The sand is trembling. Erika continued to silently confirm the vibration transmitting through the soles of her feet. The gray desert—this place called the entrance to the Dream World, *Yume Kai*—she recognized by the name "Kaibaku," the Ashen Wasteland. She had set foot here for the first time last night. A barren land devoid of sound, temperature, and color save for ash—as if emotions had been stripped away. The vibration is rhythmic. Something is approaching. Erika turned her gaze toward the horizon. Seven paths of light extended outward in a radial pattern—each connecting to one of the seven Emotion Territories that comprised the Dream World. From one of these paths, a human figure slowly drew near. It was a boy in a school uniform. A worn student jacket. One hand thrust casually into a pocket, his gait relaxed. His hair was a dull blue-green, short and unstyled, wavering faintly in the ashen light. He was tall—probably around 175 centimeters. As he approached, the color of his eyes became visible. A pale silver. Eyes of a mysterious hue, as if floating apart from reality itself. "Yo." It was Haru. A brief greeting. The boy stopped and looked down at Erika. A thin smile played at his lips—a carefree, unguarded sort of smile. "I'm your guide, so to speak. Call me Haru." Erika observed the boy—Haru—in silence. There was no emotion. No surprise, no wariness, no relief—nothing. Only data accumulated. As she gently brushed aside the black short bob of her bangs with her fingertips, Erika confirmed that her observational faculties were working quietly. Even with emotions stripped away, these eyes still functioned. There were three points of incongruity. First: his words were too prepared. The way he introduced himself with the role of "guide" to someone he'd just met flowed far too smoothly. He completed his self-introduction with the naturalness of someone reading a script. Second: his knowledge of the Dream World's structure—the seven Emotion Territories, the paths of light—came from his mouth without hesitation. He was thoroughly familiar with this place. Third: during his explanation, the outline of Haru's right hand wavered for just an instant. For a brief moment, the boundary of his fingertips became ambiguous, nearly blending with the gray sand of the background. By the time Erika's eyes caught it, it had returned to normal. Erika quietly filed away these three points in a drawer of her mind. She would not bring them out now. There was no need to. She would simply record them. "...I want to hear about the Dream World and the trials." Her own voice remained flat as always. Colorless with emotion. Yet the words came out precisely. Haru narrowed his eyes slightly, as if to say "so that's how it is." Then he withdrew the hand from his pocket and crossed his arms. "The seven Emotion Territories—each one corresponds to one of the emotions you've lost." Fear, loneliness, regret, anger, shame, sorrow, and longing. Haru counted them off on his fingers. Each territory contained a "trial," and by overcoming it, the record of the corresponding emotion would be recovered. "There's a law to the trials." This was the most important rule of the Dream World, Haru continued. The trials of the Emotion Territories could only be overcome by "directly facing and accepting the emotion." Attempting to break through by force risked permanently losing the corresponding emotion. "...That is contradictory." Erika spoke quietly, waiting for Haru's explanation to finish before pausing. "One cannot directly face and accept an emotion while in a state of having lost it. To accept something requires the subject doing the accepting to possess emotion in the first place." Haru stopped. He truly stopped for a beat. Then, slowly, he smiled wryly. Narrowing his eyes, his expression taking on a slightly troubled quality—as if he wanted to say "you got me." "You're sharp." "To be precise, the records of emotion weren't completely erased. There are faint remnants—traces that remain. What the trial demands is using those as a foothold." As Erika listened to this explanation, she sensed something within her shift—as if a classification shelf had moved. Logical understanding. Not emotion, but comprehension as thought. And she recorded one more unexpected fact. (This person is interesting.) "Interesting" was not an emotion but an evaluation. Erika told herself this. Yet the fact that the other party had entered that category was undeniably recorded as truth. The sand of the Ashen Wasteland continued to vibrate. Erika turned her gaze toward one of the light paths. "I'm going." She spoke briefly and took a step forward. Haru let out a small "oh" and followed behind her. --- As they progressed down the path, the landscape changed. The gray desert faded, and walls began to appear. Walls of grayish-white, roughly eight meters high. They interlocked like a maze, forming a complex structure with no exit. A labyrinth of confusion—the Emotion Territory of fear. Erika turned her gaze to the surface of the wall. Images floated there. Like video. Moving, changing images. A dark closet. She was six or seven years old. Someone had locked the door from outside. She pounded on it while crying. She didn't know how much time had passed. In that darkness, she nearly forgot how to breathe. That memory wavered on the wall's surface. The moment Erika looked away, the wall moved. It crept slowly toward her. "If you don't look directly, it closes in." Haru's voice from behind. No unnecessary explanation. Just that. Erika looked at the wall again. The image of the closet expanded and wavered. Something strange happened. There was no emotion. She wasn't experiencing fear. Yet something within her—something that resisted the image—reacted faintly. It was a resistance without the name of emotion, merely the creaking sound of an empty vessel shaped like emotion. Erika continued to look at the