The Slumbering Dragon

Waves thundered against the rocky outcrops at the foot of the cape, spraying seafoam and splintered boards up the side of the cliff. Far above, Kaito looked down in helpless despair at the remains of the decimated sailing ships as the lighthouse’s beacon spun meaninglessly behind him. The salty air that blew up from the sea stung at his tired eyes, although they were now watering for a different reason. Taking a deep breath, he held his arms out and closed his eyes as he positioned himself on the ledge. This was all he could do now. He could never undo what had already been done, but perhaps he could still find some peace. This was how it should be.

Kaito opened his eyes as the tip of his nose brushed against his wall. He wiped away the tears on his face with a sigh and turned away, kneeling down and stoking a fire in his irori.

Dammit.

A cool mountain breeze whistled through the sleepy glen that Kaito had now called home for the better part of three years. He walked quietly through the rural town that he lived just beyond, keeping his head down and avoiding eye contact with the other residents. He could hear them muttering around him. He didn’t mind. Kaito knew that, were their positions reversed, he wouldn’t want such a troublesome neighbor as himself. However, he also knew that he couldn’t survive on only what small game he could trap in the mountains, and so he bore the derisive chatter of the townsfolk—carefully measured to be just loud enough for him to hear it—for the sake of buying some groceries.

“Good morning, Kaito,” the young woman at the vegetable stand said with a gentle smile as Kaito approached. He nodded his head politely.

“Satomi,” he said quietly, his eyes still on the ground. “Just the usual, please.” Satomi nodded and shook open a paper bag, carefully surveying the produce.

“You know,” she said, plucking the nicest-looking daikon she could find and placing it in the bag, “the offer still stands. I know these trips are hard on you.”

Kaito frowned slightly. Satomi was perhaps the only person in town who was unconcerned by his presence. He had once found her congeniality warm and comforting, but it now served only as a stark reminder of what he could never allow himself to have.

“I appreciate it, but it’s not worth the risk. I would rather be left alone.” Satomi stopped picking vegetables for a moment as she looked over Kaito’s face in concern.

“I saw the beacon again last night. It’s happening more frequently, isn’t it?”

Kaito raised his hand to his face and rubbed at his eyes. At first, he had thought he was hallucinating. Too many days without sleep will do that to a man. But it had soon become clear that he wasn’t the only one seeing these things. The lighthouse, the roaring sea, the…something else that eluded his memory; whenever the hallucinations kicked in, everyone near him saw them, too. He was simply the only one who didn’t find them strange at the time. Now that it had been three—could it really be three?—months since the last time he remembered sleeping, the hallucinations, or whatever they were, had become an almost nightly occurrence. He didn’t know what might happen if someone was nearby at the wrong time, so he kept his interpersonal contact to a minimum, coming into town only for essentials and staying only as long as necessary.

“It’s not your concern,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a handful of coins. He handed them to Satomi as she placed the last vegetable in the bag and held it out to him.

“Pardon me. I didn’t mean to pry.” Kaito shook his head.

“It’s alright. I know you mean well. I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Kaito turned to go with a wave of his hand, but stopped as Satomi suddenly interjected.

“Oh, actually,” she said, her voice softening a bit, “there was a man here earlier. He was asking for you. He seemed to know about the, um, ‘incidents’, so I thought maybe he was someone you knew. I gave him directions to your house. But I guess you would have recognized him on your way here if he was a friend. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Kaito looked up at Satomi with a scowl, but relaxed his brow when he saw the genuine remorse on her face. He just shook his head slightly and turned away again.

“It’s alright. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’ll just ask him to leave. Excuse me.”

Satomi watched in disconsolate silence as Kaito trudged away, his head hanging down towards the earth.

As Kaito approached his home, he saw an unfamiliar man sitting on his veranda, idly rolling a stalk of grass around in his mouth, his left arm draped limply over his knee. There was a large knapsack sitting next to him with what appeared to be a folded cot strapped to it. He had short, dark hair with a prominent streak of gray running down the length of the bangs over his right eye. He seemed to be inordinately fixated on his right arm, not taking his eyes off it as Kaito approached. When he was only a few feet from the man, Kaito audibly cleared his throat. The man looked up in surprise, then smiled, pulling the grass stalk out of his mouth.

“Kaito, right?” he said with an irritatingly pleasant tone. Kaito hooked his thumb to the side.

