AN: Eep, my first posting. Written back in 2011 as a school project (apparently that's the only way to guarantee I'll finish something). Enjoy and let me know what you think~

"You came here for a reason."

Across from me, the dark-haired shop owner was sprawled languidly on a settee, her eyes meeting mine with a seriousness that, despite its contradiction of her pose, did not seem out of place. She had a wise woman's eyes: eyes that seemed to see everything in the world at once; eyes that could see into your soul, but looked at it as though it were an equation; eyes that appraised on a spiritual level. Her gaze was intimidating, but there was some other quality about her that struck into me a strange kind of hope. I shivered.

"I... I don't know why I came in." My voice was barely above a whisper, but the silence in the room made it resonant. "There was something... alluring. Something just pulled me in. I don't know what it was."

"Few people ever do," the woman said matter-of-factly, "but that doesn't mean your presence is without purpose." She sat up fully, folding her hands in her lap. "This is a shop, and there is something here that you wish to purchase."

It was a curious kind of shop. There were no wares to be seen; in fact, the room in which we sat was completely bare, save for the two seats that we occupied. The merchandise here was not material: this woman sold wishes.

"I can't think of anything," I said, a touch of guilt in my voice.

She leaned forward, her expression concentrated. "What is your name?"

"Tenshima Kohaku."

"And your birth date?"

"January fifth."

"What did you dream last night, Tenshima-san?"

I sat cross-legged in my bed, leaning back against the wall with my eyes closed in contemplation. I sighed profoundly. What was the matter with me? Everything seemed so real, but...

My eyes snapped open, staring into the darkened room around me as though they had been starved of light for centuries. Fragmented moonlight fell into the room like an afterthought, casting a somewhat eerie haze over my surroundings. Whether it was the muddling half-light or my own scrambled subconscious that made me anxious, I couldn't tell. In the middle of the night, things that were once unquestionably real to me – perfectly tangible, sharply in focus – seemed blurred and dream-like.

Was I dreaming now? A simple enough question for most, but for me, lately… I shook my head, hoping to clear it, but in the back of my mind I knew that no matter how clearly I felt I was thinking, there was still a possibility that I was, on another level, asleep.

I had been sleeping a lot lately, to the point where the line between dream and reality was becoming blurred. The two sides mingled freely, leaving me in a mental state of utter disarray. An overwhelming question gnawed on the scenery of my mind, casting constant doubt on the world around me; incessantly, my inner voice whispered, "Is this real? Am I dreaming right now?"

More than anything in the world, I wanted the answer to that question.

"Dreams can be tricky," the shopkeeper said, lighting her kiseru. A small cloud of tobacco smoke wafted in my direction and I cringed. "While you're in a dream, it's often very difficult to tell that you're dreaming. Although things around you may be strange by the standards of waking life, they are accepted as normal within the dreamscape; only once you wake do you realize the discrepancy. In addition to that, your sense perception while dreaming is often" – she pinched my arm quickly – "uncanny."

My skin stung slightly where she had pinched me, but nothing else changed. I wondered briefly whether that was meant to indicate that I was awake or to illustrate her point. I nearly asked, but before I could say anything, she stood and began pacing the room, continuing her musings: "Dreams can seem very real indeed… and who's to say the state we call wakefulness isn't simply another level of dreaming?" She took another puff of her pipe and exhaled slowly, sending the smoke in a narrow stream towards the ceiling.

"You're dreaming," she said plainly, and for a moment I was afraid. "You wake from the dream, assuming it's over, but moments later you wake once again." Puff. Exhale. "Has that ever happened to you?"

"Frequently," I said, and though I would've liked to have said more, I found myself consistently tongue-tied in the shopkeeper's presence.

"And what does that tell you? About dreams. About reality."

I glanced at the ground, formulating an answer. "That they're hard to distinguish. Dreams are very good mimics of reality. Or reality is a very deep and complex dream."

"Yes," said the shopkeeper, and judging by her tone – for I was still focused on the floor – I assumed she was smiling. I looked up to find it was true. "Yes, exactly. There's no telling, is there? Dreams are full of what your mind creates while you're sleeping, and they can seem so perfectly realistic. They're only things your subconscious has invented, but you could easily convince yourself of their reality if you so desired.

