Mr. Sakamoto’s Guide to Dimensional Collapse

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“It’s called Yume no Kuni.”

Minase tapped her finger on the page of a book in her arm.

When she learned of my bizarre nocturnal odyssey last night, she demanded I come to the Student Council room before class. And even though I'd gotten zero sleep, ironically due to the dream, I still hauled myself up out of bed at the brink of dawn and drudged to school.

Either she kills me from exhaustion, or she actually kills me for ghosting her. What could I do?

“Dream Country?” I finally ask. “That’s what it means, right?”

She nodded. Her eyes stayed on her book, but she wasn’t really looking at it.

“It’s an old myth. People say that if you dream deeply enough, your soul could slip into another world. One where you might meet someone from a different reality. Briefly.”

The idea of slipping into another world made my stomach turn.

I tried my best to remember everything I could from the dream.

I’m standing in the middle of a grass field. The moon is impossibly large and wind moves through me instead of around me. I hear a girl calling out to me and I don’t know who she is or what she wants. I just know I’ve seen her before.

And that girl... the one from the mirror, but… why was she there?

“I think the runes are the key,” Minase said, derailing my train of thought.

“What?”

“The runes? In the notebook? Duh! I think they’re the key to all of this. The dreams, the mirror, the girl. It’s all a part of the same thing.”

Minase closed her book with a dull thump.

“I don’t know how exactly, but it’s not a coincidence that the symbols started showing up right before you started experiencing strange dreams and memories.”

“Well, that’s just convenient, isn’t it?” I said, sarcastically. “The runes are the key… and we can’t read them.”

⊹ ▬ ▬ ⊹ ⊹ ▬ ▬ ▬ ⊹

The bell rang signaling the start of class. Students settling into their seats filled the room. I took my place near the back, eyes drifting to Minase at her desk at the front. She was still studying the runes in her notebook.

A voice startled me from the desk behind.

“You and Minase talking a lot lately.”

It was Yashiro. He had a big grin on his face.

“Should I be jealous?”

I didn’t look back at him. “Don’t be weird.”

“Too late,” he said. “I’ve always been weird. That’s my whole thing.”

He kicked his legs up against his desk, which made my own shake violently.

“She’s not really the type to hang out with guys like you, y’know? You sure you haven’t been cursed or something?” 

I gave him a look. “What?”

“Just saying. First, she talks to you, now she looks like she’s deciphering an alien transmission. Classic signs of a demonic pact.”

“You’ve been watching too many movies.”

He gave a shrug. “I learn in other ways.”

Then Mr. Sakamoto walked into the room, cutting off whatever dumb thing Yashiro was about to say next. His coffee was in one hand, a piece of chalk in the other, and his expression was the usual mix of tired and mild amusement.

As he passed down the aisle, something caught his eye.

Minase’s notebook.

She didn’t notice him until it was too late.

Without warning, Sakamoto reached down and picked it up. A sharp inhale from the front row. Even from the back, 

I could see how stiff Minase went. At that very second, she probably lived and died a thousand times. 

“Hmm,” he muttered. “Haven’t seen those in ages. Interesting.”

He closed the notebook gently and placed it back on her desk. Then he turned and began his lecture.

Yashiro leaned over to me, whispering. “Okay, that was weird. Even for her.”

I didn’t respond. Because at that moment, Minase turned.

She looked back at me. A realization seemed to pass between us.

⊹ ▬ ▬ ⊹ ⊹ ▬ ▬ ▬ ⊹

Forty minutes passed and the bell rang again. Chairs scraped, bags zipped, and students filed out. Yashiro yawned. He looked like he had just woken up from a long slumber.

“Well, guess I fell asleep again,” he muttered, grabbing his bag. “You wanna get food?”

“You can go. I’ll catch up.”

“You two aren’t actually actually in some kinda club, right?”

“I'm just helping her with an assignment.”

He pointed two fingers at his eyes, then at me. “I’m watching you.”

With that, he headed out, disappearing into the current of students leaving the room.

When the room had emptied out, I walked to Sakamoto's desk in the front where Minase was already waiting. She didn’t say anything, just nodded toward the teacher’s desk.

Sakamoto was still at his desk, using his laptop with one hand and sipping cold coffee with the other. He looked up as we approached.

“Ah. Kurayami. Minase. What can I do for you?”

I cleared my throat and came up with a lie on the spot. “Uh, we’ve got a question about something we found. It’s for, uh, the extra credit assignment.”

Minase nodded, looking like she understood the deal. “Yeah, I found these symbols… um… online and I thought they looked interesting. I’d ask you about them.”

Sakamoto raised an eyebrow, intrigued now. He set his coffee down and walked over to the desk. “Hmm. Let’s see it.”

Minase hesitated for a moment, before placing her notebook on his desk, flipping to the last page where the symbols were:

● ↑ △ → / ○ − △ + … / ⊕ ⊖ ⊕
● ↑ △ → / ○ − △ + … / ⊕ ⊖ ⊕
● ↑ △ → / ○ − △ + … / ⊕ ⊖ ⊕
•••••➖➖➖ɸ➖➖➖••➖➖➖➖➖➖•➖➖➖••••➖••➖➖•••••••➖➖•➖➖
••••➖➖••••➖➖➖➖•••➖••••➖➖➖➖••➖➖➖••➖➖➖••••••➖••••➖➖•➖➖➖•••➖•••➖•••➖•••➖➖➖
•••➖➖➖ɸ➖•➖➖➖••➖➖••••➖➖••➖➖••••➖➖ɸ•••➖➖➖••••➖➖••••➖➖➖➖•➖➖••••➖➖➖•➖•••➖•➖•••➖•➖➖
➖➖➖••➖••••••➖➖••➖••➖➖•••➖•••••➖••••••➖➖➖••••➖➖➖••➖➖➖

Sakamoto took a detailed look. “Ah, yes… From earlier. Very interesting,” 

“You chose the right person to ask about this. Mostly theoretical nonsense, but—eh, fun stuff.”

