Liam's eyes darted left and right, taking in the scene around him.
So what the hell is this?
Shizuku looked wrong. Her body was semi-transparent. Unstable. Like she was caught between states of matter. Somewhere between gas and solid flesh.
Her eyes were vacant. She drifted aimlessly, no recognition in her face.
Then something appeared inside her translucent form. A... picture. That was the only word Liam could think of.
Empty streets. Neat but lifeless.
People in protective gear wandering through mountains of garbage.
A child beaten bloody over a broken toy they'd found in the trash.
A younger Shizuku sitting alone in a corner of a garbage mountain, reading a book.
The same Shizuku sitting on a crude vacuum cleaner folded from a cardboard box. Bodies of gangsters sprawled around her, heads bleeding, eyes bulging.
The images were monochrome. Black, white, and gray. Many of them distorted and flickered, light flashing across Shizuku's body before vanishing.
Is this Shizuku's memory? Or her dream?
Liam tried to observe as calmly as possible.
He looked around. Other "ghosts" in similar states wandered nearby. Aimless. Like zombies from The Walking Dead before they spotted prey. Some of them also had strange, bizarre images appearing inside their translucent bodies.
Liam tried to remember what had happened before this.
The first thing that popped into his mind was the DiCaprio meme from Inception.
Focus, damn it.
He shook his head. Then he noticed the scene inside Shizuku starting to spread. The images blurred, floating around her like bubbles. Dreams or memories made visible.
A Ferris wheel. Nighttime. Liam's own face, talking and laughing.
If these are memories, that was over half a year ago. And she still remembers it this clearly.
If these are dreams, then I didn't expect Shizuku to be dreaming about our time at the Ghost Island amusement park.
"Is the same thing happening to me?" Liam suddenly thought. "What images are showing up?"
Please don't let it be the scene where I possessed a crow and got obsessed with lifting Shizuku's sweater...
The zombie-like crowd shuffled across the grass, slowly moving toward the peach tree swaying in the wind ahead.
Liam drifted among them, staying close to the unconscious Shizuku. He thought back to what happened before he appeared here.
"Shizuku and I... we were chatting in the pavilion in the villa garden!"
Like a bubble popping, Liam suddenly jolted awake—as if surfacing from deep water. His perspective shifted. His eyes moved.
He immediately saw himself and Shizuku in the pavilion.
They were leaning against each other. Sound asleep.
Shizuku especially. She slept deeply. But her eyelids trembled occasionally.
"I'm looking at myself and Shizuku. So who am I?"
Liam froze for half a second. A confused chirp sounded in the back of his mind. He snapped fully alert.
I've activated Jaku's Star Mark. I'm controlling the bird from first-person perspective. Looking at myself and Shizuku through the bird's eyes.
"When did we fall asleep?"
The "Liam-as-Jaku" bird flapped its wings. It landed gently on the pavilion railing and turned its head to observe his own sleeping face.
Bird eyes were positioned on the sides of their heads. He could only look at things with one eye at a time by turning his head. Still not used to this.
He only remembered practicing En with Shizuku at the hotel, eating dinner delivered by the staff, then walking through the garden together. The one thing he could determine was that the only reason he'd stayed conscious in that strange "dream world" was probably because of the Star Mark.
The "Liam-as-Jaku" bird turned its head, looking at the back of his own neck with his sleeping face frowning slightly.
The bird flapped its wings and took flight, circling the villa gardens. On garden benches scattered throughout, other martial artists who'd climbed the mountain earlier also sat slumped over, asleep.
"So we were all pulled into a dream world by a Manipulator?"
"But that doesn't make sense. If the opponent is a Manipulator..."
Liam's thoughts churned. His consciousness shifted back to the strange grassy plain. The dense crowd wandering like zombies. The peach tree everyone was slowly heading toward.
Countless peach petals drifted on the night wind.
Liam looked at Shizuku beside him. He activated her Star Mark.
Shizuku's dull eyes immediately sharpened. Awareness returned. She looked dazed for a moment, taking in the surroundings, before her gaze finally settled on Liam.
Don't move yet, Liam's voice appeared directly in Shizuku's mind through the Moon Mark. We fell asleep at some point in the pavilion. This seems like some kind of collective dream space. I can probably stay conscious because I'm a Manipulator too. My Star Mark grants immunity to other people's Manipulation abilities.
At the same time, Liam noticed the bizarre dream scenes inside Shizuku fading like a receding tide.
The images didn't completely disappear. Suspected scenes from Meteor City still appeared faintly from time to time. After all, strictly speaking, neither he nor Shizuku had "woken up." They were just experiencing "lucid dreaming." Fewer dream images. Less vivid and fragmented.
Both Liam and Shizuku could see that the other's body was blurry. Indistinct. Like shadows. Occasionally, scenes of the other person flashed across their forms.
They drifted with the "tide of corpses" toward the source of the flying petals—the peach tree on the plain.
Along the way, Liam and Shizuku looked around. They saw mist-covered figures climbing the Long Steps to Immortality. Obviously one of the martial artists from this afternoon. One showed scenes of applause in a ring, fists raised high in victory. That's Tetsuro.
But who was that figure with muscles like granite? Golden proportions like cast iron? Two meters tall?
Wearing glasses...
Liam stared in surprise. The "dream" images appearing inside Wing's body showed him as a walking muscular demon. I didn't expect elegant, easy-going Wing to be dreaming about looking like that. Bisky, look what you've done to him!
But Liam, Shizuku's voice appeared in his mind, her tone confused. If this is done by a Manipulator, and it doesn't work on you because you're also a Manipulator, then why were you pulled into this dream space in the first place?
Funny you should ask. I'm wondering the same thing.
Liam's mental voice was grim. Two possibilities: One, we don't fully understand Manipulation ability mechanics. Two, the opponent isn't actually a Manipulator.
His eyes suddenly narrowed.
Shizuku followed his gaze. A snake with gray scales slithered slowly through the grass.
As if noticing their attention, the gray-scaled snake raised its head. Its tongue flicked out. Gray. Forked.
Then more heads appeared. One after another. Gray-scaled snakes emerging from the grass all around them. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Densely packed snake eyes staring coldly at the two "exceptions" in the "zombie tide."
Their tongues flicked in unison.
Hsssss.