That morning, the strangest thing was that nothing strange happened at all.
No flickering lights, no rebellious coffee machine, no alarm screaming in shock at my existence. For the first time in I don't know how long, the world followed the manual.
I even caught myself wondering—is this how normal people feel every day? Calm, steady, boring?
Coffee dripped obediently, its bitter aroma filling my tiny room. I looked in the mirror: hair messy as usual, eye-bags under control, expression… a bit too good for a person often blamed for campus-wide electronic malfunctions.
"Me?" I asked the reflection. "No disasters this morning?"
The reflection answered with suspicious silence.
I stared at the notebook on my desk and, for some reason, wrote:
Hypothesis #01: As long as Mira is within a radius ≤ 2 meters, anomaly phenomenon = 0.
I underlined that absurd formula, then quickly crossed it out.
"I am not writing Mira = lucky charm."
I launched the paper toward the trash can with professional flair—and of course missed.
My phone on the desk vibrated once.
A short message lit the screen:
> Mira Millover:
Come to campus early. I want to show you something.
No emojis. No exclamation marks. That was it, but somehow it was enough to make my heart tap out Morse code.
I tried to convince myself this wasn't an invitation to romance; maybe it was just homework, or maybe she wanted to return a pen I'd lent yesterday—though I was fairly sure I'd never lent her a pen.
I put on a light gray shirt, buttoning it halfway because the top button was missing (evidence of the hard life of a student). Clean shoes, hair minimally combed, expression practiced in the mirror to look like someone not waiting for a message from a mysterious silver-haired girl.
---
Campus felt different that morning. The air was clearer, the sky too blue, and the streetlights—yes, them—glowed for a second even though the sun was already high. Normally a bad sign, but this time I decided to call it a "side effect of hope."
Lab room B-3 was empty when I arrived. Chair shadows stretched across the floor, and among those bands of light sat Mira, in front of a campus computer. Her silver hair caught the morning like threads of deliberately woven light.
She turned without surprise, as if she knew my arrival time down to the second.
"Morning," she said.
"Morning." I looked at the screen in front of her. "You do realize this room isn't open yet?"
"It is," she said casually, tapping a few keys. "I opened it."
"With a… digital key?"
"With access I shouldn't have," she said, smiling a little.
The monitor flickered, going to a black screen with one white line:
NOAH – Neural Organization for Anti-Nightmare Hazard.
I stared at the text, then at Mira.
"This isn't a sci-fi movie, is it?"
"No." She looked back at the screen. "Or maybe—partly."
I chuckled. "So what is this, secret agent recruitment? You going to give me a covert mission to save the world?"
Mira didn't answer. Her fingers just danced across the keyboard. On the monitor, rows of symbols spun like an overconfident old program.
Then the entire room blinked.
The lights went out for half a second—long enough for me to look at the ceiling and think, not me this time.
Mira looked at me, her eyes reflecting the screen's leftover glow.
"Relax," she said. "I'm just opening another door."
I swallowed. "A digital door?"
"A dream door."
I was about to laugh—and that's exactly when the whole screen flared white, the air around me folded, and gravity changed its mind about which direction to work.
The sky shifted color like someone was pouring paint from the top of the monitor.
A flash of blue, then orange, then silvery gray. The campus floor beneath me felt soft, like a glass surface holding water underneath.
"Am—I falling?"
No. My body stayed upright, but my view slid sideways. The faculty building outside the window tilted thirty degrees, and the clouds dripped downward like rain that forgot physics.
"Mira!" I yelled. "What—"
"Easy."
Her voice sounded exactly the same as usual, as if we were still in the real world.
She stood two steps in front of me, silver hair floating gently though there was no wind. "You're still on campus. Just… not that one."
"Not—do you mean there's a backup campus?"
"Call it a copy. This is the Dreamspace."
She walked casually along the now mirror-bright floor. Each step bent the light.
I looked around. "So am I asleep? Or in a coma? Or lightly deceased?"
"Nothing so dramatic. Just your door of consciousness opened a little too wide."
She stopped and looked at me. "You can still control everything if you stay calm."
