Warnings: PLEASE READ THIS VERY CAREFULLY, especially on FFnet. The limited options for formatting made this a nightmare to render coherently, and it is CONFUSING (it's supposed to be, but the formatting didn't help matters). If shit seems to repeat, it's not an error. Just go slow and it'll come together in the end, promise.


Lucky Child

Chapter 116:

"Homeward Bound (Part 3)"


As grudging as the overcast day outside, I admitted to Tom and Nori: "I guess my main issue with the story is its goddamn length."

Tom snickered at the growl in my voice, lips curling beneath the fall of his thick beard. Nori trotted ahead of us over the slick pavement, sniffing at the sidewalk and fallen leaves, his fur only slightly less shiny than the rain-soaked sidewalk. I'd fallen asleep the previous night listening to that rain come down. Drops plinked off the cover on the chimney with musical cadence, scent of petrichor funneling down the column of that smokestack to perfume the living room as I read Lucky Child on my phone. The weight of the phone had felt unfamiliar in my grip, but soon my fingers learned to grasp the device and skim through pages of text with nimble strokes. I held that phone again during my walk with Tom and Nori the next day, after sleeping in late and lying in bed till an absolutely ungodly hour in the afternoon. It goes without saying that I felt fantastic… aside from the broken arm, of course. That ached all the time, so to distract myself, I kept up a stream of chatter as we walked through the neighborhood, Nori guiding us along a path Tom claimed we typically took on weekend mornings.

Well. Perhaps "chatter" is a bit forgiving.

What I really did was rant.

And according to Tom, that's what our walks were all about. We spent our walks with Nori (one in the morning, one at night) ranting to each other about our days, our woes, the state of the world and our opinions on it. Our walks constituted a period of "couples' bonding time" amidst the rest of our busy lives, as he put it. The topic of the hour that day proved to be Lucky Child, as is only natural when one spends eight hours reading something and blocking out everything else in the damn world. Something (namely Tom's mischievous and contented smile) told me this wasn't the first time I'd had a lot to say on this subject, either.

"I mean, don't get me wrong," I said, watching Nori sniff at the base of a tree before lifting his leg (an impressively yoga-like feat). "I've enjoyed reading it, but it's excessively long. It would be a more effective story if you trimmed out the fat and cut down on the number of side characters." I paused to reflect upon the differences between fanfiction and original works. "But then again, I think exploring characters is sort of the point of fanfiction, so… and readers do seem to enjoy it…"

Tom shook his head and laughed. "I just can't believe you don't remember writing LC. It's been a part of your life for almost as long as I have."

"It's weird when you put it that way." Feigning horror, I grasped my heart and gasped, "I'm in a relationship with my fanfic!"

"Aw, babe," Tom lamented with obvious cheek. "Are you cheating on me with a work of fiction? I'm hurt."

"Eh, you shouldn't be too threatened." I rolled my eyes. "It's not like these characters are real, anyway."

Tom laughed at the joke, squeezing my hand before Nori bolted after a squirrel and yanked Tom down the sidewalk after him—but as I stood there upon the pavement, watching their hilarious caravan stomp across someone's picturesque suburban lawn, disquiet stole through me, a yawning pit opening in the depths of my stomach.

My stomach had been doing that a lot lately. And like the times I'd felt that pit in my gut before, I couldn't put a finger on why it had opened in the first place.

Tom dragged Nori back off the lawn and over to me in short order. "God, he's the fastest dog alive!" he said, glaring at Nori (but without any malice; love for the dog shined in Tom's every word, even when he called Nori a weasel). Falling into step beside me again, Tom said, "So what part of the story are you on?"

"She—" I paused. "I—um?"

"You usually say 'she' when you talk about Keiko," he helpfully informed me. "Third person, right?"

"Third person, yeah." My turn to take his hand and squeeze; anyone who learned writing terms on my account had all my love. "She just took a backpacking trip with Hiei to rescue Yukina."

He let out a low whistle. "So you've got a long way to go to finish reading, then?"

"Yup. But I already feel like it's too long." The work didn't quite feel like mine, so criticizing it came as naturally as breathing. I ticked each area of improvement off on my fingertips, saying, "The details are agonizing and the emotions are just, ugh, so overwrought, and I'm pretty sure I could combine half of these characters if this wasn't a fanfic where people expect to see the whole cast, but…"

"But what?"

I shrugged. "This is a first draft, technically. I update week-to-week, right?"

"Yeah," said Tom. "You usually write the chapters the same day you release them. Well, you outline them ahead of time, but the actual writing and stuff you do the day-of." He looked nearly wistful, then. "Man, you sit at your desk for like 12 hours at a stretch and forget to eat. It's nuts." A sly smile stole across his mouth. "And you say I'm a bad procrastinator. But, y'know, takes one to know one."

But I didn't rise to his teasing. I was too busy processing this, staring at the damp, sparkling pavement as it passed below our feet. "So this is definitely a first draft, then," I muttered, more to myself than to Tom. My hand stole into my pocket, fingers winding around the phone within. "No beta, no editor, not polished. No wonder it meanders a bit in places. Honestly, I'm shocked it's not worse."

Tom laughed. "You're back to your old self."

"Hmm?"

"You like to shit-talk your work, but clearly it must be OK if people like reading it," he said. "I think you're too hard on yourself. Your story is good."

"Maybe." I shrugged again, uncomfortable with compliments I didn't feel I deserved—and then I took a deep breath, bracing myself to admit a fear that had been brewing ever since I began reading Lucky Child. "I dunno, though. I don't want to disappoint anyone if I can't keep writing it the same way I used to."

Tom took my hand. "They'll get it if you need to take some time before going back to updating," he said, words low and soothing and soft. "Plus, you gotta remember the story before you can continue it. They'll understand that. Your readers always have your back."

The sheer logic of this made sense. "I'll have to make a post on Tumblr or something and explain what happened to me." A beat passed before I (somewhat desperately) asked, "You said I have one of those, right?"

His laughter filled the air like drizzle, soothing and cool. "Yeah, you do," he said. "And you seem to have a really full Ask Box, like, 900% of the time."

To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure what an Ask Box was, so the joke didn't quite land. Tom slipped an arm around my shoulders when he saw this. It felt warm against his side; I shrank into him without thinking, cradling my broken arm against my chest to rub at the cast protecting it from the elements.

"Try not to think about it," he said, pressing a kiss against my temple. "Just read and update when you have the energy. You don't have to rush."

By all accounts, this was true. Tom claimed (and the numbers suggested) that Lucky Child had amassed a following of considerable size (much denial I felt about this, for the record). They'd wait for me if I needed to take time off, he claimed… but it still felt like I'd let people down if I didn't continue writing the story eventually. The comments I'd read indicated there was still quite a ways to go until we reached the resolution, and I'd followed enough unfinished fanfics to know the pain of an incomplete story. If I didn't get back on the updating ball soon, then…

Tom nudged me with a hip. "Why don't we order food and take it easy tonight? Maybe play some games together, or watch a movie?" he said—a welcome distraction from my worries. "There are a lot you might have forgotten that you'll enjoy. It'll be like re-meeting an old friend."

That sounded wonderful, and I told him so, pressing a grateful kiss against his scruffy cheek.

We spent the day with each other, just relaxing and basking in each other's company. I read snippets of LC between chatting with Tom and cuddling with Nori on the couch, movies and TV episodes filling the hours as the sun crept lower in the cloudy sky. Eventually Tom decided that we needed a special treat ("Because today feels like a special occasion," he said), so he baked one of his famous chocolate cheesecakes as I looked on, offering to help as he melted chocolate and put together the creamy cake mix. Tom mostly rejected my efforts to assist, but eventually I wore him down enough to at least help him when he needed to take the cake out of the oven.

I shouldn't have intervened, however. When it looked like he might not have a good grip on the baking sheet, I reached out on reflex to help—but with my broken arm. All I achieved was giving the pan a hard bump, one that sent the water in the bain-marie sloshing over the edge of its tin. For a second it looked like the boiling water might spill onto my hand, but Tom jerked the tray away and out of reach before it could.

His foot, however, wasn't so lucky. The water had to go somewhere, and as he lifted the pan away from the oven, the errant liquid splashed onto the floor, where his foot sat bare and waiting. Immediately his skin broke out in a gigantic red blister; somehow Tom didn't jerk the baking pan again, though, managing to set it on the counter with a rattle before hopping from foot to foot, aggrieved air hissing between his teeth.

"Oh my god!" I said, stretching my hands toward him to do… I wasn't sure what, exactly. To help? "Oh my god!" I repeated, words as impotent as I felt inside.

"It's OK, it's OK!" Tom shook his head, still hopping. "Ow, fuck!"

"Get on the counter, the counter!" I pointed at the sink, darting over to get the cold tap running. "Quick, quick!"

For a 6'4'' man, Tom sure was spry, leaping onto the counter to shove his feet into the drum of the sink like a gazelle on steroids. I ran for the first aid kit he told me I'd stashed in the hall closet, and as we treated his burn, I shot him a ferocious glare.

"Tom, you—why did you do that?" I said. "You shouldn't have taken that bullet!"

"Hey, you already have a broken arm," he retorted, comically accusatory. "A twice-broken arm! We don't need you getting burned, too." He pasted on a smile to hide a grimace. "Me, though? I can take it. We're a team; we share the load."

My eyes rolled as I opened a packet of iodine. "My hero."

"Hero, huh?" His lashes fluttered. "How 'bout a kiss for my heroics?"

"You earned it, Mister Hero," I said, laughing when he winced at the sting of antiseptic. "Bravery and valor, that's you. The very portrait of a knight in armor."

"Aww, shucks," he said, faking a blush. "Oh, stop it…" And then he winked, making a 'come here' gesture with his hand. "Actually, keep goin'." Before I could do so, however, he looked over at the oven and yelped, "MY CHEESECAKE!"

