided by some form of higher power.
Though Toujou had initially been an unwelcome presence in her otherwise peaceful existence, there began to be times that Eli looked forward to her almost nightly visits to the dreamscape. Although she didn't spend as much time in her own dreams anymore, the unending search of nightmares and shadows that tainted the dreamscape was a lonely crusade, even if it was a purpose that she had chosen to fulfill. Toujou was company, albeit not very good at times.
It had taken her a long time to be comfortable enough to reveal her own first name to her new companion , though she withheld her surname out of trepidation—or was it fear?—that it could lead to some unpleasant consequences when Toujou left for the waking world in the mornings, although she had briefly regretted this decision when Toujou coined an annoying nickname out of her first name: Elichi. She was also convinced that Toujou made use of the pet name for the sole purpose of annoying her.
She had warmed up to Toujou enough that some of their first meetings could draw a smile to her lips when she thought back to them. They had been a perfect combination of awkwardness, reluctance—mostly on her part—and stubbornness that would've turned her into a seething ball of anxiety if it had happened to her in the waking world.
As things happened, it only caused her to become increasingly irritable; the more irritable she got, the more Toujou laughed.
But their nightly 'adventures', as Toujou insisted, didn't always consist of hunting down the shadows and wraiths that preyed on the weak, of which she had been a quick study. There were times when all that lay before them were violet meadows, sweet and musky evening air saturated with the smell of freesia and jasmine, and an ocean of lavender that stretched before them before a sky of boundless, infinite stars in twilight. These were Eli's dreams, or rather, her chosen dreamworld, although if Toujou knew that they were, she never mentioned it.
Some of these were filled with silence as Toujou explored her dreams while Eli stood by, trying not to let her restlessness show. She could, of course, traverse the dreamscape on her own, but that still wouldn't let her stop Toujou from poking her nose into every inch of her inner landscape. She figured it was better if she was there to at least do some damage control if things came to that. I can't… I can't let her know who I am.
Other times, there was idle chat between them, though Toujou always tried to make it personal. This made her uncomfortable, and there had indeed been times where Eli had chosen to walk away, but for some reason, it was as though Toujou had already wormed her way into her heart, because she couldn't seem to actually keep her distance for that long.
The truth was, although the dream world had been her refuge, her escape from the things she couldn't accomplish in the waking one, she couldn't change the fact that her existence was as lonely as it had ever been. It had briefly been assuaged by the colourful world of her own dreams, but even she couldn't continue to lie to herself that that would've satisfied her forever.
So I have to keep going. I just want to make sure that nobody else ends up like me, with nobody to understand them.
"Draw."
Toujou waved the stack of tarot cards in her face.
Eli quirked an eyebrow at the sudden request, mouth half open to refuse. She closed it, then opened it again. "Why, again?"
Toujou made a face at her. "Just do it, Elichi."
The syllables of Elichi grated against her nerves. Intending to make things quick, because she had better things to do than fortune-telling all night, she pulled the closest card from the stack and held it up so that its face was turned away from her.
Toujou took the card from her and inspected it. "Hm."
Eli crossed her arms, knowing that there would be an explanation waiting for her even if she turned away now. She mentally counted to five before speaking. "Well?"
"Look for yourself, Elichi." She turned the card towards her.
Eli scowled at her. "You know I don't know what these mean."
"It's the Tower, Elichi. Surely you know what this one means."
She did—now that the name of the card had actually been spoken out loud. The Tower. She didn't actually believe in tarot cards, no matter what Toujou insisted, but she would be lying to herself if she didn't admit the card made her a little uneasy.
Eli silently mused over the meaning of the card as she let herself wander through various dreamscapes, dimly aware that Toujou was following her, though she kept a few paces between them.
A flicker of shadow in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Out of place in the ethereal expanse, she steeled her nerves as she strode towards it with a resolved sense of purpose. Walking towards the clouds of darkness was almost like waiting her turn to go onstage before a performance. No. Don't think about that. Not before this.
The scene was familiar to her. She had seen this a hundred—perhaps a thousand—times before, in other dreams.
Machines beeped in the background. There was the steady drip of an IV somewhere, but it was oddly muted, as though it was muffled by cloth. There was the scratching of a pen against paper on a clipboard close to her, but Eli felt strangely detached from the situation at hand. There were footsteps—real, or at least to her—behind her. She had almost forgotten Toujou was there.
