Prologue

July 12, 2010

I'm not one to write journals or diaries. I don't read them over and I don't enjoy writing very much. The only reason why I'm doing one is because you, the psychologist, say that I will do one to have a better grasp at what could be causing my insomnia by writing down anything I feel is important.

It started about two to three weeks ago. At first, it only happened a few times. I would stay up doing homework, studying, playing games, and counting sheep for one night, and I would be sound asleep on the next one. It was alright at first, as I could use the extra time get some work done. But it became more and more frequent to the point that it's every other day now. I started with the school nurse, and when she couldn't find anything out she recommended me to you, a psychologist. Now I have to visit you every two weeks. And of course, I still have to attend school, although summer break is about to start.

My dad's not too happy about it either, although it's not like he's about to withhold payments for the shrink. He would just rather not have to.

July 14, 2010

I noticed that my last few dreams have had me running and jumping from rooftop to rooftop in the middle of the night at an alarming speed. It's an exhilarating experience, to see cars and people as mere pinpricks on the asphalt and concrete as I soar above them. I don't know what the dreams mean, but I know that it feels real. The wind blows past me as I make the jumps. It's a pure adrenaline rush that nothing can match.

I guess this journal will be focusing on what I dream about. I will write on the days after I fall asleep. So the next entry should be the sixteenth, meaning I fell asleep on the fifteenth. That is, of course, if it follows the pattern.

July 16, 2010

My dreams have changed, or at least for the one last night. Instead of leaping across the night sky, I've begun to inflict bodily harm on myself. It started with cuts. Surprisingly, it hurt, considering how it was a dream. I suppose the theory about pinching your cheeks to wake yourself up from dreams doesn't hold any water.

What confuses me though is that it took a lot of effort to inflict the cuts. I couldn't just drag a razor lightly over my arm. I had to take a knife and forcefully slice into myself. Even then, I couldn't go very deep, or I chose not to. There wasn't very much blood because the cut was shallow.

Afterwards, I took a lighter from my desk and put my hand in its flame. It was hot, but when I took the hand away, I could see no signs of a burn. Not even the small hairs on my arm were singed. When I awoke, my arms looked perfectly fine. It was very strange, indeed.

Thank god I'll be able to sleep on the night after this one, according to the schedule. It's going to be busy on the day after and I'd rather be prepared for it.

July 19, 2010

Surprisingly, I fell asleep last night. Perhaps it was the pain that my upper back had to go through that made me tired, but getting two nights of sleep was definitely comfortable. However, what I dreamed about was disturbing. Taniguchi-sempai was in it. He was heavily injured, bleeding and screaming while on a staircase of sorts, all while looking at me as if I was some hideous monster. I woke up shortly afterwards though, as if my mind had shut out the rest of the event.

I don't know when I'll sleep again. I feel more rested than before though, which is good because this evening will be busy as well. I just need to push aside what I saw last night.

July 21, 2010

Summer break starts today, and my dad has begun filling out the papers for transferring to Kouyouen High School. I can only assume that the reason why the transfer is necessary is business related. Still, I'll be far away soon, so you! Psychologist-san! I hope you have something to tell me after I do all of this journal writing and such.

As for strange dreams, I feel that they are getting weirder and weirder. I was searching names on the internet. I don't recall who they were, but I feel that if I saw the names that I looked up I would recognize them immediately. I don't even know if I was successful at finding the people. At the very least, however, it could be said that the dreams are nonsense, which is what most dreams chalk up to anyway.

June 23, 2010

Last night, I dreamed that I was walking out on the streets at night and looking for someone. Eventually I stopped in front of a homeless man who was sleeping in the end of an alley against a dumpster. I slowly took out the knife I was hiding, held his mouth closed, and stabbed his heart. His eyes opened, but it was momentary and he was lifeless in moments.

I don't know why I dreamed that, but the fact that all of my dreams in the past few days have felt real has made me worry. I can understand that when you dream, chances are you don't realize you're dreaming until you feel the warmth beneath the covers on your bed. You play along with whatever your brain has decided to hypnotize you with for the night and when you wake up, it's simply over. Your brain is done playing tricks with you for the time being because if it didn't stop then you'd be, to put it lightly, in trouble.

I don't know what happened after that. Did I just walk away? Did I hide the body? My dreams are leaving me with questions that I'd rather not face.

June 25, 2010

I dreamed again. There didn't seem to be anything violent or extreme. No one died, no jumping from rooftop to rooftop at breakneck speeds, no self-inflicted wounds.

But everything was in some shade of blue. As I walked the streets at night, the few people I passed were more of a golden color. It's not heat-based. Otherwise I would have seen the streetlights appear white. It was strange, as if I was looking through a pair of sunglasses with a dark blue tint.