It was always laugh-a-minute with Tom, even in the face of extreme burns and potentially overcooked cake (it was fine, for the record, a fact that made Tom sigh in overstated relief). The laughs continued as dusk fell and we ordered a sushi feast online through a magical app called DoorDash, one Tom said he'd heavily relied upon during the 2020 quarantine. After we placed the order, we settled in for a marathon of something called The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, which Tom claimed I adored—a claim that made sense considering it was an adaptation of a Shirley Jackson novel I loved beyond all reason. But as we sank onto the couch to wait for our food and Tom wrapped an arm around my shoulders, I looked up and poked his cheek with a tender fingertip.

"You know, I'm surprised," I said in the timbre of gentle teasing. "You haven't talked about playing video games at all today."

But Tom just batted my hand away, grabbing it and pressing a kiss to my knuckles. "They can wait a day," he said. "I just wanted to spend some time with you."

"Did a brush with death remind you just how much you love me?" I teased.

"You know what they say," he said. "You don't know what you got till it's gone."

I laughed, assuming he was joking—but he didn't join in. He just kissed my hand again, holding it to his lips as we traded a long, strange stare, one that made the hair along my arms rise to chilled attention. It lasted for an uncomfortable length of time, the air in the room thinning until breath prickled in my throat.

"Tom?" I said. "Are you OK?"

"I'm great." A smile broke through the storm clouds in his eyes. "Luckiest guy in the world."

But he didn't say anything else. He just looked at me, smiling that soft little smile I couldn't make sense of, loving and sweet but—but something else. Perhaps desperate, or maybe nostalgic? It was hard to tell. I wanted to ask, to make him tell me whatever he was thinking behind the overcast pall in his eyes, but—

The doorbell rang, and Nori went fucking ballistic. Full-throated barks, stripe of thick hair fully erect along his spine, teeth bared and a growl rumbling in his small chest… he was only 30 pounds, but I'd never seen a dog that fierce. He leapt off the couch and sprinted downstairs at full tilt, barking like mad at the door as a trio of knocks rapped against the wood.

"Oooh, yay! Food's here!" was all Tom said, though. He untangled himself from my arms and the blanket we'd curled up beneath, heading for the stairs with a shout of, "Nori, ya little weasel, calm the heck down! It's just the sushi man!"

I didn't follow them right away.

I just sat there, staring at my reflection in the TV screen, wondering if the shroud in Tom's gaze had really looked like tears, or if I had imagined them entirely.


The sushi tasted good, but also strange. When pressed, I couldn't quite articulate quite why. "It just… it just isn't right," was all I could say when Tom requested elaboration. "It's missing something, somehow."

"Huh." He gestured at me with his chopsticks as his eyes lit up. "I think one of your meds' side-effects was that it would mess with your sense of taste, right?"

"Maybe." I looked away—not because he was wrong, but because the sight of the chopsticks pointed at my face put a pit in my stomach again. "Or maybe it's just not great sushi."

Tom admitted that might be the case; apparently we hadn't ordered from this restaurant before, and it was a strange fusion establishment that mixed Mexican and Japanese cuisines. Perhaps they'd added an odd spice or marinade. Tough to say, but in the end the food proved palatable enough to finish off.

For the most part, anyway. Tom cleaned his plates, but upon mine a few bites still lingered, untouched.

After dinner, we walked Nori through the neighborhood a second time, pavement once more slick with evening drizzle and typical east-Texas humidity. Afterward we cut slices of the cheesecake we'd made and settled back in for more Hill House (which, true to Tom's promise, I enjoyed quite a lot). Much though I liked the series, though, it felt nice and warm to sit tucked against Tom's side, Nori's heavy little head pillowed on my thigh, and soon my eyes grew heavy with the weight of sleep.

Tom beat me to it, however. Just as I started to doze off, a snore rumbled in his thick chest, startling me awake as if I'd been doused in cold ice water. Nori lifted his head sleepily off my leg as I eased off the couch, putting it back down with a contented grumble as I extricated myself from the family-cuddle-pile and stood up. It had gotten a bit warm between Tom and the dog, and Tom's deep snores made hearing the TV tough; sensing I wouldn't get a very good Hill House watching experience, I crept away and padded downstairs, standing in the living room on uncertain feet.

Along the living room's back wall, I caught a flash of my reflection in the silver mirror Tom said I'd hung there so many months before—but as soon as I beheld two blue-grey eyes staring back at me, I looked away again.

That face, lined in places I'd never seen before, still didn't feel like mine.

The grey couch in the center of the room, with its plush cushions and soft pillows, beckoned. Curling up against an armrest, I slipped my hands into the pocket of my hoodie to pull out my phone. The girl in the phone's background smiled at the starry sky, vanishing when I pressed the Google Chrome icon and opened to my current spot in Lucky Child. In it, Not-Quite-Keiko and Hiei trekked through a dark forest in pursuit of Yukina's place of captivity, making camp beside a stream before bedding down for the night.

Reading Lucky Child constituted a particularly odd experience, unsettling not for the content of the story, but for the content that came after each chapter. The author's notes provided glimpses into my unremembered life that I had not been expecting when I first stumbled across them. New jobs, new friends, moving, illnesses, small worries that felt big in the moment but were soon forgotten as the weeks went by—they provided shocking insights into the life that was mine-yet-not-mine-at-all. They detailed when I moved in with Tom, when we adopted Nori, busy periods and happy times… and times that weren't happy at all.

My uncle has died, said one note in particular. Seeing those words in print is surreal and heart-rending. He died after a long struggle with heart disease. His death is not necessarily a surprise, but even in the light of expectation, it remains no less of a shock.

Rain began to fall outside as I reached that author's note, tears dripping in tandem with the weather as I read about Viking funerals, Harris' love of Shakespeare, and a request to the readers of Lucky Child to pour out a drink in his name. I pressed onward through the story with feelings of desperation, hoping to learn more, seeking closure for this out-of-nowhere wound that made my heart feel like it was bleeding.

But closure did not come quickly. I sank into the story for a long time before finding even a crumb. I had the Dark Tournament to read through, including the chilling revelation with the ever-smiling Hiruko, before Not-Quite-Keiko's secret broke free of its silence and emerged for her world to see. What followed were chapters describing an unsettled feeling of disquiet as her world turned upside-down, feelings I related to with aching, uncomfortable familiarity—and then came Byron. Anyone who'd known my uncle could see him in Byron, every last word and mannerism a loving homage to the most recognizable man who'd ever lived. I drank Byron's scenes down like someone dying of thirst, more engaged by his appearance than the narrative of the story itself. Hungrily I hunted through the chapters following his introduction, skimming and absorbing until I reached chapter 114.

That chapter I read a little closer than the others, because chapter 114 was… odd.

It contained a lot more for Tom than usual, for one thing. He came to Not-Quite-Keiko in dreams, cryptic utterances falling from his mouth, accompanied by a monster forged of darkness that made Keiko yell blue murder in her troubled sleep. Something didn't seem right about this, the further and further I read, but I couldn't quite place my finger on why a sensation of nagging dread kept rising, a tide pulled to the shore by the moon—

The cup in my hands fell into the soapy water with a splash, read the text of Lucky Child.

Her collapse started innocuously enough. A dropped cup, a buzzing in her ears. But like an avalanche of pain it crashed down all around her, vision whiting out as vomit bubbled from her mouth, and soon she was carried to a hospital by strong arms and cries of concern and fear. I read this with heart in my mouth, fingers pressing tightly to my lips, eyes skimming faster and faster—

—and then she woke up. She woke up in a hospital, hand held by warm fingers, and—

"It's OK, babe," Tom said. "It's OK. I'm here. You're here."

His arms around me tightened.

"You're safe," he said.

"You're home."

I stared at that passage for a long time, silence as perfect as Tom's perfect face. Faintly, beneath the sound of pattering rain, I heard his snores in the upstairs den, where he lay beneath the watchful gazes of my Yu Yu Hakusho posters. Where he slept in contented ignorance to my discomfort on the floor of the house below. Where he lay in obliviousness to the way my skin had begun to crawl, my memory of that moment in the hospital—

"It's OK, babe," Tom said. "It's OK. I'm here. You're here."

His arms around me tightened.

"You're safe," he said.

"You're home."

—and the writing of Lucky Child overlapping in cacophonous, discordant harmony.

A shudder ripped up my back like a blade tearing at the seam of an antique shawl, threads stretching until they snapped. Releasing the breath I'd been holding for at least a minute, I jammed the "next chapter" button, moving on to chapter 115—

Retrograde amnesia—a loss of memory-access to events that occurred or information that was learned in the past, often caused by an injury or the onset of a disease. It tends to negatively affect episodic, autobiographical, and declarative memory, while keeping procedural memory intact without increasing difficulty for learning new information.

In layman's terms, I couldn't remember anything for shit.

The neurologist's office. Tom's jokes about my missing memories. The trip home along familiar highways. The goddamn Blizzard. I sat up inch by inch, word by word, spine going ramrod straight as the hum of familiarity turned into a crashing thunderclap of recognition. Meeting Nori and knowing his name without knowing how, the red front door, the tour of the house, rising dread and uneasiness, Tom telling me everything I'd missed, the fucking pandemic

This was my day yesterday.

Chapter 115 of Lucky Child outlined the day I had only just lived—but I hadn't written this. I hadn't had time. When could I have possibly written this chapter, or posted it, for that matter? And the way it ended, with me picking up my phone to read the story from the beginning…

Hands shaking, I tried to press the button to move forward, to go into the next chapter—but nothing was there. It ended with chapter 115.

I sat there in silence as perfect as Tom's perfect face for one minute. Then two. Then three.

Had Tom… could Tom have done this? He was the only one who—

But, no. He couldn't have. Tom loved math, not writing. He hated writing. And this was my style, my thoughts, my feelings encapsulated in text. Tom knew me well, but he wasn't inside my head. The person who'd written this had a front-row seat to my reality.