"I'm sorry." The speaker of the sentence was male. " We've run these tests over and over, but there aren't any signs of injury or trauma. We… just don't understand right now. What could have caused a coma with essentially no damage?"
There was a long silence, and Eli waited; the shadows hadn't penetrated the strands of the dream just yet. Until they converged, she would have no idea whose dreams they were currently in.
"I'm sorry," the doctor repeated the short sentence once more, his voice eerily monotone. "I don't know if she's coming back."
It was at that moment that the darkness struck, clawing through the fabric of the reality that she was in with a demonic fury. The darkness engulfed the scene before withdrawing, only to strike again, repeating the action in sequence, almost like the beating of a monstrous heart.
Eli looked around desperately, trying to see the source of the nightmare, trying to discern who the shadows had decided to target.
A quiet gasp from somewhere on her left drew her attention. There was a girl curled up in the corner of the room, the grey hood from her sweatshirt pulled up over her head so that she couldn't immediately make out her facial features because she had her head buried in her arms. She was strangely away from her current reality—here, the background sounds of the hospital and the doctor speaking were subdued, as though filtered through a poorly tuned radio. Garbled feedback kept razing against her ears as she approached the small figure, turning into a soft mechanical whine. If cold metal had a sound, this would be it.
She knelt in front of the girl, although Eli knew she could neither see nor hear her.
She had done this before.
The moment her slender fingers touched the girl's forearm resting on her knees, though, a hurricane of emotions pushed her backwards. Regret sliced through the core of her being and fear swept through her veins like ice. Fighting back against the rush of negativity, Eli reached out to touch the girl again.
The memories that flooded her were oddly familiar, although not in the sense she would've anticipated in a million years. It was like she was watching her own past on rewind, badly refined by a different perspective.
Cerulean eyes widened when she realized who was in front of her. Stumbling backwards, she did something she had never done before: she backed away from the dream in front of her, forcing herself to break away from the nightmare spread before her and she barely processed the fact that she was running. Eli closed her eyes as though that would stop the torrent of emotions that suddenly threatened overwhelm her.
"Eli!" The sound of Toujou calling her name barely registered as she tried to keep going. She didn't get very far, however, before sinking to her knees. She thought she was going to be sick, gasping for breaths she didn't necessarily need, trying to control the violent tremble in her hands.
Someone's hand—tangible, warm—touched her shoulder and remained there, but it was still a long time before Eli found the courage to open her eyes.
She was back in her dream plane.
Blue eyes found the green as she forced herself to look at Toujou, knowing, with growing dread, that there was absolutely no way she could internalize this. Her reaction had been too obvious, but her mind was oddly blank. Briefly, Eli wondered if she was going into shock—if that was possible here.
"I know who that was." Toujou's voice was low, but it contained none of her usual sass; instead, it was filled with something akin to an uncharacteristic concern.
Eli didn't reply.
"I know who you are."
Was there a point in denying anything?
"You're famous in our town, you know." Toujou's speech was oddly flat. "The aspiring ballet dancer who fell into a coma with no sign of trauma or disease. Her family reported that she had been sleeping more, and that she'd seemed tired all the time, but hadn't looked ill. Her teachers reported her as a model student, if distant and unwilling to socialize with her classmates. But she never mentioned she was stressed, or not feeling well, until… one day, she never woke up."
She paused, her words growing more intense as she continued. "You didn't tell me your last name, but I suspected it was you, even if 'Eli' was short for something. But I was waiting for you to come and say it out loud yourself. I didn't realize that this was what your family was going through. If I had, I would've said something sooner." There was a hint of bitterness—regret?— in her voice.
Toujou took a step closer to her. "I get it now." There was no need to elaborate on that particular statement. "If I'd realized things were like this earlier, I might've tried harder to convince you to open up to me."
Eli found her voice, although it was barely louder and no more distinct than a croak. "Why?"
There was a ferocity in Toujou's eyes that Eli couldn't associate with her. Where was the carefree, happy-go-lucky individual she had come to associate with the purple-haired teenager in front of her? "Because that's your sister back there. You know what she's dreaming about, don't you?"
She clenched her hands into fists, fingernails digging into her skin until it hurt, but the pain grounded her and reminded her why she was there. "Yes." She took a breath, willing her voice to stop shaking. "But I can't—I can't go back there. You have to get rid of those things. You know how to do it."
