The Dream Shifter

Chapter 206

He looked a little over his shoulder back at Yumi. She seemed to be getting closer to him, somehow projecting herself out of the image. Yumi stretched out to him warping the two dimensional image of her. The more it stretched the more horrific Yori's face turned until he could only turn away to where he ran. 'I'm so sorry! Forgive me!' Yori stumbled in his fleeing and collapsed roughly to the ground, his nose a little bruised.

"Ugh…"Slowly, Yori pulled himself up with the pain having wiped his mind of its concerns. It took him a few moments to focus his eyes on the ground. He found the white glow of the room no longer present and Yumi's face missing. "Where am I?" Yori forced himself to concentrate on the ground, his mind suddenly feeling very light. His hands rubbed against the floor feeling a smooth grain of tiles and particles of dirt. The tiles continued out of sight, as he looked further away and walls nearby. "A hall? It seems familiar…"

Yori rubbed his hand over his face trying to push through the lightheadedness. "…so dizzy…"He pushed his back against the wall and supported himself to rise to his feet. Once he stood, he felt a little better, but still had to concentrate to keep focused. "It doesn't end…"he commented, when he saw the hallway continuing until only a dot in the distance. It did not matter to him. He needed to move. Keeping one hand supported against the wall, Yori began walking slowly down the hall. His mind did not even consider the passage of time, his legs just kept moving as though stopping meant the end. Yori believed that an end existed. It kept him moving.

The further he went whispers began to appear in the hall even though he saw no people. They grew stronger the longer he continued. It made him more certain that an end existed and something awaited him. He heard a multitude of voices around him, but he could not separate any of them. They existed as a mass. He felt as though they belonged to children.

A faded image of a student passed his eyes just on the edge of his periphery. His head snapped behind him trying to see who the student was, but they were gone. 'Am I imagining things?' Yori focused ahead of him, but caught a gasp in his throat. The empty hall had filled with ghostly images of students. 'What's happening? Why are there ghosts? What's going on?' Yori's confusion pushed him onward.

His hallway became crowded and even hovering by the wall no longer kept him out of the way. He had to push through them, but when he pressed his hand, it passed through. Yori stumbled through the student collapsing to the ground. The voices around him grew in volume. Their feet clattered along the tile. Then something bumped into him suddenly. He fell to his back and his eyes closed for a moment. However, when his eyes opened the students were solid. The hallway no longer continued endlessly. Windows and doors lined the walls and the sun beamed down on him.

Yori no longer felt weakened and pulled himself up, but a weight kept him from moving too far. He looked down to see Yuki dazed in his lap. The position made Yori feel awkward and annoyed. "What's going on, Hayashi? Why are you here?"

"Huh? Who are you?" Yuki rubbed his head, not completely focused. Once he stopped tending to the bump on his head, he looked up at Yori's face. It only took him a second to see the second year bars on his collar and realize he ran into an upperclassman. "Sorry! I didn't see you! Are you hurt?" Yuki pulled himself up and offered a hand to Yori.

"I'm fine, Hayashi," Yori curtly spoke, as he stood up on his own. "This is a school hall. You shouldn't be running."

"Normally yes, but when you're getting chased you sort of have to run." Yuki laughed a little to himself. He patted down his clothes to knock off the dust, but stopped in mid-motion. His eyes focused on Yori suddenly. "How come you know my name? Do I know you?"

"What are you talking about, of course I do!"

Yuki leaned in lifting his hand to this chin in his investigation of Yori. He got a little too close to Yori, who pushed him away. "I don't remember! Sorry!"

"Get back here, Yuki!" yelled several students from the end of the hall.

The voices made Yuki turned his head away to respond. When he saw the three boys charging down the hall for him Yuki jumped. "I thought I lost them!" Yuki looked over to Yori and clapped his hands together in apology. "Sorry, but I've got run again!" As his last words, Yuki departed in a sprint keeping barely ahead of the students chasing him.

Yori stared at the scene deeply confused. 'He doesn't remember me? What's going on?' He looked around at the school certain beyond a doubt that it was his school. 'This is our school and I recognize others…' His eyes scanned the hall as his feet began moving again. Everything was in the places that he knew it. '…is this a memory? Did I step into a memory? From before we met?'

A bell rang through the school distracting Yori from the hall. He turned his head almost instinctive thinking that he needed to be in class. However, he corrected himself knowing that he could not be at school. 'Right, I'm being interrogated. I didn't escape…she's somewhere watching me probably…I need to find her…' Yori began to move again still feeling a little distracted. 'I can't let her see this…if I can help it…' When he focused his eyes back on the hall, he saw that it was empty. The students all disappeared, almost too quickly. He turned around and around trying to find any of them, but none of them were around, even in classrooms. Yori ran up to the window in the hall to look outside.