Which meant only I could've written this.

Me, and only me.

Thunder in the distance rumbled. I don't know how long I sat there, that time. Long enough for the rain to stop and start again, at least, the sounds of Hill House and Tom's snores still drifting down the stairs. Once more my thumb drifted for the "next chapter" button. Once again it found nothing to press. Desperately, my eyes roved across the phone's bright screen, searching for something, anything, that might make sense—

Star Charter.

That's what the bright orange words at the top of the page proclaimed. Star Charter. Charter of the stars. That was my penname. A name I'd constructed from a favorite quotes about living by ones ideals. And while I was familiar with the name because both Tom and FFnet itself had told me that was my penname, something about it nagged at me for a different reason. A reason I couldn't quite—

Wait a minute.

Hitting the chapter menu, I began to scroll, searching for a familiar title: "All's Well That Ends Well." The climax of the confrontation with Hiruko during the Dark Tournament. Fingers flying, I used the "Find" feature to type in my penname, heart leaping when two results showed in the search bar—

"You made this entire world about you," Hiruko had sneered, staring down Not-Quite-Keiko in a reconstruction of her memories. "Pride is your greatest weakness, Not Quite Keiko, Star Charter, nameless wisp of consciousness in the scope of the broader universe—"

Star Charter. He'd said it. Hiruko had said the name, calling it out explicitly, using the name of the story's own writer to address—

To address—

"That's me," I whispered, reality gelling into place, fire catching on dry tinder, a forest igniting under the strike of an atomic bomb. "That's me. That's her. I'm her. But I'm not, because I couldn't have written this—I couldn't have written this."

The truth descended, as certain as the ground beneath my feet.

"I couldn't have written this," I said aloud, "because I lived it."

Without warning, the world around me shattered, then, and my memories returned—one by one, in order.

Darkness.

Then a blinding light.

Then warm arms, and words I didn't understand.

Took me a long time to figure out what happened. Might seem obvious to you that I'd somehow been reincarnated into a new body with memories of my old life intact, but when you're caught in that situation yourself, reality takes a while to sink in. Not just because the situation is so utterly impossible as to be unbelievable—though of course that's part of it.

It took me a while to figure out what was happening simply because the brain of an infant doesn't possess the same processing power as an adult brain.

God, being a baby again had sucked ass. A grown adult trapped in a body that couldn't even wipe its own damn ass—talk about embarrassing. But that hadn't held a candle to the grief of leaving my old life behind, trading warmth and love and Tom for terrifying uncertainty.

But I didn't have long to think about that, because I had a lifetime to live all over again.

The boy had come out of the shadows so he could stare at me. Big brown eyes, made even bigger by his thin cheeks, glittered dark and wary. A mop of untidy black hair, cheeks streaked with dirt…he was too skinny. Judging by the hollow cheeks and twiggy arms, I'd bet you could count his ribs. My mom would have a fit and force-feed him if she saw him.

Me? I just stared. Everything inside me had gone cold and quiet, echoes of emotions casting tentative shadow on my shock-dark soul.

I knew exactly who this was, without quite knowing how.

And that meant everything was about to change.

The boy and I stared at each other for a minute. I think he expected me to talk first, but I didn't. I couldn't. The cold and quiet were just too loud. Eventually he sniffed, wiped his nose on his arm, shoved hands into pockets, and kicked a toe at the grass.

"You…you said shit," he said. He almost looked impressed.

"Don't tell me mom," I said. "I'd get in trouble."

"I won't tell," he said, offended. "I'm no tattletale. And I didn't need your help. I would've beaten them up soon." He crossed his arms, chin lifting. "I was just warming up."

"I believe you," I said. No use arguing, if he was the stubborn boy I suspected he was. "What's your name?"

Hesitation. He looked me over, sizing up my clean jumper and trim pigtails, weighing them against my coarse language and sweet face.

Then: "I'm Yusuke."

I closed my eyes. The cold inside roared deafening.

"Yusuke what?"

"Urameshi."

"Right. Of course you are."

"What's that mean?"

"Nothing." I opened my eyes. "I'm Yukimura Keiko."

Yusuke. How could I have ever forgotten Yusuke? But I couldn't reflect on the swell of love inside my chest, because someone else wanted to say hi, too.

He looked up, narrow eyes widening above cheekbones so sharp they could cut—and just like with Yusuke, the minute our eyes met, I knew who I was looking at. Those eyes, that curly hair, and those cheekbones were the stuff of anime legend. I went cold all over, stomach a ball of hollow ice.

was this allowed?

Was I allowed to meet Kuwabara so early?

He looked as perturbed as I felt, though clearly for different reasons. He grabbed another fist of earth and threw it into the air.

"Boom," he repeated. He sighed like a deflated balloon. "It's a volcano. But it's dumb."

As the cold in me abated, I considered sprinting in the opposite direction. Keiko and Kuwabara didn't know each other in the anime—not until they intersected in the wake of Yusuke's death, when Yusuke possessed Kuwabara's body. That had always struck me as strange. Kuwabara and Yusuke interacted a lot, and Kuwabara, Keiko, and Yusuke all went to the same school. The idea that Keiko didn't at least know Sarayashiki's #2 Punk by sight didn't make sense. But the anime made it seem like they didn't know each other, so…

Like I said.

Was meeting him like this allowed?

No time to answer that question, to reflect on the answers I surely had found along the way to the present, where I sat remembering everything upon a dog-hair covered couch. There was no time because the next memory pressed in quick and sharp, a sword sneaking between my ribs with the intent to kill.

Despite my teacher's proximity and the chatter of my classmates, I heard the classroom door creak open.

A flash of red appeared in the corner of my vision.

The girls at my school all wore red uniforms. The boys wore a weird pink-purple shade.

Despite this assortment of warm colors, the second I saw this particular flash of red appear…I knew.

I knew.

I kept my eyes locked on my teacher's face. I didn't turn as the red smudge in my periphery walked behind me and out of sight. I carefully maintained a neutral expression, spine erect but relaxed, as I heard a chair rattled and slide across the floor. I did not react as, below the murmur of other students' conversations, a schoolbag hit the flat of a desk with a thump.

There's no describing how I knew, from nothing more distinct than a smudge, that Kurama had sat down somewhere behind me.

Certainty crackled across my awareness like electricity, biting and undeniable.

Kurama was here.

I could feel it.

And just like I could feel Kurama in that moment, I felt my brain breaking in the present, fabric of memory unspooling and re-stitching itself in a desperate attempt to realign what it knew then with what it knew now. A firework of pain flowered behind my right eye, migraine bursting into being like exploding dynamite. I shrieked and cupped my face in my hands, but it didn't do anything to stop the flood of memory.

If anything, it only made it worse.

He stood no taller than five feet, crowned by an impressive shock of blue-black hair that could probably poke my eye out of Hiei got too close. Its deep navy color remained dark until light persuaded sapphire highlights into view. The odd white streaks in his hair were just that: odd. Streaky, grey, like he was actually a lot older than his height suggested. Or (more plausibly) like he'd gone to a salon and requested the weirdest dye-job on the planet, then had stuck a fork into a toaster and let it pick his spiky hairstyle.

His face, however, struck me far more than his height or hair.

The eyes dominated his features, of course. Small chin, delicate jaw, rounded cheeks, all topped by scarlet eyes so large they might actually have come out of an episode of the anime. They possessed a luminous quality that reminded me—strongly, inexplicably—of the reflector on the back of my bicycle at home. His eyes caught the light and reflected it in a glowing flash the same way those red reflectors winked bright even in the dark, eerie and inhuman in its color's bold intensity.

There was absolutely no mistaking this person for a human, that's for sure. No cosplay contacts could ever hope to replicate the coruscant quality of those eyes.

I probably would've found him intimidating if he didn't look like a goddamn child.

Before I could laugh at the recollection, the memory changed, once more snapping to another moment in time before I could process the first. Dozens of memories crowded forward for attention in an endless tsunami of color and sound and taste and scent and touch, a lifetime of the stuff force-fed into an unprepared stomach, stretching and groaning and horrible and dense—

But were any of these memories real? The thought came to me unbidden as I curled into a ball upon the couch, panting, barely able to feel the air on my skin beneath the memories' onslaught. Were these real memories, or were they just memories of the story I'd read? Were these just the images I'd imagined when I first read Lucky Child, or were they something I had experienced, or—?

"N-no," I groaned into the couch. Fingers dug deep into my hair, rain striking the chimney like bullets, every pop and ping as deafening as thunder. Addressing no one, and everyone, I shrieked, "No—no, it's not some story! That was my life, goddammit!"

Or was it? With conviction I'd cried my truth to the universe, but speaking it aloud hadn't helped. The memories still crashed, confusion unabated, rain pounding ever harder on the roof and the chimney's metal cap—

I think I may have fainted, because the next thing I remembered was waking up.

It felt like I'd eaten a bag of cotton, lungs full and limbs heavy. My head still pounded, face wet with tears I didn't remember shedding. Around me, the world hadn't changed. I sat right where I'd been upon the couch, dog hair flecking the fabric of my comfy yoga pants. I moaned when I sat up, massaging my aching temples with both hands—and then something ignited in my blood, the urge to move rising high and hot and overwhelming. On shaking legs I staggered upright, toddling into the master bedroom at the foot of the stairs with stars in my eyes and winged things fluttering in my veins. Upon the bedside table sat my tablet; I spotted it like a magnet drawn to a lump of iron, bolting for it so I could take it in my hands, fingers smoothing over its flaking faux-leather case. I'd purchased the tablet on Black Friday with my mother, I recalled, back in 2009—

No. It's 1990. I live in Tokyo. We don't have tablets. I'm Yukimura Keiko and I don't own a tablet computer. Tablets aren't a thing yet. TABLETS AREN'T A THING—

"Shut the fuck up," I hissed, and I wrenched the tablet's cover off. The password came to me as naturally as breathing, typing the letters with a staccato clatter of fingernail on plastic keys. The desktop took a second to load (the thing was old as hell, after all, and on its final legs, another memory I knew without knowing how), and when it did I beheld the digital faces of Kurama, Yusuke, Kuwabara, Hiei standing against a backdrop of falling gingko leaves—

I didn't let myself look at them, at their wrong faces—faces nothing like the ones still calling for attention inside my head. I just scanned the document folders on the desktop, instead, zeroing in on the one titled "FANFICTION." It opened with a flash of white, revealing more sub-folders marked with the familiar names of fanfictions past, stories I'd written in college and even before that, and the ones I'd written afterward—

And Lucky Child, of course. It sat in the middle of the alphabetized list, innocent yet somehow menacing.

