“Yo, Kyouya, let’s go already!”

“Mhmph?”

“… Stop eating! Come on! We’ll be late for that tournament if you keep stuffing your cheeks with pockies and melonpans! Argh, come on!”

Hmm, they sure were different when they were kids, huh?

Tokyo, oh, Tokyo. I was born and raised in Yokohama in the Kanagawa prefecture, so a trip to Japan’s capital only took around 40 minutes. As a teacher who worked in Tokyo, that still meant I needed a total of 80 minutes to commute from home to my workplace and to return. Considering I had to wake up early at 6 AM and get ready to go to work, it was still extremely inconvenient for me, but money was money, right?

However, after only reliving my time on Earth through my memories all this time, it was a sight for sore eyes for me to see the familiar buildings and sights of a modern Japanese city. You could call me nostalgic. My garm mother showed me my home again, but I still felt surprised to see Earth through the memories of one of my students.

“Come on, run! Let’s go!”

“Haaa, yeah! Ahaa, I can’t, Tatsuya. It’s too hot!”

What was even more surprising was that one of my students was dreaming and inspecting his memories when he was still an elementary schooler. Specifically, these were Kyouya’s memories of when he was still a kid.

I knew Tatsuya and Kyouya were childhood friends, but I didn’t know much else from that. I was their teacher, yes, and while I could say we had a nice enough relationship to be called friends, I still had to keep a certain distance since I was their teacher. I couldn’t be too close, otherwise, people would talk about it. My position as a teacher was too important for me to jeopardize it.

Now, that I wasn’t their teacher anymore — since my human self who was employed as a teacher had died — I could proudly say my former students were my friends. Still, I had no idea about their pasts. I didn't know what Kyouya faced before he became my student.

“Kyouya, left, left, left! Normal special. Grab, dude!”

“Gottem, gottem, gottem! Hey, hey, hey, keep him off the ledge!”

The two friends were playing in an arcade right now, spamming buttons on some arcade game I had no idea about. They had joined a tournament to earn some tickets for something, and were now playing against other kids their age. Moments later, they won.

“That fatty really did it?! Clutch!”

“Ah, come on, how was that clutch? Tatsuya led him around like a puppet with his shot-calling. No way can he think without the other. Like some pawn.”

Unfortunately, snickers were coming from the audience. Not only from elementary kids, but also young teenagers and high schoolers. While they praised Tatsuya, most of them were being rude to Kyouya.

Children could be cruel, especially if there was something they could bully you for. In Kyouya’s case, as a kid, it seemed he was quite overweight. In addition, from what I saw, he had an eating disorder, as the moment the two boys won, he would take out snacks they just bought from a combini — a convenience store.

“Come on, don’t let them get to you.”

“Mhmm. Yeah…” Kyouya nodded to Tatsuya’s wide smile, trying to comfort his best friend. However, Kyouya just cowered from everybody and began eating some pockies. “I got nothing to worry about with you around. We’ll win this, alright!”

“Yeah!”

And they did. They won the whole tournament, even beating some older kids. The two friends cheered as they got their tickets, but they didn’t stay inside the arcade for too long. Smart, since the snickering and backhanded jokes on behalf of Kyouya’s appearance was increasing more and more.

The two kids escaped to a nearby park, resting themselves on the grass in the shade of a tree. It was summer, so they were sweating a bit. For a couple of kids with CEOs as fathers, they really acted like any other elementary kid I knew about. It seemed they had a good childhood.

“Can’t believe you got that last hit off. That was too close! I really thought you would die right there.” Kyouya grinned as he praised Tatsuya’s gaming skills.

“What? Ha! Of course I wouldn’t blow it at the finals! As if, dude, haha!” But Tatsuya’s boastful expression quickly vanished as his smile fell into a frown. The atmosphere between the two changed. “… Mhmm. Not when this is our last day together. I had to give it my all.”

“…”

“…”

“I didn’t want to leave.” One of Kyouya’s lingering thoughts resounded in this dream of his. This was his real thought.

