/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I wondered just what Reimu had done in the Dream World once she'd become lucid, but it didn't seem all that pertinent to the conversation. I asked Doremy what exactly I was doing here. She didn't speak for a moment, and when I looked away from her and ahead of me, I realised that we were at the castle, which was even more impressively nonsensical up close. The bricks curved in ways that they surely couldn't do in real life, and the towers loomed over us as if they were actually bending down to meet us. Doremy clapped her hands, and the bricks of the castle rolled back, opening up a path into the depths. I swallowed nervously, then followed her in. "Don't worry, you know. You won't come to any harm here. It is a dream, after all." Inside, I found that I was in a corridor, which stretched out into the distance, far beyond what could possibly be contained within the castle I'd seen from the outside. There was a thick red carpet taking up most of the floor, and every now and then I saw massive stained-glass windows, which cast twisted, distorted light across the floor. The corridor was empty, apart from Doremy, who frowned and flipped through her book. "Ah, I see." She muttered to herself. "Well, a visual metaphor isn't bad at all. Come on, I suspect you'll find this walk quite illuminating."

I followed her, and she stopped at the first window. I looked up at it, and with some amazement, I soon discerned the pattern engraved in the coloured glass and lead. There were stretching lines of what could only be spider webs, and in the centre, framed by criss-crossing patterns of brown and gold, was a spider crafted out of the lead as it met the other pieces of glass. "So I see." Doremy spoke up from next to me. "That's not much of a metaphor, is it?" I commented that it was beautiful. "Well, I supp- Oh, that's it." She flipped through another page of her book. "That's the spider." I could see that much, though I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to represent. I supposed that it felt welcoming if I had to describe it in some way. It felt comfortable, but at the same time, I struggled to understand it.

"I suppose I need to explain slightly more. I said I was the ruler of the Dream World. Well, I can see and eat dreams." I raised my eyebrows in surprise. "Yes, well, I mentioned that I wanted to speak to you for that reason. Shall we continue? I suspect that this isn't the only thing we're supposed to see here." I slowly nodded, tearing my eyes away from the stained-glass window, and began proceeding down the hallway again. After a few moments, I realised that the hallway had twisted, and when I looked back, I was amazed to see that the corridor I had just been in was upside-down. I looked at Doremy, who simply shrugged. "Dreams rarely hold internal logic. Yes, the corridor is upside down. No, you're not falling. It happens, and much more spectacular happens, too." As we walked, Doremy continued speaking. "As I was saying, I can eat dreams. Until recently, your dreams were just like any other. You dreamed about where you'd been. Where you wanted to go. What you wanted to do, and none of these amounted to very much." I felt a little uncomfortable about the fact that she knew all of my dreams. "Oh, don't feel too self-conscious. Yours are hardly the worst dreams I've seen. That meinreiki, in fact..." She trailed off. "Well, anyway, those were your dreams until recently. Then, your dreams began changing. They turned into twisted nightmares, memories of pain and fear. They were quite delicious, in fact." I'd never thought I would hear someone describe a horrible nightmare as delicious. "But I started to wonder just what could possibly be happening to you. Not everyone is plagued by nightmares night after night."

I shrugged. I couldn't really remember any of my dreams, but I'd assumed they were the typical sort. "Well, the subconscious has access to memories that the conscious mind doesn't. You dreamt about Satori Komeiji a number of days ago, didn't you?" I actually did remember that. It had been the day after Yamame and I had returned from the Palace of the Earth Spirits. "Then, I noticed that your dream self was becoming...well, quiet. You weren't dreaming big." She flipped her book open. "You started to dream of being hidden, of being somewhere that no one could find you." I would have just learnt that I'd been experimented on, so I wasn't all that surprised. "But then, a few days after that, you had what I can only describe as a burst of life. You were dreaming of a happy life. With someone, even." I was about to respond, but I realised that another massive stained-glass window was coming up.