Before I could lost my nerve, I clicked on it. Within lay numbered folders: chapters 1-10, 11-20, all the way up to the hundreds. I clicked 111-120 in a flash, scanning the documents within. 111, 112, 113, 114, 115—

116.

Chapter 116 lay at the bottom of the list, the final chapter in the folder. The most recent chapter of the work. The chapter that, if it was anything like 115, would be about—

My breathing hitched.

I opened the document.

As grudging as the overcast day outside, began the 116th chapter of Lucky Child, I admitted to Tom and Nori: "I guess my main issue with the story is itsgoddamn length."

Tom snickered at the growl in my voice, lips curling beneath the fall of his thick beard. Nori trotted ahead of us over the slick pavement, sniffing at the sidewalk and fallen leaves, his fur only slightly less shiny than the rain-soaked sidewalk. I'd fallen asleep the previous night listening to that rain come down. Drops plinked off the cover on the chimney with musical cadence, scent of petrichor funneling down—

My breathing hitched again, harder that time, as I read with dawning horror about my day with Tom—about walking the dog and ordering sushi, baking cheesecake and burning Tom's foot, watching Hill House and listening to the rain on the roof. About him falling asleep and snoring, getting up to read Lucky Child on the couch—

The grey couch in the center of the room, with its plush cushions and soft pillows, beckoned. Curling up against an armrest, I slipped my hands into the pocket of my hoodie to pull out my phone. The girl in the phone's background smiled at the starry sky, vanishing when I pressed the Google Chrome icon and opened to my current spot in Lucky Child. In it, Not-Quite-Keiko and Hiei trekked through a dark forest in pursuit of rescuing Yukina, making camp beside a stream before bedding down for the night.

Reading Lucky Child constituted a particularly odd experience, unsettling not for the content of the story, but for the content that came after each chapter. The author's notes provided glimpses into my unremembered life that I had not been expecting when I first stumbled across them. New jobs, new friends, moving, illnesses, small worries that felt big in the moment but were soon forgotten as the weeks went by—

Reading the note about my uncle. The chapters about the Dark Tournament and the secret coming out (chapters I remembered both as writing and as lived memory, a disorienting mix of recollections that layered on into another in a perplexing feedback loop), about the confrontation with Hiruko, chapter 114 ending in—

The cup in my hands fell into the soapy water with a splash, read the text of Lucky Child.

Her collapse started innocuously enough. A dropped cup, a buzzing in her ears. But like lightning it crashed down all around her, vision whiting out as vomit bubbled from her mouth, and soon she was carried to a hospital by strong arms and cries of concern and fear. I read this with heart in my mouth, fingers pressing tightly to my lips, eyes skimming faster and faster—

and then—

"It's OK, babe," Tom said. "It's OK. I'm here. You're here."

His arms around me tightened.

"You're safe," he said.

"You're home."

I stared at that passage for a long time, silence as perfect as Tom's perfect face. Faintly I could hear his snores in the upstairs den, where he lay beneath the watchful gazes of my Yu Yu Hakusho posters. Where he slept in contented ignorance to my discomfort on the floor of the house below. Where he lay in ignorance to the way my skin had begun to crawl, my memory of that moment in the hospital—

"It's OK, babe," Tom said. "It's OK. I'm here. You're here."

His arms around me tightened.

"You're safe," he said.

"You're home."

and the writing of Lucky Child overlapping in cacophonous, discordant harmony.

A shudder ripped up my back like a blade tearing at the seam of an antique shawl, threads splintering until they snapped. Releasing the breath I'd been holding for at least a minute, I jammed the "next chapter" button, moving on to chapter 115—

Retrograde amnesia—a loss of memory-access to events that occurred or information that was learned in the past, often caused by an injury or the onset of a disease. It tends to negatively affect episodic, autobiographical, and declarative memory, while keeping procedural memory intact without increasing difficulty for learning new information.

In layman's terms, I couldn't remember anything for shit.

The neurologist's office. Tom's jokes about my missing memories. The trip home along familiar highways. The goddamn Blizzard. I sat up inch by inch, word by word, back going ramrod straight as the hum of familiarity turned into a crashing thunderclap of recognition. Meeting Nori and knowing his name without knowing how, the red front door, the tour of the house, rising dread and uneasiness, Tom telling me everything I'd missed, the fucking pandemic

This was my day yesterday.

Chapter 115 of Lucky Child outlined the day I had only just lived—but I hadn't written this. I hadn't had time. When could I have possibly written this chapter, or posted it, for that matter? And the way it ended, with me picking up my phone to read the story from the beginning…

Hands shaking, I tried to press the button to move forward, to go into the next chapter—but nothing was there. It ended with chapter 115.

Except it didn't end with chapter 115. I was reading 116 on my bedroom floor, kneeling on the carpet as I hunched over the tablet (the tablet 1990s Keiko should not have had), reading about memories returning to me (memory of those returning memories both a memory of the memory and of the written recollection of the memory), reading about fainting and waking up, of stumbling into the—

I wrenched the tablet's cover off. The password came to me as naturally as breathing, typing the letters with a staccato clatter of fingernail on plastic keys. The desktop took a second to load (the thing was old as hell, after all, and on its final legs), and when it did I beheld the digital faces of Kurama, Yusuke, Kuwabara, Hiei standing against a backdrop of falling gingko leaves—

I didn't let myself look at them, at their wrong faces—faces nothing like the ones still calling for attention inside my head. I just scanned the document folders on the desktop, instead, zeroing in on the one titled "FANFICTION." It opened with a flash of white, revealing more sub-folders marked with the familiar names of fanfictions past, stories I'd written in college and even before that, and the ones I'd written afterward—

And Lucky Child, of course. It sat in the middle of the alphabetized list, innocent yet somehow menacing.

Before I could lost my nerve, I clicked on it. Within lay numbered folders: chapters 1-10, 11-20, all the way up to the hundreds. I clicked 111-120 in a flash, scanning the documents within. 111, 112, 113, 114, 115—

116.

Chapter 116 lay at the bottom of the list, the final chapter in the folder. The most recent chapter in the work. The chapter that, if it was anything like 115, would be about—

My breathing hitched.

I opened the document.

As grudging as the overcast day outside, began the 116th chapter of Lucky Child, I admitted to Tom and Nori: "I guess my main issue with the story is its goddamn length."

Tom snickered at the growl in my voice, lips curling beneath the fall of his thick beard. Nori trotted ahead of us over the slick pavement, sniffing at the sidewalk and fallen leaves, his fur only slightly less shiny than the rain-soaked sidewalk. I'd fallen asleep the previous night listening to that rain come down—

Thus, the cycle began anew.

I don't know how long I sat there, reading the looped text. I don't know how many times I read the cycle of description bleeding into reality bleeding into memory bleeding into description—reading text that described a memory, a new memory forming on top of the old, text supplanting and replacing my first recollection, merging and dancing and swimming until I couldn't tell any of it apart. My head swam, eyes hazy, hands clenched around the tablet, reality turning into writing and back again in an endless, aching fractal, impossible to understand or tease out, impossible to do anything but get swept away—

"Babe?" said Tom, silhouette a figure of looming black against the doorway. "Are you OK?"

The spell broke. I slammed the cover atop the tablet's screen, words plunged into darkness I secured in place with the cover's elastic band—scared bindings to hold back the curse of that infinite document, incongruous and impossible and strange. A sob wrenched from my dry throat when I staggered to my feet, whirling to hold the tablet between myself and Tom like the frailest of shields.

I wasn't sure of anything anymore. Not after that. And much though I loved him, that included Tom—Tom and Nori both, dog standing by Tom's feet where he stared at me through uncertain eyes, ears pricked and tall as he listened to my ragged breathing.

"Babe?" Tom repeated. "What's wrong?" He took a single step into the room, darkness covering his perfect face. "You're kind of freaking me out."

I held the tablet toward him, shaking it. "What the hell is this?"

"What—?"

"This isn't—this isn't normal!" My voice broke, another strangled sob wrenching up my neck. "This isn't right. What the fuck is going on, Tom?!"

Another step toward me, slow and purposeful. I still could not see his face. "Babe—"

"Don't call me that!" I shrieked. "My name is—"

The words died. I couldn't continue. I shrieked again and shoved past him into the living room, Tom and Nori following at my heels. Nori's nails clicked against the tile with every step, a soloist wailing against the accompaniment of the rain upon the windows. Tom looked like his heart would break and pour out of his eyes as he tried to put an arm around me, but I shoved him off and rounded the couch, putting the furniture between the two of us like another shield.

"It's OK. It's OK, babe," he was saying in the tone you'd use to gentle a horse. "You're home. That's what matters." More certainty this time: "You're home."

But I shook my head. "No."

"Babe—?"

"That's not what matters. Being here is not what matters." I pointed at the tablet in my hand, smacking my palm against its cover, thoughts a babbling brook that came pouring from my mouth in a river of anger, confusion, fear, dread, sorrow, the emotions of two lifetimes lived in quick succession expressed in a handful of gibbered words. "What's real, Tom? What's not? That's what matters to me. That's what fucking matters! Which life is mine? Which one? Because it can't be both! It's not both, it has to be one, it has to be—"

"Can't it be both?" Tom asked.

