As Tsuki stepped in, she felt something tug at her, then all of a sudden, she felt the tug become a jerk. A brief surge of panic overtook everything else as she felt her feet leave the ground. Suddenly, she was spinning; spinning into the inky darkness before her. She faintly heard the door behind her slam shut. Unable to repress the panic, she closed her eyes and prepared to scream. Before she could do so, however, she felt her feet touch the ground and the spinning stopped.
Eyes still closed, and with great uncertainty, lifted her foot up, then down, to reaffirm that she was, in fact on the ground. Or at least whatever would quality for ground in this dream.
Her foot met with a faint thump.
Tsuki breathed a brief sigh of relief.
'Okay,' Tsuki thought. 'My foot didn't go through, or make an unpleasant noise. That's good. Do I dare open my eyes?'
Hesitantly, Madotsuki opened one of her eyes, then both, and took in the sights of this strange place she now found herself in.
To her right and left were green walls, almost an unpleasant green, that was adorned with wallpaper of strange faces. The walls were off in that they seemed to branch off into strange angles, forming a sort of cone that started small at the door, and led off to two hallways.
The hallway to the left continued onward for a bit, leading to a corner she couldn't quite see past. The hall on the right stopped abruptly, cutting to a 90 degree straightaway, of which she couldn't quite see the end of from where she was standing.
To her back was the door she just entered. She shook her head, deciding that she wasn't quite ready to go back through and go through the spinning again. She took a few brisk steps forward. She then proceeded to look down.
Madotsuki realized that this was a mistake. Under her feet, a mirror of what was going on around her appeared to be scrolling, almost machine-like, interspersed with strange red numbers, some longer, some shorter, but seemingly random. Madotsuki couldn't make heads or tails of it, but immediately felt a sense of dread seize her.
She wanted to wake up already.
Trying to decide whether exploring further, or putting up with going through the door, Madotsuki sat down, feeling a bit overwhelmed, and close to tears.
"What do I do? This place…it's not…"
Madotsuki struggled to describe what exactly the room was.
"…it's not…real. It's not real. There's no way this is real…"
A sudden thought occurred to Madotsuki.
"Wait, so if it's not real, nothing can hurt me, right?"
Madotsuki stood up at this.
"Yes, it can't hurt me. This is a dream. This is a dream!"
Bolstered by this, Madotsuki took a few steps forward, and looked at the wall next to her. She tentatively poked the strange face with her finger. The face, thankfully, was 2 dimensional.
Feeling a bit more brave, she pressed her hand against the wall. Besides feeling a bit cold, the wall felt solid.
"Okay, you can do this. I can get through this."
Madotsuki took a few more steps and continued a ways to the hallway on her left, until she entered what looked like a huge, empty room. There appeared to be more of those red numbers here, spelling out even longer numbers than the spot by the doorway.
Madotsuki made a small whimpering noise at the sight of this, swallowed the fear and dread she felt at such a huge, apparently empty room, and stepped out from the hallway.
Nothing happened.
"O-okay. I just need to remember where this hallway is. Okay, I can do this…"
Madotsuki took a few more steps out into the room.
Nothing happened.
Madotsuki proceeded to walk towards the middle of the room. 'Why is it so empty?'
After a bit, she spied a wall ahead of her.
Deciding to walk around the wall, she slowly peeked around the corner after hiking around the wall.
Nothing happened.
Madotsuki saw what appeared to be an entrance to somewhere ahead of her, and deciding that there wasn't anything here out to hurt her, made her way over to the entrance.
Within, she saw water that was not water. The "water" appeared to be made of numbers that "flowed" to her right.
She decided this would make for a good spot to sit and collect herself.
"You know, I think my dreams are rather boring." Madotsuki mumbled to herself.
She sat for a bit, poking at the number "water", noting that it still rippled like water did.
"This reminds me of that bad anime Poniko used to watch all the time…what was it called? It had to do with the world being a digital construct, and the ones who could "see" through the illusion were the only ones who could save it.
The hero was a teenage college student who just woke up one day and could "see" the digital world for what it was. He eventually ran into a woman fighting some kind of glitch being and through sheer dumb luck, managed to help her defeat it.
She offered to explain what he was, and how he could help keep this world from becoming undone by the "glitches", beings who at one point could see through the world, just like they could, but instead used this to exploit the nature of the world for power. This "power" would usually corrupt whatever environment they happened to find themselves in.
It was such a stupid, corny show, and yet…Poniko would never miss an episode…"
Madotsuki felt her eyes growing hot, threatening to release more tears.
"…Why am I even thinking about this?"
She stood up, trying to compose herself.
"I…guess I'm just trying to pass time until I wake up…"
She stopped, frowning.
"This is stupid."
As she was about to turn around, she heard an odd splashing noise that seemed to originate along the stream to her left.
Immediately trying to find the source of the splashing, Madotsuki was greeted by the sight of a thing in the water. It reminded her heavily of the mask from some famicom game she played, something about an evil mask trying to wipe out the planet, and the hero had 3 days to save it all.
For whatever reason, it appeared to be waving at her. Not sure what to do and feeling that sense of dread fill her, she waved back, turned away from it, and bolted all the way across the empty room back to the hallway.
Feeling that was enough exploration for one dream, she made her way to the door she entered from, grabbed the handle, and pulled it open.
She had forgotten about the spinning.
-0-
Landing once again, slightly dizzy and disoriented, Madotsuki felt herself relax.
She was back in the room full of doors once again.
Without a second glance, she made her way over to the door that would take her back to her room, wrenched the door open, and stumbled back into the comfort of her "room".
This elation lasted, until she remembered that she was unable to wake up, and would still have to wait until she woke up.
Sighing, she made her way to her desk, and rested her head upon it's wooden surface, only to start as she felt her forehead stick to something lying there.
Sitting up properly, there appeared to be a diary of sorts resting on her desk.
'Um, I don't think this was here when I left.' Madotsuki thought.
With nothing better to do she opened it up, and thumbed through the pages. The words appeared to be written by her hand, and in bulleted form. One of these pages appeared to be loose and had a crude drawing of an egg. Underneath the drawing in tiny writing appeared to be some instructions for something.
One stood out in particular.
"If at any time you wish to awaken, simply place your fingers on your face, and pinch u*ing t*e *** key."
At least that's what it looked like. The end was smudged, and she wasn't sure if that last word was actually "key".
Deciding that the last bit wasn't important, and waking up now being the more pressing matter, Madotsuki brought her fingers up to her face, and sharply squeezed…