CH 19

The Secret of the Courtyard Before Lunch Break

I found myself on the grass in the courtyard where I had fallen asleep earlier.

No, is this something that can be described as “being here”?

I can look around me, but I can’t move from the spot at all, and the surroundings are constantly moving while I can’t move.

The trees were swaying in the breeze, and I could see students walking towards me from the other side.

It’s just that all the scenery is slightly faded and sepia-toned… The scenery reminded me of a traditional reminiscence scene in a drama or anime…

“…I see, this is a past dream”

Speaking out loud, I grasped the situation I was in.

Unlike a lucid dream, I cannot move my body by my own will, but it is a dream with a different feeling from a premonition dream.

To put it bluntly, the dream was like watching a retro movie in silence.

“Amazing… it’s like an old movie”

“You’re right… I thought so too… Eh?”

Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice of Amane from next to me, and I looked at the place where no one should have been before… The moment I became aware of it, Amane appeared like a figure whose entire body was a humanoid collection of glowing light.

………… Her body lines are shiny and a bit erotic, but… let’s not talk about that.

Rather than that…

“How did you get into the dream? I thought I was the only one who could enter past dream…”

After all, the only way to see the past dream this time was to put your hand on the book, but I assumed that only one person could do it because it was such a simple method.

That’s why I had asked Amane to be my wake-up alarm.

“Aa, it’s an application of shared dream.”

However, Amane begins to speak proudly.

She thought that if she turned the crest of the upper part of the dream book towards herself and slept, as in a shared dream, she could enter the past dream in the same way, somehow? She thought it was a good idea, so she did it.

And the fact that she is here now, just like me, means that the experiment was a success.

“It would be boring to wait alone during the lunch break… it can’t be helped~ it can’t be helped…”

“Isn’t it fine, right? I mean, lucid dreaming every night is fun. Wouldn’t it be nice to experience being able to see what happened in the past?”

Amane, with her sparkling, curious eyes, makes a strong argument. I understand how you feel.

“Do you realize that what you’re about to see is a search for a culprit who may have a grudge against you?”

…… The current time is 11:50.

I can check the time on the clock in the schoolyard, which I can see from the courtyard.

…… The uncertainty of whether the watch will be available locally seems to be another annoying weakness of the book.

In addition, it was slightly out of my intended time range.

“Don’t you know the exact time the ball flew?”

“As expected, I don’t remember. I’m sure I was on my way back to class…”

Well, that’s true… Not many people check the time on a daily basis, and at this time Amane didn’t even think of the flying ball as a malicious attack.

There is no confirmation of that…

“It’s still time in class, and I think we’ll be free until then.”

“…I guess so”

The bell for lunchtime would ring in ten minutes… Until then, I guess I’ll just have to watch the sepia-toned scenery flow by.

After all, past dreams cannot be fast-forwarded, unlike videos.

But then I heard a rustling noise coming from the blind spot in the courtyard, a dense area of plants.

Both Amane and I became more alert at the sudden noise.

When we threw a glance at them, the plants stopped moving once, but after a little while, they started moving violently again.

It was obvious that it wasn’t the wind or any other natural phenomenon.

“Someone is there…”

At this time of the day, classes are still in session, and there are no students working on physical education in the schoolyard at the moment, so it’s unlikely that anyone would accidentally enter the courtyard.

That would mean that someone is breaking in here with a clear intention.

…… The mysterious phenomenon in the same place on the day the hard ball flew to Amane, it would be strange not to suspect a connection.

So someone was getting ahead of us for some reason?

So, for some reason or another, someone skipped class and waited vigilantly for Amane to pass by here?

Me and Amane gulped… I looked behind the plants that were still rustling.

And we got stunned………… by the noise-making culprit!!

“N-No, you can’t, Yoshizawa-sensei… We’re at school right now…”

“Ufufu… It’s okay, Nakura-sensei, the class is still in session. No one will come here, but don’t you feel like this is a different time?”

“Well, that’s… but…”

“”……………………””

We swiftly looked away in a strangely natural movement, strangely calm.

“……… That’s the serious classics teacher, right? Like a mild-mannered man in a dress.”

“……… Isn’t it Yoshizawa, an English teacher who represents a straight-laced person? The last time I saw Kudo, he was being lectured like it was the end of the world when he forgot to do his homework.”

Among the teachers, two of them for whom the word “serious” is a good fit.

“Speaking of which… That day, during lunch break, I saw a leaf stuck to Yoshizawa-sensei’s head, and I told her about it, and she was in a panic to get rid of it…”

Amane’s flustered and slightly embarrassed tone made me a little hesitant, but there was something I really needed to ask her.

“Hey Amane?”

“……What?”

“That’s totally Yoshizawa dominated, right? It’s a scene where the mild-mannered classics teacher is being eaten by the normally strict but actually fierce English teacher, right?”

“I don’t know!!”

*

And the crucial search for the culprit who threw the hard ball flying at Amane… failed spectacularly.

No… Let me assure you, it’s not like I was so engrossed in a scene between two teachers in a past dream that I missed the important part of the event.

…… In fact, they left as soon as the bell rang for the start of lunch break, as if nothing had happened………….

I don’t think I can see those two teachers as serious and straightforward people in the future.

The reason for my failure was simple: it was almost the end of the lunch break before I reached my target scene, and I was woken up by a teacher who was worried about being late for class.

“Hey, wake up, you guys ……… the lunch break is over, right?”

“……Uh?”

“Fuwaa?”

What we saw when we woke up was a female teacher looking down at us with a slightly annoyed look on her face… English teacher Yoshizawa…

She was standing there in a neat suit and shiny glasses.

“You guys……… It’s good that you’re getting along, but you need to keep it down a bit on school.”

“…………Eh?”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but the weight I felt on my right arm made me understand what she was saying.

I was holding her in the right arm, and my left hand, I had inserted it in a dream book.

Of course, there is only one other person…

The profile of Amane at close range, rubbing her eyes and looking at me sleepily… Oh no… She’s cute.

“…………!? Why??”

“A-Are? The lunch break is over?”

“I’m not going to go so far as to call it illicit relationships nowadays, but you should be concerned about the school’s morals, okay?”

Yoshizawa-sensei left me flustered by the sudden situation, while Amane was still looking sleepy, and walked away briskly.

…… I don’t know what it is, this feeling of knowing what she is saying but not being able to agree with it.

“Look who’s talking…………”

I couldn’t help muttering towards the back of Yoshizawa-sensei as she walked away.