“Shit. I’m sorry,” I sit upright. “I’ve creeped you out now, haven’t I? I tend to do that to people.”

“After all we’ve been through? Besides,” Zaniel lifts his ice cream spoon to his perfect, rosy smirk, “dark humour just happens to be one of my biggest turn-ons.”

Well, that shuts me up. I look away, as if it will hide my big-ass grin. Our waitress with great timing brings our sake. We fill each other’s cups, clink them together, and drink.

“Damn, Kamisawa-san,” I giggle. “You can really knock ’em back.”

He points to his nose. “Salaryman. It’s a job requirement.” We laugh as I pour him another and he drains it in one go. “Pick another song.” He hands me the menu tablet. I know just the tune for us. While I punch words into the search bar, he continues with our conversation. “So, as I was saying, we all dream the same dream. It just depends on how you look at dreams in general.”

“Yeah, you said that. So, you’re a lucid dreamer …”

“A dream walker. But, yes. You can call it that.”

“Right. You can walk into other people’s dreams and communicate with them … or so you claim.”

“Yup. But that’s not —”

“But that’s not the same as lucid dreaming.”

“Exactly. Being lucid means you know you’re dreaming. What I do is —”

“Different. Don’t worry, I got that part. But I still don’t get how this works. Okay, let me ask you a question. Let’s say, you can walk into my dream when I go to bed tonight …”

He grins shyly. “Mm-hmm …”

“But what if I go back to Canada? If you’re in Osaka, and I’m in Toronto —”

“I could still do it, if I had the time. I’ve been dream-walking for years, so I’m pretty good at it. Sure, it would be extremely difficult to find you, and we’d have to be asleep at the same time, so I’d have to figure out your time zone and plan around that — and then I’d have to sleep long enough to find you because there’s going to be millions of people between here and your city — but I’m pretty confident, yeah, I could do it.”

“I see. Damn, they don’t have ‘Sandstorm.’ And I’m still hungry. Hey, do we still want that ‘Potato Mountain’?”

“Sure. Order a couple of beers, too. And see if they have ‘Dream On’ by Aerosmith.”

“Okay. Now, what if I wanted you to … walk into one of my sisters’ dreams. Could you do that?”

“Yup,” he says without missing a beat.

“How? You’ve never met her.”

“I don’t have to meet her. It’d be harder because I’d have to approach a lot of people and say ‘Hey, are you Cybelle’s sister?’ and odds are I might never meet her, what with the odds of finding one person in seven billion who all sleep at an inestimable number of times in a twenty-four-hour period. But if you’re asking if I have the ability to find her without meeting her in person, then yeah. Absolutely.” He winks at me. “How else do you think I found you?”