Be careful.

~Chapter 8~

He hadn't completely woken up, but he could clearly hear the hitting sounds on his shutters. Was it some kind of a burglary check technique to see if there was anybody inside the house before breaking in?

He had no choice but to make sure it was nothing dangerous, or if it was, save enough time to call the police. He got off the bed, pressed his toes on the floor like it was made of thin ice, and stepped carefully towards the kitchen to have a better view of his room from the outside.

The curtain was covering the whole window, so he grabbed it with his fingers and slowly moved his head towards it. Still terrified of the fact that somebody had targeted him, he carefully checked the area outside the window of his bedroom. The street was uncomfortably dark and his eyes couldn't see clearly through the glass. The stones kept being thrown on the shutters, but he couldn't figure out the direction they were coming from.

His eyes searched around scanning the whole yard, until he noticed a figure on the edge of the sidewalk from the side of his house.

You have to be kidding me.

He headed towards the door without any hesitation, with his fears being erased completely.

"What are you doing here? Why are you hitting stones on my window?"

Airi was standing with her usual cocky attitude, looking completely pissed off, but also very vulnerable.

"You're such a wuss, that you didn't even try to take revenge. It seems that your notebook isn't that important, so I don't need it anymore."

She opened her backpack and took a notebook exactly like the one she had trashed some hours ago, and he threw it towards him without making a step from where she was standing.

Naito looked at her with doubt and mistrust, visibly irritated and sick of her.

"I expected that you would do something to take revenge on me for what I did to you. It seems though that your notebook wasn't that important to you so I cannot use it against you. You can have it back."

Naito grabbed the notebook and carefully raised it from the ground. He opened it and checked the content of the pages. It was indeed his own dream journal. He turned his head up and looked at her. She had started walking away once more, without even giving him time to react. This behaviour was driving him crazy.

"Wait the hell up."

Surprisingly enough, she slowed down and finally she stopped walking.

"What is that? Why did you pretend to destroy it, while you actually have kept it safe and sound?"

She took a deep breath, seemingly fed up.

"I was just testing you. If you had done anything to take revenge, I would have used your notebook as a tool to get back at you by doing something worse. But you don't seem to be a threat to me. I have no interest in you anymore."

"What kind of thing could I have done?"

"Oh don't play this game. You're not dumb, you know what I mean."

"No, I don't. You seem to think that the whole world revolves around you. Who cares about what you do in your private life? And what makes you believe that I, of all people, would waste time finding a way to "expose" you? I have more important things to do in my life. Don't flatter yourself."

She remained silent looking at him with empty eyes, obviously annoyed and a little embarrassed. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, but her hands were trembling out of anxiety.

"You're the one who shouldn't be full of yourself. Do you think it's sane to just suppose that anybody is indifferent towards you? Have you ever experienced being blackmailed by people you have never met in your life? If you haven't, then you don't have the right to lecture me on life."

She turned her back hastily and walked away in a rush.

Naito didn't try to stop her. He didn't know how to respond to what she said, because he couldn't exactly understand it. How can a person you don't know take interest in you, and try to harm you in that specific way? Serial killers have their own issues for example, but they don’t just try to expose the private life of their victim. They kill it.

There must be a reason that somebody wants to hurt you.

He double-checked his notebook once more to be sure it was the right one.

He took a long breath and walked inside the house. Now that he had the dream journal in his hands, he could read it once again, and be sure to keep a copy.

He made himself a cup of tea and sat on the couch. He remembered most of the dreams he saw, but without so many details as he had written after waking up. Being able to re-read them was a great relief.

I should write down the last dream I had. This creature keeps appearing, so maybe I could use it somehow.

While he was writing, more details were coming to his mind and he was going back to the previous text, adding them like notes.

The black sphere appeared again, and it seemed clearer than the previous time. It was friendly and there seems to be a weird way to communicate with it, without actually making any sounds coming from my mouth. It's more like waves in specific sequences. When I want something from it, this communication is accompanied by the formation of bright runes around me, which gives something like a command to the creature. Since it looks like a sphere or an orb, I named it Kyū."

After having finished writing the details about the city he was walking in inside his dream, describing the environment around him, as well as everything he could remember from the interaction with Kyuu, he left his pen down and proof-read it.

As he was reading something peculiar caught his eye. Behind his neatly written text, there were definitely marks from somebody else’s writing, but not on the same paper. Like somebody had put another piece of paper on the page he was on, and started writing so that the markings of the words were embossed on the paper underneath them. It was very difficult to distinguish the words written behind his own text, because his writing was covering and distorting most of them.

..Don’t… ..wron.. ..mea.. ..caref..

He couldn’t make sense of the meaning of the cut words. He tried titling the notebook a little bit to make the embossing more clear. Some of the words were written between gaps of his own text so he tried reading them first.

Then he managed to make sense of the whole sentence.

Don’t try to befriend any creature inside a dream. Not all of them mean good. Be careful what you let approach you.

For some minutes he thought it was something he wrote on his own while still half asleep between a dream session. But this handwriting...was definitely not his.

He read the sentence again and again. There was only one possibility.

She read everything.

But why.. does she know anything about it? What does she mean about not all creatures meaning good? Does she..

Could she also probably practice….lucid dreaming?