Got Dropped into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Work

The iridescent potion ripples in my hand.

The color of Dream Essence.

A potion that grants wishes.

…The instructions are engraved in relief on the transparent glass bottle, and whenever the liquid inside shimmers like waves, the words are revealed.

I looked into it.

: Daydream Potion :

Wish

EX (miraculous)

Lift the bottle with both hands.

With your eyes closed, drink all the liquid in the bottle at once.

Any wish will come true.

I had already known about these instructions since before.

So I had agonized over it from the beginning.

What sentence should I use?

When using the Wish Ticket, in what single sentence would I express my wish?

Every time I lay awake in bed unable to sleep, every time I wrote an exploration report at the office, every time I barely survived a ghost story and walked home after work, I thought about it.

The very first thing that came to mind was that.

The primal desire.

– Please send me home.

It was a desperate plea.

But I put it on hold.

‘Home’ is too abstract a concept.

It’s not as if there was only one place I’d lived until now. I couldn’t tell by what standard the Wish Ticket would activate.

If I phrased it wrong, it might even send me to the Daydream Inc.’s company dorm.

…Even when I was infiltrating the Disaster Management Bureau, the aversion that made me avoid the concept of ‘home’ and move from motel to motel likely stemmed from this.

So I thought again.

I had to eliminate every possible loophole.

‘I can’t make a mistake.’

I absolutely must not let the Wish Ticket grant my wish in some unintended way.

‘Please send me back to where I originally lived’? That’s just as abstract. Rejected.

‘Please send me to a world without ghost stories’? There’s no guarantee that’ll be the world I was originally from. What if I died and went to heaven? That would technically be a world without ghost stories… Some insane interpretation like that might happen.

I rejected options again and again, and chose with the utmost caution.

A perfect sentence that could designate time and space precisely.

And I decided.

Clutching the potion tightly in both hands, I opened my mouth and spoke.

“My wish is…”

Right away.

“…To return to where I was the day before I joined Daydream Inc.”

To the world I originally lived in, at the point before I spun the roulette at the popup store.

It was the perfect fit.

– Excellent!

‘It’s done.’

Hearing the host’s admiration, I calmly opened the cap of the Wish Ticket potion.

A burst of light erupted, but I covered it with my hand and closed my eyes.

Then I poured the potion into my mouth.

“……!”

A dream that you drink.

That was the only way I could describe it.

A strange, synesthetic liquid like nothing I had ever experienced slid down my throat.

Radiance filled my stomach.

An intangible power. Transcendent authority. Overwhelming mystery.

Ecstasy and awe led me forward.

Yes. I am moving!

‘Holy…’

My whole body was being sucked away somewhere.

Very deep, very far…

To wherever my wish reached.

It felt like I was traveling to fulfill a long-cherished desire. Transcendent power was transporting me.

Yes.

Yes!

Just like this, I’m going to return safely to my home…

……

……

……?

“Cough.”

I collapsed to the floor.

My body rolled across a dusty, filthy floor and I coughed.

Musty air.

Even when I opened my eyes, there was only pitch blackness. Even blinking, I couldn’t make out any contours.

Silence.

Stillness.

What is this?

The fantastic sensation was gone. The Wish Ticket had vanished. Which meant…

This was my destination.

“……”

The blood drained from my head.

I felt numb.

“Ugh.”

I struggled, twisting myself off the floor. Sharp fragments scraped my arms and hands, leaving a stinging pain.

Gasping for breath, I lifted the empty bottle I was still holding in one hand. The last few drops of the Wish Ticket liquid faintly shimmered.

My surroundings became visible.

…I was on top of shattered glass.

“…!”

When I turned my head, I saw where I had fallen.

An empty glass tube was shattered.

I had collapsed onto the broken glass shards in a dust pit.

‘…Why?’

How did I end up… inside this place?

My heart thudded uneasily. Before the ominous feeling could take over my mind, I desperately tried to make out the silhouette of the device in the darkness.

It looked like a device for storing large volumes of liquid. But…

…The machine was familiar.

There were no lights, and below the empty glass tube, I saw buttons and a keyboard panel. An old lab machine, straight out of the 2000s.

That, that’s…

The Dream Incubator.

A broken, shattered Dream Incubator from Cheerful Research Institute.

……

Blankly, I looked around.

My eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, used the leftover shimmer from the Wish Ticket to finally make out my surroundings.

This place.

This is Cheerful Research Institute’s prototype Dream Incubation Chamber.