Like a flipped switch, my babbling stopped. I stared at Tom in silence; he stared back with naked desperation in his bright blue eyes, mouth thin and hard amid the thicket of his beard. But soon his eyes softened, and he reached for me, coming around the couch with arms outstretched. I danced away, out of reach. He stopped in the same spot where I'd been standing, and in the reflection of the mirror over his shoulder, I saw the terrified, tear-streaked reflection of my own, foreign face.

Slowly, Tom's hands fell to his sides, where they hung limp and motionless.

"Can't it be both, babe?" he said in softer tones, sadness resonant in every word. "Because if it was… it would be a beautiful life."

"Yes," I agreed, after a time. "It would."

We looked at one another. We really looked.

"But I'm sorry, Tom," I told him. "That's just not how this works."

Tom held very still.

Then, his eyes closed.

As if through water, his head drifted down, eyes falling to the floor. Nori whined and pawed at Tom's ankle out of sight below the back of the couch. One limp hand rose, clutching the back of the couch as his knees apparently gave out, sending Tom to the floor with a grunt and a groan. His other hand covered his eyes; Nori whimpered louder and reared up on his back legs, licking at Tom's cheek as the air around them appeared to darken, waves of despair rendered visible by some unseen painter's brush. Pity swelled in my chest. I started to go to him, to put my arms around him—

Movement in the mirror caught my eye. I gazed into my own stare, caught within it like a spider in a web. A ringing rose up, squealing and awful, a bout of tinnitus far louder and higher than any I had ever heard. With a cry I covered my ears, calling out to Tom to do the same.

Again, something in the mirror moved.

Once more, I met the eyes of my reflection.

They were no longer grey or blue, but black.

The reflection still looked like me (or like the me I didn't recognize, at least), but her eyes had filled with pure black like the heart of the earth where no light can penetrate, white and irises filling up with liquid shadow that soon spilled onto her skin, filling them up and then falling outward in a rush of tarlike ichor. It pattered onto her chest and dribbled down her shirt, spreading like a mold wherever it struck, creeping over skin and down the tips of her hair until her skin and body vanished into shade. I watched it happen in glacial horror, unable to move or speak as she raised one black-clawed hand and reached forward, fingertips pressing against glass—

The mirror cracked.

The demon in the mirror screamed, and the mirror at last shattered, spraying sharp crystal shards across my face. From behind the glass the creature scrambled, levering its hulking and distorted mass over the edge of the mirror and then outward, one black foot—a foot that had mutated into a gigantic, clawed paw—swinging onto the tile floor beside Tom and Nori.

I started to run, terror injecting the urge to flee into my bones—but I stopped, eyes on Tom and Nori.

"Tom." His name came forth upon a whisper, and then upon a frantic scream. "Tom, Tom, Tom—what the fuck, Tom, RUN!"

But Tom didn't run. Neither Tom nor Nori moved a muscle, nor did they pay the creature any mind at all, sitting behind the couch as the thing finished pulling itself from the mirror and into the waking world. Tom just sat there with oppressive clouds of despair wreathing his face and eyes as the creature rose to its full height above his, its horned head brushing the ceiling, massive feet cracking the glass that had fallen like hard hail to the floor. Tom did not even move when the creature took a step forward, foot hitting the ground with such great weight, the tile floor cracked and shattered.

Tom and Nori did not move.

I, meanwhile, heeded my own advice, and ran.

I didn't know the house well enough to hide effectively, though I did my damndest to make myself small—small enough to fit behind the white lounge chair in the corner of the upstairs living room, at least, back pressed to the wall as I hunkered down and out of sight. Downstairs the creature shattered glass and threw furniture, tearing apart the home I shared with Tom with vicious impunity. Why it hadn't come after me immediately, I wasn't exactly sure, but I didn't question its motives. I didn't even question why the creature seemed oddly familiar. I was too busy wondering what the fucking hell was happening or where the monster had come from in the first place, not to mention why Tom hadn't reacted to its presence, or—

A sob twisted free of my throat, burning along the way. All at once I became aware of the frantic thunder of my heart, the way black threatened the corners of my vision, my breath shallow and rapid from fear and adrenaline. Oh, oh, poor Tom, he hadn't even tried to save himself. He'd just sat there as the creature crawled out of that broken mirror, not bothering to save himself, not bothering to save Nori, not even bothering to save me

Downstairs, the monster roared, a window shattering in a crystalline scream of broken glass. Drawn to the sound, I twisted to look out from around the chair, checking to see if it had come sneaking around the edge of the stairs—but it had not. The landing at the top of the stairs was empty, bathed in blue illumination from the flickering TV screen. No one had bothered to pause Hill House yet, I guess. Tom must have come looking for me when he woke up and found me gone, and—

As I slid back down behind the chair, I spotted something on the coffee table: the first aid kit. I'd brought it with us when we started watching TV, intending to check Tom's burn eventually. My eyes locked on the kit, freezing me in place, exposed but too fixated to be properly terrified at the thought of the monster spotting me.

The second it looked like I'd been about to get burned, Tom had pushed me out of the way. He'd taken the bullet. "We're a team; we share the load," he'd said as he put his foot under running water.

Tom… he was my partner. He'd never leave me to deal with this alone. He'd never abandon me—not to a burn, not to a monster, not to anything.

Like before, the truth crystallized into place with a snap of icy clarity.

"This—this isn't real. This is a dream." But that wasn't right, and I amended: "No. Not a dream. It's a fucking nightmare!"

Thus spoke, thus realized. Lucidity settled like a cloak of mist, bracing and certain, no question that what I'd said was true entertained in any part of my mind, body, or soul. This was a nightmare. This was a dream, and I'd dealt with dreams like this before. I recognized the feel of it, the way nothing made sense even as the pieces seemed to click together perfectly, god, how had I not realized it sooner?

Not time to wonder, no time to ask. Time to act. Time to move.

A quartet of framed posters hung above my hiding spot. Light glinted off the smiling, dead-eyed faces of Kurama, Hiei, Yusuke and Kuwabara, but even though their uncanny countenances chilled me to the bone, I still shot them a hysterical grin.

"Oh, but you're gonna love hearing about this when I get back," I said—and then I made myself wake up.

Only, I didn't.

I stared at the posters of my boys in shock, mouth open wide in confusion and fear. I'd made myself wake up from bad dreams before, but this time when I'd tried to trigger that part of myself that only existed in the waking world, nothing happened. Nothing around me changed. I stayed crouched behind that chair in this horrible waking nightmare world as the monster roared again, so loudly this time I clutched my ears to drown out the ghastly noise. As I hunkered, I tried to at least make myself lucid-dream, but nothing happened whatsoever. The monster kept roaring and I kept existing in this space and time, unable to wake or gain control.

"What do I do?" I cried as the monster screamed again. Panic gripped my chest like the claws of some ravenous beast. "I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do!"

The monster stopped roaring—but then, as if summoned by my cry, a heavy foot descended on the stairs. Then another. Then a third. It was coming, and with a shriek I threw myself out from behind the chair, running headlong across the room and down the hall, flinging myself into Tom's game room and slamming the door shut. A few unpacked boxes, Tom's massive office chair, and a heavy rug were easy enough to shove in front of the locked door as a rudimentary barricade, but that was all I had. Not enough to keep the monster out. Not nearly enough, not nearly

The roof.

I ran to the window and threw it open, because if I couldn't keep the monster out, then maybe I shouldn't stay in (or so ran my panicked thinking). Outside of Tom's window lay the jutting square of roof that shielded the back porch from the elements; tossing the tablet I'd somehow not dropped out ahead of me, I levered myself onto the rain-slick roof as quickly as I could, scrambling for purchase so I could wrench shut the curtain and the glass after me to disguise my escape route. I finished just as the bedroom door rattled, a massive weight colliding with its expanse as the creature shrieked and gibbered, eager for my blood (or so I had to assume). As far as I could tell, it would still take a minute or two for it to get into the room—but how smart was it? Would it know I must've gone out the window, or would it go back the other way in confusion? What would it do? What should I do? What should I—

With a cry of fear, I clutched at my head, temple and forehead on fire with pain and stress, tablet still clutched in my hand knocking painfully against my cheekbone—

The tablet. The goddamn tablet!

I ripped off the elastic and threw back its cover, typing in my password as fast as I could… only the attached keyboard wouldn't connect, magnets shoddy from years of use. I ripped off the keyboard and connected it again with a scream, slamming the keys until finally the devices connected and my password appeared in the entry box. The computer opened to right where I'd left off in the middle of chapter 116, but as I scanned the document, I noted with relief that more black words marked the white page. Judging by the size of the scroll bar, I still had a ways to go.

"Thank fucking Christ for spoilers," I said, frantically scrolling down. When new and unfamiliar words appeared, I cracked my neck and muttered, "Well. Here goes fucking nothing!"

Took me a minute to get oriented. The unfamiliar text didn't just concern what happened next—it concerned where I'd left off reading. The way the maelstrom of memories had swept me away, text a cycle of memories embedded within memories that only broke when Tom—

"Babe?" said Tom, silhouette a column of looming black against the doorway. "Are you OK?"

The spell broke. I slammed the cover atop the tablet's screen, words plunged into darkness I secured in place with the cover's elastic band—

"No, we're past that already," I growled, flinching every time the monster slammed against the door of Tom's computer room. Scrolling like mad, I muttered, "C'mon, c'mon, c',mon…"

Movement in the mirror caught my eye. I gazed into my own stare, caught within it like a spider in a web. A ringing rose, squealing and awful, a bout of tinnitus far louder and higher than any I had ever heard. With a cry I covered my ears, calling out to Tom to do the same.

Again, something in the mirror moved.

Once more, I met the eyes of my reflection.

