"Asuka, I'll give you a whole new world, one just as you wish it to be. You'll wait for me, won't you? Sadly, you can't remember me for now... but perhaps that's for the best." An Asian boy her own age stood before her in a strange, tattered blue bodysuit, speaking a language she didn't understand. Yet somehow, she understood what he meant. And...
He tightly clutched a necklace, then held it out to her.
A brilliant red bead hung from the necklace. As soon as the bead shattered...
In that instant, she woke from the dream.
Asuka had the same dream again that night. This wasn't the first time. The strange dreams had started coming at irregular intervals last year, just after she turned fourteen.
Later, they became nightly occurrences, continuing right up to the present.
When she got up that day, she told her mother, Soryu Kyoko Zeppelin, about this strange experience.
After hearing her out, Kyoko first checked Asuka over herself, then took her to the hospital to see a doctor.
The doctor examined her but found nothing either. All he could offer was that it might be a sleep problem, along with some irrelevant medical jargon. Kyoko was left speechless. In the end, she politely thanked him and took Asuka out of the hospital.
On the way home, Asuka held Kyoko's hand and gently swung it. Her father spent most of the year away working and couldn't be there for her, so her mother, Kyoko, was her only companion.
Asuka looked up at Kyoko, whom she was almost as tall as now, and said considerately, "It's all right, Mom. It's been so long, and this dream hasn't really affected me. It's just that these dreams feel like memories that were always supposed to be in my