Kitagawa Ryo's Monologue

Chapter 33: Kitagawa Ryo's Monologue

I wanted to see Ichinose Honami.

Although I had lost my memories of the past, ever since I heard that name in a dream of my "little sister," those feelings had taken root deep in my heart.

She was someone important to me. She was my real "little sister."

From then on, every night, I tried to find her in the world of dreams. I believed she dreamed, and that her dreams were beautiful, lovely, and glowed with the colors of the rainbow, because only the best-behaved children were allowed to have good dreams.

For the first time, I let my consciousness and thoughts go completely free, sending out my signal. I was certain she was somewhere in Tokyo.

Tokyo had a population of around thirteen million. Every night, people went to sleep and dreamed, consciously or unconsciously.

The distance between reality and dreams was like the distance between sky and sea: gazing at one another from afar, reflecting one another, yet never meeting.

But as an individual, I could enter the ocean of dreams freely. It was an ability I had been born with.

I stood on the boundary where sky met sea and dipped one finger into the ocean of dreams.

Like sharks drawn by the scent of blood, a school of tapestry-red fish instantly surrounded my finger. I felt them gnawing at my cold fingertip. I waggled my finger and shook them off. These weren't the dreams I was looking for.

I put that segment of white bone back in my pocket and continued searching for Ichinose Honami's dream.

Waves surged up at my feet, like the most potent corrosive acid, gradually eroding my body away. Thirty minutes later, all that remained was a skeleton, still walking one step at a time, still searching.

I could feel my consciousness being battered again and again by other people's dreams. Sometimes I had to stop for a long while before I could remember my own name, or what I was trying to do.

Broken nightmares turned into black snow, drifting down from the sky. Flake after flake settled on my shoulders, gradually staining me in shades of black and white.

More and more dreams... were drawing near.

Or rather, they were rushing straight toward me.

As if they'd spotted a burning bonfire on a freezing winter's day, dreams surged toward me from every direction, above and below, crowding together in a dense mass.

Kitagawa Ryo's figure was buried and lost beneath the black snow swirling through the sky and the overwhelming waves crashing all around him.

When I woke the next day, I realized I had lost some of my memories. At the same time, a stabbing pain kept coming from the nerves in my brain. When I first opened my eyes, my vision was almost entirely black. I ran into the bathroom and repeatedly touched my face in the mirror, telling myself I was Kitagawa Ryo.

But the next night, I still didn't give up searching for her.

If all the memories from my three years in the White Room were the result of someone deceiving me, then there was nothing to grieve over if I threw them all away.

One day, two days, three days.

My memory loss became more and more obvious. The instructors seemed to notice something was wrong, and as usual, they hoped my "little sister" could reignite my fighting spirit.

After all, for the past three years, I had been a pitiful existence who worked hard for no one but her.

"Brother..."

The silver-haired girl still lay languidly on the bed, opening her arms to me. She was used to giving Kitagawa Ryo affection, genuine or otherwise, and watching him meekly curl up at her feet like a dog.

"I heard your recent test scores haven't been very good."

She turned off the pale ceiling light and switched on the orange desk lamp. Its warm glow enveloped the two of you, and in that sealed white room, it seemed as if this was the heart of the world.

I stopped paying attention to her. All I wanted now was to enter the dream as quickly as possible. The second hand ticked on and on. I closed my eyes and pretended to fall asleep, but suddenly felt a cold hand grasp my right hand.

"I'm right here. Don't be afraid. It's all right. Even if you do terribly, Brother, I'll stay with you."

She was very good at slowly pouring these sweet words into Kitagawa Ryo's ears like lukewarm syrup, waiting for him to give in.

But for the first time, Kitagawa Ryo ignored her words. He really did just lie there and fall asleep.

For the first time, Sakayanagi Arisu felt uneasy.

About half a year later, I finally found Ichinose Honami's dream. By then, I had already lost about a third of my memories. I knew it was my brain's way of protecting itself; otherwise, the tens of thousands of dreams I had recklessly encountered over the past six months would have been enough to erase my consciousness completely.

But I still thought it was worth it.

Because I had finally seen her.

"Um, where is this?"

Ichinose Honami in the dream didn't seem to understand what was happening yet, but she soon saw me.

"Ryo! Is that you, Ryo?"

She rushed over in delight and hugged me. Just as I'd imagined, the cheerful and lively Ichinose Honami was a beautiful, adorable girl.

"This must be a dream, right?"

Murmuring in my arms, Ichinose Honami said,

"But this is the first time I've dreamed about you since you moved away."

She must have longed for a reunion like this countless times. Ichinose Honami called my name against your chest.

"Ryo."

"Yeah."

I felt puzzled. She hadn't called me "Brother." She had always called me by my name.

"Ryo."

"I'm here."

Her cheeks flushed, and she smiled. Her smile made my heart flutter uncontrollably.

From that day on, I met Ichinose Honami in my dreams every night.

She told me all about what was happening around her, chattering away about everything from the fresh green of the willow branches downstairs in spring to the fireworks blooming in the summer sky. In autumn, plane-tree leaves drifted down like rain in the park. In winter, all sorts of bird tracks marked the snow, and she would often spend a long time by herself, staring at those strange symbols.

She told me about her mother and her younger sister. In her dreams, Ichinose Honami seemed afraid of nothing. After all, it was her own dream, and everyone had the right to sleep peacefully and dream. All I had to do was play the perfect listener.

In a way, Ichinose Honami and I had both lost our freedom in reality. Perhaps only in dreams, where no one could disturb us, could we carefully build a happiness meant for the two of us alone.

Day after day, my memory showed no sign of improving. But I still held on to the memories I shared with Ichinose Honami. I locked them away in the deepest part of my consciousness, treasuring them as my most precious possessions.