From the look of it, Kyouya’s father wasn’t the CEO of his company at this time. For his promotion, he was requested to lead the opening of a new branch. However, this branch was located in a different prefecture, and due to the importance of his job, he decided it would be best for him and his family to move. And looking at the future, this decision allowed him to secure his family’s financial security.

However, this meant Kyouya and Tatsuya had to say their goodbyes. Sure, they had phones and computers, but to those two boys, being able to meet in person and going to the arcade was what their friendship was about. Tatsuya played tough when Kyouya cried, but I could see the former tearing up a bit, also.

“Stay strong, alright, Kyouya! If somebody calls you fat or whatever, just give me a call, alright? I’ll have my mom drive me over and I’ll give them—”

“I know, but don’t alright! The people at the arcade are right. I have to stop relying on you so much. Don’t worry about me, Tatsuya! When we meet again during summer, I’ll show you how much better I got in the arcade, yeah?”

“Deal!”

However, the flashbacks told a different story. Bullied not only by his new schoolmates but also his cousins who lived close to the city his father worked at. They body shamed him, which caused him to gain even more weight as he tried to eat his stress away. A fact I knew quite a bit from my time as a teacher, but due to all the stress, I lost more weight despite how much I ate.

Eventually, his father bought him a membership and also a personal trainer to help him out with his weight. Kyouya disliked it at first, but he quickly grew fond of “the burn.” However, during this time, from all the training, Kyouya decided to not visit Tatsuya during summer or even for winter break. They were still friends, but it seemed they drifted off a bit.

“You would like to join the track team?”

“Yes, please!”

During his last year of elementary school, Kyouya began to participate in sport clubs, which he continued even into middle school. He was changing, not only physically but also mentally. His interest in otaku activities slowly dwindled and he was becoming more and more a training enthusiast.

“Looks good. Feel good. Can’t hate this, right?” Kyouya told himself as he inspected himself, but, as his teacher I had the responsibility to not look at him when he was half-naked. “Just a bit more bulking, and nobody can say anything anymore. Last bits of fat and I’ll look reliable as hell. Yup! Gotta keep on going.”

It was only when Kyouya’s family moved back to Tokyo in his last year of middle school where his interest in games was reignited when he reunited with Tatsuya. The two friends had a lot to catch up on, even if they met often on social media. However, not only Kyouya but Tatsuya also changed during all those years. He wasn’t addicted to coffee when he was a kid, but when the two friends met again, Tatsuya had his usual coffee thermos with him.

“I should have stayed! I should have told Papa I wanted to stay!”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Tatsuya? Why did I…”

The two friends made up and even acted like extremely good friends again, however, from the sound of Kyouya’s thoughts, it seemed they kept some distance between each for a while. Even into high school, where I became their teacher.

For a long time, Tatsuya hadn’t told Kyouya about the court case between his mother and Akabane’s father, which so happened to have occurred in that very month the two met again. Kyouya didn’t seem to hold much of a grudge, but it seemed he had some lingering regrets at not being relied on.

And then, Peolynca happened. A magic circle appeared and transported my whole class to this world, all while I probably died. I saw my students talk about me being late. I still had memories of leaving the house and being in the teacher’s lounge, but I couldn’t find out how I died in this memory. A shame.

[“There you are, Saori.”]

I turned around.

“Oh, hey, Mother.”

It was my garm mother.

[“You were fastidious,”] Mother suddenly told me, making me instantly realize what she did.

“Do not pry too much into his memories, Mother. It is already rude that I am here, doing this.” I shook my head, feeling slightly ashamed I was interfering in my students personal life right now.

However, Mother thought differently. [“It’s been three weeks since they were trapped in this dream by Goddess Kronnaz. You care for your pack, so it’s important for you to help them.”]

It’s been a week since I accepted Belzac’s offer to help my train, meaning, I was currently undergoing his full shadow training. To become a proper fenrir, I needed a fenrir to train me, similar to how Hestia needed her Mother to acquire her full draconic abilities. But, most importantly, it was to improve my control over shadows.