Anger blazed in the viridian eyes facing her. "That's not what this is about, Eli."
She noticed that Toujou had dropped the annoying antonym. "Yes it is."
"Don't be obtuse," Toujou snapped back. The other girl inhaled sharply though her nose, pinching the bridge of it as she let out her breath slowly. "Let me spell it out for you then. Why don't you want to go back to reality?"
She really needed to give Toujou credit where she deserved it. Maybe I've been more obvious than I thought. The errant thought crossed her mind before she pushed it away.
"You wouldn't understand." Eli hated that the last syllables of her words caught in the back of her throat.
"Really," Toujou deadpanned back. "I'm going to let you reconsider that statement for a bit. But in the meantime, I'm going to respond to your other request. That is your sister back there, so no, I will not be doing what should be your job. In fact, I think it's appropriate that I let you handle things."
"Did you come here and find me to begin with just to wait for your moment to tell me all this?" Her voice was a rasp, only partially because the thought had been lurking at the corners of her consciousness for awhile, but Eli hadn't had the nerve to say it out loud.
Toujou let out a laugh, although it was as hard as glass. "No, Eli. Contrary to what you might believe, I didn't lie to you when we first met." She ruffled through her deck of tarot cards, drawing one and narrowing her eyes at the result. "Okay. Let's try things a different way. Why do you want to stay here?"
Eli finally found the part of her where she shoved away the emotions battling it out in her internal wasteland and put them under lock and key. "No." Her voice was steadier, but not by much. Still, it was better than nothing. "We're done here."
The corners of Toujou's mouth twitched. "Suit yourself," she said, tossing the tarot card at her as she turned to leave. The piece of thin cardboard fluttered to the ground, where it landed face up in front of her.
The bright, innocent face of Judgment looked up at her, its wings spread in an azure blue sky.
The pulsing dome of shadows lingered in her peripheral vision, but Eli forced herself to ignore it as she stalked through the familiar paths of her dreamscape. She couldn't—she couldn't go back there. But more than that, she couldn't admit to anything Toujou wanted to ask her, even if the other woman saw fit to come back into her dreamscape tonight.
The familiar scent of peony and gardenia was like ash in her throat, and Eli resisted the temptation to scratch at the phantom prickling in her forearms, knowing nothing was there. She paused at the edge of a small cliff that overlooked a violet sea of lilac, gazing out at the lavender dusk in front of her, but taking in none of it.
There was the sound of footsteps on delicate petals, a soft crunching nose that normally would've comforted her—right now, they only served to heighten her already erratic heartbeat. She didn't turn around. If it was malevolent, then she didn't have the strength to fight back against it anyways.
"Hey." The voice was soft. "Can we talk?"
No. But she couldn't say the monosyllable sentence aloud.
"I guess I'll talk then."
There was a pause. The only sound in the twilight meadow was the sound of breathing.
"Sorry for yelling at you yesterday. I…" For once, Toujou seemed lost for words. "I thought about everything when I was awake. And… I guess it's unfair of me to hold something against you when I didn't understand everything about you."
You still don't understand. There was a part of her that wanted to say those words out loud because Toujou was rapidly approaching the boundary that she'd struggled to redraw around herself, but she bit her lip before they could make it past them.
"I get that you think you have to be here. Obviously there's something about this place that's attractive enough for you to consider never going back to reality… so there must be things that you're afraid of—enough to spend the rest of your existence running away from them."
She found she had no response to this particular insight. Willing herself to remain calm, she half turned, enough to see the wistful expression on Toujou's face. "Congrats," she mumbled. "Ten out of ten." She paused for a moment to swallow the bundle of nerves at the back of her throat. "I… I don't want to have this conversation right now. Really, Toujou, just… go."
"I couldn't stop thinking about you during the day. You spend all your time helping people get rid of their nightmares, but the truth is, the worst nightmare out there is your own."
Her breath hitched in her chest.
"Can I ask you again, Eli?" The words were soft, unchallenging, and Eli had the feeling that if she asked Toujou to leave again, she would. "What are you afraid of?"
"You already know the answer to that, don't you?" A dry laugh forced its way out of her mouth, though amused was the furthest thing she was feeling at the moment. "You probably looked up everything you could about me while you were awake."
Toujou neither confirmed nor denied her statement, but her silence told Eli everything she needed to know.
"Why do you think it's so much easier to be here? Where I can create a world where none of that has to happen?" She swallowed again, feeling the familiar burning sensation creeping up her neck.