"The human mind is a very mysterious construct. Even with memory, it's difficult to be sure of what's real and what's imagined, wouldn't you say?"

"That's true," I said, nodding slowly.

"Sometimes it happens that you have an exchange with someone, and in some way that exchange doesn't go as you would've liked. You summarily spend hours upon hours dwelling on whatever interlocutory disaster occurred, pondering the things you could've said, what could've happened to achieve a different result… and after a while, the lines start to blur. It's difficult to tell what was really said and what was scripted in your mind afterwards.

"Your dream situation is somewhat similar… correct?"

We were sitting opposite each other again, and it occurred to me that I wasn't sure when that had happened. She was looking at me with those serious eyes again, and I thought that for a while she had seemed notably more human. Now, however, she was expectant without seeming overly interested, perhaps as though preparing to analyze data. A philosopher with the objective curiosity of a mathematician. She was fascinating.

At length, my mind settled upon the question she had posed. I gave an answer that nearly ignored it. "I never know whether I'm awake or asleep," I said simply, tugging my sleeves down into my loose fists. "Every dream seems to be within another dream. Or I'll be convinced that I'm awake, but after a short time I realize I've been dreaming. I… I just wish I could tell the difference."

A smile crept across the shopkeeper's lips, and that expression confounded me as much as her eyes: it seemed all at once pleased, sensual, and malevolent. "Well then," she began, lowering her voice, "shall I grant your wish?"

"Wake up."

It began as a whisper in my ear, like the sound of a little buzzing fly, or perhaps some sort of encouragement fairy, trying to coax me out of bed and into the world for the day. I pushed it out of my mind and settled back into darkness.

"Wake up, Kohaku."

The whisper grew louder, into a real voice, albeit a quiet one. Sweet-sounding, I thought, with a little bit of an edge to it. It sounded like my sister. Maybe I was late for school. But I was tired, so very tired….

"Kohaku, please."

It was beginning to sound desperate. I opened my eyes to find my sister standing at my bedside, tears in her eyes.

"Kohaku, please, wake up!"

I sat up abruptly. "I'm awake!" I exclaimed, but it did nothing to help her distress.

"Please, Kohaku, please…." She was crying bitterly, and as she wept she grabbed and clutched at me, burying her face in my clothes. "I'm sorry, Kohaku! Please wake up for me…."

"I am awake, Miri!" I tried to push her back enough to look her in the eye, but she clung to me as though her life depended on it. "I'm awake, Miri; I'm talking to you right now!"

"Kohaku, don't you dare leave me…" A sob wracked her. "Don't you dare leave me alone like this. Wake up, Kohaku. Wake up and we'll go back home together."

"Miri, I'm right here…" Tears stung at my eyes. Why couldn't she understand? "I'm right here, Miri; everything's fine. We are at home–"

"Wake up!"

Sitting across from the shopkeeper, I had the sneaking suspicion that my entire world was about to be deconstructed before my very eyes. It was an unsettling feeling, but at the same time there was some lucid part of me that knew it had to be done.

"I had a strange dream last night," I said carefully. Since agreeing to help me, the woman demanded that I tell her about every dream of mine I could recall. So far, not much had been of use, but this dream seemed to have some weight to it.

"Your eyes are narrowed," she remarked. "This one must be good."

Once again she set about lighting her long pipe, and I took a grateful breath of the as-yet uncontaminated air. Part of me felt inclined to ask why she insisted on smoking every time I was in her company, but my better judgement kept me quiet.

"I dreamed about my sister," I confessed to my lap.

"And? What happened?"

"She was crying and begging me to wake up."

"Were you asleep in the dream?"

"No."

She exhaled slowly. "What else happened?"

"That's it," I said, bringing a hand to my mouth for the purpose of nervous fidgeting. "She was crying and clinging to me and begging me to wake up, but I was already awake. I tried to console her, but she only kept sobbing all over me. She said she was sorry about something."

