Before going to school, Itsuka-kun and I met with the commander on [Fraxinus].
The reason was, of course, to decide what to do about Len.
Now that we knew Len was a spirit, it was an unavoidable matter.
"So you both met a spirit named Len in a dream?"
"Yeah."
"Right."
"And her ability is to grant three wishes... What is she, a genie?"
The commander, who seemed to have come to the same conclusion as me, rested her chin on her hand and thought for a moment before continuing.
"Even if it happened in a dream, once the other side has revealed herself as a spirit, we can’t afford to let our guard down. From what I’ve heard, it doesn’t sound like an ordinary dream either, so we should prepare for the worst."
"Fair enough. But do you really think Kotori can grant wishes?"
"...Hard to say. We can’t know the full extent of her power, so I can’t say for sure. If it’s not just bluffing, there are three possibilities."
As she said that, the commander held up three fingers and folded them down one by one.
"First, she really is a spirit who can grant any wish. Second, she has limits on what she can grant, and she steers things so only wishes within a realizable range come true."
If Len’s ability was like the second one, it felt like even the direction of the wish itself could get warped.
For example, if you wished for money, maybe you’d get into an accident and receive insurance compensation afterward.
Something like...
"...a monkey’s paw."
"A monkey’s paw? What’s that?"
"It’s the title of an English novel. There’s literally a monkey’s paw in it, and it’s an object that grants three wishes."
"That sounds just like Len."
"Yes. The difference is that the way it comes true is cruel. For instance, if you want money, you get into an accident and then receive insurance money."
"......"
After hearing my explanation, Itsuka-kun couldn’t hide his confusion and fell silent.
If Len’s power really worked like that, then even making a wish itself would become a problem, so from Itsuka-kun’s point of view, it had to be complicated.
"Well, that’s only the worst-case scenario."
In truth, this was only the absolute worst of the worst, so there was no need to worry about it right now.
We didn’t know the limits of what she could grant, and that range might be much broader than we expected.
Besides, if it came to that, we could simply not make a wish. And even if we did, we could just make one that wouldn’t result in something weird.
In other words, something tiny, like asking her to remove the bandages she was wearing.
"Hiki’s right. And you haven’t heard the last pattern yet."
"What’s the last one?"
"The pattern where she makes Shido believe that his wish has come true."
"Makes him believe...?"
"The one who decides whether a wish has come true is the person who made it, right? Then if she messes with Shido’s perception or does something to it, she can trick him into thinking the wish was granted."
After hearing the commander’s words, another possibility came to mind.
Len had appeared in a dream, and she could disappear from it at will.
In fact, after that, I had even woken up from the dream.
It was almost as if she could manipulate that bizarre dream itself.
Then, combining what the commander had said with my own guess, there was one more hypothesis.
"...Manipulate perception in a dream and make it seem real."
"What?"
"You only realize a dream is a dream after your consciousness wakes up. And even then, only after you notice that something is off."
Dreams are hard to recognize for what they are.
Even when I’m conscious, it isn’t easy to tell I’m inside a dream, and when I do realize it, it’s usually because the scenery looks wrong or people’s faces aren’t rendered properly or something else feels off.
"Then what if the dream is made to look exactly like reality?"
"You’d mistake it for reality...?"
Itsuka-kun’s face gradually grew more complicated as he answered my question.
That was proof he roughly understood what I was trying to say.
"Exactly. If she grants a wish inside that, she can make it seem like she really granted it in the real world."
In other words, if the dream is close enough to reality, the boundary between dream and reality collapses.
"If she’s a spirit who grants wishes, fooling a mere human shouldn’t be that hard."
"...Yeah, if it’s a dream, it’s the perfect place to make wishes come true."
"Return always comes with risk. If anything can be granted, then we have no idea what the price is. And it’s not even clear whether Len benefits from it."
"Then is the right answer to say there’s nothing to wish for when we meet her again?"
At Itsuka-kun’s question, the commander shook her head.
"If it were me, I’d say that. But..."
"But?"
"That’s only in my case. Our goal is to seal spirit waves, so Shido has to make Len fall for him."