“Beat it,” he said. The man frowned, placing the stalk back in his mouth.

“Can’t do that, I’m afraid. You have something I’m looking for.”

Kaito simply stood there in befuddlement for a moment, still eyeing the stranger over. He didn’t have an adversarial air about him, so the chances of him being a bandit were slim. Even accepting that possibility, Kaito had nothing of value to steal, which the man, were he a bandit, would have already seen for himself.

“Listen, mister…”

“Ayumu,” the man volunteered.

“Ayumu,” Kaito repeated, “I truly don’t have anything.”

“Except nightmares, right?” Kaito’s eyes widened slightly, then his eyebrow arched in confusion. “Or haven’t you realized that’s what they are yet? Surely the thought must have occurred to you.”

“They…” Kaito started, unsure of what to say. “They can’t be nightmares. Nightmares aren’t real.”

“Oh, yes, they are,” Ayumu said, finally flicking the grass stalk away and standing up. “As real as anything else. We just don’t normally see them, you know, out here.” Ayumu gestured to their surroundings with his hand. Kaito lowered his head in thought, his mouth slightly agape.

“But if they’re just nightmares, how is it that other people can see them, too?” Ayumu gestured with his head towards the front door.

“That bag is probably weighing on your arm by now. Why don’t we head inside? I’ll tell you everything I can.”

Ayumu graciously thanked his host as Kaito handed him a cup of tea. He took a sip, then placed it down in front of him as Kaito prepared his own cup. He tapped his finger on his knee a few times in thought. It would be best if he didn’t needlessly complicate matters, so he mentally sifted through the information to find only what Kaito needed to know.

“Let’s see, now. First of all, you should know that you’re not unique: there are other people who suffer from the same condition as you.” Kaito looked up in surprise.

“Really?” he asked, taking a cautious sip of his tea. Ayumu nodded.

“We call them ‘Insomnolents’. They’re people who can’t sleep—people who transition seamlessly from waking to dreaming, and whose dreams manifest in a tangible form around them.”

“And, uh, who is ‘we’, exactly?”

Damn, Ayumu’s lips had been a little too loose after all. He had been hoping to avoid getting too much into the nitty-gritty, but he supposed it couldn’t be helped.

“Noemantics,” he said plainly, as though the word was a part of the common vernacular. Kaito raised his eyebrows, then gestured for him to continue.

“People who can—how should I put it—see the dream world, I guess.” This explanation clearly did little to abate Kaito’s confusion or his ignorance, so Ayumu reluctantly continued.

“What you see around you is what we refer to as the Material Plane. It’s where all matter and energy have their form. But there’s another plane, sitting just on top of it, where the soul travels during sleep. It’s a plane as vast and malleable as the human imagination itself. We call that the Noetic Plane. That is where dreams occur.” Kaito listened in polite, albeit confused, silence as he drank his tea.

“Yet the boundary between the Material Plane and the Noetic Plane is not absolute. Certain individuals—Insomnolents, such as yourself—weaken it to the point that the Noetic and the Material planes begin to overlap: your nightmares become observable to those around you. Yet you yourself do not even realize what’s happening, as you have already been infused with the dream’s reality. To you, nothing is out of the ordinary until the dream is over, and the memory of it begins to fade.”

Now that it had been laid out like this, Kaito realized that Ayumu was right. Each incident began before he realized it, and only seemed to be unusual once it had ended. And still, even after all the times he had seen it, there were details that he couldn’t recall.

“Is there any way to stop it?” Kaito asked, almost pleading. Ayumu nodded, taking a drink of his tea and placing the cup back down.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said. Kaito shifted his legs underneath himself in a seiza stance and placed his hands on his knees.

“What do I have to do?” he asked eagerly. Ayumu raised an eyebrow as he held the teacup to his lips.

“Nothing,” he said. Kaito sat confused for a moment, then bowed his head.

“Please, I’ll do anything you ask. Whatever it takes.” Ayumu waved his hand dismissively.

“No, I mean there’s nothing for you to do. Even if you wanted to help, you couldn’t.” Kaito raised his head.

“Then…what are you going to do?” Ayumu stood up and removed the straps from his knapsack, picking up the cot and unfolding it.

“Wait.”