I was currently having a break, and I decided to help out Kyouya and Tatsuya with their trials. For some reason, both of them haven’t broken out of their dreams yet, forcing Vivachel to perform a blood transfusion to give them nutrients. I was worried about blood type and so on, but it seemed a hemomancer like her could bypass those rules. Magic, I guess.

Regardless, the point was I was currently in Kyouya’s dream, or, to be more specific, I was inside the dream bubble of Tatsuya and Kyouya. Like the one Ilsaphone made around me, it extracted the memories inside our soul and released them as a vivid dream. Memories were part of our souls, as Hestia could attest, and for the Goddess of Death bringing out our memories wasn’t a problem for her.

Belzac manipulated my dream bubble to test me with an illusion, however, for Kyouya and Tatsuya, it was about them trying to find a reason to continue fighting. Of course, they had one — to return home to Earth — but Kronnaz, who was monitoring them, wanted to extract another reason from them. And because they were stuck in this problem, I decided to help.

When I mentioned this dream bubble also encompassing Tatsuya's dream, I wasn’t lying. With one command, I could transport my consciousness to his, however, I’ve watched him struggle with his problem too often now. His hatred for Franz Akabane began to affect me, also.

That was why I was inside Kyouya’s dream. It was still sad, but it wasn’t as infuriating to watch. My garm mother also decided to be here, but from her actions, I believed she simply wanted to watch their memories to learn more about me. Similar to how she extracted and created an illusion of my mother — my human mother.

I wished she would ask me directly about it, but from the look of it, Mother was shyer than I thought. She was a garm of little words and was more sneaky than confrontational. She would rather look into Tatsuya’s memories to watch me teach them, than to simply ask me what my favorite sleeping position was… I still had no idea why that was worth knowing, but I guessed it was garm stuff.

Not to mention, mentally speaking, Mother was technically younger than me, since she was nine when her body died and I was 26 when I died on Earth. Honestly, I wished it was more straightforward, like Hestia’s and Melloxtressa’s relationship.

“Dammit!”

My attention shifted from Mother back to Kyouya’s memory, who was smashing his fist into the ground. At this point in time, he had not made contact with me. From the look of it, it was after their trip into the Belzac forest, where their group was almost overwhelmed by a horde of grimgarians.

“Why am I so goddamn weak!”

He blamed himself for not being able to turn the tides when it mattered the most. He planned on sacrificing his life to save everybody else, by taunting every grimgarian towards him, but before they could do anything, he was saved by Tatsuya. Similar to their first Church Quest, where Tatsuya saved him from bandits. Once again, he had to rely on his best friend for his survival.

“Nothing has changed… Dammit…”

He was envious of Yorshka. He was envious of Hestia. He was jealous of how much stronger they all were, and blamed himself for not training enough. He had gladly given up the unique skill the demonkins attached to him as a tracker, knowing it would be best if he severed all ties with the Church of Aurena, but he was lamenting how he didn’t know where to go now.

It mirrored Ellaine’s chagrin, in my opinion. Watching stronger people around you succeed, it felt like you were holding everybody back. I could sympathize with them, but power didn’t come around magically.

Hestia trained hard to adapt to her new body, and so did I, even if I felt too weak compared to Hestia. At this point, though, I knew my path forward required me to have patience and dedication. Tasianna understood it also, with her training with Melloxtressa. Ellaine, although she accepted Klea’Hatma’s demonic abilities as a power boost, at least she was training and making it her own at this point. Not to mention, Grimnir using his ingenuity to weapons and creation none of us could have done without him.

As such…

“GO TO HELL!”

You aren’t the only one, Kyouya…

I turned my head around and transported Mother and myself into the neighboring dream, where I watched Tatsuya screaming like a wildman as he was being arrested by some policemen. In front him was a knife and a young man who was extremely hard to forget with his gray-white hair. He had an unimpressed, stoic expression, glaring at Tatsuya as he was being transported into a police car.

“Die, you bastard! Go die with your damn father! Fuck you for doing that to my mom! Fuck you!”

