I’ve collapsed.
The monochrome girls pull me hard, but I don’t have the stamina to run. I get the feeling that something horrible is happening all throughout my body. Like bones are breaking, like skin is tearing, like blood is overflowing...
Of course, I’m invisible — I can’t conceive my own form, so I can only imagine. I guess I must be squashed flat like a frog hit by a car.
I don’t get the logic behind it, but the blood that drips from my body becomes visible the second it touches the floor. Of course, I’m probably the only one who can see that blood.
I don’t know how many liters of blood are actually in the human body, but I feel like I’ve long exceeded that amount. It’s sprayed all over the place, like splatters from a hose in an old horror movie.
“Huff, uungh—”
I can no longer walk, and I collapse on the spot.
I feel dizzy and topple forward. I’m lying facedown, sinking into that sea of blood.
The monochrome sisters(?) who were pulling me seem to be concerned about me. But my vision has become so obstructed, I can’t see very well.
I’m like an ice cream cone that’s been dropped on the ground, I surmise vacantly.
What was that scenery I saw earlier — that hospital-like place, and someone who was like a doctor, lecturing me. It was like torture, as they droned on and on about stuff I didn’t know about......
It was more vague than a dream, but the scenery was oddly realistic, and I still can’t process it. It’s the first time I’ve seen something like that. Somehow it didn’t fit with the other dreams — such strange content, like reading the pages of a novel out of order.
I only saw that place for a short period of time. I’m completely exhausted. My head’s heavy, like I’ve just gulped down some sleeping pills. I can’t think clearly. It’s awful, like an iron kettle boiling in Hell.
In dreams, we process what we’ve seen in reality. It helps us recover from our exhaustion. If that hospital came from reality, then reality really is awful. But no matter how much I dream, this extraordinary weight never sorts itself out, and I never get better.
The atmosphere here is like that of a strange planet. I cannot breathe. I feel like I will suffocate.
“Ungh...”
As I gasp for breath, I suddenly realize.
Vivid-red blood flows from my body... Something is being drawn along the floor, using my blood as paint. It’s a number.
4
Four can be a very sacred number in dreams, and is highly regarded.
If it were a shape, it would be a circle or a square, a symbol of stability. Circles are used in mandalas and squares in national flags; they’re symbols that put humans at ease.
It’s balanced, harmonious, and orderly, the perfect dream — the ultimate goal of humanity, referred to as individuation by Jung. Three makes people uneasy, and five is too unbalanced, making four the most reassuring number. That’s why so many things we use in our daily lives, like books and cigarette boxes, are a quadrilateral shape. Four can make people feel at ease.
In any case, four is the first number written.
Since four is being written in blood, it also has that sinister association with death, as both are pronounced “shi” in Japanese.
The numbers gradually increase.
4. 36. 84141089...... 88888...... 01010101......
It looks as if someone has run their fingertips through the blood, painting the floor with it.
But I cannot see who that someone is. I can’t even fathom what would be writing numbers in blood.
It’s a strange phenomenon, like a poltergeist. I lift my head anxiously.
All of a sudden, the scenery around me changes.
Though at this point, I’m not particularly surprised.
I’ve seen a variety of different scenes while pursuing you. Walking through all of these bizarre dream worlds, nothing surprises me anymore. It takes a great deal of energy to move forward even one step in real life. Within one’s dream, one’s mind, one can move instantly from India to outer space to a different dimension. You can take a trip around the world in the blink of an eye, without such tedious procedures as acquiring passports or immigration inspections.
I observe my surroundings as I let such thoughts drift through my mind.
It’s a familiar scene. It’s someplace we passed through several times when I was following you. An area that can readily be reached from one of those doors that stand in that area you first arrive at when you are dreaming. Maybe it’s the surface of that dream — the outermost area.
It’s a scene that looks like it could take place in the near future. It looks like a floor that has been vigorously scrubbed until it shines, without one speck of dust on it. The floor is oddly translucent, and the scene goes on and on, like mirrors facing one another. It feels like I’m in one corner of this giant circuit of a world.
