Part Eight — Two Dreams

　I hadn't dreamed of my old life once since waking up in this one.

　Not Tokyo.

　Not the apartment.

　Not the raid I never got to finish.

I'd assumed, somewhere along the way, that Haruto simply didn't get to follow me here — that he'd been left behind on that street along with everything else.

I was wrong.

The dream started ordinary.

The way the worst ones always do.

I was back at the crosswalk near Kaede's neighborhood, streetlights doing their slow orange flicker overhead, and Kenji was standing across from me like we were just two guys who happened to be waiting for the same light to change.

"You look good," he said.

Pleasant.

Easy.

Exactly like he'd sounded on the phone, six hours before he killed me.

"Considering."

"Considering you had me run over," I said, "yeah, I'm doing alright."

He laughed at that.

Actually laughed.

Head tipped back, like I'd told a genuinely good joke instead of describing my own murder.

"You should've logged out," he said.

"Would've saved us both the trouble."

"You could've just asked me for money, you know."

"I probably would've helped."

"Nah."

He said it the exact same way he had that night, standing over me with the car door open.

Unhurried.

Almost fond.

"Wouldn't have felt the same."

I woke up before I could answer that.

Chest tight.

Staring at the ceiling of the inn room in the dark.

Wouldn't have felt the same.

What does that even mean.

What kind of person needs it to feel a certain way.

I lay there a long time turning that over.

And somewhere in the turning, an old, unwelcome thought settled in and made itself comfortable:

I'd trusted him without a second thought.

He'd called.

I'd gone.

No hesitation.

No suspicion.

Nothing.

And it had gotten me killed.

Two dragons showed up on that mountain wanting me dead for a reason I still don't understand.

I don't even know what I did to earn that.

If I couldn't spot Kenji coming with a whole lifetime of context on him—

how am I supposed to spot the next one, in a world I understand even less?

New rule, then.

Doesn't mean I stop trusting people.

Just means I stop handing it out for free.

I didn't go back to sleep easily after that.

When I finally did—

the second dream was waiting.

This one didn't start ordinary at all.

I was standing somewhere I recognized without ever having seen it — the clearing near the house, but wrong, the air thick with a kind of heat that had nothing to do with weather.

My father was there.

Sword raised.

Facing something too large to look at directly.

And I understood, the way you understand things in dreams without being told, that I was watching something that had already happened.

I couldn't hear what he said to it.

I could see his mouth move.

Calm.

Deliberate.

The same even tone he'd used the night the dragons came.

Whatever he said—

the creature across from him didn't like it.

The explosion didn't have a sound in the dream.

Just light.

Total and absolute.

Swallowing the clearing whole.

And then—

nothing where my father had been standing a moment before.

I woke up gasping.

The way you do when your body decides grief is a physical event before your mind's caught up to why.

I never got to ask him anything.

Not really.

Not why he was gone so much.

Not what "business" actually meant.

Not one real question about who he was before he was my dad.

And now I never will.

Not from him.

I sat up in the dark, hands pressed flat against my knees until they stopped shaking, and let the anger settle into the same place it had settled the night on the mountain.

Not loud.

Not something that needed shouting or breaking furniture.

Just cold.

Permanent.

Filed away next to everything else I was owed.

Two dragons.

One debt.

Whatever it takes.

Doran found me at the table downstairs before sunrise, staring at a cup of something I hadn't actually drunk any of.

"Bad night?"

He dropped into the seat across from me without waiting for an invitation.

"Something like that."

He studied me for a moment.

That same recalculating look from our first night, except gentler this time.

Less about danger.

More about a kid who clearly hadn't slept.

"You want to talk about it?"

"Not really," I said.

"Not yet, anyway."

He nodded.

Easy.

No pressure behind it.

Which I appreciated more than I said out loud.

"Fair enough," he said.

"Eat something."

He paused.

"Whatever it is, it'll still be there after breakfast."

He's not wrong.

I ate.

The dreams didn't go anywhere.

But something in me had shifted overnight all the same.

Quieter.

Harder.

A little more careful about which doors I left open.

Grief can sit in the back seat.

Fine.

But it's driving today, just a little.

I think I can live with that.