"Honestly — was that so hard? A few considerate words, just a little consideration. Is that really too much to ask?"
When Amamiya Rin finally relented and said something gentle, the Tomies were satisfied at last.
One by one, they broke into bright, self-satisfied grins, the corners of their mouths curling upward with barely-concealed smugness.
For a man who couldn't be charmed — getting him to soften his attitude, to show genuine goodwill toward them — that was no small achievement in the eyes of the Tomies.
"We won't slack off on training, you know. We've got a clear direction now, so just wait for our good news."
"Then give it your best. I'm rooting for you."
Aamamiya Rin's expression didn't change. He didn't mind lowering his guard a little to give them some praise.
It wasn't purely about self-interest. Part of it was simply that they'd spent too much time together.
Years of living side by side — even with an enemy, that kind of closeness breeds something like attachment. And the relationship between Amamiya Rin and Tomie was far more complicated than mere enemies could ever be.
Dream World time might be worth nothing on paper — but it still slipped away, second by second.
He didn't know how long had passed. But at some point, Amamiya Rin was seized by a powerful, creeping sense of dislocation. Without warning, everything around him grew distant and blurred.
He realized: he was about to wake up.
Like clawing his way up from the bottom of a fathomless sea, Amamiya Rin forced his eyes open.
His field of vision was filled by an unfamiliar ceiling — pure white, completely bare, nothing but a single, plain flush-mount light overhead. From somewhere nearby came the noise of a television and the bright, lilting laughter of women.
A bone-deep exhaustion coiled around every inch of him. Each breath felt like it was wringing every last drop of strength from his body.
On reflex, he sank into deep Dhyana. A long, silent stretch passed before his mind finally cleared.
"Ha. Sleeping inside a dream — doesn't do the body any good at all."
Aamamiya Rin's mouth curved into a faint smile, and for a moment something unexpected flickered through him — a strange pang of nostalgia.
This exhaustion... this was exactly how he'd felt before entering the Dream World.
No. Before his sudden cardiac arrest. To be precise.
After twenty years, his body had reawakened — and with it, that same bone-grinding fatigue had returned in full.
With considerable effort, Amamiya Rin turned his stiff neck and took stock of his surroundings.
It was a room — not particularly spacious, but clearly arranged with care. The layout was immediately readable. The desk by the window was buried under books and stacked documents. The walls were covered in clippings and photographs. In the corner stood a camera bag and tripod, alongside his own backpack.
Against the opposite wall sat a small television. On its screen, two female comedians in garish, oversized cartoon costumes were mugging shamelessly at the camera, their makeup gaudy and their expressions grotesquely exaggerated.
"So last night, my refrigerator spoke to me!"
"Oh? What did it say?"
"It said: 'It's so cold in here!'"
"Well, of course it did! Ha ha ha ha!"
The two comedians delivered their material — material that generated not even the faintest ghost of amusement — with the particular, desperate energy of performers who are absolutely convinced they are killing it.
The moment the punchline landed, they erupted together in a long, deliberate, painfully drawn-out burst of laughter. The screen obligingly cut to a cheap "EXPLOSIVE LAUGHTER" text effect, complete with canned audience noise.
Aamamiya Rin's brow creased slightly.
This performance was... stiff. Painful.
The material felt like something unearthed from the previous century — he couldn't locate the joke in any of it. A few more seconds of watching and he could feel the secondhand embarrassment beginning to flare in the back of his skull.
But what he found completely impenetrable, someone else was apparently finding absolutely hilarious.
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...!"
A woman had her back to Amamiya Rin, doubled over laughing at the screen.
That person...
"Mamiya Yuka?"
There was, of course, no way to identify someone from behind — someone he'd had only brief contact with twenty years ago. He simply thought it through. Twenty years ago, before the cardiac arrest — who was the last woman he'd had any contact with?
Only Mamiya Yuka.
Mamiya Yuka was wearing comfortable loungewear, a pumpkin-shaped cushion clutched tight to her chest, eyes fixed unblinking on the television screen.
In sharp contrast to the cringe Amamiya Rin was experiencing, her shoulders shook with barely-suppressed laughter. The corners of her mouth refused to stay down. Every time the two comedians landed another punchline, she burst out laughing right on cue — over and over, without pause.
So absorbed was she that she hadn't even noticed Amamiya Rin had woken up.
"Hey..."
Aamamiya Rin tried to push himself upright — and was hit by a wave of profound, crushing weakness. He swayed sideways and caught himself against the wall.
At the sound of his voice, Mamiya Yuka finally turned around — still laughing, her grin stretched wide and completely out of her control.
"Ha ha ha... Amamiya-kun... ha ha ha... you're finally awake... ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
Seeing that he was up, she laughed harder than ever, rocking back and forth until the pumpkin cushion in her arms was being squeezed out of shape. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and caught the lamplight, glittering like tiny sparks.
"Ms. Mamiya — something is wrong with you."
Aamamiya Rin's gaze sharpened. Mamiya Yuka's state was far too strange. Low laugh threshold or not, there was no earthly reason to still be laughing like this.
"I... I know... ha ha ha ha... I can't stop... ha ha ha...!"
Mamiya Yuka laughed until she was gasping, wiping her eyes mid-laugh, forcing out an explanation in broken, heaving fragments.
Déjà vu...
Aamamiya Rin's brow furrowed. This situation... felt like something he'd seen or heard of before.
A Junji Ito manga from his previous life?
Too much time had passed; the details were hazy. But he could vaguely recall a certain chapter — one that featured something very much like this. Something that made a person laugh and laugh, and laugh, with no way to stop.
Aamamiya Rin braced himself against the wall, pushed to his feet, and crossed to the corner. He unzipped his backpack.
Notebook, ballpoint pen, banknotes, sandpaper... everything seemed to be there. Not that he had the energy to count the money right now.
He opened the notebook and flipped to the middle. What greeted him was row upon row of characters written in wild, sprawling Chinese script.
Back then, to prevent himself from forgetting critical intelligence, he had recorded everything he could remember. To guard against prying eyes, he had written not just in Chinese characters — but in a deliberately scrambled, inverted order. Anyone who was not a native reader of Chinese would never make sense of a single line.
"Found it..."
He turned a few more pages, scanning each at speed. Amamiya Rin's eyes landed quickly on the passage that matched.
Junji Ito manga: "Ghost of Prime Time." Main characters: two comedians without a shred of natural talent. Though they possess no gift for comedy whatsoever, they possess ikiryo — living spirits!
What is an ikiryo?
In Japanese culture, an ikiryo is the soul of a living person.
It is said that even while a person is still alive, their soul can detach from the body and drift freely through the world. This is said to occur most often in women consumed by intense jealousy or powerful, unresolved emotion — women who have long been fixated on something they cannot achieve in reality for one reason or another. Their souls leave their bodies in order to accomplish what the person cannot.
Put simply: astral projection.
And this phenomenon was precisely what manifested in those two comedians.
But unlike an ordinary ikiryo, theirs could release multiple living spirits simultaneously. The upper limit was unknown — but it would be no less than ten million.
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