When I was a little girl, I kept having these horrible nightmares. I would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming, not knowing where I was or who I was. My parents would burst into the room and hold me until I calmed down and pretended to go back to sleep. The images from those dreams would replay over and over in my mind, and I grew wary of trusting people at school or anywhere else. My classmates called me crazy and one time even cut locks of my unique hair off with safety scissors when I wasn't looking. All of this, because of these terrible nightmares. After the eleventh time they happened, Father took me to a child psychiatrist in a stuffy little building in the city. I didn't like it there, I decided. I was seven years old.
"Do you remember what happens in the nightmares?" the woman asked. Her face was kind and her voice was laced with understanding. I struggled to figure out why.
"Yes," I said, then looked away. My eyes wandered to everywhere but her, examining the little knickknacks strewn across the table that separated us and the creases in the leathery seat I was sinking into. The woman liked to leave long pauses after my short answers.
"Can you tell me about them? Are people you know in it? Your parents?" she asked.
I shook my head. "I don't know anyone in them, except Yuka. Sometimes she's there." Yuzuki Yukari was my only friend in my elementary school. She was so cheerful all the time but was much more intelligent than she let people believe. When those kids cut my hair, she lent me one of her hats and told me I looked even prettier now. Yuka and my parents-they were the only ones I could trust.
"Yuka's your friend?" Another one of her questions she loved to berate me with. I nodded. "What does she do in the dreams?"
"Um..." I shifted my weight around. "Well, she's Yuka, but she's all grown up. She usually just talks to me. She never dies, like the others do."
"The others die? Who are the others?" Her tone became a few octaves lower.
"I don't know who they are." I clasped my head and thought really hard. "And I can't remember their faces when I wake up. I just know there's a pink one, a blue one, a green one, a red one, a purple one, a turquoise one, and two yellow ones."
"Why are there two yellow ones?"
"I don't know. One is a girl and one is a boy. I like the boy the best. He's always really nice to me."
"How do they die, Mayu?"
All the images came flowing back again. Old, European settings and old, Japanese settings, dead bodies filling the streets, people that I knew I loved being stabbed, poisoned, eaten. Why did they have to die? Why did they hurt each other when they were friends the last time? Who were these people and why did my heart hurt so much when I thought of them? There in the psychiatrist's chair, I began to cry.
Never, and I mean never, wear a skirt suit unless your occupation requires it. Also, never go into an occupation which requires you to wear a skirt suit. This is friendly advice. They are like corsets for your legs, they cost more than a month's rent, and they make you look like you have a stick up your-
The door to my right opened, and I found my productive fashion brooding cut short as I remembered why I was here in the first place. Here, as in, a therapist's office, sixteen years after the nightmares that plagued my childhood started. However, I wasn't in this place as a patient this time. In fact, I was a full-fledged psychiatrist myself and had the skirt suit to prove it. When I stood at the sound of the door opening, my stance was awkward to say the least. Still wasn't used to these stupid things.
A young man passed the threshold and into the waiting area. He must have been a patient of the friend I was visiting. My eyes followed him, something strange stirring in my stomach at the sight of this man, though I was quite sure I had never seen him before. Despite this, his golden hair and small stature felt so familiar. It somehow made me sad.
I realized that he was looking at me, too. I quickly tucked my purse under my arm and stumbled through the door, trying to push the strange experience behind me.
Kamui Meiko was my mentor during these first years of my practice. Her demeanor may seem sweet and cheerful to some, but those closest to her knew the savagery underneath that beautiful, smiling face. She was, indeed, beautiful. Her tall, slender figure accompanied by short, straight brown hair made her seem so professional. I used to-and still did-admire the aura about her.
"Mayu-san! I see your punctuality is much better than your fashion sense!" she said that sunny Tuesday afternoon. Tea had already been poured and set on the little wooden table in the corner.
"You were the one who kept telling me to get skirt suits! Are you saying I should return this now? Actually, I'm totally okay with that," I replied, squatting strangely in order to sit down. "This may a size too small."
"No, the suit is perfect. I'm talking about your hair. When you wrap it into a bun like that, you can't see how pretty it is. It hides all the colors!" She was referring to the fact that at the tips of my sandy blond hair, there lay a rainbow of colors like nothing I had seen naturally on another person. This anomaly always seemed to come up at every family gathering still to this day.
"It distracts people. My patients don't need to be distracted during their sessions."
"You are never going to find a man if you are going to hide all your high points! Next you're going to shove color contacts in your eyes each morning to cover those pretty gold irises."
"How many times," I seethed, "do I have to tell you that I have a boyfriend!?"
Meiko covered her ears. "Lalalala! No, you don't. I don't approve of that man."
"He's more stable than anyone you've set me up with. Come on, he's handsome, he's a doctor, and he's good to me. What more can I ask for? He's also an excuse for you to stop making me go on dates with your ex-patients."
"Well, there is one..." she began.
"Absolutely not! It's unethical and maybe even illegal to keep doing this!"
"I'm not doing anything illegal! Unethical, okay, but not illegal! And this guy, trust me, he's perfect for you. I can feel it."
"How is he perfect?" I asked, very worn out now by all the arguing.
"He's exactly the opposite of Kiyoteru." Kiyoteru, as in, my current boyfriend.
"So, he's unattractive, selfish, sadistic, and unmannered?"
"No, I said the opposite of Kiyoteru, not exactly like Kiyoteru."
That's it, I was going to strangle this woman. Right here. Right now. Sadly, the opportunity passed as a witness showed up at the back door. A man, tall and handsome, clad with long, purple hair and a dark suit, leaned against the wall with a snake-like smile across his lips.
"What are you lovely ladies talking about?" he asked.
"Darling," Meiko said, "please tell Mayu-san that Kiyoteru is all wrong for her."
"Mayu-san, Kiyoteru is all wrong for you," he recited.
Curses, I had been double-teamed. I should have expected this from a husband and wife. "You haven't even met him, Gakupo."
"I don't need to! My senses are not hindered by distance. Kititaru-"
"Kiyoteru," Meiko corrected.
"-Kiyoteru is all wrong!"
I sighed and sank further into my seat. What was to be done with these people?
"I have a deal for you," Meiko said. "If you go to dinner with this one guy, I will never interfere with your love life again!"
"Never again?"
"Never! You don't even have to call it a date. It's just one dinner."
I was getting flashes from all the times this woman had set me up, all the horrors that followed. With heavy reluctance, I said, "Fine. One dinner."
"Yes!" she cheered. "His name is Kagamine Len. Actually, you may have seen him on his way out. That was our last session."
"Really? That guy, huh...?"
"He's cute, isn't he? Not as handsome as my darling husband, but pretty cute."
"You make me blush, sweetie," Gakupo cooed from the background.
"Okay, that's my cue to leave," I said, shakily getting to my feet in these acursed heels. Beauty hurts.
"Remember to wear your hair down for your dinner! It's Friday night, 7 P.M." Meiko handed me the card of the restaurant as I made my way out. Looks like I had to keep a secret from Ki. Though, after this one dinner, life would become much more normal, surely.