Someone shakes me awake.
It’s like one of those mornings where I might be late for work or school.
In the beginning, it’s a gentle shake, but it finally escalates to a violent grip on my shoulders, wobbling me to and fro, here and there.
No. I don’t want to wake up. Reality is inevitably harsh. I don’t want to open my eyes if it means I have to once again behold such repulsive things.
I stubbornly ignore and reject it, turning over to go back to sleep.
I still want to have these gentle dreams.
However, at that moment, something heavy lands on my chest with a thud.
I expel a burst of air with a “Ngph?!” and cough.
Someone’s jumped on top of me.
They continue to do so as they smack my cheeks, pull on my hair, getting on my nerves and forcing me to open my eyes into little slits.
“Eek?!”
My eyes pop open in shock.
Someone’s face is right in front of mine.
It’s not merely that if I reach out my hands, I’ll touch them — but that if I even stuck on my tongue, I would touch them — that close of a distance. Too close. My entire field of view is covered by that person’s face.
“Wh-What?” I shrink back, recoiling from this person who is close enough to kiss me.
They knit their eyebrows together in apology. As if they had awakened me with a fairytale kiss.
They then stroke my cheeks.
Lovingly.
Their palms are cold — spine-tinglingly so.
It feels as if I’m being stroked by a ghost.
Those fingertips don’t feel like those of a living person. They’re smooth and dry, like paper, mysterious in their origin.
I rub my sleepy eyes and watch this “someone” right in front of me.
She is a woman whose features are so well put together, it would be safe to call her a girl. Maybe only a few years older than you or I...... However, she seems mysteriously calm, giving the impression of maturity and adulthood.
Oddly enough, it’s like the color has worn off of her. Like a black and white film from the Showa era. Her skin, her clothes, everything is in black and white. However, it suits her. She looks like she was drawn by someone, but has the depth and presence of a real person, staring at me with a gentle grin.
“Uh-m—”
I feel like I’ve seen this person somewhere.
She looks a lot like the girl I saw you playing with earlier (if earlier is even a fitting phrase, since I can’t seem to get the hang of the order of events in the dream world). That monochrome girl gamboling about with you in that black-and-white world—
No, it might be a different person. She has the same air about her, but the hair and build are different.
Observing her up close, she oddly leaves no impression, having a peculiar dullness about her. Pretty, but with dull characteristics. Just as the most beautiful girl in the world would inevitably be “plain,” her face is merely pretty, with no outstanding features.
In art terminology, it’s like she was drawn simplistically, like the very concept of a beautiful girl itself.
I’m looking at her as close as I possibly can, but even this close up, I can see no pimples or moles, not a hint of moisture in her eyes or pores on her skin, not one of these physiological things.
She is right in front of me, but it’s like looking at someone from far away.
The front bangs are cut straight and even, but the back hair hangs uneven (this was supposedly a hairstyle back in the day), each strand at a visible distance, and straight black like an image colored in a PC illustration program.
Her eyes, like narrow slits, vacant, creased as if she is smiling, like cracks in her face.
A woman with no sense of reality, as if she really were drawn—
When I blink, her smile broadens, and she sits up.
Now that she’s pulled her face away, I can finally see my surroundings.
It’s that black-and-white world, the one I saw between gaps in those giant structures.
It looks like a comic pencil sketch. Or like printed text in a picture-less book.
Yes, somehow it really does feel like I’m reading a comic book.
After all, here and there are borders resembling comic panels. Lines like those that represent division in the world of comics. They’ve become three-dimensional and surround us. Something like grass grows thickly beneath me, but it’s simplified, like a repetitive “www.”
There are fires burning here and there, but they’re harmless, not the least bit hot. I notice a severed head floating in the sky, but it doesn’t seem very graphic, as if one could skim right over it. No matter what kind of tragedy or degree of ruin occurs in a comic book or a novel, it has no effect on reality... or so it seems.
Cactuses grow unnaturally here and there, like our hands as we separate from awareness while reading. Like fingers used to support a book.
Every now and then, splotches of vivid red jump out, like droplets of blood from a nosebleed falling onto the page.
What is with this world? I wonder what sort of metaphor it bears.
Generally speaking, it’s like a dream without the color, like someone forgot to add it.
The dream world was colorful, but then it became sepia-toned, then black and white, then invisible, then it disappeared. Like a memory from long ago, an insufficient dream with memories omitted because they failed to leave an impression.
I wonder what it is I’ve forgotten.
“Hya?”
All of a sudden, the monochrome girl looking at me reaches out a hand toward me.
For some reason, I feel like I’m about to be hit, so I cover my face.
When I give her a bashful look, I notice she’s reaching for my stomach. I finally realize it — someone else is sitting on top of me.
I can feel the heaviness.
With a great deal of hardship, I turn my face in that direction, shocked.
There, right before me, is the girl I saw you playing with earlier(?).
This one appears younger than me. She’s still a small child.
With her as well, from the top of her head to her fingertips, even the clothes covering her body, are all black and white. Her hair is parted in the middle and tied on each side, bouncing about like animal tails. Or rather like wings, like an angel’s wings.
She has extremely simple eyes, like a stuffed animal’s.
I can’t feel this girl’s body heat either.
That point is a bit weird (she doesn’t seem to be of this world!), but she’s very peaceful and doesn’t seem to mean me any harm.
The monochrome girl, like so many characters in comics and cartoons before her, has jumped on top of me in an attempt to wake me up. The one shaking me earlier must have been this girl—
Even though I’ve long since woken up (or at least opened my eyes), the girl just keeps shaking me and saying, “Wake up, wake up,” gleefully.
The older girl pats the younger girl’s head, as if chiding her.
The girl smiles innocently and jumps up, hugging the older girl around the waist with all her might.
The two of them stare in my direction.