They were no longer grey or blue, but black.

The reflection still looked like me—

"Fuck! C'mon you longwinded blowhard, get to the goddamn point!"

With a cry of fear, I clutched at my head, temple and forehead on fire with pain and stress, tablet still clutched in my hand knocking painfully against my cheekbone—

The tablet. The goddamn tablet!

I pumped a fist into the air. "Thank Christ; we're almost caught up!" But no time for celebration. I lowered my head and devoured the text, gobbling it in swift, desperate scans as I sat alone upon that isolated patch of slippery roof, swiping at the drops of rain the flecked the tablet's screen.

I ripped off the elastic and threw back its cover, typing in my password as fast as I could… only the attached keyboard wouldn't connect, magnets shoddy from years of use. I ripped off the keyboard and connected it again with a scream, slamming the keys until finally the devices connected and my password appeared in the entry box. The computer opened to right where I'd left off in the middle of chapter 116, but as I scanned the document, I noted with relief that more black words marked the white page. Judging by the size of the scroll bar, I still had a ways to go.

"Thank fucking Christ for spoilers," I said, frantically scrolling down. When new and unfamiliar words appeared, I cracked my neck and muttered, "Well. Here goes fucking nothing!"

Took me a minute to get oriented. The unfamiliar text didn't just concern what happened next—it concerned where I'd left off reading. The way the maelstrom of memories had swept me away, text a cycle of memories embedded within memories that only broke when Tom—

"Babe?" said Tom, silhouette a column of looming black against the doorway. "Are you OK?"

The spell broke. I slammed the cover atop the tablet's screen, words plunged into darkness I secured in place with the cover's elastic band—

"No, we're past that already," I growled, flinching every time the monster slammed against the door of Tom's computer room. Scrolling like mad, I muttered, "C'mon, c',mon…"

Movement in the mirror caught my eye. I gazed into my own stare, caught within it like a spider in a web. A ringing rose, squealing and awful, a bout of tinnitus far louder and higher than any I had ever heard. With a cry I covered my ears, calling out to Tom to do the same.

Again, something in the mirror moved.

Once more, I met the eyes of my reflection.

They were no longer grey or blue, but black.

The reflection still looked like me—

"Fuck! C'mon you longwinded blowhard, get to the goddamn point!" I screeched at the computer.

With a cry of fear, I clutched at my head, temple and forehead on fire with pain and stress, tablet still clutched in my hand knocking painfully against my cheekbone—

The tablet. The goddamn tablet!

I pumped a fist into the air. "Thank Christ; we're almost caught up!" But no time for celebration. I lowered my head and devoured the text, gobbling it in swift, desperate scans as I sat alone upon that isolated patch of slippery roof, swiping at the drops of rain the flecked the tablet's screen.

Here, the page went blank.

The cursor blinked at the end of the sentence, a heartbeat pulsing in the silence.

I stared at it for a second in disbelief.

Then: "Well that's not helpful at all!"

But then, before my eyes, the document rippled. The cursor stuttered. Black words stained the page one after another, a stream of writing flowing into being in the spaces between seconds. Distantly I heard wood splinter and groan, and then heavy feet pounded into Tom's computer room. I ignored the sounds, though, reading as if my life depended one it—because as far as I knew, it did.

The words read:

Here, the page went blank. The cursor blinked at the end of the sentence, a heartbeat pulsing in the silence.

I stared at it for a second in disbelief.

Then: "Well that's not helpful at all!"

But then, before my eyes, the document rippled. The cursor stuttered. Black words stained the page one after another, a stream of writing flowing into being in the spaces between seconds. Distantly I heard wood splinter and groan, and then heavy feet pounded into Tom's computer room. I ignored the sounds, though, reading as if my life depended one it—because as far as I knew, it did.

"NOT HELPFUL!" I bellowed. "NOT FUCKING HELPFUL YOU MORONIC PIECE OF—"

More words stuttered into being:

"NOT HELPFUL!" I bellowed. "NOT FUCKING HELPFUL YOU MORONIC PIECE OF—"

"OK, now you're just being an asshole!" I hollered, watching as a transcription of those words appeared upon the page—

The monster had no intention of letting me read further developments, however. Even through the window glass I heard it rip the curtain aside, a shadow falling over the glowing tablet like a funerary shroud. Briefly I thought of pitching myself over the side of the roof to get away, but despite the cold of its presence, I didn't tear my eyes from the screen.

"OK, now you're just being an asshole!" I hollered, watching as a transcription of those words appeared upon the page—

The monster had no intention of letting me read further developments, however. Even through the window glass I heard it rip the curtain aside, a shadow falling over the glowing tablet like a funerary shroud. Briefly I thought of pitching myself over the side of the roof to get away, but despite the cold of its presence, I didn't tear my eyes from the screen.

—because after those words appeared, more followed.

They read: "As soon as the thought occurred to jump, I knew that was what I must do—then, as the glass above me shattered, I said: "I take it back—I fucking hate spoilers!"

And with that, I closed my tablet, darted out from under the monster's swiping claws, and hurled myself over the edge of the roof and onto the grass below."

For a second I just stared.

Then, as the glass above me shattered, I said: "I take it back—I fucking hate spoilers!"

And with that, I closed my tablet, darted out from under the monster's swiping claws, and hurled myself over the edge of the roof and onto the grass below.

I hit the ground and somehow managed to roll, breaking my fall with a move so uncharacteristically nimble, I popped up and just stood there for a second, shocked into inaction. But the monster on the rooftop gave an ear-splitting wail, frightening me into giving a wail of my own, and I put the nimble roll out of my mind. I just sprinted around the side of the house to the back gate, grabbing its metal handle and pulling with all my might.

But it didn't budge. "Aw, shit—this gate sticks!" I said, knowing I was right (but without knowing how). Rattling the gate some more, I muttered, "Dude, dude, just fucking open—!"

A heavy thud; another roar, and feet pounded into the space behind me. I spun and stared in horror at the thing, now at least eight feet tall and crowned in curling horns, reaching back to try and pry the gate open again. It didn't budge, however, and the monster made of darkness advance a single, predatory step—

And then something went 'clang,' a heavy stock-pot (a stock pot?!) hitting the ground at its side with a sound like a gong.

Behind the monster stood Tom—Tom's perfect face arranged in a determined grimace, a frying pan in one hand and a hammer in the other, Nori at his side, hackles raised to full attention and teeth bared in a gleaming-toothed snarl. A low growl issued from Nori's throat as the monster slowly turned to regard Tom with its sightless, eyeless face, my dog—my beautiful, brave boy—snarling with a splatter of foaming lather.

Tom only glanced at me for a second before his head lowered.

"Run, babe," he said—and he hefted his hammer high.

He moved in slow motion, almost—like he leapt through heavy water, movements impossibly sluggish as he jumped at the creature through the humid, midnight air. Nori did, too, jaws and sharp teeth aimed at the monster's enormous ankle. I wanted to tell them to stop, to not be fucking heroes. I wanted to tell Tom to grab Nori and run with me. We could all get away if we worked together, I knew we could, I knew

But Tom and Nori landed on the monster before I could say a word. I just screamed his name as he laid into the creature with his hammer, sending chunks of black ichor splashing against the side of the house. "Go, go, go!" he screamed, punctuating each blow with a strike of the hammer. "Get out of here, run!"

"I'm not leaving you and Nori—"

Blue eyes flashed like igniting pilot lights. "I CAN'T LOSE YOU AGAIN, GODDAMMIT!" Tom roared—and because I had never seen eyes like his, so solemn and determined and full of love-tinged desperation, I did as he asked and scrambled over the top of the gate with another nimble leap I shouldn't have been able to perform.

Then, final obstacle cleared at last, I ran—and I hated myself for it.

Because I did not know where else to go, I ran to the park where we'd taken Nori earlier that day—only this time, I didn't have Nori to chase like a white rabbit leading me to wonderland. This was no wonderland, after all. This was a nightmare of the highest order, and try though I might, I just couldn't make myself wake up or even lucid dream.

And without those tricks at my disposal, just what the hell was I supposed to do?

By the time I made it to the neighborhood park with its picnic tables and small playground, I teetered on the verge of collapse. I basically did collapse onto one of the picnic tables, sitting on it to hang my head between my knees and try to catch my labored breath. Every intake of air felt like a knife between the ribs, wind misty with spring's warmth against my face. Above hung a bloated super moon, a watching eye that cast silvery light over the playground and made haloes around the nearby streetlamps. Orange and red leaves lay on the ground on an autumnal carpet, slippery as I'd run across them, and—

Wait. Orange leaves. Fall. But spring rain? What season was it? I honestly couldn't tell, but then again, maybe it didn't even matter. If this was a dream, then none of it was real, and—

No. Cut that shit out. Don't get distracted. Focus on action, not reflection, you navel-gazing piece of shit. What should you do next? Think about that, dammit!

The first step toward getting yourself out of the mud is figuring how deep you are in it, not to mention what you have at your disposal to use as a mud-extraction tool. Yeah. That sounded right. Looking around, I took stock of the trees, the playground, the community center beside the park (locked and closed for the night, of course). Aside from that stuff, my clothes, my tablet and myself, I didn't have much to work with here. Maybe if I shook a tree, I could get a big stick somehow? Use that to defend myself? Or I could break into someone's garage and grab a chainsaw. Would definitely need more than Tom's hammer if I wanted to go toe-to-toe with… well, with whatever that thing was. I had a feeling Tom wasn't going to be able to hold off the monster for long with just a hammer and a 30-pound husky mix…

Guilt sliced into my chest, but I ignored it. There was no time to indulge in self-pity. Not yet, anyway.