When he looked down at the school grounds, he saw a small group, the only ones present. He pressed his hands to the glass the moment he recognized them. "Yumi! And she's with Hayashi and the others! What's going on?" Yori spun his head around looking for the stairs. He had to get down there to them. There had to be a reason for them, something was happening.

His sense of distance and time disappeared. He was not certain if it was because of the memory or the effects of his focus, but he ran regardless. Yori held no concern for any of it. He had to protect his sister from that woman. He had to stop what was happening before they learned everything, if they had not already. 'Yumi…I'm sorry…this is all my fault…if I hadn't stubbornly insisted on going with you…'

Once Yori reached the grounds, none of them were in sight. He searched around from them and found nothing. But he suddenly heard laughing in the distance, a familiar voice. Yori's head perked up and he dashed in the direction without consideration that it might not be his sister. The voice continued, but grew more distant on him forcing him to push his legs harder to keep up. Each turn seemed to have the hope of seeing them, but always empty. Only the sound of the laughing kept Yori going. He lost all sense of where he ran or if he still remained in a memory. Nothing mattered to him anymore. '…sister…'

Around the next corner, Yori came to a stop. He caught up. "…Yumi…" She stood within reach of him, but her back faced him standing with Yuki smiling. Yori froze unable to move watching them. They began to pull away from him. He watched them all disappear before his eyes. Yori did not know why his legs refused him, but once they vanished, his body suddenly shook dropping him to his knees. She left him, again. '…Yumi…' His head tilted up staring at the building before him. The sign above the door said 'Mi Hana Shop', a phrase that did not immediately come to Yori. He focused too strongly on his sister.

Yori pushed himself back up and forcibly marched over to the building. The door opened for him. Inside, he saw an empty front desk and no sign of his sister or the others. Ignoring manners for intruding, Yori walked deeper into the interior. All of the smaller rooms he found along his search were empty. 'They have to be here somewhere… I know I saw them enter…' Further down the long hallway, he heard voices speaking in the distance, once more. He hurried in the direction until he came to the corner from where heard them. 'Yumi! But that woman… What's going on?' Yori hugged the wall keeping out of sight, suddenly feeling the urge to be cautious.

"It's important that you don't fail," spoke the unknown woman. She looked like a regular businesswoman, except for the fact that Yori could tell that she was not Japanese. The features and hair made it clear to him that she was Western, possibly European. "They're ripe for rebellion right now."

'What's she talking about? And to Yumi and the rest…'

"I know," Yuki said, nodding his head to the woman.

Yumi agreed with him, looking over at Yuki. "We can't let them get away with it any longer. They'll pay for the injustices that they've committed."

"Right. When you arrive, you'll be met by those in the resistance. They'll let you in."

"Won't they know we've entered?" questioned Yumi.

"Yes, it's likely that they'll send a patrol to investigate. But you'll be able to handle them."

Yuki comforted an uncertain Yumi. "Don't worry Yumi. I've taught you how to use your abilities. You'll be fine. You just have to trust in yourself."

"You're right! We have to do this!"

'What's going on? This isn't right!' Yori fell back against the wall suddenly feeling out of breath. His chest heaved and his body struggled for air desperately. He knew that could not be his sister. It did not make any sense. It had to all be a lie. 'What memory is this? It can't be true!' Yori felt his body warming up and his cloths becoming stifling. He wanted to escape, but his back felt glued to the wall. 'This is wrong! Yumi's not…she's…I don't remember this!'

The image of Yuki and Yumi together burned in his mind. They were together and she looked happy. He did not understand it. It did not seem possible. It was all wrong. It had to be wrong.

There was no possible answer.

Yori shook his head side to side trying to get all of the lies out of his mind. 'This isn't right! It's wrong! This never happened!' He tried to convince himself what he heard and saw did not exist. His hands clung savagely to his head wanting to remove everything. 'Why? Yumi? Is it because I betrayed you? You…' When his breathing reached its limit, Yori collapsed to the floor pale and almost unconscious. The only word from his mouth repeated endlessly was her name.

Struggling to remain sane, Yori pulled himself crawling on the floor away from the trickery. He slowly made it back to the entrance of the business before collapsing once more out of breath. On his back, he stared up at the exterior of the building. 'So disgusting…no taste…' he thought, when he saw the building, 'Why would she be here… at this karaoke shop…'

The longer that he stared at the sign the more it seemed to stare back at him. The name repeated through his mind as his words trigger a new path. A flash of an image of his sister talking to him about the shop came to him. He remembered something about it. 'Yumi told me about this place. I remember, she went here with Hayashi and the others. I remember her telling me about it. They played at the beach…it didn't make a lot of sense then…but this is the place…' Yori focused on their conversation to remember what she told him about the day. Most of what he remembered was just that she spent the day with Yuki, a fact that bothered him. He ended up focusing more on that than the rest of the details. He could not remember if he heard all of what she told him.