"Why do you think you have to be defined by your failures?"
The question caught her off guard. My… failures?
"Your dancing isn't the only thing that exists to define you, Eli. I hope that you're able to see at least that." There was a brief moment of silence. "The first time I saw you, you were with that little boy. The things you said to him… in reality, you were wishing them for yourself, weren't you? That's what drew me to you, because it was so obvious that you were suffering too. That's why I tried so hard to find your dreams again."
Eli found herself—for the second time in what felt like so many minutes—unable to reply.
Toujou's voice was gentle. "You know exactly how those nightmares work. Your family doesn't think that way about you."
"You don't know that," she argued, turning her head around again, resolving to only look forward and blinking rapidly to get rid of the prickling sensation in the corner of her eyes. "What if they do think that way about me? I thought you did your research about them."
"So if I told you I don't think that way, what would your response be?"
Her words died on her lips as Eli closed her mouth. She looked around before she remembered her prior decision to not turn her head. "Really?" she whispered.
There was a faint smile playing at the corners of Toujou's mouth. "Really." She took a step towards her, even though she was already close enough to put a hand on her shoulder. "Eli, do you know what the most beautiful thing in this world is?"
"No," she answered truthfully.
"Then come on." With that, she turned to walk in a direction away from where the cluster of shadows still pulsated, unsolved from the previous night.
Eli had no idea where Toujou was planning to go, but her abrupt departure unnerved her as she fell in behind. I could've probably stayed put, but…
It wasn't long before they encountered more nightmares, black claws formed of shadows taunting them from a distance. Darkness blotted out the light like a badly drawn painting covered in charcoal. "What are you waiting for?" The prompt was accompanied by a small nudge forward.
"W-Wait," she spluttered. "I can't," she insisted.
Toujou met her gaze equally. "Yes, you can. This isn't your sister's dream. How many times have you done this? Or… do you want to leave that just hanging around here?"
No.
She tried to calm her racing heartbeat, telling herself that there was no way she would react the same way to this dream as she'd reacted to her sister's nightmare the previous night. Even if they both knew Toujou was more than capable of dispelling the shadows, Eli knew her well enough to know that there was no chance she would agree to do it.
But despite her reservations, deep inside, she knew Toujou was right. Her instinct to drive away the dark despair that had to be the source of the gathering nightmare was overriding her instinct for self-preservation. I can't leave that there.
Ignoring her trepidation, hands curled into tight fists to stop them from shaking, she walked towards the gathering shadows.
""If they could see you, they might think you're their guardian angel or something."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I'm asking you if you've found the answer to my question."
There was a long silence as Toujou's words lingered in the air. Trying to internalize her sorrow for the dying girl whose dreams she had just released, she closed her eyes for a brief moment to take a deep breath before she opened them again.
"I don't know what you're trying to ask," Eli replied quietly, struggling to control the flare of her temper.
Toujou put away the deck of tarot cards. "I asked you if you found the answer to my question," she repeated. There was a trace of frustration in her voice.
"I don't know," she insisted.
"You're here, day after day, spending the rest of your existence chasing away these wraiths—these shadows that are the cause of everyone else's nightmares. What about your own?" Toujou asked delicately. "You're still living in a nightmare, after all. Isn't… that what we established last night? And yet, you still want to help these people instead of yourself. Why?"
Because I can't be helped. But they can.
She didn't know if she voiced those thoughts out loud or not.
"I wanted to show you what I thought was the most beautiful thing in this world." Toujou's voice was gentle now. "Even though you're hurting, you still want to help the people who are suffering in this world. I told you before… you're not defined by your failures. I've seen the way you speak to the people who can't hear you in this plane. I've seen what you wish for for these people you don't even know."
Toujou hesitated for a moment before continuing. "Buddhists believe that the most beautiful thing in this world is a lotus flower. But I disagree—because the most beautiful thing in our universe is a soul. You have a beautiful soul, Eli."
No. That's not true.
This time, she knew she had voiced the thoughts aloud.
"Why not?" The corner of Toujou's mouth twitched. "You asked me if I really thought you weren't defined by those things—by your past. I didn't lie to you, Eli."
"You don't even know me," she whispered.
