The rain that had been falling since yesterday stopped around dawn, leaving behind numerous sparkling puddles along the road. Spring of my second year in university. It was still a little too early for the rainy season. Light filtered softly through the atmospheric layers. I walked briskly along the pavement. There was a bus stop, seemingly lingering within a patch of sunlight. I let out a soft breath and sat down on a bench with vividly marked wood grain. Someone was already sitting at the far end. For a moment, I was startled, thinking it was someone I knew, but I quickly realized it was a stranger and shifted back. Her hairstyle was completely different. Besides, there was no way that person would be here. While waiting for the bus, I vaguely wondered if it was around this season when I first met *him*. No, it must have been when the rainy season had already begun. Less than a year ago. She was one of the people who had opened a door to another world. Through that door, I had seen and experienced things that an ordinary person living in this world could never hope to witness, no matter how many years they spent. Of course, a door was just a metaphor. But it was also true that I felt as though it were actually there. One of those doors had closed. It would likely never open again. Like winter garments quietly packed away with the arrival of spring, she was gone. Thinking of this, I found myself overcome with a profound sense of sentimentality. In the end, I was never able to convey my feelings. That regret settled deeply in my heart like sediment, swirling around.
A single crow cawed and flew off right before my eyes. I sat there in a drowse at the deserted spring bus stop, lost in such thoughts. "To dream is like..." The sound of a piano echoed from the sky. Or at least, it felt that way. The woman sitting at the end of the bench spoke again, still facing forward. "To dream is also like..." From the soft spring earth, I felt a sensation like ice rising to the surface. It began to creak and tighten around my heart. Even though my neck had suddenly grown stiff and refused to move, I managed to turn it slightly to the side. A woman with long black hair that seemed to veil her face. Her legs, extending gracefully from a sky-blue one-piece dress, suggested she was quite tall. She spoke again. "To dream is..." Part of it was inaudible again. No, it was a strange sensation—I could hear the words, yet my brain failed to recognize them. She had her eyes closed. "Who are you?" I already knew. The old, animalistic part of my brain was reacting. I knew who she was. "I wanted what that girl had. No matter how many times I grasped it, it vanished like a mirage. I intended to make this the same length as hers, too." She touched her hair with her left hand. Her fingers were slender and supple.
"To possess the only one of something for eternity, there is only one method. Even though I thought I had reached it once." Her cool voice suited the pure, post-rain air all too well. "To think that those tactile sensations were an illusion." She lowered her hand smoothly. She kept her eyes closed and faced forward. I couldn't tear my eyes away from her profile. I was beginning to understand. They must have been the same length to her. That day, *that person* lost his "other half." The mystery was now solved. "Your eyes..." You cannot see, can you? I tried to say that, but the words vanished into thin air. Even though I was speaking, I felt as though my mind failed to recognize the sounds. As if in affirmation, a pale hand pulled a cane resting on the bench closer. "I couldn't obtain that girl's one and only thing, but in exchange, I was given a wonderful world." Her words tickled my ears like music. It was practically like a drug. I wanted to hear more of that voice. The conversation continued like fragile glassware. "Night becomes the entrance, and I await a new world like a girl who has just learned of love. Sleep becomes an egg, and I cradle and warm it. And to dream is..." The words faded away. Yet I understood. She had obtained *that person's* nightmare.
The nightmare summoned by the demon said to eat nightmares. The nightmare that had tormented him for so long. That nightmare, which that strong man had sworn he never wanted to see again, not even once, no matter what happened. She was muttering something. I could hear it, yet I couldn't hear it. It felt entirely devoid of reality. I tried to pinch my thigh, but hesitated. I had a feeling she was waiting for me to do so. *His* "other half" had been obliterated by her. She had believed that existence to be him. I recalled how he had described it as "me, looking a bit younger." In other words, that "other half"—the one only he could see, touch, and perceive, the "other half" that once sat on an empty chair in a coffee shop— must have taken the form of him from back when his hair was long. Unable to see and located in a place beyond physical touch, she had found that "other half" through some method beyond human comprehension, and captured it. Believing she had captured him. And then, the "other half" and the "nightmare" vanished. He was simultaneously freed from the two things that had tormented and confused him for years. And then she had departed. "I wonder if the Man of La Mancha is still the same." Her voice danced like a beautiful melody. I immediately understood the meaning of those words. She must have meant the knight—the figure who protected him. "He is still blowing hot air, as always." Hearing my slightly strained reply, she gave a faint, satisfied nod. Thinking back on it now, her comparing him to the Man of La Mancha subtly hinted at his duality—at once being Princess Dulcinea and yet also Aldonza. The true meaning of this would only become clear when I later approached his secrets, but that is a story for another time. There was silence. I understood the feelings of the crow that had flown off a moment ago. Right now, besides the two of us, there wasn't a single moving shadow around the bus stop. We were simply enveloped in the soft atmosphere.
I remembered him once describing the space where she was as "distorted." With her eyes closed, her profile was as calm as if she were sleeping. She surely hadn't been blind back in high school. I hesitated even to imagine how she had come to lose her sight. Had she not lost her sight, and had that miraculous mix-up not occurred, she would have been an opponent neither he nor *that man* could ever hope to defeat. It wasn't a guess; I simply knew. I didn't want to use a word like "outmatched." I didn't want to, but that was precisely what it meant. A bus arrived, trailing the scent of exhaust fumes. The moment it did, I had the illusion that the strange, membrane-like air enveloping the bus stop had vanished into thin air. I had been released, perhaps. The bus stopped a short distance away, and the doors opened. Was this the bus I had intended to catch? For some reason, I couldn't remember. Where was I even trying to go? Yet, I felt I had to board it. I stood up from the bench, forcing my laughing knees to steady themselves, and walked. "Take this." With those words, she pulled something resembling a pendant from her gracefully extended neckline. A talisman. What he had once called the talisman of the Five-Color Map. "Throw it away somewhere. I have no use for it anymore." She turned to face me for the first time. I stopped in my tracks and looked straight into her face.
"Go on," she said, extending her hand. I will never forget that smiling face with closed eyes for the rest of my life. I had never seen anyone so beautiful. No matter how beautiful a person I might encounter in the rest of my life, I doubted I would ever feel such profound emotion again. Being slandered as a vampire was utterly trivial. Such words couldn't even begin to describe one facet of who she was. That's what I thought. "Go on." She spoke again, almost smiling. I accepted it with trembling hands. The chain rattled. There was a faint scent of rust. A mysterious pattern was drawn across the surface of the circular plate. But that was all. It was hard to believe this was the object described as "having a shape that must not exist in this world." They say that any map drawn on a flat surface can always be colored using no more than four colors. I knew without testing it. I was sure this, too, could be easily colored with four colors. At least, now that it had left her hands. A horn honked timidly. I gently placed a foot on the boarding step, turning my back on her—someone I would likely never see again. The doors closed with the sound of dry air. Another door leading to another world had closed. Before long, a dull recorded voice announced the next destination. Jolted by the moving bus, I yielded to an impulse and looked back. I felt as though she might have vanished as if she had never been there at all. Yet, within the swaying, picture-frame-like window, she was still there at the receding, post-rain bus stop. She stood up from the bench, leaned on her white cane, and slowly, very slowly, began to walk. Her slender, long legs splashed through puddles with a hesitant, unsteady gait, making them shimmer with a pale silver light. That was the last I ever saw of her.
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