Sir Awen opened his mouth.
He stared blankly at the scene.
He watched Lynn smile through his tears, watched the pathways representing the subconscious behind him brighten bit by bit, just as they had before.
Whistles.
One desperate whistle after another.
They came from the pitch-black seabed, from those countless pathways of the subconscious.
One after another, amid hoarse sobs, she blew the Bamboo Whistle in her hand with all her might. Every time, she gave everything she had, desperate to make him hear. The whistles echoed throughout the Sea of Loss, each note steeped in wrenching emotion and pent-up anguish.
Lynn smiled through his tears.
"Do you hear that, Big Brother Awen?"
"Do you hear it?"
Because he had told her that if one day he could no longer wake up, if one day she could no longer find him...
Then she should blow the whistle in her hand.
No matter where he was...
He would come find her.
At that moment, Sir Awen barely had time to shout and reach out before Lynn plunged into the pitch-black, bottomless Deep Sea. He rushed toward the whistles, toward the sobbing, into that eternally silent sea of darkness.
Even if it was a dream.
Even if all of this was nothing but an illusion in her sleep.
She absolutely refused to part with him like this. She absolutely refused to be abandoned in the darkness of the Deep Sea again.
On the seabed of that shattered dream, she cried as she clutched the Cloth Doll in her arms, blowing the Bamboo Whistle in her hand with all her might, again and again, into the endless darkness around her.
She had crawled out of the dream.
Her body was still covered in wounds. She had never grown up, never become that young