"No, and I don't need to," Toujou replied. "You're right, I don't know every single facet of your life. But I do know that you stay here because you're afraid of what people think about you. You've always been by yourself. Nobody's bothered to stop and ask you how you feel—if you were okay. If they did, it was superficial. For the people who did care, you didn't answer honestly because you didn't want to add concern to what you thought was their inevitable disappointment in you. And so it was easier for you to just run away from all that into a place where you could create a world where none of that would happen. There're probably a billion other things I'm don't know, but I don't need to. I've seen you when you're vulnerable and afraid, I've seen you pissed off and irritated and in pain, and I've seen you when you try to hide all that. I've seen you when you're honestly a complete bitch—and you know what? That hasn't changed my opinion of you whatsoever."
Eli closed her eyes, and let the words wash over her. The surge of emotions in her chest was almost enough to send her to her knees, but she resisted, biting down on the inside of her mouth until she was sure it was enough pressure to draw blood.
Suddenly, there was a soft brush of fingers against her cheek, and Eli almost recoiled at the touch, not because it was unwanted, but because it had been longer than she could remember that someone had reached out to her like that.
She found herself staring into an emerald gaze filled with certainty in what she was saying.
"Do you believe me now?"
Her head dipped the slightest bit—a reaction that she couldn't control and the still-rational side of her screamed to take back, but she didn't, finding that she at least wanted it to be true.
"Then it's time to go back to your sister's dream."
A soft gasp pushed past her lips as she resisted the tug on her arm. "No. I can't. Not… not like this."
"Why not?" Toujou inquired, tilting her head to one side. "You just told me you believe me."
"I-I do," she admitted. "But…"
Despite everything, she still wasn't ready to admit it: that she was still afraid of what her family thought about her… if their concern was only masking the disappointment they held in her.
"But what if your family don't feel the same way?" Toujou supplied. She paused to think for a moment, turning a soulful gaze on her when she looked back. There was a hint of something that might've resembled uncertainty in her voice as she went on. "Let's say that they are disappointed in you, Eli, that they thought your failures meant that you were a terrible person, and they completely fail to see who you are beyond that. Well… would it be enough for you if I told you that I didn't think that way?"
When her vision blurred, Eli realized she was crying. Tentative fingers bumped against her free hand, the other having been raised to cover her mouth, closing around her own fingers, but not tightening, and not trying to lead her in any direction. Toujou simply waited until her throat didn't feel as constricted and she was able to focus on some aspect of what she was supposed to be looking.
"Yes." Her reply was barely audible, but she knew Toujou had heard.
"Then it's time to go back there. You said it yourself, Eli: you shouldn't fear the unknown… especially the future."
When Toujou gently tugged on her hand with unnaturally steady fingers, Eli found that she wasn't pulling away from her anymore. Instead, she closed her fingers around them, and hung on as tightly as she could.
Her breathing felt oddly shallow as she made her way back through the shifting dreamscape. It was as though she was walking in a dream. Eli took a moment to appreciate the irony of that particular statement.
Some part of her that wasn't still captured by the emotional storm that had picked her up and dropped her off a thousand miles away from where she'd started was able to process that she was going back to that dream. There remained vestiges of doubt—she still wasn't sure if she would be able to hold herself together for it—but she shoved them away, stowing them in a corner of her mind.
Because no matter what, at the end of the day, it's still a nightmare. It doesn't matter who it belongs to. I still have to get rid of the shadows.
She could feel her heartbeat speeding up as they approached the anomaly in the distance that rapidly grew closer. In a world where she wished time would slow down, things seemed to be happening too quickly for her. In fact, it seemed the opposite: the slower she wished time would pass, the more it seemed to speed up.
They paused at the very edge of the twisted dimension, watching the darkness shape shift slowly, warping the beams of light in odd patterns. It might've been a beautiful sight if it wasn't the cause for the knot of unease currently sitting somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach.
Toujou squeezed her hand again. "Are you ready?" Her voice was calm, though there was a hint of something Eli didn't recognize underneath it. She cast a glance sideways out of the corner of her eye at her, but Toujou was staring ahead at the gathering of shadows, expression stoic.
"No," she admitted. "But… I don't think I'll ever feel ready, so… the less time I stand here thinking about it, the better."
"That's the spirit," Toujou quipped at her. She turned a serious gaze onto her. "Eli. Do you want me to go with you? If it's too personal for you, I understand."
To her surprise, this was a question that she had an answer for. It came easily to her lips, as though she had already thought of the answer she wanted to give to the question before Toujou had even proposed it, although its origins had been driven by instincts and feelings alone.