Crackling logs in the center of the irori were all that broke the silence in the small room as Ayumu sat idly on his cot, drumming his fingers on his leg and watching his right arm intently. The serpent-looking thing coiled around it had steadily become more perceptible since he had arrived, and it had nearly become fully opaque. It would only be a little longer now before Kaito slipped into his nightmare, at which point Ayumu would have a chance to observe it.

He really wished this part of the process wasn’t necessary, as it always came with unknown risks, but there was only so much he could learn from listening to the fragmented recollections of an Insomnolent. Inevitably, there was more to the dream that Ayumu had to see for himself if he had any hope of putting a stop to it. Based on what Kaito had told him, he could speculate about some of the symbolism already, but he felt the fine details would be vital. Without knowing exactly what lurked deep in Kaito’s subconscious, he would have no hope of drawing out the nightmare-causing mara.

They were disgusting creatures, the mara. As beings of pure malice that inhabited the Noetic Plane, most people had never and would never lay eyes on one. Ayumu, being a Noemantic, had the unpleasant distinction of being one of the few who had. They all took different, distorted forms, but they all had the same goal: to latch onto the soul of a dreamer and feed on their fear. Reaching into their victim’s psyche and triggering the nightmare that would most prey on their weakness was part and parcel to this. However, this was a double-edged sword, and one which Noemantics such as Ayumu were able to turn against them.

“Say,” Kaito’s voice suddenly rang out, snapping Ayumu out of his reverie, “I meant to ask earlier, but what’s the cot for? Are you planning on staying the night?” Ayumu shook his head.

“It’s part of the process I explained earlier. Once I understand your nightmare, I’ll need to interact with you on the Noetic Plane to end it. I’ll have to be asleep for that.” Kaito gave an incredulous laugh.

“What, you can just fall asleep at will?” Ayumu smirked, then reached into a pocket of his knapsack, pulling out a small pouch.

“If only, right?” he said, giving the pouch a shake. Kaito could hear the clacking of several small objects inside, then motioned to it curiously.

“What’s that? Some kind of sleep medicine?” Ayumu placed the pouch back into his knapsack.

“Something like that. It would be more accurate to say that it’s poison. If all goes as planned, it should nearly kill me.” Kaito’s eyes widened in shock. “Don’t worry, it’s not as dramatic as it sounds. You see, death and sleep are really two sides of the same coin. When you fall asleep, your soul leaves your body. That’s why it enters the Noetic Plane, and why we’re able to dream. But since your body is still alive, your soul is still tethered to it, and inevitably returns to it. Thus, the fastest way to induce sleep is to bring oneself to the brink of death, which forces the soul out of the body temporarily. However, once the body dies, we enter what might be called a permanent sleep: our soul departs for good. As for where it goes after that—well, even Noemantics don’t have all the answers.”

“About that,” Kaito said, trying to trust that Ayumu knew what he was talking about, “I’ve never heard of you…Noemantics before. How did you become one? Is it something you studied? Were you born like that?”

“Neither, actually,” Ayumu said, glancing down at his right arm. The serpent was nearly completely tangible now. “I had an encounter with a noetic creature many years ago. It left a part of its body with me, and I’ve had the abilities of a Noemantic ever since.”

“What sort of creature?” Kaito asked, intrigued.

“The Noemantics refer to it as the Baku. It’s a chimeric spirit that is said to consume nightmares. Presumably, it once covered the entire Noetic Plane, protecting all of humanity from the mara—creatures that cause nightmares. However, in recent years, the Baku has stopped consuming mara, and humanity is once again suffering. I’m trying to find out why.”

“You say you’ve seen it?” Kaito asked. Ayumu nodded his head. “What was it like?”

“Well, as a chimera, each Noemantic has a different interpretation of its appearance. It appeared to me as a great, pearlescent dragon. It was immeasurable in size, coiling over itself endlessly, and yet I still had the impression that I was only seeing one tiny fraction of its true body. It said nothing as I looked into its eyes, both awesome and gentle, yet I understood immediately what it wanted from me. Before I knew it, I was once again on the Material Plane, but I could feel part of the Baku’s spirit dwelling inside me. And, well, here I am.” Kaito nodded a few times, then stood up suddenly.

“I’d better go light the beacon,” he said, turning and opening a door that wasn’t there a moment prior.

