Chapter 9Ai looked around with her vision blurred by tears. She was about to leave when she caught a pair of blue eyes watching her, glaring at her. Ai rubbed her eyes to clear up her vision and her mouth fell open as she took in the beauty of the beast that stood before her. An enormous wolf covered in luscious black fur was standing about 100 meters away from her. The black wolf started to growl fiercely as a gaping Ai started to walk towards it. When Ai got close enough to reach out and touch the wolf, the beast pounced on Ai and snarled, “Leave!”
The wolf then jumped away from its position on top of Ai, who was on her back now, and started stalking around her in circles as if Ai was its helplesss little prey. Ai did as she was told, afraid that the beast would literally rip her head off if she didn’t. It was hard to concentrate with a giant predator around, but it helped that the beast was no longer standing above her or growling. Even so, Ai closed her eyes tighter and concentrated on returning to reality.
After Ai disappeared from Saki’s dream world, the black wolf began to transform. Its fur shortened, paws grew bigger, ears became round, and muzzle widened as it transformed into a black tiger. Once the transformation was complete, the black tiger said aloud, “You can show yourself now. I’m pretty sure she’s not coming back, at least not tonight.”
A fair-skinned girl appeared before the tiger and stared at the animal curiously. She titled her head slightly and asked, “Why did you transform into a wolf?”
The black tiger explained, “Takahashi has only seen me in this form once when she last did something like this so I decided to use that to our benefit. If we’re lucky, she’ll make an assumption with something along the line of ‘black animals are the manifestations of the dreamers’ subconscious.’”
“Umm… I was just wondering why you transformed into a wolf and not a different animal,” the girl asked timidly.
“What else was I supposed to turn into? A kitten?” the tiger asked sarcastically.
“You can turn into a kitten?” the girl asked, with a smile and eyes filled with wonderment. The girl was extremely tempted to ask her senpai to transform into a kitten or maybe even a tiger cub but decided against it. There were more serious things to attend to at the moment.
“Yeah, but I’m not going to do that right now. I’m not in the mood. Anyways, I need you to take your group to visit Berryz. It should be fairly easy if you just go under the pretense that you want to observe your senpai. Try to find out what Takahashi is going to do about Saki-chan now. There’s no way that Tsunku can make
her graduate. She’s too important as the Captain of Berryz.”
“What will you do then, senpai?”
“Since I don’t see Saki-chan anywhere around here I’m guessing that she’s still sleeping but not in the REM* sleep stage right now. I’m sure that she’ll wake up soon so I won’t make my move until tomorrow night. Now let’s get out of here.”
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Ai woke up with a jolt and checked herself for any pain she might feel from being pounced on by a giant wolf. What was a beast like that doing in Saki’s mind anyways? There’s no way something like that could be one of Saki’s memories. Something clicked inside Ai’s head. She had seen a similar beast before. A black tiger appeared right after that
incident happened. There’s no way this was just coincidence. There had to be a reason those animals showed up.
It wasn’t until Saki started moving that Ai remembered what she had just done to the girl. Saki opened her eyes and sat up to look around her. She clutched her head and her eyes met Ai’s. Saki continued staring at Ai, while trying to remember everything, trying to remember anything. “Why? Why can’t I remember anything?” Saki asked desperately as tears started to build up in her eyes. “Who are you? Who am I?”
As Saki began to cry, Ai muttered, “I’m sorry, Saki-chan. I’m really sorry.” Ai began to cry as well. Guilt overwhelmed her and she became infuriated with herself. Why did things end up like this? All she had wanted to do was help. She just wanted to make Saki happy. All she had ever wanted was to make the people in her life happy. Ai closed her eyes and began to cry even harder.
Ai felt a hand brush the tears off her face and, suddenly, she felt a pair of soft lips press lightly against her own. Ai opened her eyes to see a teary-eyed but smiling Saki pull away. New tears flowed down Ai’s face as anger became replaced with sadness.
Saki stopped smiling and began to panic about the crying Ai. “I’m sorry. I thought that might cheer you up. I thought you had to be somebody… important to me since I woke up by your side and since you’ve been crying as much as I have, even more than I have. Was I wrong?”
After thinking about what Saki said, Ai made a decision. “At this moment, I’m just your senpai… but I can and want to be somebody special to you… if you let me be.”
Ai pulled Saki in for a kiss. As soon as their lips met, Saki remained completely still until she felt a strange desire for love, an unknown desire to be loved. Both Ai and Saki continued kissing each other, desperately and passionately but gently.