"No. I… want you to come."
In truth, Eli didn't trust herself enough to hold it together, but she suspected Toujou already knew that.
Toujou didn't let go of her hand as they walked towards the distortion, the ground beneath their feet changing, once more, from the mirror of a twilight sky to the tiled hospital floor, polished with unnatural harshness. Fluorescent beams lit the empty hallways as their footsteps echoed against the stone floor, both soft and loud at once.
There was an open door at the very end of the hallway, its mahogany wooden frame starkly outlined against the illuminated walls. The other doors were faceless, meaningless in the moment that currently possessed them. As they approached the far door, black oozed from the ceiling, dripping down the pristine white walls, but Eli knew that they had not yet reached the source of these shadows.
There were voices coming from just inside the doorway. Patterned curtains formed a sort of barricade to make a smaller area just inside the entrance to the room, hiding the rest of it from view. Chairs were set up within the smaller partition, though to her, the dark red and mauve cloth felt suffocating, as though they were capable of swooping down from where they were hung to choke her.
The sound of machines beeping was coming from the other side of the curtains. Curled up on one of the chairs, her feet off the ground, was a very familiar silhouette. A doctor bent down to speak to her. "I'm sorry, Alisa." He spoke his words with the same monotone voice from the previous time they'd been here. "I don't think your sister is coming back."
Her fingers felt numb. Whether this was because Toujou was holding onto her hand so tightly that she was depleting the circulation in them, or because she no longer had the ability to feel her extremities, Eli didn't know. Her heart hammered at the back of her suddenly painful throat as she struggled to remain upright.
Neither of them spoke, but Toujou's silent plea could not have been more evident as she dropped their joined hands at last.
On unsteady steps, Eli closed the distance between herself and that of her sister. Sinking down to one knee, she realized that the hand she had outstretched was shaking. I have to do this. It was a weak conviction, all things considered, but she didn't have the time nor strength of will to make a stronger one. Darkness clawed at the edges of her vision, forming arms and hands that reached towards Alisa's legs, biting and snapping at her ankles with teeth and claws.
She closed her eyes, her fingers finally finding those of her sister's, almost shrinking back from their icy fingertips.
Fear swelled like a frightened animal in front of her, infecting the space around her. Doubt swirled in her mind, wondering whether her sister wouldn't come back because of something she'd done. Whether it was because of something their parents had done. She'd heard their conversations when they thought she was sleeping—her mother cried, asking if it was because they'd pushed her too hard, if it was because of an illness that she didn't want to tell anyone because there were too many expectations that they'd had of her. She could hear the regret in those words, the what-ifs and the we-should'ves. Her father rubbed her shoulder, telling her things would be okay, that the doctors were wrong. She could hear the desperation in his tone.
Eli fought to control her emotions as she took a staggering breath, although her chest was so tight she wondered if it had helped at all. The words took a heartbeat to come—or had it been an eternity? "It wasn't because of you. Or them," she murmured, pain constricting her throat so that it was hard to speak in a voice louder than a whisper. "I didn't want to keep living that way."
She forced herself to keep going, although the words were easier now; like unleashing a dam, once she'd started, it was impossible to stop. "It was easier for me to just get away from everything. I didn't mean to make anybody worry about me. I just… didn't want to be a disappointment anymore." She tilted her head up, feeling the burning tears gathering at the corner of her eyes. "Please, don't cry anymore." Her unconscious desire for the sibling who could neither hear nor see her to understand and the surge of emotions in her chest—pain, sorrow, and underneath it all, relief, all at once— threatened to overwhelm the remnants of her self control as Eli stood, feeling pins and needles prickling her lower legs. She held onto the fingers of her sister. "It wasn't because of you," she repeated quietly. "I'm sorry."
Warmth spread from her fingertips, creating the familiar rush of emotions that accompanied a feeling of safety. Shadowy wraiths and monsters seemed to cringe away, fleeing under the curtains and out the door. The scene of the hospital slowly shifted into one of sunshine, of content voices and soft laughter.
Eli did not move until Alisa's dream had disappeared into the night sky, like fireflies drawn away from their riverside home to a distant gathering.
There was silence for a long time, stretching through heartbeats that Eli wasn't counting.
A gentle voice broke it. "Now you know." There was a pause. "Does that make you afraid to go back?"