“Ah, I see we’re starting,” Ayumu said as he lifted himself off his cot. He followed Kaito through the door to the base of a spiral stairwell, stretching up out of view. He heaved a sigh and began his ascent, following closely behind the oblivious Kaito. When at last they reached the top, he leaned against the railing overlooking a dark and turbulent sea, trying to catch his breath. Noetics be damned, this part always felt plenty real.

“Alright,” Ayumu said, thinking aloud as he took stock of his environment, “the lighthouse is about what I expected. It could be a symbol of guidance, or perhaps one of safety. I’m more interested to see what’s out there. From Kaito’s description, there’s something important about the ocean. I suspect something will show up once he lights the beacon.”

As if on cue, Kaito started up the generator that brought the beacon flaring to life. As the light began to slowly spin, Ayumu saw two wooden sailing ships in the distance, bobbing up and down on the roiling waves. They were too far out to discern any minute details, but Ayumu immediately noticed that one was significantly larger than the other. He couldn’t be sure yet, but he had a pretty good idea of what that might mean.

Suddenly, the beacon swept over the water, illuminating something behind the ships: an enormous humanoid looming out of the ocean. Its skin was dark and its face was utterly devoid of expression, lacking hair, a nose, or a mouth, and possessing only two perfectly circular, luminescent eyes. Kaito rushed out onto the balcony as it appeared.

“An umibōzu?” Ayumu muttered to himself as he looked the creature over. Kaito gripped the railing in distress as he leaned over it.

“Hurry!” he screamed, his voice faltering in the rising gale. “Get to the shore! Get away from it!”

His words evaporated into the salty air as the umibōzu slowly raised its arm out of the sea, the displaced water bringing the two ships crashing together. In one smooth and deliberate motion, it brought its arm back down again, shattering the two ships and causing an enormous eruption of water to burst forth from the surface of the ocean, carrying with it a mess of broken wooden planks. Kaito screamed inconsolably as tears streamed down his face. Ayumu watched the events carefully, then turned to head back down the stairs.

“Alright,” he said to himself, “I think I’ve got it.”

Ayumu sat on his cot and retrieved a small pellet from the pouch in his knapsack. For all his feigned confidence earlier, the truth was that this part still terrified him. He’d had no trouble so far, but he could never be completely sure that his next trip to the Noetic Plane wouldn’t be his last. Still, there was no getting around it, so he swallowed the pill and laid back on the cot, his hands resting on his stomach.

After a few seconds, he stood up again, looking down at his unconscious body on the cot. So far, so good. He walked back through the door and found himself, not in the lighthouse, but on the cape itself. Kaito was gazing out across the ocean with tears in his eyes. Although he still wouldn’t respond to Ayumu’s presence, now that his soul had fully manifested on the Noetic Plane, his words would be able to reach into Kaito’s subconscious. If he chose them right, he would be able to disrupt the nightmare and dislodge the mara.

“Kaito,” Ayumu said as he stood beside him, “no matter how painful it is, you have to own this. You can’t let yourself be pulled in two like this anymore. You watched while your wife and child were killed, and now you watch it happen, again and again, feeling both responsible and helpless. You want to hide from the reality of what happened, and so you let that monster take the blame, and you bury it deep inside you. But that monster is a part of you. Are you going to continue to sit idly by while it destroys those that you cherished most? Can you be satisfied being helpless forever?”

Kaito started to tremble, his knuckles burning white as he clenched his fists. Without warning, the surroundings started to shift, as though the world was a painting on a thin piece of fabric billowing in the wind. Ayumu braced himself for the change, and suddenly found himself rocking back and forth in a dinghy on the water. Kaito was nowhere to be seen, but there was a large, red glow emanating from beneath the surface of the water. It hesitated a moment, then started to move away.

“Oh, no you don’t, you bastard,” Ayumu said, bracing his shoulder with his left hand and throwing out his right arm towards it. The Baku’s tail uncoiled from his arm and shot out into the water, wrapping itself around the submerged creature. With a strained grunt, Ayumu lifted his arm up, pulling the squirming mass of tentacles and gnashing teeth into the open air.

“Kaito!” he shouted, looking around. “This is your tormentor! This is the object of your helplessness! This is that which you have rejected! What will you do with it now?”

There was a massive swell on the surface of the water, and the umibōzu once again lifted its body up, staring down at the creature that Ayumu had bound. Though it had the same expressionless face as before, it now had Kaito’s eyes. As Ayumu had suspected, Umibōzu, being the manifestation of Kaito’s deepest fears, was his chimera—his own piece of the Baku that would empower him to eliminate the mara that had preyed on him for so long.

