At some point as we were going along like that, for whatever reason, I fell asleep. You could almost hear a little splash as I dropped off, that's how sudden it was. I had no idea when it happened. All I remember is his shaking me awake a few moments later, saying that we'd arrived. I realized then that we were parked in front of my building.

Oh, that was great. That wasn't bad at all!

The few minutes I'd expected to be the saddest and most painful of all had vanished in a puff of smoke, and so having reached the point where it was necessary to say good-bye—and now that the time had come I could see that it was really nothing at all—I just smiled and waved back at him. Yes, sleep is on my side, I thought. Once more I was amazed.

Yet lately a certain question had been fluttering through my head right at the moment I awoke. But isn't this eating away at my life? I began to feel a little bit afraid. It wasn't just that I'd started sleeping right through my boyfriend's calls, utterly oblivious to the ringing, it was also that recently I'd been settling into a sleep so profound that, every time I woke, it was like I'd died and was just returning to life—I could almost believe that, and sometimes it even occurred to me that if I were able to look at myself while I slept, all I'd see would be my perfectly white bones, nothing else. Sometimes I'd find myself in a dazzled haze, wondering if maybe it wouldn't be best for me just to rot away as I lay there, without ever waking; to slip away to that place called eternity. It occurred to me that I might be possessed by sleep, just as Shiori had been possessed by her work. The thought scared me.