Each of us is just a tiny part of society — of the world. Earth aside, it’s the type of place that makes you realize how diminutive you are in the grand scale of the universe.
A wall stands perpendicular to where I lie prone on the floor, and that wall is filled with circuits. They’re exposed circuits, like those that make up the inside of a computer. The patterns look like pictures of groups of men, arms around each other, smiling. If you made society or the cycle of human relationships extremely simple, this might be what it would look like.
If one were not accustomed to the cycle of society, they might be alone in a corner of the world, sad. Circuits and cycles never rest, just running on and on.
Even if I sleep, the world moves on the whole time.
Dreams, like machines or circuits, are a barometer to measure how happy or unhappy someone is with their life. If things are going well, the machine works without a hitch. If they aren’t, then it breaks or shuts down somewhere. In this situation, if blood were to drip into the machinery, then it would stop working, wouldn’t it?
The heart and mind would break down, wouldn’t they?
As I’m thinking of such things, the oozing, bloody characters begin to change. The numbers transform into something like machine language, then finally phonetic characters, and even kanji begin to appear. In the end, an illustration appears.
The image drawn in blood somehow looks like the two monochrome girls I encountered earlier.
It’s so poorly done and hard to make out, but I can grasp their features. It’s like a child’s doodle. The illustration depicts the older sister with the long hair and the younger sister with the tied-back hair.
I wonder if these two are the ones who drew this image and wrote the numbers. When the world changes, we all become invisible. We become distant, unable to perceive. It seems I cannot have a form outside of that rainbow tent.
And outside of that comic-like world, I cannot see the two of them.
However, when you remember the words of comics or novels in the real world, then they too can have an effect on this world... That’s the conclusion I’ve come to.
As I’m watching, a speech bubble inflates next to the image.
It really is a comic. There are now bits of dialogue accompanying the illustration.
“Patience is poison to the body.”
“And to the heart!”
A bubble also pops up with a “ping” next to the littler girl. The letters are messy, like maybe she wrote her lines herself. On the other hand, the neat letters in the bubble by the older girl are erased, and written anew.
“If you suppress your stress, it will leak out.”
Those two girls, who seem to be sisters, appear to be talking to each other.
“Suppression, endurance, restraint... all of those things create a burden on the heart and mind, pressing down on them. The way your head leaves an indentation on your pillow, or a heavy bookshelf leaves one on the floor. Any human under a great deal of pressure will break, their skin torn, their body crushed.”
“Just like you are right now!”
“If the surface, the consciousness, the skin cracks, the unconscious is revealed and spurts out. Like when one suddenly breaks down or cries, that sort of thing. The cause is the stress that the distortion is rooted in. That’s because the unconscious generally is the opposite disposition of consciousness. So if you let that out, everyone around you will be surprised.”
“Like how when a child commits a crime, everyone says, ‘But he was such a good kid!’”
“Stress warps the heart and mind, causing them to fall apart. Destroying them — this was a point that Freud and Jung actually agreed on for once.”
“It’s something obvious, something everyone can agree on!”
“As the pressure increases, it presses hard upon the heart, constricting it. Once a hole opens, the unconscious comes flowing out.”
“When you pull the tab on carbonated juice can that you’ve shaken up, it instantly spews everywhere.”
“The carbonic acid vaporizes and it becomes carbon dioxide. When you give an out to something compressed into a can, it gushes out instantly.”
“I love juice!”
“In order to prevent it from ending up like that, you must reduce the stress — the pressure — or else you’ll end up periodically letting off steam.”
“If you don’t, you’ll be crushed! Crushed!”
The illustration of the smaller girl on the ground, in accordance with her words, becomes crushed flat. It’s unsettling. Cracks run along the center of their bodies, flow from their eyes and vomit from their mouths, arms and legs sprouting endlessly from their bodies.
It’s a cute illustration, but it’s unnatural and makes me feel weird.