True Dream

Inari Shrine, Inari Secret Realm.

Inside a small room, Miketsu and Eirin were looking on with faint smiles at Yorihime, who sat on the floor mat with a look of utter consternation. Beside her, Konkiku and Tsuruha stood on high alert.

'Damn it... I’ve been seen through...'

Realizing the situation, a sense of dread filled Yorihime's heart. She hurriedly tried to circulate her power to escape, but immediately felt a wave of discomfort wash over her body. Clutching her chest, she gasped for air, unable to summon even a shred of energy.

"Huff... huff... huff... This, this is..."

"While you were dreaming, I took the liberty of feeding you some medicine. If you don't want anything unfortunate to happen, it would be best if you didn't move recklessly, Yorihime..." Eirin spoke slowly as she watched Yorihime's pained struggle. Hearing this, Yorihime finally realized she had been completely outmaneuvered.

"Huff... huff... So, you saw through everything from the beginning? Master..." Yorihime stopped trying to force her power and attempted to steady herself as she addressed Eirin and Miketsu.

"Indeed. No wall in this world is perfectly airtight, not even the boundary wall between dreams and reality," Miketsu said calmly. Yorihime pressed further.

"When... when did you first suspect something was wrong with me?"

"From the very start, I suppose. At first, seeing that you wouldn't wake up, I wondered if you were faking unconsciousness. I asked Eirin to examine you, and she proved you were indeed comatose. I believed it then, but when Konkiku told me you weren't exactly peaceful while unconscious—that your expression often changed and you would let out soft sounds—my suspicions were piqued once more..." Miketsu explained indifferently. Yorihime's mouth hung open.

"At that point, you suspected I was dreaming?"

"Correct. After all, isn't that usually how one behaves when dreaming?" Miketsu replied. In truth, she had only been slightly suspicious at first. She only became certain after using her causality vision to observe Yorihime's brain, discovering that Yorihime's consciousness was interacting with an unknown thread of causality from afar. That discovery had turned her suspicion into deep concern.

Afterward, Miketsu had privately met with Eirin to share her findings, and Eirin immediately made the connection to the possibility of long-distance communication via dreams.

"Once we suspected you might be using dreams to transmit information, I immediately performed another examination. I found that your brainwaves were indeed abnormal, which confirmed you were plotting something within a dream..." Eirin said, looking at her disciple. Miketsu then added leisurely.

"Knowing you were plotting was one thing; the next step was finding a way to draw that plot out. I originally intended to find a Dream-Eating Baku to devour your dream, but your master said she had a better way." Miketsu glanced at Eirin, who picked up the explanation.

"A Dream-Eating Baku can only consume the dream the target is currently having. If your conspiracy had already been settled in a previous dream, it would have been useless. Therefore, I suggested using a new medicine I developed while in the human realm: the butterfly dream fragrance." Eirin held up a small, delicate incense burner. Yorihime stared at it, dazed.

"Butterfly Dream... Fragrance?"

"It is a hallucinogenic incense that is almost impossible to detect. Anyone who inhales it will, without realizing it, fall into a 'True Dream' that is virtually indistinguishable from reality. Furthermore, everyone who inhales the incense will enter the same shared dream."

"So when you had my guards fetch that 'clearing incense' earlier, it was actually this?!" Yorihime cried out. Eirin continued to smile.

"Correct. By then, I had realized you might be using hypnosis or a similar method to force yourself to stay asleep while still observing the outside world. I needed a pretext to set this up so you wouldn't suspect anything... Lady Konkiku played her part in our little performance quite well, too." Eirin laughed lightly, and Konkiku nodded with a smile.

"..." Listening to her master's words, Yorihime lowered her head in total defeat, her face cast in shadow. She had thought she had finally managed to deceive her teacher, but in reality, she had been seen through and toyed with from the start. It was a devastating blow to her confidence.

Seeing Yorihime slumped on the floor in despair, Miketsu's smile deepened.

"We aren't finished yet. It's too early to give up. Do you know why we specifically chose to use the butterfly dream fragrance?"

"Wh-why..." Yorihime looked up, her eyes dull.

Eirin answered, "Because with a slight adjustment to its ingredients, the butterfly dream fragrance has another effect: desire manifestation. To put it simply, it makes whatever the dreamer currently wishes to accomplish manifest completely within the dream. This means the plan you and Toyohime were plotting was carried out perfectly within the dream created by the incense. By monitoring your dream through the shared inhalation method, we were able to learn every detail of your conspiracy."

As Eirin finished, Yorihime fell into a profound silence. She never imagined that the 'perfect' execution of her plan had merely been a manifestation of her own desires. By manifesting her thoughts in the dream, the Inari Okami and her master had gained complete knowledge of their operational plans.

She thought she had deceived them, yet she was the one being deceived. She thought she had woken from a dream, only to realize she had fallen into another...

'Truly... a total defeat...'

Seeing Yorihime so utterly crushed and despondent, draped in a literal shadow of gloom, Miketsu shook her head. She then turned back to Eirin.

"Well then, shall we move on to the next step?"

"Yes, it's getting late. We shouldn't keep Toyohime waiting too long. It's time to invite her down~" Eirin said with a slightly wicked smile. Her words jolted Yorihime out of her stupor.

"Wait... Master... what are you saying? Invite my sister down?"

"Indeed. Wasn't your plan for you to draw a magical array on the ground to link with Toyohime, allowing her to bypass the Secret Realm Barrier and descend to take action against Uka-no-Mitama-no-Mikoto? Tonight is the time for your operation, which means she is currently waiting for you to draw that array from the Monitoring Pavilion in the heavens." Eirin spoke with a smile as Yorihime's face paled. Miketsu added:

"Your sister in the sky has no idea what's happening down here. She is still in a state of waiting. This means that as long as we draw the array now, she will teleport directly before our eyes, bringing two of the Lunar Capital's treasures with her. Am I right?"

"That... that may be true, but you don't know how to draw that array, do you? It was a unique design agreed upon specifically between us!" Yorihime shouted, trying to regain some ground. However, Miketsu responded with a subtle, knowing smile.

"No, we know it. That so-called linking array... didn't you just draw it for us, perfectly and in its entirety, within the dream of the butterfly dream fragrance? We memorized every single stroke."

Upon hearing Miketsu's words, Yorihime froze once again, completely stunned.