As Umibōzu reached out its hand and grasped at the mara, Ayumu withdrew the Baku’s tail. Umibōzu held the writhing creature up to its face, taking a moment to study it, then clenched its hand together with all its strength, sending a burst of light flying out into the aether. It looked down at Ayumu briefly, then turned away and receded into the ocean. The roiling waves began to calm, and soon all of the scenery around Ayumu faded into a flat, peaceful whiteness. Kaito stood at the center of it, looking down at his hands absentmindedly. The nightmare was over, and now the Noetic Plane sat open, ready to be reshaped. This was Ayumu’s opportunity to put an end to things for good.

“You’ve accepted the part of yourself that you most feared,” Ayumu said, his voice flooding into the empty void like a star bursting to life in the cold depths of space. “You’ve faced the truth—of the past and of yourself—and now it’s time to move on. Kaito, it’s time to say goodbye.”

Kaito turned, the warm rays of the sun shining on his face, a gentle spring breeze blowing across emerald hills that stretched far out of sight. A short distance away, beneath the fluttering petals of a blooming cherry blossom tree, was a woman holding the hand of a young girl. Kaito walked out to them with tears in his eyes and fell to his knees, wrapping his arms around them. The woman ran her hand across the top of Kaito’s head, pushing it back so she could look at her husband’s eyes.

“Darling,” she said softly, her fingers caressing the back of his neck, “it’s good to see you again. I wish it were under happier circumstances.” Kaito simply nodded dumbly, running his hand down his wife’s arm and squeezing her hand. His daughter looked up at him curiously, tugging at his shirt with her small hand.

“Papa, are you coming with us now?” she asked, her voice soft and innocent. He looked down at her with a pained expression. He so badly wanted to say yes—to say that they would never be apart again—but he knew that wasn’t the truth. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, rubbing the small of her back with his hand.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, his voice trembling, “but it’s going to be a little longer.” She gave him a disappointed look, but nodded, embracing him.

“It’s okay, papa. I’ll wait.”

“We both will,” his wife said.

Kaito stood and clasped his wife and daughter’s hands one final time as everything began to fade. Soon, Ayumu was alone in that empty whiteness once more. Kaito should now be conscious on the Material Plane, and it was—hopefully—only a matter of time before Ayumu joined him. However, he had one final piece of business before he was ready to leave.

Ayumu stretched out his arm, allowing the Baku’s tail to uncoil and emerge from his body, the light from the exterminated mara gathering around him as it did so. It continued to unravel, filling more and more space around him, until Ayumu was once more face-to-face with the Baku itself. Its eyes were closed and its breathing was slow and steady, as though it were in a deep and restful slumber. Ayumu became angry at the sight, calling out to it.

“Baku!” he shouted, trying to elicit some kind of response. “Why do you sleep on humanity? Why do you neglect those whom you have protected for so long? I refuse to believe that you bear us any malice, or that you allow harm to come to us arbitrarily. What do you want from us? What must I do to wake you?”

The Baku made no movement, but continued to slumber peacefully. Ayumu reached out his hand and placed it against its shimmering white scales, trying to glean anything he could from the spirit that had for so long now been a part of him. Whatever it was that the Baku was trying to achieve—whatever it expected of Ayumu and those like him—was still elusive. He only hoped that the answers would come in time.

Ah, it was time to wake up.

The world slowly came into focus as Ayumu groggily opened his eyes, Kaito’s hands wresting him by the shoulders. Kaito relaxed his grip with a relieved smile as Ayumu strained to sit up in his cot, massaging his throbbing temples with his thumb and fingers.

“Thank goodness,” Kaito said, stepping back. “After what you told me, I was afraid you’d died.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ayumu groaned, somehow managing to effect sarcasm in his weakened state. He looked around the room, then motioned wordlessly to his teacup. Kaito quickly retrieved it and handed it to him, pouring some more tea into it. Ayumu gratefully took a drink, then handed the cup back. He swung his legs over the side of the cot and bobbed his head from side to side, cracking his neck.

“So, is it over?” Kaito asked hesitantly. Ayumu looked up at him with an arch in his brow as he stretched.

“You were there. You tell me.” Kaito nodded, then folded his arms together.

