However, Effects with such a profound effect on your surroundings are rare.
In general, the Effects have no use. It’s not like they have a profound impact on the nature of the dreams, nor are there any that can cause any sort of dramatic change. They only seem to go as far as getting you to some places you might not have been able to reach before. They’re like glasses or backscratchers — things that would be convenient to have, but not the sort of things worth risking one’s life over.
However, there’s nothing else here that you have to do. The Effects should have some sort of significance, or at the very least, should yield something, and not something bad. Believing this to be the case, I help you from the shadows.
For example, there is this object that I can only describe as a cat-shaped coin, rotating at high speed. Its movements are so quick that it seems incredibly difficult for you to catch, so, slipping next to you and the bicycle, I try to help you by impeding the coin’s movements — or at least, that is my intention.
At one point, I get tangled up in the fishing line of an oddly lanky man while we are going for one of the Effects that had sunk to the bottom of the pond.
There is also an Effect hidden in a corner of a messy reference room. I try to use a ghost’s movements to make the Effect easier for you to spot. I am overtaken and almost eaten by that monster, but I panic and run away.
In this way, through my and your hard efforts(?), you explore every corner of the dream, acquiring every type of Effect — leaving almost nothing else to do. Perhaps it’s because you’ve finished collecting them all, but you don’t feel any sense of accomplishment or progress.
As if you’re undergoing full-fledged brain death, you wander around idly with nothing else to do.
I grow bored of all this repetition. With no other option, I pursue you less and less, instead choosing to spend my time researching and coming up with deductions.
Back in the one place where I can truly be myself — the little hut amidst the snowscape, I open the dream diary and scribble things here and there. One by one, I record the Effects you’ve obtained. Frog. Neon. Demon. Midget towel. Buyo-Buyo.
I roll up my sleeves, as if I’m about to dispel any doubts of the value of those symbols, even if their meaning is not yet understood. I am sure that they hold significance for you. They’re the keys to breaking through these impenetrable circumstances, and believing otherwise feels like it would cause me to lose something important.
I’ve been thinking over a lot of things. What in the world is this dream? I understand that it is in fact a dream. That’s because when you go to bed and fall asleep, it is your dreams that rise to the surface. Outside of those times, I cannot leave this little room.
And then, who are you? Why are you having a dream like this? And why am I inside of your dream? What in the world am I? Why am I so interested in you? And why in the world don’t you have even the slightest interest in me? No matter how much I think about it, I can’t find an answer, as deduction and inquiry give way to the realm of philosophy.
I want someone more clever than I to explain it in great detail.
However, no such generous development occurs, and so all I can do is follow you, observing your movements and coming up with even more conjecture about the nature of things. It’s very much like excavating ruins. I painstakingly brush away the filth from the geographical formation that is you, inspecting that which I find.
No one will give me the right answer. Or at the very least, no one will affirm what the right answer is. All I can do is gather a variety of data, compare it, and consider whether is or isn’t right.
While you’re awake — in other words, while you’re in that little room, I cannot interact with you. However, I can watch you. I can watch you from the other side of that TV in your room.
I can’t touch you. You’re so far away during those times, as if you’re on the other side of a mirror.
You’re only awake for a very small period of time. You’re like a baby; all you do is sleep. On the nights you can’t sleep, you lie awake drowsily in your bed for short bursts of time. Your room always looks so simplistic — there doesn’t seem to be anything important therein.
While you are awake, you often head for your desk and write in your diary. What you write is eerily similar to what I summarized. Almost completely the same, down to the words... Flute. Bicycle. Blonde Hair. Triangle Kerchief.
I am having your dream. I am next to you. That’s why the things we saw and heard were almost the same, and the impressions left upon us seem to line up. That’s why it makes sense that what we both write is so similar.
I feel as if I’m beginning to lose any sort of distinction between you and I.
That line is becoming ambiguous. I think too much about you, and so I become closer to being you. The delineation between us is becoming unreliable and falling apart.
Me. You. Me. You.
It feels as if I’m going to be swallowed up by your dream. Like one droplet dangling above the sea.
Amidst these strange feelings, I remember comfort — and so, I pursue you. Reaching out for you, or rather, voluntarily trying to interact with you.
I want to be with you.
You continue collecting the Effects. They are items that are important to your mind and heart... or at least, they should be. You seem so satisfied upon attaining them.
Like Billy Milligan, who had 24 distinct personalities that later integrated into one perfect self. Perhaps, with a perfectly intact mind and the willful purity of a saint, your consciousness and unconscious mind — in other words, the wisdom of the anima and the reason of the animus — can integrate, bringing you closer to the realm of the divine.
If that is your ultimate goal, then I want to help you. I want you to become stronger. I want to prevent you from cracking into pieces like Humpty Dumpty. To have a strong heart, an unscathed one that will not be lost no matter what.
Even if I’m not an Effect — even if I’m a meaningless, worthless being who won’t leave any sort of impression on you.
Even if my place isn’t in the completed version of your heart, it’s all right.