The Dream Code: Yume no Kodo [Light Novel] Vol. 1 – Page 4

The Dream Code – Volume 1 – Chapter 1: Nihon Dream

Page 4

But something was… off. As he looked, a subtle flicker seemed to pass over the reflection. The lines around the eyes seemed to soften, the set of the jaw to become less weary, more uncertain. It was as if his own fifteen-year-old spirit was subtly reshaping the vessel he now inhabited. He looked like a man of 37, certainly, but there was an underlying… a youthfulness that shouldn’t be there, a hint of an unresolved adolescence clinging to him. It was a strange, unsettling duality.

Memories, not his own, began to flood his consciousness. Images of late nights spent hunched over a keyboard, the frustration of writer’s block, the quiet loneliness of his small apartment, the sting of rejections from publishers, the fleeting, imagined encounters with women he’d seen on the street, in cafes, their faces blurring into a tapestry of shy longing. Kanzaki Tahiru’s memories. They were vivid, detailed, and… mature. Mitsu, a fifteen-year-old boy, now possessed a wealth of experience and a complex inner landscape that was entirely foreign to him. The shy introversion, the imaginative fantasies about girls – these were Kanzaki’s, and now they were his too. It was a disorienting rush, a confusing blend of his own nascent identity and the deeply ingrained psyche of a man he had never met.

He reached out, touching his reflection’s cheek. The skin felt real, warm. He was Kanzaki Tahiru. He was also Mitsu. The two identities were not separate streams, but a tangled, intermingling river. He knew, with a sudden, dawning certainty, that this dual existence would be a constant companion, a challenge he would have to navigate.

His mind, still reeling from the shock of his new reality and the influx of Kanzaki’s memories, struggled to process the immediate surroundings. The small apartment. The scattered papers. The laptop. Kanzaki was a writer. He lived alone. Financial issues. Mitsu, the fifteen-year-old boy from a future of enforced simplicity and communal living, now found himself in the body of a struggling artist in a bygone era. The contrast was stark.

He needed to understand more. He needed to know why. He moved towards the desk, his new body feeling clumsy and uncoordinated. He picked up a stray sheet of paper. It was a draft of a novel, filled with Kanzaki’s meticulous handwriting. He scanned the opening paragraphs. It was a story about a detective in a dystopian future, grappling with a world on the brink of collapse. A chilling irony. Kanzaki, it seemed, had been writing about a future not unlike the one Mitsu had escaped, a future that now seemed intimately connected to his own mission.

As he read, he felt Kanzaki’s ingrained habits surfacing. A pang of laziness, a desire to simply lie back down on the futon and sleep. A sudden, overwhelming shyness at the thought of facing the outside world. And then, a more potent, unexpected surge – a vivid, imaginative fantasy about a girl he’d seen at the convenience store yesterday, her smile, the way her hair fell… Mitsu felt a blush creep up his neck, a sensation that was both Kanzaki’s and, strangely, his own now. He had to get a grip. He was here for a reason. Master Genryu’s words echoed in his mind: “Your mission is to go back… to save those who are destined to perish.”

But how? He had no idea who these people were, or how to find them. He looked back at the desk, at the piles of paper. Kanzaki, the writer, might have clues. His stories, his research, perhaps even his anxieties about the future, could hold the key.

He continued to sift through the papers, his movements becoming more deliberate as he began to exert his will over Kanzaki’s passive inertia. He was Mitsu, and he had a mission. This body, this life, was merely a tool. He had to learn to use it, to understand Kanzaki Tahiru, not just as a host, but as a part of himself now. The journey had just begun, and the path ahead, stretching back through time, was shrouded in the unknown.

He opened the laptop, his fingers fumbling slightly on the unfamiliar keyboard. He needed to access Kanzaki’s digital life. Emails, documents, search history. There had to be something here, some breadcrumb leading him to the people he needed to find, to the disaster he was meant to navigate. As the screen flickered to life, illuminating the small room with its sterile glow, Mitsu took another deep breath, steeling himself for the complex, challenging task of living a life that wasn’t his own, all for the sake of a future that still needed to be saved. The weight of 37 years, and the burden of a future he had yet to fully comprehend, settled upon him.