Yume Nikki

Sleepwalking

You are in a dream.

You don’t seem to become tired of it no matter how long you stay here.

You wander around without any destination.

Electric signals seem to be travelling in your brain; you seem to have a heightened consciousness of yourself; you seem to be having a dialogue with yourself.

Your stagger around this enigmatic dream world endlessly.

An enigmatic world grown relentlessly with eyeballs and blood-smeared wrists. A large graffiti thrown in with colours of all sorts, which no one can recognise if they look from afar. A dark void with a school of dangerous primates holding spears and shields who just stand there. Mutated fish swimming in a fishing pool, screaming when you touch them, living along with other abominable wriggling beings. A flight of stairs stretching far into heaven. A flickering, broken television set placed in a barren land grown with ancient plants. And at the end are several girls with eyes as sharp as birds who are having a picnic with their open lunch boxes.

You slowly begin to get used to these effects, but you walk as usual. These endless suppressed stages approach us with staggering speed.

You slowly become bold, approaching fearlessly to things as enigmatic as they could be, entering new doors, heading into deeper caves, until you confront your inner ugliness you don’t want to confront.

But you eventually got tired and worked mechanically. You lost interest in everything, lived like a zombie, and fell into repeating dreams—you have almost reached pseudo-death.

As you hate this fake death, you begin to collect impression-striking things in your dream. These things I name effects have great significance and are procured into your heart. You fill up your ego slowly with these things like puzzles.

Some of them have effects on your surroundings, and as you use them, you advance into even more out of the blue territories.

Every effect seem to be attached with a heavy and painful feeling. As you seem to fill yourself and grow as you collect them, you also become tired—like the process of maturing.

You too use these effects on yourself.

Take the bicycle as an example. In this world of wonder, a small transportation tool is placed. Riding it allows faster transportation and brings you to farther places. To me it is a pain to chase you who are riding the bicycle, your swaying ponytails travelling to the future in surprising speed.

Take the kitchen knife as another example. It’s basically your only weapon. You stab mutated creatures with it to kill them. You stab vessels with long legs, things squirting blood, women who are boiling themselves with the onsen, toy soldiers, and more. You even seem to stab me too, so I don’t get too close.

But these things have little effects on the surroundings.

Most of these effects are unavailing. They won’t make significant changes to the dreamworld, nor will there be hyperbole effects. They only seem to be a little helping hand, such as glasses or rubs that make life more convenient but that wouldn’t be lethal without them.

But there is nothing to do anyway. Effects should bear some significance, something they represent, so it is nothing bad.

I helped you in the dark with this in mind.

For example, there is something that spins around in high speed—I should describe as it a coin with a cat’s shape. Its too deft for you to catch it, so I secretly gave you a bicycle and blocked the coin’s path.

There is a tall strange man beside the fishing pond, so I tied his fishing wire to the effect sunk deep under the pond in advance.

There was an effect lost in the corner of a messy information room, so I threw the effect into a conspicuous monster’s mouth so you would find it easer, but the monster ended up wanting to eat me too so I ran away in a panic.

So with our concerted (?) efforts, you searched the corners of the dreamworld and acquired effects of all kinds. There is now nothing for you to do now. Having completed this task of searching, you have no feeling of accomplishment, nor is there anything to entertain you.

Thereafter you wandered around as your mind really seemed to have died. I also gradually started doing meaningless things again and again, and followed you less, allocating more time to investigation and reasoning.

The only thing that retains its old appearance is the small room in the snowscape. I open the diary there and mark down each effect you acquired. Frog, neon lights, ghost, small man, blanket, soft…

I roll up my sleeves to analyse these unknown symbols, to identify their values, connotations, and metaphors.

They must bear a certain significance to you.

I believe this is the key to break the stalled status, to retain something important.

I thought about a lot of things. What does this dream mean? The only thing we can be sure about is that this dream is real. For only when you sleep on a bed do you go into these dream worlds. Anytime other than that, I cannot escape the small room.

So who are you?

Why am I in your dream?

And who am I?

Why am I so keen of you?

These analyses and investigations have trudged into the territories of philosophy—I cannot find an answer despite my contemplations.

I really hope someone smart can come and explain everything in detail to me.

But because this person doesn’t exist, the only thing I can do is to follow and observe you, finding the reason to everything through reasoning like digging in archeology: finding things in the underground layer of you, and doing inspection as I rub their dust off.

No one will tell me the correct answer. At least no one will give me evidence to tell right from wrong. I can only collect information, compare, and reason from the little evidence I have.

When you are awake—or when I’m in the small room—I cannot touch or talk with you. But I can look at you at a distance from the television set in the room.

You are so far away you seem to be at the other side of the television, unable to be touched.

The time you’re awake is extremely short. You sleep as much as an infant. The time when you are awake is so short it resembles nights that you can’t sleep, dozing off to space on your bed. The small room has always been so plain that nothing important resides there.

When you are awake, you often write your diary on the table. The astonishing thing is that the things your write, the words, are very like—no, exactly the same as—the ones I wrote: flute, bicycle, golden hair, hair band…

I am at your side in your dream, so the things we see are exactly the same. It should be no surprise the things that left an impression on us would similar.

The borders between you and me are slowly becoming blurred.

My obstinate investigation to your issues has bridged the distance between us. Our blurred borders are gradually melting.

I, you, I, you.

Your dream seems to be devouring me like the sea devouring a water droplet.

I feel relieved as I chase you. I stretch my arm so I can fall deeper.

I hope to stay at your side.

The effects you collect should be the important things in your inner self. These effects fill you up.

Billy Milligan integrated his twenty-four split personalities into one to become a complete personality. You integrate your perfect psyche by combining your conscious and unconscious to become a sublime saint, an intelligent animus or a meaningful animus—perhaps you can become a deity.

If this is your goal, I can help you. You hope you can become stronger so you won’t fall apart like the Humpty Dumpty. I hope you can acquire a strong psyche so it wouldn’t be lost or hurt.

Even though I am not one of those effects, perhaps something unworthy of acquisition, a meaningless existence that leaves no impression, or even if I would lose my residence when your psyche is complete, I am willing to do so.