After several minutes of kissing, they separated but left their faces only centimeters apart. “So are you more than just a senpai to me now?” Saki asked timidly.
“At this moment, I’m just your girlfriend.” Ai chuckled and took Saki’s hands in hers. “I promised that I would make you happy and I will. Trust me.”
Saki nodded and gave Ai a smile; the smile that Ai had seen only after Saki had kissed Miyabi in Saki’s dream.
For about three hours, Ai briefed Saki about her life as an idol. She told Saki about her audition, her progress, her high school graduation, and her status as Captain. Ai tried to give Saki all the information she could, but it was hard considering the fact that Ai rarely met Saki for work and met her even less outside of work. Ai would have to use other methods to give Saki her memories back.
Ai then had an epiphany and realized Saki’s original memories might be irreparable but there had to be others that shared the same memories. The memories would be in somebody else’s version but it would give Saki enough of an insight to be able to create new memories and actually seeing everything would be a million times better than just hearing about it. Navigation was the cause of this problem and now it would become the solution. The question now was which dreams they should observe first. More importantly, whose dream should they visit first? Ai thought about it and decided that she would let Saki choose tomorrow night but she would make sure that it would definitely not by Miyabi's dream.
“We should stop for tonight, Saki-chan. You need to get some rest,” said Ai.
“But I’m fine, Takahashi-san. I want to hear more.”
“Why? Why is it still ‘Takahashi-san’?”Ai asked jokingly.
Saki began to pout and stared at Ai. She looked like a little lost puppy looking for a home. Ai almost reached out to pull the girl into a hug because she was just too damned cute at that moment. This was the girl that Ai would learn to love, the girl she was starting to love. Ai laughed at the notion, which caused Saki to tilt her head with curiousity. Saki looked even cuter as a confused puppy than as a sad puppy. “Maybe I’ll tell you more if you call me ‘Ai’,” Ai said playfully.
“Ai!” Saki called out eagerly but not without blushing fiercely.
“Sugoi, you actually said it.” Ai laughed a bit. “You should still go to sleep though.”
“... I don’t want to” Saki said solemnly, no longer looking like a cute little puppy.
“Why not? I’ll tell you more about yourself and everybody else when you wake up but you need to get some rest now,” asked Ai.
“I’m afraid to go to sleep,” explained Saki. She stared down at the bed with eyes clouded with fear of the unknown and, also, fear of knowledge. “I’m afraid that I might wake up and not remember anything again. I’m afraid I might wake up and not remember you.”
Ai stared at the Saki for a moment, taking in what she had just said, before leaning forward to kiss the girl. “Saki,” Ai said as she lightly squeezed the girl’s hand. “I promise that nothing like that will ever happen again so sleep now,” Ai said soothingly.
Saki nodded slowly and lay down without letting go of her girlfriend’s hand. Ai smiled and used her free hand to cover Saki’s eyes as a silent way of telling her to go to sleep. Once Saki closed her eyes, Ai moved the hand away and lay down as well. Ai looked at the peaceful face of the girl she had decided to protect. Ai really was starting to love the girl. Saki was turning away in her sleep but, after feeling a slight tug from still holding Ai’s hand, she turned onto her side to face Ai. Ai chuckled when Saki moved Ai’s hand next to her face and placed her other hand on top of Ai’s. Ai lightly kissed Saki on the forehead and moved into a similar position as Saki, placing her free hand on top of Saki’s. Ai took one last look at the sleeping Saki before closing her own eyes to go to sleep.
Yabai…I think I’ve already fallen for her.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* The REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep stage is supposedly the the stage of sleep in which dreams occur. So the reason why Saki wasn't seen around when the world inside her mind was being destroyed was because she was only sleeping and not dreaming at the time. She had stopped dreaming when she had run away crying in her dream.
First off, nobody is going to kill me for this pairing right? I had to get this fluff out of my head so now my brain is just screaming "Yay for epic Ai-senpai fail! It got her a girlfriend." Hey rokun... I'm not going to get disowned by Estrea if she ever hears about this, am I?
Oh well, on to the question I was going to ask readers.
Remember the "whose dream should they visit first?" Saki's decision is actually the readers' decisions. I really have no preference about whose dreams they should invade. Pick any H!P member. How many dreams the visit depends on who and how many you guys want me to write. There's also an alternative though. I can always just move on with the story and completely skip Saki's little adventures for now and leave them as possible side stories. I'll leave it up to you guys to decide. Just leave a comment or PM me or something with your ideas or suggestions.
Topic: Dreams [Chapter Nine] (Read 15580 times)