Feeling composed enough to stand, I hopped off the picnic table and paced, restlessly combing over the park and the street, the homes and the trees, and the dark community center. Aside from a few sticks, I had relatively little to work with. I could probably use a swing's chain to strangle someone, or maybe beat them to death with my tablet, but neither of those ideas held much water. But what else could I do with the tablet? Use it as a very breakable shield? Nah, that was an even worse idea. What I needed was a damn sword or something—

Lightbulb moments aren't typically so obvious, but just then, I had about the most obvious light-bulb moment of my life. If the creature didn't know where I was, they were sure to know now, because I'm pretty sure the force of my idea lit up the entire block. Hardly daring to hope this might work, I lifted the tablet up and stared at it. Considered. Made plans and hatched plots.

Whispered: "What's mightier than the sword, they say?"

No time to answer my own rhetorical questions; now was the time to act. I marched back over to the picnic table and sat down with purpose, propping open my tablet and slapping the power button until the screen ignited. The keyboard behaved itself that time, thank my lucky stars, and the computer followed my commands as I scrolled down to the very, very bottom of chapter 116's source document. I didn't let myself read any words along the way; getting caught in one of those reading-reality traps was sure to be a bad thing, so all I did was skim the document's current final paragraph:

No time to answer my own rhetorical questions; now was the time to act. I marched back over to the picnic table and sat down with purpose, propping open my tablet and slapping the power button until the screen ignited. The keyboard behaved itself that time, thank my lucky stars, and the computer followed my commands as I scrolled down to the very, very bottom of chapter 116's source document. I didn't let myself read any words along the way; getting caught in one of those reading-reality traps was sure to be a bad thing, so all I did was skim the document's current final paragraph:

Perfect. That's right where I thought the text would leave off. Satisfied, I tore my eyes away before I could see it write anything else. Keeping my gaze low, fixated upon the white space below the words instead of upon the words themselves, I cracked my knuckles and flexed my fingers, hovering them over the keys as I prepared myself for what needed to happen next.

Earlier the document had, for the most part, written itself in tandem with my actions.

Now, though, I needed it to work the other way around.

"I'll show you who's the nightmare," I said to my own reflection, and I cracked my knuckles one more time. "So buckle up, buttercup—prepare yourself."

As if summoned once again, the monster—close enough for its cry to hurt my ears—gave a mighty roar.

I looked up with a terrified gasp, scanning the park and the community center, but the monster wasn't there. It wasn't until the thing moved that I spotted its bulk at last, figure lurking only a few hundred feet away down the road leading back the way I'd come. It stood upright, horns silhouetted against the burnt orange sky and beneath the undulated limbs of a tall oak tree—but as soon as I saw it, the thing dropped to all-fours, loping forward like a lion sprinting toward its prey.

A few horrible insights flashed through my head as it sailed down the road, claws gouging into the pavement and scattering concrete with every thundering step it took, unnaturally graceful as it moved like an oiled shadow through the night, eating up the ground between us with alarming speed. If it was here, that meant it made it past Nori and Tom. Had they been hurt? Had it seriously injured them, or worse? Or did that even matter since this was a dream, and—

No time. No time!

Of their own accord, my fingers began to fly.

"The creature slowed," I wrote, eyes dropping to the screen. "The creature slowed as if running through thick ichor, air around it constricting its movements like a vice."

The moment the final period hit the page, the world bowed to my whim.

I felt it change. I felt the fabric of the world shift. I didn't need to lift my eyes from the document to see the monster slow, struggling to move through the thickened air with every step it took. I just felt that my whim had been made real, but there was no time to marvel, revel or congratulate. My fingers continued to fly, pounding out text as fast as they could.

"The street began to boil beneath its feet," I wrote, "asphalt turning to molten tar between one breath and the next." I winced at the cliché but kept going anyway. "Like a dinosaur caught in a tar pit, the monster's body sank into the muck—"

"Oh god, that's a terrible simile," I muttered.

"—dragging down its limbs with heavy ichor and molten heat."

"That's way too many 'moltens' in two sentences!" I said—but I didn't have time for self-critique. I just tore my eyes away from the tablet, searching out the monster in the street.

It had managed to get within a few dozen feet of my spot at the picnic table, shockingly, just beyond the curb separating the park from the street. The liquefied, steaming street tugged at its thrashing limbs, trying to drag it down into the depths even as it fought to remain on the surface—where it could try to get to me, I understood from the way it clawed at the curb, crawling and dragging itself in my direction. Long tendrils of molten asphalt clung to its black body, blackness steaming from the heat of the tar, but it didn't seem in pain. More like… inconvenienced. Its roars—the din of a car crash mixed with the screams of mourners—certainly sounded more furious than pained…

Still, I was pleased with the results of my experiment. "Take that, you stupid motherfucker!" I said. "But I ain't done yet."

The next thing I typed was the most important of all. Taking a deep breath, I pecked at the keys with quick intention, choosing my words this time with care as the monster writhed and bucked against its bonds only a few dozen feet away.

"Nori and Tom were fine and in perfect health," I wrote. "They escaped the monster without sustaining any injury. They got away to safety just in time—and the monster would never come for them again."

As before, I felt the two of them appear beside me the very instant the last period struck the page. Tom stood beneath a nearby tree with Nori's leash in hand, dog sitting at his feet wearing his usual blue harness, tail wagging, tongue lolling happily from his mouth. But while Nori appeared unbothered, Tom looked around with eyes wide, blinking in confusion as he beheld the monster—still struggling in the grip of the liquefied road—and then me, sitting at the picnic table with hands on my tablet's keyboard. His confusion abated when our eyes met, slipping away like water spiraling down a drain, expression replaced by one of certainty and satisfaction.

"You would, wouldn't you?" he said with all affection. "Look who's the hero now."

I wanted to grin, make some smartass quip—but the monster roared, clawed hand grabbing onto the grass beyond the curb and sinking its talons deep into the dirt. Ignoring Tom, who stood closer to it than I sat, it tried to heave itself out of the road and onto the embankment at the border of the park, midnight body straining and quivering with determination and exertion.

I knew what I had to do, of course… but my eyes strayed back to Tom. To Nori. To the man I'd once loved and the dog I had come to love, the two most important pieces of my life standing within reach, but as far away as the bloated super moon above.

But then Tom caught my eye.

He nodded once, sharply.

My hands descended upon the keys. Words flowed bright and harsh and hot as the monster roared again, its other hand reaching the grass and sinking deep into its roots, body at last pulling free of the asphalt and tar.

The creature was too late, though.

"Everything was fine, after that," I'd written. "I woke up happy and safe, free of the nightmare at last."

As the monster roared, I hit save.

I closed the document.

And everything fell away.

The sky went first, fitful starlight and the swollen moon vanishing like chalk struck from a blackboard. The houses and the park followed, and soon the street did, too. The trees disappeared and the grass fell away, a strip of film burning into nothing in the light of a too-hot projector bulb, reality bleeding through the nightmare in swathes of sensation and color that did not match the dream in which I'd swum. White walls showed through gaps in the sky and rends in the monster's hide, a hanging IV bag staining the sky, and as the demon gave one final bellow into the patchwork of the nightmare world, it reached for me with outstretched claws.

The last thing I saw was it reaching for me, and then the flash of Tom's blue eyes, tears wet upon his cheek, lips moving to form the words I love you, I love you, I love you—and then I was awake.

This time, for real.


I woke in a hospital bed beneath the light of a crescent moon.

For a moment, I didn't move. I just stared up at the blank ceiling, white plaster marred only by a single vent, taking in the feeling of sheets rustling against my skin, the faint pain of an IV piercing the skin of my elbow, the sound of my father snoring as he slept upon the floor. My mouth felt dry, my eyes gummy and gross—but I did not shy away from these sensations.

They felt nothing like the fabric of that dream, after all. A comfort that told me I had woken up, for real.

With clarity I remembered the dream—that nightmare world where monsters and angels alike did dwell. How could I have believed, even for an instant, that the dream had been real? It felt nothing like the sheets whispering against my skin. It had sounded like a hollow facsimile of my father's snores, of the IV bag hanging at my bedside, fluid glinting in faint blue light cast by the vitals monitor suspended on the pole below. All of this felt far more solid, far more real than anything in that dream.

Why hadn't I realized I was dreaming sooner?

Tom was the answer, I supposed.

I had not wanted to believe he had not returned to me.

For a long while, I lay unmoving in the hospital bed. But I wasn't tired—the opposite, actually—and sleep would not come. In increments I sat up, careful of the needle in my arm, to look about the room.

As predicted, my father stretched out on the floor to sleep, soft snores filling the room which whispers of peaceful breath. My mother occupied the chair to my right. My father's jacket covered her body, her tear-stained face left exposed above the garment's collar.

My parents. My parents were here. And that meant—that meant I was back, didn't it?

Despite knowing this was a good thing, my eyes pricked with tears.

Once again, I did not move for a long while. Happiness and sadness alike suffused my chest, warm and cold in frustrating turns. My parents' faces filled me with joy, but… Tom.

Oh, Tom.

It had been good to see him again. He had seemed warm and alive and real—the realest thing in the dream by far, apart from the ravenous monster. What a bittersweet feeling, having held him again, if only for a short while. What a bittersweet fever dream, to see the life we could have had, if only fate had allowed me to live it. Glancing at my parents again, the ache in my chest turned sharp with pain, with grief, with love. I'd traded Tom's love for theirs, and I—

A flash of gold; a glint of platinum; a silver sparkle on the air.

I thought I was seeing things at first. Maybe I was still sick with whatever had made me collapse. Because surely the tiny little lights—those sparks of illumination no larger than a fleck of glitter—dancing above my parents' sleeping heads weren't real, were they? They couldn't be. They hovered just above their foreheads, like fireflies held immobile in glass, winking like embers flying skyward on a dark night, almost too small to see, flickering when I turned my head.

… what the hell?

Bones possessed with awful ache, I forced myself to move, sliding from my bed to swing legs over its side. My mother's knees brushed my bedside, she sat so close, and with one shaking hand I reached out to touch the golden spark hanging so bright, so beautiful, above her head.

