Nightmare 02 – Why do you look so lonely?

What is a dream? What is a nightmare?

They are both product of the mind. A simulation created by combining fragments of memories. They portray events from experiences and the things we have yet to experience. However, there is the common and undeniable difference between them.

To put it in simple terms, if the simulation of the mind turned out to be good, or something that where we can gain happiness, it will be called a dream. Dreams show the things we wanted to see, the things we wanted to do, and the things we wanted to be. Basically, dreams are products of human desires that we unconsciously undergo during night.

On the other hand, nightmares are what we call bad dreams. These are the simulations that displays things different from what we wanted. Most of nightmares shows us things we hate, things we loath. But a nightmare doesn't end there. Most of all, it shows us what we really fear.

Someone important to you dies. Or you, yourself dies. In nightmares, there are even killers who go after our lives, chasing us whenever we go until they had killed us with the cruelest way they can. These are the nightmares that kills people inside their own simulation. Sometimes, these nightmare took lives not just inside the mind, but the actual mind and physical body of the one dreaming.

In other words, a true death.

Nightmare are dreadful experiences. Dreams are wonderful experiences. If a dream can give joy and excitement, then a nightmare can give, terror and most of all, death.

With all that said, it is clear that a nightmare can be dangerous to us. No one should want to experience it. But what if someone who died twice in a nightmare actually, and wholeheartedly wants to experience it again?

Is he weird, strange, or mad?

Honestly, that's what I think. Yet perhaps he has a reason to run a dying simulation again.

Now the question is, what is more important than one's life?

I, as a man, what is more important than my life?

I am not sure about that as well.

—However, the girl of my dreams appears in my nightmares.

Isn't that enough for a reason?

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Under the stormy night, I'm having a nightmare. Within that nightmare, there is you.

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I was staring at ground, which color was barely visible with the single source of light in the place. Several meters from the swing where I sat, there was a light post illuminating a set of slide just beneath it.

It was night and I was in a park…but what was I doing here?

I surveyed my surrounding, looking in every direction only to see pure darkness except in my front where the light post stood. It was disturbing. The eeriness of the silence and everything.

The light post suddenly turned off and all was enveloped in darkness.

What!?

Then it opened abruptly…there was a girl beneath the post.

It was girl around 150 centimeter. She had a long black hair that smoothly draped down to her stomach and her bangs hid her eyes. She approached slowly, taking small steps causing her white gown flapped in a creepy gracious motion.

A white lady.

I realized it instantly and my body involuntarily rose up, preparing for whatever she would do to me.

She made another soundless step, causing me to focus on her feet. They were bare and her skin was milky white. And after a series of steps, she stopped. This time I shifted to look at her face—I saw her smiling.

A smile that conveyed two conflicting emotions. The first was relief, and the other was malice.

"I have found you at last." Her voice was oddly powerful, yet very attractive.

"Wh-what do you mean?"

"…Ah, I'm really glad. I can finally…" she continued, ignoring my question. She hugged me suddenly, causing me to be confused at her strange actions. "Finally, I can—"

Then I felt a searing pain on my stomach and my eyes widened when I saw it.

I was stabbed with a knife.

"Kill you."

She pushed me down on the ground and then she released the knife from her hand. She sat on my right side, carefully observing me.

"Why…are you doing this?" I asked, feeling the blood dripping from my mouth. But at the same time I uttered those words I was wondering.

I was dying yet I could feel no fear nor any panic. It seemed that I was not scared of dying at all. Leaving everything I had built, my friends, and my family doesn't really matter too, I guess.

With my memories buried somewhere, actually, sometimes I see this world as gray.

"It's your fault."

But why? Why does it feel like this world is so colorful and vivid right now? Is It because of my imminent death? Or…

She suddenly leaned forward and when our face overlapped—

She kissed me.

"That was my first kiss," she smiled as she pulled her body again. "Hey… was that your first too?"

What she was saying didn't made sense to me. I was far too shocked. It was too sudden and unexpected. I couldn't understand her at all. I just stared at her, eyes wide as a thought entered my mind. That was my first kiss, I think.

Her expression was dismayed as she received no answer. Her lips relaxed down then she stood up and started to walk away—

"He-hey." I muttered weakly.

I didn't know what crossed my mind at this time and I was just taken by the spur of the moment. However, it didn't deny the fact that I asked her an unbelievable thing.

"Why do you...look so…lonely?"

She did not reply and she did not move away, still looking at me. It was hard reading her reactions with her eyes concealed with her long bangs. But I could make out one emotion, it was longing.

I felt my body cooling down, losing its temperature as I blankly shifted my vision to the night sky above.

…Seems that I will die any second by now.

That, was the last thought I had.