Speaking of sunglasses, it was night time, and yet even with the blue hue, I could still see things clearly. One would think that wearing sunglasses at night would reduce visibility, but that was not the case here.

I'm starting to become afraid of falling asleep. While this night may have been a reprieve in regards to the strange ones, I cannot help but feel that they are all adding up to something, something that I am not going to like.

I feel like I'm slowly beginning to lose my sense of reality. After a night of no sleep, everything looks surreal in the morning sunlight, as if space is distorting itself in front of me. But every time I lean in to take a closer look, it seems fine. Could this be the first sign of madness? I feel like I'm living some sort of double life. One night, I am me, but another night I'm not me. But how do I tell which is which? The boundary is beginning to blur in my tired eyes.

June 27, 2010

This may be the last time I write in this journal. I have seen something in my dreams, and it is something that I cannot bring myself to avoid.

I saw my hands writing in another journal, similar to the one you gave me. I did not get to see everything I wrote down, as much of the page I was viewing was already written. I paused in the writing and reached for a glass of… something, it was red. But when I drank it, it was sweet, not like juice but like sweetened milk. Smooth, and not very strong. I daresay that it was delicious.

I then glanced down back at the journal and watched my hands write out "Find this book, and you'll know what's going on." Then I closed the journal, stood up, and put it away at the far end of my bookshelf, tucked between two textbooks.

As I am writing this to you, I am staring, with beads of cold sweat forming on my brow, at the very journal I wrote in my dreams. I want to open it. I want to open it so badly, even if there are terrible consequences to be had. I must know what is going on. It is the insatiability of humanity's need to know. Pandora's box, to use a common idea. The gods told her not to open it, and in the end she did, for curiosity had gotten the better of her.

I tried to reach you several times by your office phone, but it would appear that you were busy today. I was going to ask you for help on the matter, but because of your unavailability, I feel that I have succumbed to my own weakness. I do not blame you for it, for one cannot be available all the time. However, I merely want you to know now that this is of my own volition. I want to see what's written in that journal. What happens afterwards is unpredictable, but this fear of what is written also has made me obsessed with the object.

I must have it. I must know.

Somewhere, somehow, at some place, and at some time in that improperly lit world with the azure giants and Haruhi, I accepted that I was inhuman.

As the blue hand fell down upon me, I felt myself being ripped into pieces down to the cellular level and my psyche torn asunder and divided into factions of its own self before being transported to another world, another dimension. My grip on Haruhi was fleeting as I felt her weight dissolve from my hands. No doubt that the same had happened to her. Soon everything was dark.

When I finally awoke, it was night time. I changed out of my sleeping clothes and put on some jeans and a shirt and jacket to explore the new world I was in, making sure to memorize where my own home was located. As I was out in the darkness, however, I realized that my vampire senses were about me. I quickly climbed to the roof of an abandoned building and began to leap from rooftop to rooftop, covering distances impossible by human standards.

But eventually I grew tired. I returned to my home and rested. When I awoke again, I did the same thing, testing the strength of my body to see just what I could do. But soon I realized something. When I feel asleep after a night of running, I did not wake on the next day, but instead almost a week later. Something was not right. My true self was locked away by my mind. I can only guess that when I spliced with myself on this plane of existence, my thoughts of rejecting my own blood had won, perhaps due to the similarities between this dimension's Kyon and my initial thoughts of my vampirism. At first I was enraged. Despite my own self-acceptance, the true me was moved out of sight from my mind.

But I had broken free from the cage. I began to think of a way out. I started off with questionable activities. I stopped running around and started to examine other parts of my body, particularly limits of pain and how much I could take before I became seriously injured. I did research on people that I knew and killed a homeless man to feed on. Nothing worked until I realized that if I could somehow remind the other self of what I really am, it would help me regain control of myself. I wrote an entry, telling myself who I really was and putting it in a place where I could easily see it from my desk chair.

It worked perfectly. Upon seeing the book on the shelf, his curiosity to solve this mystery claimed him. Upon reading the entry, my counterpart fainted and the two psyches clashed. I took over completely, gaining the memories of my other self.

It's night time now. I'm behind my house and I'm holding my lighter. I turn it on and put both journals over the flame, watching it burn away the evidence that the Kyon everyone knew no longer exists.

I'll have to wait until tomorrow to send a call to the psychologist, though. After regaining control of myself, I spent all day examining my lifestyle and relations in this world.

I am the shadow that I tried to suppress, to pretend that this side of me didn't exist. But this is my true self. Anything that has a connection with how my old self acted and thought I banished. Nothing will stand in my way to turn this world into what I want it to be.