The moment my fingers touched it, the spark flashed. I snatched back my hand as it ballooned outward, a field of color ringed in more of those flashing, glitter-flecked embers. The colors in the center of the field swirled, a maelstrom of light and shadow and hue, until they came together and coalesced into shapes and sounds.

My mother climbed the stairs in our home. Ahead of her climbed a girl with short brown hair. She looked at my mother over her shoulder and laughed, taking the stairs two at a time until she vanished at their top.

"Keiko!" my mother cried, reaching for her. "Keiko, wait!"

But it was no use. She continued to climb the stairs into infinity, but she never reached their top.

The dream—because that's what I'd just witnessed: a dream of me dreamt by my own mother—ended shortly after that. The golden sparks around the image faded, shrinking back down into a pinpoint of light that continued to hover just above my mother's face.

I stared at it for a long time.

Then, joints stiff and creaking, I rose from my bed and knelt at my father's side.

Like my mother before him, his dream blossomed like a flower in the air beneath my touch, showing me the image of a playground on a warm summer day. A small child with brown pigtails played in the sandbox, piling up the sand into the shape of a lopsided castle. My father sat beside her and laughed in delight, pressing pebbles into the sand to decorate her work. The pebbles glittered like jewels, but they paled in comparison to the sound of my father's laugh.

"It looks great, sweetie!" Dad said. "Now why don't we make another tower, huh?"

The girl in the dream—my childhood self clad in pink overalls and smiles—said yes, and she hugged her daddy tight.

As before, the dream faded, spiraling back down into a single spark floating motionless in midair.

… no seriously, what the fuck?

The IV stand rattled when I dragged it away from the wall, pulling it after me out of the room's open doorway and into the shadowy hall beyond. A clock on the wall by the nurse's station said it was after 3 AM, which explained the dark and quiet. Faintly in the distance down the hospital's winding halls, low voices discussed a patient's care, but no nurses or doctors populated the corridor outside my room. Only a night security guard, asleep with chin on his chest in a chair a few paces outside my room, brought life to the hallway.

The spark above his head, meanwhile, brought light.

As I had with my parents, I touched the spark with a fingertip. Just like before, the spark flickered and pulsed before blossoming into a spark-edged field of color and sensation, displaying a dream like a movie projected onto a screen. In it, the security guard stepped into the warmth of a bakery, inhaling deeply of the scents of cinnamon and oranges, chocolate and sweet vanilla (scents I smelled, too, somehow). He approached the counter with a swagger and scanned the pastries beneath the glass, pointing at one with a grin.

"That one," he said to the pretty shop girl behind the counter, who smiled when their eyes met. "I want that one."

The shop girl giggled. Before the man could flirt with her, I withdrew, allowing the dream to shrink back into itself, to be experienced privately by the security guard in his chair—and then the reality of that hit me like a punch to the face.

I had allowed the dream to shrink. Me. Allowed. As in, I controlled when it ended. But how in the ever-loving hell had I—?

"Fancy meeting you here, Yukimura."

Kaito Yuu stood but a few feet away in the middle of the hospital's dark corridor. Like me, he wore a hospital gown and dragged an IV stand, one arm wrapped tight with gauze to hide the injection site. Although his hair seemed frizzier than usual and bags marred the skin below his narrow eyes, he appeared no worse for wear, glasses glinting when he pushed them up his nose with one intentioned fingertip. I raised a hand in greeting, not sure what else to do, watching as his mouth pulled into a thin-lipped frown.

"Kaito," I said, wiggling my fingers at him. "Hi."

He gave me a curt nod. "Salutations."

An awkward silence followed. Then, slowly, I pointed at the sleeping security guard.

"So… out of curiosity," I said. "Did you see…?"

"That true to the cliché, cops dream of donuts?" Kaito said. Another curt nod. "Yes. I saw it."

"Huh," I said.

We stood in silence for a bit. Maybe a minute. Maybe longer. I stared at the dream-spark still winking above the guard's sleeping head, trying to parse meaning in its colors and flashing dance. No insights availed themselves, however.

Abruptly, Kaito said, "I take it you took ill today, as well."

"Yeah," I said, heart stammering against my ribs. "Did you?"

"Naturally." He sneered. "I wouldn't throw away my record of perfect attendance for anything less."

"Oh. Right." How very like him, to bring that up right not. "Well…"

Another moment of silence followed. Then, with a hand that trembled just the smallest bit, I pointed at the sleeping guard. The spark above him winked in response, an ember in the dark of night.

"So I'm guessing you also just," I said, stopping when the words refused to come. "Um…"

"Also developed a heretofore unknown supernatural ability?" Kaito said, words characteristically blunt.

"Yeah. That."

"Yes," he said without an ounce of hesitation. "It appears I have." Dark eyes narrowed. "What on earth are you grinning about, Yukimura?"

I hadn't been aware that I'd been grinning. Still, that explained the ache in my cheeks. Again I raised a hand to point at the security guard, heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted to break free and soar.

And perhaps that's exactly what it wanted to do. Because—

"I just—I just—Kaito." I stared at him with undisguised urgency, begging him to confirm what I already knew. "Do—Do I have a power?"

"Yes," he said at once. "It appears you do."

"I… I have a power?" I repeated, hardly daring to believe it.

When Kaito nodded, looking at me like I was the biggest goddamn idiot he'd ever met, I did a double-take at the security guard, at myself, at the entire improbable scenario, grin breaking anew across my face like a cresting wave.

"I have a power," I said for what must have been the hundredth time. "A power." And then I looked at my hands as joy erupted, singing and screaming in my blood so loudly I couldn't help but shriek along with it, "I have a power. I HAVE A POWER!" A rain of laughter cascaded from my mouth, unstoppable and loud. "HA! HA HA! HA HA HA—wait."

Kaito's brow lifted as my tirade came to a crashing halt and I stared at my hands in shock. "What now?" he said, looking askance at the security guard, who had begun to frown and stir at the sound of my outburst.

I continued to stare at my hands, shock giving way to horror as I puzzled out a single, horrible fact—a fact that undercut all my joy like a blade to the Achilles tendon, ambitions struck down by a single, hard blow wrought by the heavy hand of inescapable truth.

"I have a power… over… dreams?" I said, face screwing up in consternation. "I have a power over dreams?" And then the reality of this truly sunk in, and I threw back my head to bellow, "What the—WHAT THE HECK KIND OF POWER IS THAT?"

The security guard awoke with a start.

Nurses' footsteps slapped the floor.

Kaito rolled his eyes.

From my room, my parents cried my name—and it goes without saying that I saw no more dreams that night, neither with my newfound power nor in the depths of sleep.


NOTES:

Not entirely satisfied with this, but I feel like it's the kind of chapter I could tinker with for a year and never really think is good due to sheer mechanical bullshit, so… yeah.

I want to say three things.

THING THE FIRST: There is a tiny throwaway line in the Yu Yu Hakusho manga stating that all of the Territory psychics got DEATHLY ILL shortly before developing their powers. This entire illness subplot is a nod to that. Most people are more familiar with the anime than the manga, so this detail flew over most readers' heads. I don't think(?) anyone brought up that manga detail in the comments, so… yeah. GO READ THE MANGA. It's so good and worth the time, and it's where I get half of my plot points (LOL).

THING THE SECOND: I based this power of Keiko's upon canonical material. Canon-Keiko has prophetic dreams, is visited in dreams by Yusuke more than once, and even dreams of events happening in locations far away from herself (astral projection and/or remote viewing, basically). Given Hiruko tenfold expands on the trend of Keiko getting visited in her dreams by supernatural entities, I thought this was the way a Territory would most naturally manifest itself for her character. There's basis for it in canon!

THING THE THIRD: If you're disappointed that Keiko's Territory involves dream manipulation (because yes, that's what it involves) and does not revolve around such concepts as "throwing punches really good" or "making demons explode with her mind," you A) missed the point of Genkai's lesson at the start of the Sensui arc, B) are probably not even half as mad as Keiko will be about this development, and C) don't need to tell me you would rather see Keiko develop a Territory that gives her a Spirit Gun.

I get it. You want her to wield a spirit weapon and be conventionally fight-y. Too bad, this is what she's got, and I guarantee you that you are in for some surprises with this Territory. Please sit tight for developments. And please don't tell me you're disappointed; it's not helpful, it won't make me change anything, and it'll just make us both feel shitty.

The significance of everything NQK dreamed, FYI, will be discussed in a future chapter. There are some layers here that'll be fun to unpack. Looking forward to hearing theories!

Also I've had the word "dreamer" in my Tumblr bio since 2017 (or whenever I started my account). That should give y'all a clue as to how long I've been planning this…

This chapter is without a doubt the hardest one I've had to write for this story (or any story I've ever written, TBH). It's the one I feel least secure/confident about releasing into the wild, so I hope you enjoyed it enough to leave a comment. Big thanks to 115's supporters, who absolutely own my heart: RE Zera, cestlavie, Yakiitori, noble phantasm, Mia, Ouca, Bermilee, REEbook123, ewokling, C S Stars, abbynicks126, IronDBZ, tammywammy9, xenocanaan, empressofthedead, Mathemagician93, ladyofchaos, MissIdeophobia, KhaleesiRenee, MyWorldHeartBeating, vodka-and-tea, EdenMae, Kaiya Azure, buzzk97, Sorlian, RandomR15, Call Brig On Over, cezarina, PretiBurdi, Writingishardwhy, MidnightAngelJustForYou, Biku-sensei-sez-meow, wing of butterfly, KeywordIf, Vienna22, Meno Melissa, lovedigitalhope, LadyEllesmere, Shay Guy, Sarah and guests.

Well, I'm off to plan my NaNoWriMo project. See y'all on December 6 with chapter 117.

Oh, and the Scribbled in Secret shorts are all ongoing, so check those out! Chapters 11-13 also take place while NQK was dreaming.