But, Franz didn’t respond. After all, this wasn’t the actual Franz, but only an illusion Tatsuya created himself in this “wonderland.” I honestly couldn’t understand why he was so angry about Franz, to the point he would actually try to murder him. What was this idiot boy thinking?

… But before I could continue assessing the situation, the environment changed. We weren’t in the middle of the streets anymore, we were now in Tatsuya’s house. In his bedroom, Tatsuya pushed himself out of his bed. He was “awake,” again as the loop continued once again.

“Honey, I don’t know anymore…”

“All we can do is continue, dear. Akabane’s goal is me and my position in the company as the CEO. I’m sorry. Haaa, I didn’t think they would send that demon at me like that.”

“No, don’t! It’s alright… we’ll weather through this. The lawyer said all the evidence is flimsy at best, and the best way forward is to make sure we discredit them.”

Mr. and Mrs. Nagata — Tatsuya’s parents. Every morning, Tatsuya would listen to what they were discussing about the court case his mother had versus Yoichiro Akabane, Japan’s most prominent criminal case prosecutor.

From having listened to this multiple times, Tatsuya’s mother was being sued by Akabane due to an incident in her coffee shop where the latter was given some bad coffee. And when he went to the toilet, he got into an accident from a fallen chandelier, of all things. As vindictive as he was, Akabane didn’t want to absolve this out of court and sued Mrs. Nagata to bring down her establishment.

It was absurd to me when I first heard all of this. It was crazy and seemed so far-fetched… until I realized how I was reborn in the body of a garm. Stranger things could have happened, not the mention how the Mr. Nagata believed this was an orchestrated accident just to bring him down as the CEO of the company he worked at.

From how it all proceeded, it seemed Akabane pulled some strings to make sure he would win, essentially obstructing justice and faking everything for him to win his case. Not only was the whole case already nerve-wracking, when the judgement was issued, but Mrs. Nagata’s heart also fainted when she heard the damages she had to pay.

Mr. Nagata paid for everything, in the end, but it still brought his wife down at what was happening. From my meetings with them during the teacher-parent meetings, I found them still happy together, so this incident probably didn’t affect them too much, down the road. However, it seemed it affected Tatsuya quite a bit, to the point he couldn’t forgive Franz or his father for all of this.

But why, Franz? He wasn’t involved in any of this. I thought Tatsuya was blaming an innocent, only to learn he was holding a grudge for Franz because the latter rejected trying to persuade his father to give up the case. Enemies could be made with lesser reasons.

After all, who was to say Franz could have done anything in the first place? It was irrational of Tatsuya, and this irrationality affected his dream. He was trying to find a way to solve this situation in his mind, seemingly carrying a trauma from seeing his mother crying from all the stress and being worried her coffee shop would be closed. His love for coffee came from his mother, and he became even more addicted to it when he learned his mother could lose her business.

And all of this culminated in him looping his days over and over again. He was fixated on a ridiculous goal. His hatred for Franz was growing more intense with every loop, and it was to the point where the killer instincts he had nurtured in his days in Peolynca was coming out.

Even now, he was trying to sneak up to Franz with a knife. He was going mad.

“Stop.”

“Huh?!”

I’ve seen enough. I couldn’t watch Tatsuya sabotage himself any longer. With no intention of allowing him to continue this alone, I grabbed his arm and disarmed him in one quick move. Tatsuya’s looked shocked as he noticed me, before I released his hand.

“S-Sens—”

“Enough is enough. Three weeks have passed at this point and you are still stuck in this ridiculous loop of yours. Wake up, Tatsuya-kun.”

He tilted his head. He was confused at what was going on. Spending three weeks in this fantasy of his probably corrupted his brain and sense of reality.

“Oh goodness…” I facepalmed myself before I thought what Kronnaz had been doing, believing this was the best path for these boys to grow. Such a barbaric method of teaching was just idiotic!

There was only one way to deal with this… and that was the right way.

“Mother, please assist me.”

[“Just as I showed you.”]

The first thing I learned from Belzac — [Shadow Armament] expansion. Instead of covering a single item or a person, the next step for strong monsters was to expand their elemental presence around the area. To give yourself a home advantage wherever you fought, you needed to spread your elemental mana into the very land itself.

