An immense sense of happiness welled up inside Yoshida Koki. He had never imagined that Haruko, who had always looked down on him, would be willing to go home with him.
Really... It’s so unreal.
It all feels so unreal.
Memories of the past began to flood back. Yoshida Koki remembered that a long, long time ago...
He had an intellectual disability. Being in the same school as normal students led him to be ostracized everywhere, and he couldn’t make any friends.
His classmates always mocked his incomprehensible grades.
After all, in elementary school—
Most students could at least get scores in the eighties or nineties, but for him, it fluctuated randomly between a few points to twenty points.
As a result, everyone speculated—how many points did the idiot get this time.
But that really seems like something from a very, very long time ago.
Yoshida Koki always felt a sense of unease and weariness whenever he tried to recall anything.
That feeling would immediately interrupt his memories.
And—
"Mr. Yoshida, let’s go." Haruko flashed a cute smile.
Moreover, whenever he tried to recall something, someone would interrupt him.
But... he was still young. It wasn’t as if there were many significant things worth remembering.
Yoshida Koki immediately caught up with Haruko’s pace.
The two of them chatted and laughed as they headed home.
"Mr. Yoshida, what do you want to be when you grow up? No saying ’scientist’, that’s too cliché."
"Then what do you want to be, Haruko?"
"I want to be a painter."
"Then I’ll become a comic artist," Yoshida Koki said.
At that moment, Yoshida Koki suddenly felt as if someone let out a sigh of relief.
He looked around and saw that besides Haruko and himself, there was no one else.
"A comic artist! That’s great! We’ll both work hard then."
"But... can I really become a comic artist?" Yoshida Koki couldn’t help but ask.
He didn’t want to doubt himself, but he just felt that a career requiring skill with both the pen and the mind seemed out of his reach.
He inexplicably thought of himself as the type to run errands and do menial, non-thinking work.
Those feelings emerged again, but quickly, Haruko said:
"You can, you can! No problem! Mr. Yoshida, we’ll work hard together! Do your best!"
Yoshida Koki nodded earnestly, swearing that he would definitely become a comic artist.
Soon, the two bid each other farewell and went their separate ways home.
Back home, Yoshida Koki took out his test paper, but he was very afraid that Grandpa would scold him for cheating.
Though his score wasn’t high in class, it felt unreal just getting it.
But after reading the test paper, Grandpa laughed heartily:
"Hahaha, my good grandson, you’re really amazing! Really amazing! What do you want to eat? Grandpa will take you out!"
"No, Grandpa, let’s just eat at home," Yoshida Koki said sensibly.
He understood that Grandpa had spent a lot of money on treating his intellectual disability, and the family was already poor.
"Let’s go out and have a good meal. Grandpa recently made a lot of money. The market has been doing well recently. You got a good score, so we have to celebrate." Grandpa’s voice was full of joy.
Yoshida Koki’s eyes widened:
"Really? Grandpa, are we not poor anymore?"
Grandpa waved his big hands excitedly and said:
"Of course! If everything goes well, Grandpa might have a comeback in his old age! Hahaha, you will be a third-generation rich kid."
"In the future, there will be money to support you in becoming a comic artist."
At that moment, Yoshida Koki felt something was off...
Did I tell Grandpa that I wanted to be a comic artist?
No, right?
How could someone like me have such an extravagant dream?
I’m a... person with an intellectual disability. Everyone says I should be locked in a zoo with the monkeys.
The strange feeling of inferiority welled up again.
Yoshida Koki always felt that he shouldn’t have dreams. Not to mention grand dreams like being a comic artist; in fact, having any dream at all seemed extravagant.
But today, facing Haruko’s sincerity, he blurted it out in that moment.
He wanted to become a comic artist.
At this instant, seeing Grandpa’s smile, those strange emotions were suppressed once again.
"Grandpa! I really want to be a comic artist! But I don’t want my dreams to become a burden on the family."
Grandpa was stunned for a second, then suddenly said with heartache:
"You can have dreams too! You can have dreams, Koki! In the past, it wasn’t possible, but now it is! We have money now! If you want to draw comics, then draw comics, if you want to sing or act in TV dramas, you can do that too!"
Grandpa held his grandson close and they talked about the future.
It was a warm night.
If there was anything not so warm... it was probably the dream that followed.
In his dream, a masked person holding a serpentine blade appeared again.
"Where is that person hiding?"
"Who?" Koki was puzzled.
"The one who told you that you are not yourself." The woman’s tone was ice-cold.
"I... I don’t know?" Koki truly didn’t know.
At that moment, it was as if he was at school, surrounded by people coming and going, but everyone was very cold to him.
The woman said:
"Hmph, damned dream sequence. Do you think hiding in a dream will help?"
"Every anomaly in the daytime will summon us. I will find you."
"Before they say that sentence, you can’t do anything."
The black mask covered the woman’s mouth, but it couldn’t hide her somber eyes.