I can hear the voices of insects.
Insects?
*gasa gasa* I brush through the tall grass...
A child of young age earnestly climbs a leniently inclined path in the pathless brush.
Is that me?
I wonder if that's me.
A world, submerged in a deep green.
A silent forest, removed from village or personage.
A scene of which I have no memory.
However, there's a mysterious sense of nostalgia...
Ah, that's right.
I've seen this landscape before.
This is a dream. A vestigial dream.
A vestige of the dream I saw, cradled by a train rushing through the midst of twilight.
What's different is my point of view.
The child is being pulled by someone, by the hand.
The one being led must be me, I guess.
I have... sensation.
I have it, yet now, as if I am a mere spectator, I'm staring at that child's back.
I wonder who's pulling my hand?
That person is wearing something like a kimono.
A small, pale hand.
It's not the hand of an adult man.
That person... turns to face me.
You mustn't...
Ah, again.
It's this will again.
Ahead of here is a large tree.
And we are hurrying in that direction.
Why would you... stop us?
You mustn't...
It drapes itself before my eyes.
Like layers of thin silk, one sheet after another, a pale curtain of light smothers and hides the dream world.
Don't get in the way. What mustn't I do?
You mustn't...
Even if you tell me that...
Why shouldn't I?
---: You mustn't, Kei-chan...
Accompanied by a voice, a light lashes out.
Kei: -Eh!?
The world of green is brushed away.
The sensation of the hand joined in mine... fades.
I alone am taken and left behind.
I'm struck with a constricting pain in my chest.
Where in the world is this?
Have I already awakened?
But, the night still hasn't lightened.
In the midst of void so silent, it hurts to breathe.
In the midst of the deep darkness of night...
I've become lost.
In a crevice in the land of an unfinished dream, I am now alone.
As if chased and cornered by my own emotions, I desperately search my surroundings.
Someone, something, something other than myself...
---: ...Kei-chan.
This was an auditory hallucination. A simple refrain of memory.
Still, that voice will do fine.
I'll make her take responsibility, the person whose voice stopped my dream in mid passing.
No matter what kind of person she is, she knows me. She knows my name.
I'll meet with that voice. I'll search for her.
Front, back, right, left, up, and down, unable to even distinguish them, I spread my gaze across the formless world.
In the pitch dark sky blinks a tiny star.
I move closer.
Clawing at the wet, summer night air, I aim at the star and proceed.
Blinking - hovering - as if dancing...
It's not a star, but a butterfly.
As if having gathered the light of the moon, a pale white butterfly dances in flight.
Much like a spirit of the moon...
As if possessed, I reach out.
I can't touch it.
Like a true butterfly would, the moonlight butterfly deftly evades and flies away.
I run in chase.
I cannot catch it.
And yet, it doesn't pull away.
How far have I come now...
With a flap it sputters in the darkness, fading as if to melt away. Before it fades completely, it hits something.
At that spot, the butterfly dances in circles.
That which surfaces into the pale light is...
...a woman, with despondent eyes.
---: ...Kei-chan.
The person with that voice.
Ah, this voice, this face is...
Pain rushes through.
---: Don't. Don't think.
I know her. She resembles someone.
It's so nostalgic, a face I've seen day and night, in the mirror...
Kei: Ah!
I hold my head and cower.
Why... is this... what's going... on...
As if my consciousness is going far away, the pain slashes through my eyes and into my head.
Throbbing, throbbing, intermittently...
---: Kei-chan, don't think. I'm begging you.
A soft hand... pets my head.
As if to pacify a small child, "there, there," gently, slowly.
It feels like her cool fingers suck away the pain.
Like my mother's hands, in those young nights when I caught a cold, brushing the pain away...
Ah, yes, this person is...
---: Don't.
As the presence of pain creeps in, she chases it away with one word.
---: Now, promise me.
Kei: ......Promise?
---: My voice, appearance, that scenery... to sink them into the depths of night. For them to melt away with tomorrow's sunrise.
Kei: You're telling me...... to forget all of it?
---: A dream... is just a dream, after all...
A dream...
The red pain, the hand petting my head, this nostalgic feeling, all of that...
When I leave the futon, to forget, like so many thousands of forgotten dreams I've seen until now, to lump it together with them... is that what you're saying?