"Calm? The world is dancing salsa and you tell me to be calm!?"
Mira laughed softly. "Look on the bright side—at least the lights didn't go out."
While she spoke, the shadow behind us stretched, forming a silhouette like living ink. It pulsed, writhed, then thickened into something with many eyes—no, not eyes, holes pretending to be eyes.
I stepped back two paces. "Okay. That's… not a lighting effect."
"That's a Nightmare," Mira said. "They feed on human fear. Usually they're small. This one—"
She eyed the thing that now filled half the corridor. "—is a bit hungry."
The shadow screamed without sound. The walls cracked like water-glass.
I swallowed. "You bring pest control?"
"Brought it." Mira raised her hand. From the metal band on her wrist, blue light formed a slim metal staff, its tip pulsing gently. "Navigator Tool, Code TWO."
I stared. "Cool. And what do I get?"
She tossed something to me—it looked like a big watch. "Wear it."
I caught it on reflex, though with the tilting world I almost didn't. "What is this? A magic watch? Fit-bit from hell?"
"Press the center button."
I pressed it. The watch burst with light, expanding into a sort of metal gauntlet around my left wrist. A symbol I appeared in the center, pulsing with my heartbeat.
Mira arched a brow. "Welcome, Code ONE."
"Wrong person!" I protested. "I didn't sign anything!"
The Nightmare drew closer, its scraping like a thousand nails on a chalkboard. Instinctively I aimed the gauntlet at it—and a small explosion of light fired. Not fire, not electricity—something between, like compressed air kicked hard.
The thing flew back, hitting the mirror wall—which shattered into small cubes and drifted upward like soap bubbles.
I stared at my own hand. "Did I just… shoot a dream?"
"More or less." Mira smiled. "You're experiencing disaster resonance."
"Great name for something that almost made me pee from panic!"
The monster wasn't gone; its fragments re-knit, smaller but faster. I backed up a few more steps. "Instructions! I need instructions!"
"Focus on your intent," Mira said, shifting her staff until it became a long blade of light. "Dreamspace follows thought. Imagine protecting something, not destroying."
"That sounds like a self-help seminar, not battle tactics!"
"But it works."
She shot me a quick look. "Try it!"
I drew a breath, trying to picture the feeling of "protect." The first image that came up was Mira standing in front of me—her silver hair in this strange light. As the shadow lunged, the gauntlet on my wrist flared brighter.
A blue beam shot out, not straight but spiraling—sweeping the creature into glittering dust that drifted up.
I stared blankly. "I… did it?"
"See? Not that hard."
"Not hard? I was almost salad!"
Mira laughed and stepped closer—two steps. The world around us slowly stabilized: walls upright again, colors normal, sky fading to white.
But before it vanished, I heard a low hum like a giant machine waking up.
"Mira… that sound?"
"The gateway closing," she said calmly. "Means you're going to wake up."
"I still have twenty questions—"
"Save them." She patted my shoulder—light, but it felt real. "Remember this, Enkei. You're not crazy, just too aware."
Everything went white.
Then color—soft blue, like it came from under my skin.
I tried to steady my breathing, but my lungs felt like they were relearning their job.
"Don't panic," Mira's voice came, faint, far. "You're safe."
"Safe?" I said, unsure I had a voice. "I just became a test subject for a hell portal and you say safe?"
The world slowly reassembled: campus marble floor, walls with old seminar posters, a computer desk half-melted, half intact. Everything looked normal… except gravity at the far end of the room still seemed undecided on a direction.
Mira stood between those two worlds. Her silver hair rippled, though there was no wind.
Her outfit had changed: now a thin black jacket with a II emblem on the left chest. A blue-pulsing metal band on her arm matched the device on my wrist.
"Welcome back, Code ONE," she said.
"Stop calling me that. I haven't even passed basic neuro."
"You don't need to pass to be yourself."
She gave me a look that landed. "You're not the cause of disasters, Enkei. You're a disaster that can be aimed."
"Thanks for the pep talk, but that sounds like a threat."
Mira only chuckled, then tossed me something small—like a metal earbud. "Left ear. I'll be your navigator."
