Chapter 38

By the time the discussion was finally over, the time was already 1:15 AM. The students split up to gather the cushions and large towels that Niki’s Air Blast spell had blown all over the shelter, running them through their inventories once to remove the dirt before remaking their beds. By the time this work was finished, everyone was starting to fall asleep on their feet. Yuuma wanted to collapse straight into the cushions as well, but there was more that needed to be done. The simple barricade they had set up at the shelter’s entrance had proven completely ineffective against Niki’s group. They needed to find some other way to beef up their defenses. After a little consideration, they decided to give up on a physical barricade and rely on magic instead. There was a wind spell called Whistle Trap that created stationary whistle-like alarms that went off when stepped upon, which Yuuma and Mami Shimonosono laid in several locations around the main lobby. Although Whistle Traps caused no damage, they lasted for eight hours and would serve as a powerful early warning system. When they finished setting the traps, they returned to the shelter and blocked the entrance with display racks once more, just for good measure. Their tasks for the first day (technically speaking, it was already the second day) were finally complete. Yuuma curled up in the sleeping spot he had secured near the entrance, placing his head on a stuffed animal he was using in place of a pillow, and pulled a large bath towel up to his neck. If he rolled over at all in his sleep, his arms and legs would probably wind up sticking out from this makeshift blanket, but the temperature in Althea was pretty mild, so at least they didn’t need to worry about catching colds… Yuuma was promptly swallowed up by the gulf of sleep. Five minutes later, he was shaken awake. “Yuu… Psst, Yuu.” Yuuma scrunched his face up. Someone was tugging at his shoulder and whispering into his ear. Yuuma was pretty sure he told the mysterious, murmuring voice to leave him alone, but the shaking only grew more intense. “What now…?” Yuuma groaned, somehow managing to pry his eyelids open, despite the fact that they felt like they were glued shut. Orange emergency lighting flooded his eyes, causing him to blink several times and turn his head to the side. As he did so, he was confronted by Sawa’s face, just ten centimeters away. She was supposed to be sleeping next to him, but it looked like she had been awake this whole time. “Sorry, Yuu, but we can’t go to sleep quite yet,” she whispered. “Okay, but…you’re not planning to go somewhere at this time of night, are you…?” Yuuma asked hoarsely. “In a sense, but it won’t involve moving,” Sawa replied before inching closer and pressing her face against Yuuma’s. Sawa was his twin; they had been together since birth, but this behavior was still strange enough to cause Yuuma’s heart to skip a beat. “Wh-what are you—?” he started. “Close your eyes and chant the words aperta ostium at the same time as me.” “A-aper—?” “Ready on three…two…” Yuuma closed his eyes. It looked like he didn’t have a choice. ““Aperta ostium.”” The strange spell-like phrase Sawa had just taught him rolled off Yuuma’s tongue with abnormal ease. He said the words in perfect sync with Sawa. It felt like a spark jumping, where the skin on his face came into contact with the skin on hers. Yuuma’s body disappeared. The world disappeared. In the deep dark, Yuuma began to plummet, down, down, in a straight line. It was like diving into AM in the Caliculus capsules, but in the capsules, everything went white. Here it was the reverse—infinite ebony darkness, like he had dunked his head into a vat of black ink. Just as Yuuma was about to frantically shout Sawa’s name, he landed on his backside with a thump, on top of something dense yet soft. The sudden impact served to scatter the surrounding darkness. Yuuma narrowed his eyes as bright light began pouring in. There was smooth white sand beneath him now, spreading out in an arc to his left and right. Before him lay an endless, sprawling blue sea. He seemed to be on a sandy beach, but not the kind where you might go to swim. Looking up, the entire sky was stained an orangish red. Not like sunset. A color like the end of the world. It did not help that there were several massive balls of fire cutting a path across the sky, high overhead. The sight of the meteors as they fell toward the horizon, with their drifting tails of smoke, was unsettling, but for some reason Yuuma felt no fear. It was almost as if he had seen all this before… “Huh… So this is your internus, Yuu,” someone said suddenly from behind Yuuma. He quickly jumped to his feet. The moment Yuuma turned around, a strangled exclamation of surprise escaped his lips. He stumbled, almost landing on his backside again, but somehow managed to recover his balance. Sawa was standing there about three meters away. Only, there were two of her. The Sawa on the left was wearing her usual demon suit. The Sawa on the right, however, was back in her Yukihana Elementary School uniform. The Sawa on the left had horns and wings while the other did not. Yuuma stared back and forth between the two sisters. He quickly checked that he was still wearing his own uniform and asked timidly, “Uh… Wh-which one of you is the real Sawa…?” The demon Sawa cracked a faint smile. “You mean you can’t tell…Yuumy?” she teased. Meanwhile, the Sawa on the right—the one in the school uniform—made a show of frowning. “You know perfectly well that I never call you Yuumy anymore, Yuu!” That settled it. Yuuma spoke to the Sawa on the right first. “Actually, I’m pretty sure you’ve called me Yuumy about twenty times since we got to Althea.” Then he looked at the other Sawa. “You’re Valac…aren’t you?” “Bingo!” With another grin, the demonic Sawa—or rather the demon Valac—turned her head upward to face the crimson sky. The smile disappeared from her lips, replaced by a look of bittersweet sadness. There was a lot that Yuuma wanted to ask, but something about Valac, as she stared at the ceaselessly falling meteor storm, seemed unapproachable at the moment. Yuuma couldn’t bring himself to speak to her. Instead, he took a few steps toward Sawa, who was standing next to Valac. “What…is this place…?” he asked quietly. Sawa cocked her head. “Valac called it the internus…the soulscape. I don’t really understand it myself, but I guess it’s some kind of inner universe or spiritual world.” “Huh… So in other words, we’re probably inside Valac’s mind.” Thinking back, there were scenes like this in many of the stories Yuuma had seen or read, when the hero was possessed by something, where the hero talked to the creature in some sort of strange world. Yuuma still had his eyelenses in, but the UI had vanished. Maybe that was because he was no longer in either the real world or the world of AM?