The shopkeeper set her pipe in its stand beside her, allowing the tobacco in its bowl to burn away uselessly. Almost like incense, I thought, only far less soothing.

"How did you know you were dreaming?" she asked. Her eyes at that moment were perhaps the most interested I'd ever seen them.

"I don't know," I muttered, useless as the neglected tobacco. "It didn't make any sense. There was no good logic to it, so I had to be dreaming."

"What if there was good logic to it?"

I looked at her, puzzled. "Where could you possibly see logic in that situation?"

She leaned back, raising her eyebrows with an air of superiority as she suggested, "Perhaps your sister is mentally ill."

Instantly I was offended, but in a moment I checked myself. "Mental illnesses defy reason," I said simply. "Your point is moot."

"Very well," she conceded. "At any rate, logic and reason are poor guides when it comes to discerning dream from reality. Some dreams are entirely banal." I was about to interject, but she continued, "One of the more effective methods is to think about how you got into the present situation." She picked up her pipe again, inhaling deeply, and in some strange way I felt happy for it.

"I was sleeping," I said. "I was sleeping and I heard a little voice whispering to me, telling me to wake up."

"I wasn't finished," she said, smoke escaping with her words this time. I apologized. "Dreams tend to begin in medias res," she explained, "right in the middle of things. A good way to test if you're dreaming is to ask yourself, 'How did I get here?' Usually, waking life will have a memory to answer that, while a dream won't."

"I see."

"Why don't you try it right now?"

"What, on the dream I had last night?"

"No," said the shopkeeper, looking into my eyes as though trying to brace me for some great, frightful truth. "Do it right now. How did you get into my shop?"

I bristled, tense with shock and fear. Words leapt from my throat, the emotion behind them like the fuse of a cannon. "Are you saying I'm dreaming now?"

"I'm not saying anything," she said calmly. "Just try it."

I sank into my seat, desperately scrambling to remember how I had arrived here. I looked around for a door, but in a cruel twist of fate, the room had none. I remembered nothing further back than the beginning of this conversation. Then had I really dreamt about my sister, or was that a conjured dream-memory?

My heart was racing. This couldn't be. Incredulous, I began shouting as Miri had in an attempt to wake myself. Angry, pathetic, bitter tears streamed down my face and I collapsed to the floor, considering myself the most pitiable creature who ever lived.

All this turmoil, yet still I would not wake.

The shopkeeper was beside me now, comforting me as one would a child. "It's okay," she whispered, "calm down. I'm sorry I had to do that to you, but you wanted to know. And now that you do, you can move on."

"Why can't I wake up?" I asked, my voice still laden with tears.

"You're going to have to think back again," she said, giving me the same serious look as always, but with a certain amount of kindness in it. "Think back to before you had this problem of dreaming. Think about when you fell asleep. It was a long while ago."

It took most of my efforts to simply avoid breaking down in tears again. I thought on it, trying my best to remain calm. I remembered being out with Miri. Shopping, I guessed. I remembered driving home, and–

There was an accident.

Suddenly a voice from somewhere deep within me said, "You are in a coma."

I was struck by pure horror. I was past tears, past screaming, past anger. But I was horrified, and that I felt in the very depths of my soul.

"I'm… I'm…" I couldn't say it. Saying it would only make it true.

Not that it wasn't true enough already.

The shopkeeper stood and left me. I hardly cared. What was going to become of me? Was I in good hands? How was Miri handling this? She'd been driving, and she didn't see the other car coming, and out of nowhere…. That really was her in the dream, wasn't it? She was crying and worrying about me. She was feeling guilty for my condition. Oh God, I wished I could speak to her! Would I even live to see her again?

My eyes shut tight against the horrific dream-world, I felt something touch my shoulder. I turned to see what it was, expecting the shopkeeper, but what I found was a skeletal hand – and above that, an arm; and beyond that, a body in a black hooded cloak. I was looking at Death.

It's a dream, I told myself. It's just a dream. If you know that you're dreaming, you can dream this away. Just think hard about something else, anything else–

"Come, child," said Death. "It is time to go."

"No more dreams," said the shopkeeper. "After this, everything is real."