He went to his laptop and began searching for something.

“Just give me a minute…”

Minase and I exchanged a look as we waited in silence while Sakamoto rummaged through his computer files.

Then he pumped his fist like a madman. “Here it is!”

Sakamoto turned the laptop around to show us. It was a dense-looking PDF filled with diagrams and symbols that looked exactly the same as the ones in Minase’s notebook. He pointed at the screen, his finger tracing the symbols as he spoke.

“It’s from a paper published back in the early 2000s. Too abstract for mainstream physics, but it circulated in some more… niche research communities. Not exactly science approved, but I’ve skimmed it once or twice before." Sakamoto said as if it were simply bedtime reading for him. "Triangles usually refer to deltas in this context: change or divergence. Directional indicators: up, down, left, right—can imply temporal flow or spatial shift. Circles… sometimes refer to observation points or closed systems.”

Temporal—what…? 
I had no clue what he was talking about.

He looked at the both of us, checking to see if we were still following along.

“This part here.... see this sequence?”

He pointed to the first series of runes in the notebook:

● ↑ △ →

“That means: Observation, Upward, Change, Convergence.”

Sakamoto then picked up a pencil on his desk and wrote it down in the open notebook. 

“Hmm, temporal flow,” he muttered. “Could be related to time flow collapse or structural collapse, or perhaps the initiation of some form of realignment. These symbols could be pointing to something like a dimensional trigger point. That would make sense, given the arrows here.”

He pointed to the next part:

○ − △ + △ △ –

“Cycle, Negative, Divergence, Duality, Negative.”

“This looks like a divergence that flips. Like something splitting in two, then coming back together. A fluctuation… but one that’s reversing itself. Very interesting. It could indicate a moment of reversal, like a shift in the natural order. Something that undoes itself, creating a sort of closed-loop system.”

He moved to the next line, three circles. Each had these plus or minus-like symbols cutting through them:

⊕ ⊖ ⊕

“Cyclical, Energy, Transfer.”

“This is ‘Cyclical Energy Transfer.’ It typically refers to something related to Stimulus-Response Compatibility. When two stimuli overlap, they exchange energy in a cyclical pattern. Sort of like feedback between parallel systems. And they only do if they have characteristics in common.”

He paused. “But there’s more here…”

Sakamoto squinted at the page. His finger traced the final part of the code, a series of dots and spaces. “It’s not like the other code. It doesn’t match any system I know.”

Then I remembered something.

Something vaguely about how the ancient Mayans used dots and bars for numbers. I had no idea where that came from, but I definitely heard it somewhere.

“Wait a second, I think I know this.”

“You do? What is it?”

“That’s Mayan. Their numeral system... I think.”

“Mayan numerals?”

I nodded, pointing to the characters.

“Each set of dots and bars represents a number. Like one dot means one, two bars means ten, three bars means fifteen. So on...”

I took out my phone and a pencil and slowly translated the Mayan numerals into Arabic numbers, writing them down next to the code in Minase's notebook. She looked with intrigue as I wrote.

And after about five long minutes of transcribing, I finally finished: 

87 = ▭▭▭▭ •••••••
65 = ▭▭▭ •••••
84 = ▭▭▭▭ ••••
67 = ▭▭▭ ▭ ▭ •••
72 = ▭▭▭▭ ••••••
73 = ▭▭▭ •••••••
78 = ▭▭▭ ••••••••••
71 = ▭▭▭ ••••••••
........

Sakamoto studied it for a moment.

“That’s… clever. But what does it mean…?”

Then his eyes widened. “Ah, ha! That's it.... ASCII!”

ASCII?...

He walked straight to the chalkboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and began writing the numbers down:

87 65 84 67 72 73 78 71

68 79 78 84 76 69 84 72 69 82 73 78

78 65 84 83 85 75 73 75 73 83 65 82 65 71

84 115 117 107 97 115 97

“…And now to translate it...”

He didn’t speak, just continued to write. Then, finally, he stepped aside to reveal the full translated message:

“STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE”

“SPLITTING IN TWO”

“DUAL STIMULI OVERLAPPING”

————————

“WATCHING”

“DON’T LET HER IN”

“NATSUKI KISARAGI”

"TSUKASA"

Sakamoto stood silent with his hand over his mouth, his eyes still on the board. He tilted his head slightly, squinting as if he hadn’t fully understood what he was reading.

There at the very bottom, was my name.

“Natsuki Kisaragi? Who’s that?” he finally asked.

Neither of us could answer.

“You two working on some kind of puzzle? This is pretty creative stuff.”

“Uh, yeah… Something like that.” I managed to say.

“Well, nice to see some of you are still using your brains for something weird. Hehe.”

Then he picked up an eraser, but Minase was one step ahead. Scribbling it all down on a blank page in the notebook.

In a split second, the chalk message was wiped away by Sakamoto’s eraser.

And like that, Natsuki Kisaragi vanished into white dust.

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