"Actually, back then, when that classmate confessed to me..."

Ichinose Honami was describing the first time someone her age had confessed to her. I had seen it in my "little sister's" dream. I even knew she had written a letter in my name to Ichinose Honami, asking her to agree to date me on certain conditions.

"That was when I knew the letter hadn't come from you, Ryo."

Ichinose Honami suddenly said this. She smiled nostalgically, and her smile naturally drew my attention.

"Because you'd already confessed to me before that."

A scene I couldn't see suddenly appeared in my mind.

Somewhere, on some day, I seemed to remember confessing to someone.

How much time had passed? Four years later, I finally remembered everything from before I was ten. Ichinose Honami held me in her arms. It was an impossibly gentle embrace, one I never wanted to let go of.

"Would you confess to me again, Ryo? Even if it's only in a dream?"

["Honami."

After realizing I was going to leave with the people who had adopted me, I secretly ran back to the house where I used to live on the last day.

Maybe I didn't know what it meant to like someone yet, but when I thought about leaving Ichinose Honami, who had been by my side every day, an uncontrollable sadness welled up inside me. It had taken me a week to accept that my parents had died, and now I was about to face the reality of being separated from her.

"Hmm? You're back, Brother?"

Ichinose Honami still didn't know what was going on, did she? She probably thought I'd been away for the past week on a trip or something.

She looked delighted as I ran over to her.

"Actually, the thing is... I..."

My body felt stiff, as if I were bound in place. It was even more embarrassing than I'd imagined, and I desperately tried to remember scenes from television.

"I-I'm leaving soon."

"Huh?"

Ichinose Honami let out a confused little gasp.

"This is the address of my new home. You can write to me, Honami."

I wrote down the address I'd heard at the hospital—the one where the people adopting me supposedly lived—and handed it to her.

"A-and..."

The tears came before I could even say the words. Ichinose Honami just stared at me as I started crying. A child's tears were contagious, so she began crying with me.

"I like you, Honami!"

"That's what I wanted to tell you."

But in the end, I still managed to say it.

Until later, when the radiance of the White Room covered up all my remaining memories—or perhaps denied them altogether—and blew them all away like dust.]

[Having regained all my memories and feelings from the past—no, even if I had forgotten them, I still found you again and fell in love with you once more.]

I nodded to her. My confession in the dream might have been even more perfunctory than the first time, but thankfully, it was only a dream.

My consciousness began to take control of the dream. It put tremendous strain on my mind, but I firmly set things in motion as I wished.

Kitagawa Ryo reached out to her. Like a transformation in a tokusatsu show, white light began to flow from his palm. A white glove appeared first, followed by elegant bamboo-leaf patterns embroidered along the black trim of his sleeve, spreading up his arm until a crisp, immaculate suit covered his entire body.

Starting beneath his feet, a vivid red carpet stretched all the way to the edge of the dream. The sky above glittered with stars, and grand fireworks bloomed like flowers overhead.

"I love you."

He kissed Ichinose Honami's forehead. White light flowed from it and over her body, forming a white wedding dress. The pure-white skirt had been fashioned into countless pleats, with a sheer veil adding a misty layer over it. Uneven lace at the cuffs made it even more delicate. White roses adorned the flowering vines that spiraled down from her shoulders. With its elegant tailoring and billowing skirt, she looked like a princess among the clouds, graceful and resplendent.

"Yeah, I love you, Ryo. Not as family, but as someone of the opposite sex."

"This is my reply, four years late."

That was Ichinose Honami's answer.

That was why, after she turned ten, she stopped calling Kitagawa Ryo "Brother." She insisted on calling him Ryo, just as he called her Honami.

Black and white chess pieces clashed on the board at the players' command.

Sakayanagi Arisu clutched the chess piece in her hand, her bloodless lips pressed tightly together. Unnoticed by even herself, her knees trembled slightly.

She wanted to close her eyes and escape, but the clock kept ticking away, urging her on.

She wanted to get up and flee, but it was as if nails had pinned her firmly in place.

The pure-white room gradually melted away like a dream, like white snow falling on a blazing furnace, dissolving bit by bit.

The boy, who had kept his head bowed until now, quietly lifted his face. His eyes appeared beneath his long bangs. His pitch-black eyes, seeming neither amused nor angry, revealed no emotion at all—and captivated her.

"Check."

His fingertips pushed the black chess piece forward, making the final move against Sakayanagi Arisu:

The sweetness and whiteness smeared across her pitch-black memories were torn away without mercy. Kitagawa Ryo had won his seventh match against her.

Calling it a match was generous. It was more like a crushing defeat, a one-sided slaughter.

The fluorescent lights on the ceiling were like twinkling stars that vanished in an instant.

The boundary lines of the chessboard seemed to sway and blur.

Everything before her was as if seen through a thick membrane, and she couldn't hear the sounds around her clearly.

Something rising from her chest made her feel unbearably stifled. Something lodged in her throat, leaving her unable to speak.

"Then the game is over."

Absurdity sang in triumph. Once the truth behind the falsehood was exposed, it was always even more cruel.

Kitagawa Ryo stood up and looked down at Sakayanagi Arisu for the first time.

"My fake... little sister."

"Target has escaped through the window! Correction, target has escaped through the window!"

Kitagawa Ryo had leapt from the second floor with Ichinose Honami in his arms and landed on his back first. Luckily, he had chosen the lawn as their landing spot in advance. His bones seemed to be intact. He scrambled to his feet and, holding Ichinose Honami's hand, continued toward the crowded street.

"Hey, hey, Sakayanagi, where's your backup?"

A cool girl's voice came through the earpiece. But at that moment, it sounded strangely irritated, as if she had just woken up: