Mysterious Dreams ??? (Usagi Tsukino)

Mysterious Dreams ??? (Usagi Tsukino)
Date of Cutscene:	23 November 2023
Location:	Tsukino-Osaka Dorm
Synopsis:	It's been months. The dreams have never stopped. And with the hunt for the Silver Crystal now a nation-wide viral sensation, they've only been more and more urgent.
Cast of Characters:	Usagi Tsukino
Tinyplot:	Silver Crystal

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You're sitting in your classroom at Juuban Public Middle, and it's been one of those mornings, of course. You were late to class, again, but it's not your fault! You were sleeping! You were having some good sleep, even, and okay, maybe you shouldn't have stayed up so late to read every single chapter of the new manga you found online, but who could blame you! It's not fair that you have school!

But the point is that you're at your desk, and you're still kind of sleepy, and you wish it was lunch already, and it's time for math, you don't have your book. You forgot it at home, rushing this way and that to get ready and out of the house when your last alarm finally woke you up, and you know this because you can picture it exactly where you left it - on the floor, under a stack of manga.

You've just resigned yourself to definitely not being able to keep up with the lesson today when the boy sitting at the desk next to yours offers to let you study from his.

You stare at him. His face is familiar, you know it as well as your own, and you're quick to agree. You push your desks a little closer so you can both work from the book, and as you start to work (alright, fine, to 'work'), he leans down to whisper -

You're on the back of a horse, which a part of you is thrilled by and the rest of you is already regretting. A horse is an actual, living animal that's even taller than you are, and this is your third time meeting one - your first riding, and the fact that the creatures are taller than you bears repeating. Not that it's hard to be taller than you; unfortunately, height is one of the few ways you haven't taken after your mother. At least your friends aren't all taller than you, and it's only Jupiter who towers over you, willowy as an ancient oak and just as confident.

It's a cloudy day, this day in which you ride a horse, and this means the brilliant blue of the sky is scrawled over with wispy white clouds and fluffy silver ones and in the distance,thick sprawling grey ones. You love it, the colors of the sky, the change in what's become familiar to you. You're safe to look up at that cloudy sky instead of focusing on riding the horse because of him.

He's the proper rider, after all. You're sat behind him on what he called a saddle, your arms wrapped around his chest for balance, and your fingernails scrape against his armor - he's said he won't let you fall and it's not that you don't believe him.

It's just that he knows what he's doing, and the horse knows what it's doing, and you - you don't. The feel of the leather saddle beneath you is foreign, the sway of the horse's gait is foreign, and he is the only thing familiar here, and you are nervous. Nervous, but determined; nervous, but excited. He knows it, too, and he looks back but does not laugh, but reassures you, saying -

You're at Game Crown Arcade, because school is out and your Mama won't expect you for a few hours and you think you might really get the high score for Fruit Ninja this time, because you're slicing and dicing with the swipes of your hand across the screen. You're keeping up with the pace, you're not missing a single bit of fruit, you're slicing enough fruit to feed a whole virtual school, you're avoiding all the purple bombs -

And then you swipe the wrong way, hand hitting the screen in the wrong way, and you yowl in audible horror as you nick one of the bombs and it goes off.

Noooooooo!

All kinds of people are turning to stare at you, some snickering as they realize what's happened, some rolling their eyes at you for making so much noise - but only one comes to your side. He's familiar and handsome and you know him and smile sheepishly to see him. He pats your head, even though at this age he isn't even taller than you - most of the other girls in sixth grade have hit their growth spurt, but not you.

You puff up your cheeks and scowls at him for the loving little condescension, and he laughs at you, as he says -

^"Fi_nd^the_Sil^ver_Crys^tal!"

Usagi wakes from dream after dream after dream, every single one of them with that boy's words ringing in her ears, his earnest plea for her to do what she's been trying to do.

Every dream is more frustrating than the last.

It's not like she doesn't know the Silver Crystal is important! It is! But she can't find it! Having him, this nameless, faceless boy, begging her to find it - can't her subconscious accept that she's trying?

It's not that it's every one of her dreams - if it was, she might have lost her mind long ago. At first, it was every other week or so.

But then then it was once a week. And then twice a week. And now -

Now, she's had her fourth one in a single week. It feels like she sees him every week.

And his face.

And yet she can never remember it. She can describe with full detail everything else that happens in those dreams, from the domestic to the sublime, from walks to school to waltzes under the stars, it all flashes back to her with complete clarity -

Everything except his face. She sees it in every dream, and yet, when she wakes - when she wakes, it's as though she never saw his face at all.

"Why can't I remember him?" She mumbles to herself after the latest dream. Her hands are over her face, the butts of her palms pressing heavy against her eyes, as if pressure might unlock memory. "Why does he want the Silver Crystal?"

And why was it that with every dream she woke from, she was more, and more sure that his time was running out? That there was some danger, lurking, and she was -

Missing it?

Missing something, at the very least.

It's the early hours of the morning, and Usagi gives up on hoping that pressure to her eyes might make the world make sense. Instead, she rolls over onto her stomach and grabs her pillow, buries her face in it.

"These dreams better stop when I do find it..."