As the commander said, saying there’s nothing to wish for was only correct from her perspective.
Itsuka-kun had to seal her spirit waves, so he couldn’t just flat-out say there was nothing to wish for.
If he did and Len disappeared, that would be a disaster of catastrophic proportions.
"We do have the Hiki card, but if she completely hides herself, that becomes meaningless too. And if she keeps us from waking up until she says her wish, that’s the worst-case scenario."
"So in the end, we need to think of a wish."
"Exactly."
The only choice Itsuka-kun had was to think of a wish.
The deadline was basically tonight.
My job in the meantime was simply to make full preparations in case something happened.
"But what kind of wish should I make?"
"Hmm..."
"It’s hard. If it’s too outrageous, the risk will be huge, and if it’s too small, it won’t mean much."
Now that we’d been given the card called a wish, we had to use it to our advantage as much as possible.
In that situation, wasting one chance on something like asking her to remove her bandages would not be a good outcome.
"One thing’s for sure: if the goal is to make the other person fall for you, then you shouldn’t make some weird wish."
"Weird as in?"
"...L-like wanting to go to the bathhouse with your little sister."
"Hey, I’m not some siscon. There’s no way I’d wish for something like that—kweh!"
The commander completely rejected his very personal claim, and then drove a helicopter kick straight into Itsuka-kun.
Thanks to that, Itsuka-kun couldn’t even finish his sentence before going down, and the commander snorted before snapping her fingers to call Kannazuki-san over.
"Grape."
"Yes, ma’am!"
At the commander’s order, Kannazuki-san brought over a box and opened it, revealing a carefully arranged collection of candies with different flavors.
"No, what is this, some kind of candy collection? Why do you have so many?"
"You don’t need to know."
Crunch!
Maybe because Itsuka-kun had completely denied what she said, the commander had gotten a lot sharper, and she bit down on a lollipop while staring at the collapsed Itsuka-kun.
"What was that for!"
At the same time, Itsuka-kun got back up and protested to the commander, who simply shrugged as if it were nothing.
"Warming up."
"......"
At that shameless answer, Itsuka-kun could only blink in stunned silence at the commander.
Feeling sorry for him, I patted Itsuka-kun on the shoulder.
"It’s okay, Itsuka-kun. The commander is just a little prickly because her wish was completely rejected—whoa!"
"Stop talking nonsense!"
While I was honestly stating the facts, the commander’s attack came in, and I rolled to the side without meaning to.
Because of that, I accidentally ended up near Murasame-san’s seat, and I could see her face.
"...Murasame-san?"
Her dark circles were already pretty bad, so her complexion had never been great, but now she somehow looked even worse.
Like someone who had seen something they shouldn’t have seen, or heard something they shouldn’t have heard.
"...Um, Murasame-san?"
"...Ah, yeah. Hiki. What is it?"
"No, I just thought you didn’t look well."
"...It’s nothing."
She clearly had some kind of reason, but since Murasame-san was keeping it to herself, I just said, "I see," and returned to where Itsuka-kun and the commander were.
"Why are you attacking me all of a sudden? I rolled over by accident."
"Tch. Your reflexes are good too, dodging that. And you were the one who said something weird to Shido first. What do you mean, my wish?"
"Is that not it? When Kotori said that, her emotional readings were fluctuating—"
Just as Maria was about to state the facts after waking up, the commander pressed a button and cut the speaker’s power.
"Did someone just say something?"
"No."
"Maria’s voice..."
"No."
"Uh, uh..."
As the commander denied everything with a fierce aura, Itsuka-kun backed down.
He was human, after all, so there was no way he wouldn’t feel fear in front of a predator.
"Anyway, I’ll think about the wish on our side too. Len is the one who asks for the wish in the dream, right? Tonight, before you go to sleep, Shido and I will talk again."
The commander said it calmly, as if nothing had happened, and set the next meeting.
"Kotori really is shy."
"......"
I silently nodded at Maria’s words that came through the phone, then moved with Itsuka-kun to the transfer device.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register