The moment felt awfully familiar, yet impossibly distant, as if it were a part of his life that was buried, hidden, and forgotten. Yet, the cruel laughter of flames felt so real. He tried to stand up, but his legs felt like rubber—weak and surprisingly small. He fell on his back and saw the ceiling. It seemed to stretch infinitely, way beyond his reach. Regardless, he didn’t want to reach it anyway. He lay there smelling the scent of burnt wood, too confused to move.

  Among the distant and endless sound of crying, he heard several loud bangs. The sound scared him out of his body, but he suppressed the fear and sat up to watch. The light was blinding, but he watched in a mixed feeling of fear and excitement as four shadowy figures drove another back. A fight? It felt too one-sided to be one. The outline of the one being driven away felt similar—but to whom? He felt stupid for thinking that. If this was a memory from his infancy, how would he even remember the people he knew at that time? It was enough of a miracle that he remembered so much to dream about it.

  He tried to use his hands to move, but it was a futile effort. The only reaction his body gave was random punches at the fire. The flames seemed angry because of the violence; they stretched at him like a numerous-handed monster. A sob tried to make its way up his throat, but before it could, a hand reached him. The touch was so kind and loving that it calmed him instantly. Oh, the bliss of infancy—he was stuck inside a fire with no means of escape in a body that didn’t even feel like his own, yet a single touch of love calmed him.

  “It’s okay,” said a voice. The details of the sentence didn’t reach him, but the reassurance did. He was convinced those were the words. He turned around to protest, but the sight paralyzed him. It was his mother, no doubt about it, but the details confused him. Her white dress was perhaps meant as royal attire, and her sheer beauty made her look like an angel. Moreover, it was drenched with blood. Whose, he did not know; he didn’t care, either. But the sight indicated violence and his mother—the thought itself was scary.

  He started to cry, and his mother cuddled him. He grabbed her, or at least tried to, because the moment his skin touched her, she started to dissolve. Instead, his hand closed on a handle—possibly a sword, because it was implanted in a body. It wasn't his body, but the pain the sword inflicted was doubled and thrown back at him. It was a woman’s body, perhaps. She looked up at him. “Oh, it’s not dead,” he thought with a form of sarcasm, but the thought made him so happy that he fell on his knees almost immediately.

  His whole body trembled with guilt. He had a conversation with the woman, though he couldn’t make out the details, the words, or even the topic. But it felt fresher than the last scene—more real, more hopeless. The only actual detail he could make out was her smile at the end. It was like a huge dopamine surge. The intense pleasure took over him; he craved more and, for some unknown reason, reached out his hand. What the hell was he thinking? Was he trying to force this possibly imaginary woman to smile? Maybe stretch her cheeks so it looked like a smile?

  Before he could inflict such harassment on her, she started to melt along with the other contents of the scene. He found himself in the midst of a forest. He looked around, but everything was blurry. His sword didn’t melt away with its victim; it was quite strange for a sword—filled with cracks and really heavy. He wanted to throw it away, but for some reason, his hand didn’t do that. Instead, he put it in the scabbard at his back. It was as if his hand were telling him, “There, that’s better.” He forgave his hand for such disobedience since it was at least doing something, unlike in the fire when it played dead.

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  He stood up and started to walk. He might’ve gotten an award for the most steps in a dream if dreams could be seen by other people. That was how long he walked. “Were dreams always this long?” he thought. Suddenly, he saw something—a building, perhaps. He ran toward it, encouraged by the appearance of something other than trees and rocks. But the rocks didn’t seem to like that thought; he tripped on one and fell.

  He didn't land on the ground, but on a pillow. “Finally, something that would happen in a dream,” he thought. “It smells quite good for a pillow.” He turned around and found his mother looking at him. He gasped and realized he was now lying on a balcony, maybe of the building he had run toward.

  “Close your mouth, Shinjiro. It’s bad manners,” said his mother.

  “So that’s my name. Shinjiro,” he thought. He tried to sit up, but his mother pressed him down and said, “Lie.” He obeyed happily. She was back in her usual plain-looking clothes, looking at him closely. She opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by another female voice.

  “You should hurry, Auntie. He can’t spend all eternity in a dream. He needs to wake up.” The voice was kind and filled with worry. He turned to face the speaker, and another wave of shock washed over him. It was the woman he had killed in the earlier scene. Guilt filled him again. She waved at him cheerfully when their eyes met, but when she noticed the look on his face, she made a face that sent a message so sure it reached him even through the blurriness: You didn’t have a choice. Now that he looked at her more carefully, he noticed she was a girl, not a woman.

  Before he could react, his mother spoke up. “You’re too hasty,” she said, as if she were disciplining the other girl. The girl opened her mouth, probably to protest, but his mother continued. “But you are right. Listen carefully, Shinjiro. I can’t explain too much as it would ruin this opportunity that you were given. But I can say this much: you have suffered too much, and will suffer a lot more if your life goes as it is. So, the fates have given you a chance—a chance to escape this cycle. Use this chance well, for this is the only one you will get.”

  She stopped, looked at the other girl, and asked, “That was good, wasn’t it, dear?”

  The girl said, “It was okay. But too vague, if you ask me.”

  He was seriously confused. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out—probably because a zillion questions were trying to fight their way out at once. Suddenly, he noticed his vision was getting blurry and the ground was trembling. He figured if he didn’t ask them now, his questions would stay unanswered for eternity. So, he stopped choosing and asked the universal question: “What?”

  His mother smiled at him and said, “Oh, you’ll figure it out. You’re smart.”

  Before he could ask anything else, his vision blackened and he began to fall. The last thing he heard was a “good luck” from both of them. He kept falling for maybe a minute and then tried to straighten up. If he was going down, he would fall into the darkness with pride. But the dream didn’t like his pursuit of glory, and the effort threw him back into reality again.