CHAPTER 3: TEST THE DREAM

"Inoue!!"

Someone was calling her name again.

"Inoue Orihime!!"

Who?

"Wake up!"

Wake up? Did I fall asleep again? Sensei might be mad. I had to wake up.

But even if I wake up, I was still in the future.

Wait!!

Future!!

"My future!!" She startled and suddenly got her head up.

"Are you dreaming about your future? In that case you should deal with your current situation first." A female voice was talking.

As Orihime's vision was clear, she saw Oichi-sensei, her first year homeroom sensei.

Did she come back from the future? Or was she still dreaming? To test that, she pinned at the back of her hand hard.

"Ow." She didn't expect that it was hurt.

"What are you doing, Inoue-san?" Oichi-sensei looked at Orihime's action and wondered what happened with this girl today.

"I'm just checking if I'm dreaming." Orihime said and gave out her silly smile.

"You looked like that you were just dreaming for a while there. I think you're tired after preparing for the final exam. Do you want to go to the infirmary?"

Oichi-sensei, you advised the same thing as my second year sensei.

She kept the thought in herself or else Oichi-sensei might think her crazy.

"No, I'm okay. Thank you, sensei."

When she was sure that Oichi-sensei went back to the board, she looked around her surroundings to make sure everything was the same and okay. That she wasn't dreaming.

What was happened just then? Did she time travel to the future? Or everything was just only her dream? Or did she suddenly get the ability of clairvoyant without knowing?

She shook her head with this absurd idea. Seeing the future through the dream seemed odd. Usually, clairvoyants saw the future through the glass ball. Wait, or was the glass ball used by the witches? And Orihime was just a normal human.

After that, she sighed at her own thought, because no normal human had ever experienced what she had been before. Getting kidnapped to another world and then saving the world.

Even if she had something called God-like power, she wasn't God so she was sure that she didn't have that ability to see the future.

In other words, it was like her normal fantasies and daydreaming. She tried to convinced herself and accepted the fact.

After the bell rang to end the period, Tatsuki came to her and asked,

"Are you sure that you got enough sleep yesterday? You were totally sleeping an entire period."

It was the same question that Tatsuki in the future asked. Orihime felt a little bit déjà vu and trembly asked Tatsuki the same question.

"Tatsuki-chan, which period are we now?"

Tatsuki looked at Orihime with a surprised and odd expression. She placed the palm of her hand to Orihime's forehead.

"Has your fever been going down?" She asked. And then Tasuki felt relieved that her best friend's body temperature was okay.

"You were sleeping for the first period. If you don't feel anything well, you can ask sensei the permission to go home early and rest."

"Is today Saturday, December 7th?" Orihime asked another question to make sure whether she should go home and rest like Tatsuki said or not if she was still in the future.

"Yes. Did you bring the wrong textbook for the day?"

"Ah. No. Maybe I didn't have enough sleep yesterday. So I tried to take it back by sleeping in the class. I'm fine right now." Orihime smiled silly.

She was back to her past. She shouldn't make Tatsuki worry because of her own health. Tastuki already helped and took care of her a lot since the day she came back to Karakura Town and because it was silly to tell Tastuki about her dream that she went the future. And Tatsuki had a boyfriend…

Ah right! Why didn't she try to test that?

"Tatsuki-chan?"

"Hm?"

"What do you think about Ishida-kun?"

Tatsuki was surprised at Orihime's question.

She thought that Orihime did really change after she came back. She seemed more thoughtful and mature.

And she started to pay attention to other guys besides Ichigo. This was new action that Orihime in the past had never done before.

Well, it was a good thing though. That she could realize there were other guys that were better than Ichigo a ton. And Ishida was not really bad.

"Well, Ishida is a decent guy to me."

Orihime somewhat felt happy with Tatsuki's answer. They actually had a good relationship.

So that meant the future that she saw was the truth? She needed one more question to be sure.

"Do you like him?"

Tatsuki was bit getting back at Orihime's sudden question. And she tried to settle the thought.

Did Orihime change her target to Ishida? So she asked me to check whether I would accept him if in any case that Orihime liked him.

Maybe that was her question's meaning because there was no way that Orihime thought I would like Ishida in a romantic way right?

"Well, it's not I dislike him or anything. We're classmate after all."

Yeah, that's right. As long as he didn't do anything bad to Orihime, then I'm fine with him. Tatsuki thought.

"Thank you Tatsuki-chan" Orihime was satisfied with Tastuki's answer.

Because right now their relationship was "classmate", not "couple", but because "Tatsuki didn't dislike him" so they might change into "couple" in the future. She was amused with the thought.

"I don't dislike you."

An image about him flashed on her mind for a second.

Didn't he also say the same as Tastuki said in her dream? Was that also a dream of the future?

Now now mixing between the dream and the future and the reality was not a good thing. Also she thought that Ulquiorra would never say that to her.

The last thing he said to her was "I think I actually had some interest in you people." He didn't mean anything about her right?

Although it was him who reached his hand to her first, she never had any chance to confirm at what he said. She just felt that he had more things to say to her, but he couldn't make it into words. She just felt that he had "something" with her. But she was not sure if that "something" was the same as what she thought.

Though she herself was sure that it was Ulquiorra who had already taken her heart away. He was the one who changed her and made her feel that she wasn't a useless one.

Because she was never afraid of him. She was feeling more than sadness when he was gone. Some feeling that she couldn't describe it exactly in her heart. It wasn't like that when she thought about Kurosaki-kun.

Now she didn't feel any heartache when she looked or thought about Kurosaki-kun anymore. But she still felt happy if she saw him, just like a friend. Right. Just like a friend.

We were nakama after all.

Now she could look at Kurosaki-kun just like she looked at Chad without any problem.

She wouldn't need Kurosaki-kun's protection anymore because she could protect herself. Or in any case that she couldn't, she would think a way that she could fight and protect by herself. Because she had her nakama with her, she will do her best to fight alone until they could come to aid her.

Shun Shun Rikka did become stronger because she was stronger after all. And it wasn't bad to retreat if she found no way to win.

Why did she never have such thought before? At the beginning, she was stubborn for the desire to fight, but she couldn't find any good way to fight other than training herself to get more power and end up being a burden.

She didn't realize that protecting was also a kind of fighting. Thinking strategy and finding enemy's weakness were also ways of fighting.

She couldn't believe that she herself could see through the illusion made by Aizen's Kyouka Suigetsu and found a way to counter it. So she could help her friends to defeat Aizen.

It was all because of him.

It was him who gave her a tip to cope with Aizen's power because he himself didn't believe anything unreal or immaterialized that couldn't be seen by his eyes. So illusion didn't work on him. She rejected her vision that could see illusion into the vision that could only see the real. And then she used her power to her nakama so that they could get out of Aizen's illusion.

Everything she did in the battle was because of him. Because of his words to her. Or she could say the real reason that battle had won was not because of her, but because of Ulquiorrra who told her his nature. Or not, she was still the same useless Orihime that kept crying and couldn't help anyone or anything.

The bell rang stopping her flashback thought. She sat back to her seat and tried to concentrate more in her lesson. She didn't feel tired or sleepy anymore.

To be continued...