image, along with that resistance. The wall retreated. The path opened. So that's how it works, Erika thought. It wasn't necessary to "have" emotion. Only the fact of having "received" the image opened the way. Haru whistled lightly. "I see, you find the method quickly," he said, following behind. In his voice, something like genuine feeling seemed to seep through—Erika processed that "seemed to" as something curious. She hadn't expected such intuition to remain in an Erika without emotion. They progressed through the maze. Another image appeared on the next wall. The entrance. Night. Her father stood holding luggage. Without turning back, he opened the door and left. From the top of the stairs on the second floor, nine-year-old Erika watched his departing back. She couldn't call out to him, couldn't stop him. Erika's feet stopped once. "Look directly at it." Just that. Nothing more. That brevity functioned in an oddly effective way. No unnecessary encouragement, no sympathy, nothing. Just "look directly." Erika evaluated the precision of that single phrase, the sparseness of its margins. She looked at the image again. Her father's back. The line of light falling on the entrance. The sound of the door closing. The wall retreated. Another step deeper into the maze. --- As the innermost wall came into view, Erika's pace naturally slowed. An image floated on the wall's surface. A kitchen. Night. Light from outside filtered through the window, leaving the room dark. Someone stood before the sink, facing away. Their shoulders trembled in small movements. Her mother. Sasaki Minako—Erika's mother—stood alone, weeping, believing no one could see her. That image was carved into the wall's surface. Erika stopped. The previous images were "frightening events that happened to me." The darkness of the closet, the night her father left—the subject was Erika's own fear. But this was different. This was "someone is hurt because of me." The structure was fundamentally different. Each time she tried to look directly, her vision wavered. She couldn't focus. Every time she tried to turn her gaze to the image, something else seemed to intrude into her field of vision—a strange sensation. The wall began to creep closer. She tried several times. Each time, her vision wavered. The wall approached. Haru moved quietly. He came to stand beside Erika and placed his hand on the same wall. Standing side by side, they looked at the same image. The carefree tone he'd maintained until now completely vanished. "The reason your feet stop before this image..." Haru opened his mouth. His voice was different. It had weight. The mask of lightness he'd worn until now seemed to have been left somewhere else. His voice was quiet, serious, and slightly lower than before. "...is because you're feeling something." He didn't add: *even though your emotions should be stripped away*. The words ended there. Erika received that change in his voice's quality at the center of her chest. —There was, undeniably, a sensation of having "received" it. While processing it logically, simultaneously, a remnant of the voice having "reached" her remained inside her chest. It had no name as an emotion. Yet something had reached her. A dual experience unlike anything before was quietly occurring within Erika's interior. Erika looked at Haru's profile. Silver eyes gazing at the image. A serious expression. At close distance. Erika noticed that she was observing that expression—that distance—far longer than usual. She didn't know why she was doing so. She left it unexamined. "...As a trace of emotion having once existed..." Erika spoke quietly. "Rather than looking directly at it as a frightening event, I will receive it as evidence that I once feared it—as proof that a former version of myself existed." Haru moved slightly. She could tell by the shift in presence. His gaze turned toward her. Erika looked at the wall. Her mother's back. Trembling shoulders. The darkness of the kitchen. This was proof that a former version of herself had truly existed. A version of herself that feared hurting someone. That emotion was now stripped away. Yet that image was a trace of the fact that Erika had once felt something. Through that circuit, she looked at the image. Her vision didn't waver. The wall retreated. Light kindled in the depths of the maze. A faint, pale light. Like a firefly cooled within sand, a small white nucleus that wavered—the crystallized form of the fear emotion lay there. Erika walked. She stood before the light. She reached out her hand. The moment her fingertips touched it, the entire Dream World flashed white. --- Consciousness rose rapidly. The ceiling came into view. Seven stains. A six-mat room on the second floor. Outside the window, the darkness before dawn still lingered. Erika lay on her bed, gazing at the ceiling for a while. Her cheek was cold. When she touched it with her finger, it was dry. Traces of tears. She hadn't cried within the Dream World. Yet the traces remained on her cheek—Erika now directly confirmed for the first time the fact that experiences within the Dream World could exert faint influence on the physical body in reality. Her gaze was drawn to a corner of the room. Unconsciously. Like gravity, her eyes turned toward the dark corner. There was nothing there. Just a dark corner. Yet it was, faintly, "concerning." Concerning—that fact was oddly fresh to Erika. Until yesterday, the corner of the room was merely space. A place recognized only as data. Now, faintly, it was "concerning." Whether that was emotion, Erika couldn't determine. Yet something had undeniably changed. The first fragment of fear was faintly returning. Not as something she felt as emotion. Yet her body was reacting. (Why did Haru remove his mask in that moment?) The question floated up as thought. That instant when he had shed his carefree tone entirely and spoken in that quiet, weighty voice. Had