Unable to turn around to face its speaker, Eli shook her head once. She hadn't realized that one of her hands was clenched in a fist, pressed over her sternum as she swallowed back the millions of words and emotions that had gathered at the base of her throat. "I didn't realize…"
"That they felt that way about you?" She heard a soft chuckle breathed out at the end of the short sentence. "You're surprisingly dense when it comes to other people's feelings."
She couldn't resist the small smile that twitched at the corner of her lips. "I guess."
"Well, I guess that's my cue to leave. You know what you have to do though, don't you, Eli?" The words were neutral, spoken almost as if they were an afterthought.
Eli turned around before she had even finished her sentence, a sudden fear seizing her limbs like rapidly-spreading ice, sending her pulse into overdrive. "W-Wait! Nozomi!"
She clamped her mouth shut when she realized what she'd said, a faint blush starting to creep up her cheeks when it dawned on her just how desperate she sounded.
Toujou turned, wearing a faint smile. "Yes?"
She cleared her throat, though there was nothing there. "This… can't be it. I…" It was like trying to speak through a mouthful of rocks. She tried again. "You—can't be leaving."
Toujou pretended to look at an imaginary watch. "Well, Elichi, it's almost morning."
"I-I know that," she stammered. "But…" But if I do what we both know I should do, I shouldn't come back here for awhile. Maybe at all. At least not until…
"But this can't be how this ends," she said quietly. "I never would've... There would've never been…" She seemed to have lost the ability to speak in complete sentences.
The smile on Toujou's face grew. "I know. You're the first friend I've made too." Before Eli could come up with a response to that particular statement, Toujou ploughed on. "Tell you what, Eli. Hm… remember what I said about the lotus flowers?"
When she nodded mutely, wholly unable to process anything at the moment, Toujou continued. "Can you meet me, when you feel up to it, at the lotus pond?"
She turned to give Eli one last wave. "Meet me at your favourite time."
Summer crickets chirped in the evening sky as Eli made her way through the throngs of people attending the summer festival at the park. She felt out of breath already: even after weeks of physical therapy, it seemed like everything she did was an exertion and any pace faster than a walk tended to be a feat she was incapable of. However, she was determined not to let that stop her—it was already a miracle that her parents had agreed to let her out of Alisa's sight for one evening to visit the local shrine.
The chatter of festival-goers gradually dimmed as she left the main congregation of stands. Approaching the now-quiet lotus pond that was famous in their town, she could feel her heart hammering in her throat. Mentally, she chastised herself for how stupid she sounded—clinging to the hope that Nozomi's last words to her hadn't been a lie.
It wasn't until she'd had a moment to herself in between the flurry of concerned parents and flabbergasted doctors that she realized that Nozomi had never told her when, as in what day, she was supposed to meet her at the pond. The only way she could see a chance that they would meet under those conditions was if Nozomi would make the effort to go to the shrine every single evening. In other words, it was impossible. On more than one occasion, Eli was half-convinced that the whole thing had been a dream. The irony of that particular statement had not been lost on her.
For a moment, Eli wondered if she was finally losing her mind.
But just in case she wasn't, she made her way to the low stone bridge that was a popular spot for tourists to take pictures of the blossoms from. The flower petals were closed in the gathering twilight and darkness began to settle on the still waters. Occasionally, the surface of the pond was disturbed by an insect, or the swoop of a bird's wings, but she was effectively alone.
She waited, hugging her arms close to her body under the line of her bra. For once, she was glad of Alisa's nagging: it was starting to get cold, and the sweater that her sister had made her put on helped fight the chill that always accompanied late summer nights.
This is stupid. The thought crossed her mind more than once as she stood there, shifting slowly from foot to foot to preserve her body heat. Nerves prickled underneath her skin, although she wasn't sure if it was driven by the weather or her thoughts. A thin sheen of sweat gathered at the back of her neck where the material had been collected to form a hood she'd left off.
Would she even remember? She tried to rationalize the amount of pain the single thought brought. She's changed who I am. Without meeting her, I never would've realized the things I was doing wrong. Without meeting her, I never would've been able to face the future. I just… I owe her. She shook her head, blonde wisps of hair falling into her face. No. This isn't about owing anyone. This is about…
A warm hand came to rest on her shoulder, a familiar touch that had first been done under a lavender twilight sky, in a meadow of violet blossoms that swayed underneath a sky of unlimited stars that had been created in her dreams.
"I've been waiting for you."