[4.3] The Dream Before that Day

The rain that fell on the day that Teru first met Keina, it was a continuation of a storm from before.

That day, Teru was slumped over in his bed.

His computer was on, but he didn't have the energy to sit at his desk. It served as his only light source instead.

The only other company he had for ambiance was the evening rain outside.

The weather that day was forecast to be sunny, and his day was supposed to go the same way.

After all, he thought he had done fine on his university entrance exam the month before. Perhaps not a flawless score, but at least good enough to pass.

Life must have felt that it was the perfect time to cue rain instead when he failed to find his number on the exam results page. Probably to mock him for thinking that he had it in the bag.

His peers at school all passed; they were celebrating it on social media. They all got to move on to university.

They were on the next chapter of life.

But him? He was left behind. A ronin.

And that's what his life was going to be for the next year.

He was nothing.

---

"A few days later, that's when I had that dream where I first met you." Teru continued to recount, upright in his seat, his eyes locked on the window he had just smashed with his phone.

"Whenever I'm awake, I just throw myself into the textbooks and practice questions. I thought I could quickly catch up and bounce back from everything that tripped me up. I guess the mock exam was just another reality check."

He let out a bitter laugh.

"Maybe I'm just too stupid for university. Like, what's the point of me even trying to keep at it? This is two back-to-back failures now, I'm just going to fail the next entrance exam at this rate."

"I don't think you're stupid, Teru." Keina softly affirmed.

He just felt extra pathetic, venting about this to her, of all people.

Compared to her situation, his issues were just...

"Hey, don't think that," He felt Keina's hand on his shoulder. "It isn't nothing if it's weighing on you like this."

"Besides, I don't think I have it all that bad." Her pink eyes shimmered with some relief when he turned to face her.

"...Even stuck here for two years?" 

He felt like he was dissecting her sincerity.

She still nodded. "I had Yumeppo to keep me company, and now I have you. The beginning was pretty bad, but when I have you two with me, I think I'm pretty well off!"

Keina said similar things to him in the past. But still...

"You're not just saying that, are you?"

He failed to stop that thought from slipping out.

But he remembered the look on her face when she recounted when she first started dreaming. Her isolation, her existential fears.

There was no way those were gone.

She was just putting on a brave face so that he wouldn't feel as bad, which made him feel even worse.

He still didn't understand why he was the one who ended up in Keina's Dream, but it's not like it had to be him. It could've been anyone else.

Someone like him couldn't possibly bring her that much joy—

"YES YOU DO!"

It was Teru's turn to fly from his seat as Keina bellowed at him for the first time since he met her. He crashed into one of the bookshelves, knocking it over as a few books conked him on the head.

One of the books that sniped him, which was now on the floor, was titled 'Percussive Therapy For Dummies'.

"Oh, sorry!" She rushed over to kneel down in front of him, inspecting where the books got him on his mint green head.

"Anyways, stop thinking like that!" She quickly swapped back as she pointed at him.

"You don't need to feel sorry for me, Teru. Because I don't think that way about myself. I really don't! And you don't need to put yourself down either!" Keina huffed.

"Yeah, we don't know how you entered this Dream, or how you keep coming back. But stuff like 'Oh, it could've been anyone else', or "Oh, if I woke up two years earlier," or "If I never started dreaming," that doesn't matter to me, okay?!"

"None of that erases everything we've done together! In fact, I don't think they could have happened if it were 'anybody else'!

She threw her arms around him, her head on his shoulder, as her voice almost cracked.

"What matters to me more... is that we're here now, and that it's you who found me!"

Teru felt her body tremble ever so slightly as he returned the hug.

"...I'm sorr—"

"No apologizing." She curled in more.

"I'm sorry for being sorry?" He made a soft half-joke as an olive branch.

"...I just don't like it when the people I love don't think they deserve it." 

She murmured before pulling back to look at Teru. He took the time to really look at her face, one last check for any hidden darkness, any front.

But there wasn't any. Just a slightly upset expression, but also a familiar warmth. A comforting and safe warmth that made nothing else matter in that moment.

Like everything he just talked about that plagued him in real life were just complete non-issues before her.

Was she always this glowing? This radiant?

Of course, she was, wasn't she?

Keina was someone who always did her best to make sure everyone else smiled, even when they couldn't.

She was the girl whom he...

Without thinking, he moved his face closer to her's, green tenderly locked onto pink. She leaned in as well.

They were just hovering from each other now.

Of course, that was the perfect timing for two more books—hardcover ones—to loosen from the bookshelf to headshot them both.

One titled 'Chekov's Encyclopedia', the other 'Sun Two's Art of the Brick.'

---

"I guess I've been more or less out of school for 2 years at this point myself," Keina steadied an ice pack on her head, levity returning to her voice as they sat back in their chairs. 

Far away from the bookshelves.

"In a way, I'm like the ultimate delinquent!" She gave a peace sign and a wink as the Host of the Dream proudly declared her other title. "And soon to be chief ronin!"

"Pfft," A smile finally broke through Teru—and throbbing migraine that his ice pack was struggling to suppress. "I'm pretty sure you have the most valid medical excuse in the world to miss school." 

Keina was clearly elated in turn, as she continued cheerfully speaking.

"That reminds me of when Yumeppo tried to help me study, but we also had the same problems you did with actually learning new concepts."

Teru's eyes opened. "He did?"

"Yeah!" She giggled. "He gave up quicker than you did. He straight up burned his book and stomped around, shouting stuff like 'This ontological spaghetti of a dream-ppo!'. Then he grew like fifteen stories tall and started destroying buildings for stress relief!"

"Huh, I guess he was talking from experience after all." He took a sip of the warm, soothing lemon water that Keina had taken earlier. Miraculously, it didn't decide to transform into liquor.

"The poor people in that city, though. Imagine if a monster terrorized a city because they were enraged with the inaccessibility of its education system."

She giggled some more at the rare sentence that was uttered. "That sounds like an interesting Dream Date idea!"

He chuckled in turn. "Somehow I don't see Yumeppo agreeing to that." That or he'd try to target him specifically.

"I also thought that was me just being really dumb and not getting anything." Keina sheepishly admitted. "I guess trying to do anything academic while we're asleep is too hard."

Teru nodded, "It would be convenient if we could actually review stuff in the Dream without having it constantly troll us, like the night of an exam. Or an impromptu study session."

"Study session?"

Keina had that look where gears were moving in her head, before a hypothetical light bulb emerged.

Along with an excited smile.

"I got an idea!"