I have a life simulator.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Kitagawa Ryo's Monologue

I want to see Honami Ichinose.

Although I have no memories of the past, the feeling I had after hearing that name in my 'sister's' dream was buried deep in my heart.

She is an important person to me; she is my real 'sister'.

Every night since then, I have tried to find her in the world of my dreams. I believe she dreams, and she dreams beautiful, lovely dreams that radiate rainbow light, because the privilege of beautiful dreams belongs to the best children.

For the first time, I completely let go of my consciousness and thoughts, sending out my signal. I confirmed that she was somewhere in Tokyo.

Tokyo has a resident population of around 1300 million, and people dream consciously or unconsciously every night as they fall asleep.

The distance between reality and dreams is like that between the sky and the ocean; they gaze at each other from afar, reflecting each other, yet never meet.

But for me as an individual, I can freely enter the ocean of dreams; this is an innate ability of mine.

I stood on the edge where the sea and sky met, and dipped a finger into this dreamlike sea.

Just as the smell of blood attracts sharks, a brocade of blood-red fish instantly surrounded my fingers. I could feel them nibbling at my cold fingertips. I shook my fingers to move them away; they were not the dream I was looking for.

I put the piece of bone back into my pocket and continued searching for the dream that belonged to Honami Ichinose.

Waves surged from beneath my feet like the most potent acidic corrosive substance, gradually annihilating my flesh. Thirty minutes later, only a skeleton remained, which continued to walk, searching.

I can feel my individual consciousness being repeatedly impacted by dreams from others, to the point that sometimes I have to stop for a while before I can remember my own name or what I need to do.

The shattered nightmare transformed into a flurry of black snowflakes, one by one staining my shoulders, gradually turning me into a gradient of black and white.

More and more dreams... are drawing near.

Or rather, it is rushing toward its own direction.

Like seeing a burning bonfire in the cold winter, countless dreams surged towards me from all directions, above and below.

Kitagawa Ryo's figure was buried and disappeared in the swirling black snow and the overwhelming waves.

When I woke up the next day, I found that I had lost some of my memories. At the same time, my nerves kept throbbing with a nauseating pain. When I first opened my eyes, my vision was almost completely black. I ran into the bathroom and repeatedly touched my face in the mirror, telling myself that I was Kitagawa Ryo.

But on the second night, I still didn't give up looking for her.

Since all my memories of the past three years in the white room were the result of deception, there's nothing to regret about discarding them all.

One day, two days, three days.

My amnesia became more and more obvious, and the instructors seemed to have noticed my abnormality as well. As usual, they hoped that my 'sister' could awaken my fighting spirit.

After all, for the past three years, I have been a pathetic existence who has only worked hard for her.

"elder brother……"

The girl with silver-white hair lay lazily on the bed, opening her arms to me. She had become accustomed to giving Kitagawa Ryo a little affection, whether real or fake, and he would lie down at her feet gently like a dog.

"I heard your recent test scores weren't very good."

She turned off the stark white chandelier and turned on the warm orange table lamp, enveloping the two of you in a cozy, white room that felt like the heart of the world.

I ignored her and just wanted to drift off to sleep. The second hand of the clock ticked away. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep, but suddenly I felt a cold hand grab my right hand.

"I'm here. Don't be afraid, it's okay. Even if your brother does badly, I'll stay with you."

She skillfully poured these sweet words into Kitagawa Ryo's ears like lukewarm syrup, waiting for Kitagawa Ryo to surrender to her.

But Kitagawa Ryo ignored these words for the first time, and he really just fell asleep quietly.

For the first time, Sakayanagi Arisu felt uneasy.

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About six months later, I finally found Ichinose Honami's dream. Although I had lost about a third of my memories by then, I knew this was my brain's self-protection mechanism. Otherwise, the tens of thousands of dreams I had recklessly encountered over the past six months would have been enough to completely erase my individual consciousness.

However, I still think it was worth it.

Because I finally met her.

"Hmm, where is this?"

In the dream, Honami Ichinose didn't seem to fully understand the situation, but she soon saw me.

"Cold! Is it cold?"

She rushed up and hugged me with delight. Just as I had imagined, the lively and cheerful Honami Ichinose was a beautiful and lovely girl.

"This must be a dream."

Honami Ichinose murmured to herself in my arms:

"But this is the first time I've dreamed of you since you moved away."

She must have longed for this reunion countless times, Ichinose Honami, calling my name from your heart.

"cold."

"Ah."

I found it strange that she didn't call me 'brother'; she kept calling me by my name.

"cold."

"I'm here."

Her cheeks flushed, and she smiled—a smile that made my heart flutter.

From that day on, I met Ichinose Honami in my dreams every day.

She chattered on and on about the things happening around her, from the verdant green of the willow branches downstairs in spring to the fireworks blooming in the summer sky, to the sycamore leaves falling like rain in the park in autumn, and to the various bird claw marks in the snow in winter. She would often stare at those strange symbols for a long time by herself.

She told me about her mother and sister. In her dream, Honami Ichinose seemed fearless. Anyway, it was her own dream, and everyone has the right to sleep peacefully and dream. You just need to be the most suitable listener.

In a sense, both Ichinose Honami and I are beings who have lost our freedom in reality. Perhaps only in dreams, where no one can disturb us, can we carefully build a happiness that is just the two of us.

As the days went by, my amnesia showed no signs of improvement, but I still clung to the memories I had shared with Honami Ichinose, locking them away in the deepest part of my consciousness as my most precious treasures.

"Actually, when that classmate confessed to me back then..."

Honami Ichinose is recounting the scene of her first confession to someone her own age. I had seen it in my 'little sister's' dream, and I even know that she wrote back to Honami Ichinose in my name, proposing the conditions for a relationship.