Shadow Armament. Yomi! (Japanese underworld)

With Mother helping me control my shadow around a wide area, I began to cloak Tatsuya’s dream in a dark veil. Using what I learned from using [Smokey Haze], it was actually pretty easy to spread the [Shadow Armament] around, but it became harder the further it went. It would become unstable.

And that was why I needed Mother’s help with this. Similar to an elementalist, or how Hanazawa could use dark spells with her garm onnikais, Mother was helping me by stabilizing my control until I became more adept with it. To ensure I wrapped this whole area in my shadow.

And once I did, I could play around using the law of my shadow manipulation. As long as things were covered in my shadow, I could manipulate them in any way I wanted. And in this case, I grabbed the ground and began merging Kyouya’s and Tatsuya’s dreams together.

“Woah! Woah, Sensei?!”

The world became dark for a moment until the light re-appeared for all of us. The first thing I did when I could see again was to snap my eyes towards a single person.

“Kyouya-kun! Look up!”

“Huh? HUH?! Sen—”

“Give me a moment. Yomi!”

Once again, I spread my mana around, this time-consuming Kyouya’s whole dream before landing on the ground. Grabbing the ground, I pulled the shadow up into the sky, shrouding everything like a curtain. Darkness had claimed out sight once again.

…

“Please, take a seat, you two.”

““H-Huh?!””

But in the next moment, we weren’t in the darkness anymore. We weren’t in the training field where Kyouya was or the street where Tatsuya wanted to kill Franz. However, we were still in their dreams. The only difference was, the two dreams were now merged and I did some temporary changes.

Now, we were inside a very familiar room for any Shiroko High student. We were inside the counselor's room.

I took a seat on the couch. “Please, take a seat.”

“Huh, where are we— Woah! Sensei, there is a ghost garm behind you!” Tatsuya cried out.

“Oh, she? Let me introduce you two to her, this is my mother.” I gestured to Mother, who was laying behind the couch, barely fitting in the room. “Now, please, take a seat, you two.”

“H-Hold on, I was just inside a forest. Then you two came flying from the sky—”

“Take a seat.”

““Eep!””

Some [True Wolven Bloodlust] and you can cajole anybody~

With both of them seated, I allowed them to ask their questions.

“Sensei, where are we? I thought I was still…” Kyouya wanted to speak out but he became silent all of a sudden.

“If you are wondering if you are still inside your dreams, then, yes, you are. Both of you have been stuck inside this dream bubble for three weeks now,” I answered to push the conversation forward.

“Three weeks?! You have to be kidding me… Urgh, n-now, I remember.” Tatsuya looked away from me, looking like he was ashamed of himself. “I-I… T-That wasn’t me, Sensei. I hate Daisy, b-but I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do that, please, you have to believe me.”

“Mhmm, I do, Tatsuya.”

“You do?”

“Of course, there are many things we would not want to show others in fear of them judging us. It is an entirely normal human action.” I nodded to Tatsuya’s elation. “After all, looking through the memories of the both of you… I really have to question the things you both mastur—”

““Stop! Uwaarrrrgh!!!”” Both boys cringed. We were all adults here, there was nothing to be embarrassed about.

After the two calmed down, Tatsuya was the first to speak up, again. “Alright, alright, I really don’t want to go that way, but can you tell us why the hell you would just look through our memories?”

“Oh, I was not the one who was looking through your memories. At worst, my mother looked through them and was trying to share them with me. Believe me, I sure did not want to learn your fetishes.” Both boys groaned, but I ignored them. “In any case, the two of you were showing me your memories by reliving them. As I said, you have been here for three weeks now. It is time for the both of you to wake up, so that is why I am here.”

“… How will you help us?” Kyouya asked, slightly hesitant to know the answer.

I smiled and then began gesturing around the room, presenting it as my reply. “Shouldn’t it be obvious? It has been a while since we have done one, but I believe you two need it, right now. Let us talk about your future~”

It was career, slash, Job counseling time.