"Navigator? Like a GPS?"
"More like an antivirus."
She pointed at the computer, now showing the same logo: NOAH – Neural Organization for Anti-Nightmare Hazard.
I stared at it. "NOAH. So you—"
"—are with NOAH, yes."
She said it like it was ordinary. "And now, so are you."
I looked at the metal on my wrist. A tiny blue light blinked. "Did I just get recruited without an interview?"
"You were accepted a long time ago. You just forgot."
I was about to argue when the room shivered lightly. Ripples rose from the floor like water, forming a bubble of light.
Out of it came something that made no sense: a body of black smoke with mirror-wings. Not as big as before, but its eyes were sharp.
"Great," I muttered. "I was missing a little existential dread."
Mira stood beside me. "Light-class Nightmare. Think of it as a practical exam."
"Exam? I don't even know the theory!"
She handed me her staff. "Hold it. Focus."
I gripped it. Too heavy. "I can't—"
"You can. Just imagine you don't want something bad to happen."
"Bad like… the floor breaking?"
"Bad like me getting hurt."
That stopped me. Something in that sentence knocked my heartbeat off tempo.
The creature leaped; Mira stayed calm. I swung the staff like an amateur and—BOOM!
Not blue this time. A white surge swept straight out, ricocheted off the wall, took out part of the ceiling, then slammed back into the Nightmare.
It shattered, dissolving into mist like morning fog.
I froze. "I… uh, didn't mean to."
"You rarely mean to." Mira patted my shoulder. "But it worked."
"One question. What's the repair bill for this dream room?"
"Free. No contractors here."
She met my eyes. "And the effects stay in Dreamspace, so don't worry."
I let out a long breath, trying to process. "Okay. So, in short: I have a weird power that breaks things, you're a navigator who's somehow immune, and we're part of a secret group called NOAH that fights dream monsters."
"Short and accurate."
She smiled. "You learn fast."
"What if I refuse?"
"Too late."
Mira tapped her wristband. A hologram spun up: NOAH's emblem, a circle with a spiral line in the center. A synthetic voice came from the air:
> CODE ONE CONFIRMED. AGENT ENKEI SHIRON, ACTIVE.
NEURAL SYNCHRONIZATION LEVEL: 48%.
NAVIGATOR TWO LINKED.
I looked at Mira. "That's serious? Do I have an auto-narrator in my head now?"
"It's the system. You'll get used to it."
"Can I turn notifications off?"
"No. And don't try."
I rolled my eyes, then looked at my left hand—the metal gauntlet now sleeker, the I symbol calmly lit.
Everything felt real—too real to be called a dream. But somehow, my brain wasn't panicking anymore.
Maybe because Mira was still there. Or maybe because a long-buried part of me finally found something that looked like purpose.
Before I could say more, the world began to crack like glass under a fine vibration. Mira's gaze sharpened. "You're about to drop out."
"Out to where?"
"Wake up. But don't forget this. Don't file it under dream."
Light swallowed everything.
---
I woke in a campus chair. Sunlight came through the window, gentle and normal.
The room was back to how it had been—no cracks, no monsters, no sign of Mira.
Just birds outside and a computer screen showing a blank document.
I looked at my left hand—the metal device was still there. Its blue light pulsed softly.
The door opened. Mira stood there in regular clothes, hair falling easy. She smiled faintly.
"Good morning, Agent One."
I stared at her, halfway between confused and resigned. "You're joking, right?"
Mira shrugged. "No. But if you want, we can rerun the test tonight."
I looked up at the ceiling, then down at my hand again. "I think I need a day off."
She laughed lightly. "NOAH doesn't do days off."
I was about to protest when my phone buzzed on the desk. The screen lit without my touch.
An unknown message popped up, a single line:
> WELCOME TO NOAH, DISASTER.
I looked at Mira. "Who sent that?"
She looked back, smile unchanged. "Your commander."
"Commander?"
"Zero."
She walked out, waving a hand. "And don't be late tomorrow, Agent One. The dream world doesn't wait."
I glanced at my phone one more time, then muttered, "I really have to stop taking afternoon naps."
---