"I knew then that the letter wasn't sent by Liang."

Honami Ichinose suddenly spoke up, and she smiled nostalgically, a smile that naturally drew my attention.

"Because Ryo had already confessed to me before that."

An unseen scene suddenly entered my mind.

One day, in a certain place, there seems to be a scene where I confessed my feelings to someone.

How long exactly did it take? Four years later, I finally recalled all my memories from before I was ten years old. Ichinose Honami held me in her arms, an incredibly gentle yet irresistible embrace:

"Could you please confess your feelings to me one more time, even if it's just in a dream?"

"Fanbo"

Realizing that I was going to leave with the people who had adopted me, I secretly ran back to my old house on the last day.

At that time, I probably didn't know what love was, but the thought of leaving Ichinose Honami, with whom I had spent every day, filled me with sadness and grief. It took me a week to accept the reality of my parents' death, but I was about to face the reality of being separated from her.

"Huh? Brother, you're back?"

Honami Ichinose probably doesn't know the situation yet; she probably just thinks my week-long disappearance was a trip or something.

She looked at me with some surprise as I ran up to her.

"Actually, it's like this—me."

My body felt tense, as if I were bound. The embarrassment was more exaggerated than I had imagined. As a child, I desperately tried to recall the scenes from TV shows.

"I...I'm leaving soon."

"Eh?"

Honami Ichinose let out a soft, puzzled "hmm".

"This is my new home address. Fanbo can send letters here."

I wrote down the address of the house where the people who adopted me lived, which I heard in the hospital, and handed it to her.

"Also, there is more."

Before I could even say anything, tears welled up in my eyes. Ichinose Honami just stared blankly at me as I started crying. Children's crying is contagious, so she started crying along with me.

"I love Honoka!"

"This is what I wanted to tell you."

But in the end, I still said those words.

Until later, the light from the white room completely obscured or negated my remaining memories, turning them all into dust and blowing them away.

Having regained all my past memories and feelings—no, even having forgotten them—I still found you again, and fell in love with you once more.

I nodded to her. A confession in a dream might be even more perfunctory than the last one, but thankfully it was just a dream.

My consciousness began to dominate this dream, and although this brought me tremendous mental pressure, I resolutely began to act according to my own ideas.

Kitagawa Ryo reached out his hand to her, and like a transformation in a tokusatsu drama, white light began to flow from his outstretched hand, starting from his palm, appearing from the white gloves, and the black piping embroidered with elegant bamboo leaf patterns extended up his robe sleeves to his upper body, until a smart and neat suit covered his entire body.

Centered on his feet, a vibrant red carpet stretched all the way to the edge of the dream, while the sky above them shone with starlight, and magnificent fireworks bloomed like flowers above them.

"I like you."

He gently kissed Ichinose Honami's forehead, and a white light flowed down her forehead, transforming into a white wedding dress. The pure white skirt was crafted into countless pleats, and a thin veil of gauze veiled over it. The uneven lace trim on the cuffs added to her femininity, and white roses, spiraling downwards from her shoulders, graced her like a princess in the clouds, elegant and magnificent.

"Yes, what I like is coolness, not the kind of feeling between family members, but the feeling between people of the opposite sex."

"This is my reply, which is four years late."

Honami Ichinose replied in this way.

So after she turned ten, she stopped calling Kitagawa Ryo "brother" and started calling him Ryo, just like he called her Honami.

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Black and white chess pieces are commanded and fought on the chessboard by the player.

Sakayanagi Arisu gripped the Go piece tightly in her hand, her lips pressed together so tightly they were almost bloodless. Unbeknownst to herself, her knees were trembling slightly.

I wanted to close my eyes and escape, but the clock kept ticking away.

He wanted to stand up and escape, but his body felt as if it were nailed firmly to the spot.

The pure white house gradually dissolved like a dream, like pure white snowflakes falling on a blazing red furnace, shattering away in a soft, continuous drizzle.

The boy, who had kept his head down until now, quietly raised his face, revealing his eyes through his slightly long bangs. Those dark eyes, which seemed to be smiling yet not smiling, angry yet not angry, and devoid of any discernible emotion, captivated her.

"Check."

His fingertips propelled the black Go piece, advancing it one last time towards Sakayanagi Arisu:

The sweetness and purity painted on the pitch-black memories were torn apart wantonly, and Kitagawa Ryo won the seventh match against his opponent.

It was less of a competition and more of a crushing defeat, a one-sided massacre.

The incandescent lights on the ceiling resembled twinkling, fleeting stars.

The boundary lines on the chessboard seem to be shaky and blurred.

Everything in front of me seemed to be separated by a thick membrane, and I couldn't hear the sounds around me clearly.

A feeling welled up in my chest, making me feel incredibly depressed; something was stuck in my throat, and I couldn't speak.

"Then, the game is over."

Absurdity is celebrated, but the truth revealed after piercing through the facade is often far more cruel.

Kitagawa Ryo stood up and looked down at Sakayanagi Arisu for the first time:

"My fake... sister."

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"Target has escaped by jumping out of the window! Correction again, target has escaped by jumping out of the window!"

Kitagawa Ryo, who had fallen from the second floor while holding Ichinose Honami, landed on his back first. Fortunately, he had chosen the lawn as his landing spot in advance, so his bones didn't seem to be damaged. He got up from the ground and, holding Ichinose Honami's hand, continued rushing towards the crowded area of ​​the street.

"Hey, Sakayanagi, where's your backup?"

The girl's cool voice came through the earpiece, but at this moment it seemed to reveal a kind of annoyance as if she had just woken up: