The following morning, Shindo woke up feeling refreshed. For once, it seemed like he had control of his nightmares. He subsequently went to work without a worry in the world.

"Shindo! You no longer look pale," Makihara remarked. "I should tell my sister."

"Thank you," Shindo replied. "It's about time, too."

He then went over to his workstation. Today's assignment involved programming a cutscene about the villain's backstory. The cutscene had several graphical glitches, and it became a top priority for Shindo to fix them. First, Shindo decided to see what the cutscene looked like so far.

The scene began with a man with white hair forced to go to a building by a mob. Once the man entered the building, a woman set the building on fire with her torch. The fire and smoke appeared glitched, and something that looked like an apparition rose out of the smoke. Additionally, something else next to the building became corrupted.

Shindo looked at the sprite files for the cutscene. He decided to look at the corrupted image by the burning building first. Fixing the sprite would require quite a bit of work, so Shindo started right away. Two hours passed, and he managed to program the object to the point where it did not appear garbled.

The image itself was of a sign.

What was on the sign, however, changed everything.

オネイリカ

Oneirica.

It was the place Shindo had visited at night. And that thing that came out of the building and was now manipulating his dreams-

"He never left," Shindo said aloud.