Suzu sat at a café table, her hand supporting her head as it drooped further. As if by muscle memory, she slowly laid her head upon the table, ready for her next sleep attack.

But it never came. Confused, Suzu sat up once more. She didn't feel tired at all, her green eyes brighter than ever, the bags underneath her eyes were gone.

That was new.

She regarded the landscape around her. The blue café table contrasted well with the blue asphalt, combined with the blue sidewalk, mixing with the blue trees. She smiled. This all felt so normal. Suzu leant back in her seat, content to sit here awhile longer.

Something twinged at the back of her mind. Neurons fired as she tried to make it out. A voice commanded her to leave her seat, she couldn't place a face to the strange noise, but nevertheless, she followed. She stood on heavy knees, moving aside as she pushed her chair in. The cup of water she had been taking fickle sips of tipped slightly, the water inside becoming offset.

She didn't notice this however, and she moved around the corner of the small café. She put her hands in her pockets, looking down. She was wearing some kind of… suit vest? Suzu didn't question it, and instead kept moving to where the voice was demanding that she go. The landscape around her became a blur, but she didn't notice.

Suzu was standing in the middle of a large avenue now, the road cutting through tall, monolithic buildings in both directions. She couldn't see where it ended, but she saw something further down the road. Her clothing was indeterminate, but her blond hair was like a lighthouse in the darkness. The voice called to her, it was a siren's song. Gradually, she found herself moving toward her unconsciously. She was getting closer.

"I wouldn't get near her if I was you." A much darker voice, one that cut the song in half and wrapped it around a pike. Suzu turned around, Thom stood behind her, but he was looking into the distance, towards the strange blond woman.

"Who is she? Shouldn't she get out of the middle of the road?" Suzu asked him.

Thom looked down to her, then smirked. "Do you see any cars around us?" He gestured around him.

The road was entirely devoid of cars, or pedestrians for that matter. Why would an entire city block be deserted like this? The windows around them were devoid of human life. Suzu looked back down the road, but the woman was gone. It was just the two of them.

"Wha-?" She began.

"Think about it Suzu, didn't you find it hard to walk over here?" Now that he mentioned it, it felt like she was walking uphill, but the terrain was completely flat. As if to illustrate his point, he picked up a pebble and threw it on the ground, it started to roll towards them, then behind them. Why was that happening?

"Where did I get that pebble Suzu?" He continued his questions. The avenue was paved perfectly flat, and not a blemish existed on its surface. Where did he get the pebble from? Thom continued his glare, almost as if he was trying to get Suzu to realize something.

She looked around her, and realized something. They weren't in Kyoto anymore, in fact, Suzu had no idea where she was. The buildings around her were all the same height, and looked identical. Blue glass covering blue interiors. The roads and avenues had no markings, simply rivers of pitch black headed on routes to nowhere in particular.

"They say that you never remember the beginning of a dream, that you're always somewhere in the middle. Tell me, how did you get to that café?" How did he know that she'd been at a café?

In fact, at that café, why was everything blue? Even the trees were the same, dull, muted blue. It almost reminded her of her hair colour. And the color here… still blue? She looked at the windows around her. They were almost like mirrors, reflecting back and forth until it looked like there was an army composed of Thom and Suzu.

And it was at this moment that Suzu realized something, that this couldn't exist in real-life. Her mouth dropped slightly as she became lucid for what seemed like the first time in her life.

"It's a great feeling isn't it?" Thom said, walking past Suzu. "The feeling of exhilaration, discovery, perhaps even a thirst for… what lies beyond?"

How had she fallen asleep? This Thom wasn't real, but why did it feel like he was?

"…How?" Was all that Suzu would meekly squeak out.

"Right now, we're both connected to a device that lets us share dreams. You've most likely heard about it on the news, haven't you?"

"Wait… who's dream are we sharing, yours or mine?" Suzu's curiousity started to get the better of her, she hated the feeling, but she wanted to know more. This world where she spent half of her time, and now she could control it? The feeling was… strange, but certainly not unpleasant to her. She held power here, a luxury she couldn't afford in reality.

"Your's." He replied, staring where the blond woman had been. "You're lucid now, which means to some extent you both consciously, and subsconsciously control the dream.

Suzu was stunned. She could change this world, mend it into her own vision?

"Alright, for your first lesson; don't think about elephants."

"What?" She looked to her left, in the quiet, frozen city, she could clearly feel the vibrations rumbling through the concrete. A line of elephants emerged from one of the side streets, one of them sounding off it's horn. Their grey, slightly dirty skin brought a sort of imperfection to this perfect world. They continued on before they were swallowed by the other side.

"Amazing, isn't it? Our minds both perceive and create the world at the same time, the amount of possibilities you can build in here are truly limitless." Thom said, almost like an excited school-kid. Her kidnapper surely had a passion for this sort of work.

He sighed. "Listen I'd love to sit here all day and see what we can get up to, really I would, but you need to learn."

"Learn what?" Suzu questioned, cocking her head.

"You're learning how to steal, my dear."