“A lot of it is pretty hazy,” he said, gathering his thoughts. “I don’t actually remember seeing you at all. But it was like I could…sense you, somehow. There was this…drive, welling up inside me. Something pushing me forward. And then, suddenly, the nightmare was over.”

“And after that?” Ayumu asked, a probing tone in his voice. He was never sure how much clarity an Insomnolent would have after the emergence of their chimera. Kaito’s expression turned sad and wistful for a moment, and he turned to look at Ayumu again.

“Was that real?” he asked, assuming that Ayumu knew what he was talking about.

“Of course. I told you, dreams are as real as anything else.”

“I mean, was that just a dream? Did I just imagine it? The sound of my wife’s voice? The embrace of my daughter? There’s no way it was really them, is there?” Ayumu shrugged, then pushed himself, a bit unsteadily, to his feet.

“I told you, didn’t I? Even Noemantics don’t have all the answers.” Kaito looked disappointedly down at the floor. “But,” Ayumu continued, seeing how disheartened he was, “I would say it’s not impossible.” Kaito gave him a hopeful smile. Ayumu thought back on the scene that he had been a reluctant spectator for.

“Do you mind if I ask their names?” he asked. Kaito shook his head.

“My wife’s name was Emi. Our daughter’s name was Sayuri. They were…killed in a mudslide. I saw it happen, but…” Kaito trailed off. Ayumu nodded his head. After seeing Kaito’s nightmare, he could put enough of the pieces together himself.

“Well, imagined or not, I would say that the feelings of the genuine Emi and Sayuri came through.”

Kaito’s eyes watered a bit, but he nodded his head with a smile. With a disoriented grunt and gesture from Ayumu, Kaito set about helping him fold up his cot and strap it onto his knapsack. Ayumu hoisted it onto his shoulders, then stepped out into the bright morning sun, shielding his eyes from the glare. He took a deep breath, mentally preparing to set out.

“Will you be staying in town?” Kaito asked. “I don’t have much, but you could always stay here another night, if you wanted.” Ayumu shook his head, looking down at his arm. The Baku’s tail had faded somewhat, but it was still too visible for his liking.

“No can do. Gotta be heading out.” Kaito looked at him in surprise.

“Not even a day to rest? That was some ordeal you went through last night, wasn’t it?” Ayumu smiled at him.

“I appreciate the concern, but I can’t stay. Like Insomnolents, my presence weakens the Noetic boundary. If I don’t leave now, it won’t properly mend. Besides, judging by the time, I’ve been mostly dead for several hours. That’s enough rest for now.”

Kaito stood in stunned silence as Ayumu stepped out onto the grass and stamped his boots a few times. Though he had only just met Ayumu the day before, Kaito had grown incredibly impressed with his tenacity and fortitude, and was slightly dismayed to see him go.

“Wait, you’re not walking, are you?” Kaito asked, realizing that he had no transportation. Ayumu nodded, raising his arm into the air to stretch his side. “There’s nothing but mountains for miles. You should really consider getting a motorbike.”

“Know where I can get one for cheap?” Ayumu asked. Kaito scrunched up his cheek.

“Ah, um…no,” he said.

“Well, then.”

As Ayumu started to walk off, he stopped suddenly and turned back to face Kaito.

“By the way, will you extend my thanks to that young lady at the vegetable stand for pointing me here?” Kaito’s eyebrows perked up.

“Satomi? Sure. But if you’re heading back that way, you could do it yourself, no?” Ayumu’s mouth turned up in a sly smile as he read Kaito’s body language.

“Satomi, huh? She spoke very kindly of you.” Ayumu paused as he noticed Kaito start to blush. “She’s quite fetching, isn’t she?” Kaito furrowed his brow, his cheeks turning a bright beet red.

“I’m married, you know,” he said, his voice stern. Ayumu just continued to smile, then turned away with a wave.

“So you are. Well. Pleasant dreams, Kaito.”

Droplets of dew scattered from the grass as Ayumu set off once more. Kaito stood on his veranda and watched him go, ruminating on all that had transpired, then turned and walked back into his house. Far away, beyond the range of human sight, the Baku laid curled upon itself. Though it continued to slumber, it did so with one eye open—one eye on the man who did what it could not. It would continue to watch Ayumu for now, pleased to see one who could not only rid mankind of their nightmares, but mend their hearts, as well. As long as there was a man like that, it could rest easy.