Chapter 3: Dreams

[Student Dormitory Complex, Kyushu, Japan, Year: Mid Summer, 2019]

Darkness.

All he could see was pitch black darkness, and not even his hands. Alex tried to speak, but nothing came out of his mouth.

Then he spotted a pair of glowing golden eyes from a distance. Predatory looking. Where the hell was he? He tried to shout, but nothing came out.

Suddenly, he heard a deafening boom and a sudden illumination of the surrounding area. Alex was standing on a hilltop. Below was a village, constructed in an ancient Chinese style.

Sounds of petrified cries and screams in the infernal mess were emanating around him. Another flash made him gaze upwards. The clouds were thick and blackish as the lightning zapped around the heavy-looking fluff of vapour.

He spotted a black snake-like shape swirling around and a large flaming-bird-like creature swooping around in the skies as though to dodge the other. Another deafening boom brought on the noise of rushing water, which grew louder and louder.

People in the village scattered like ants, running and tripping over each other from a distant shadow. Alex narrowed his eyes for a better look at what they were fleeing from.

Much to his horror, a tsunami was entering at great speed towards the human settlement. He tried to yell at them to run faster, but to no avail; he made no sound.

Another flash followed by a thunderous sound wave reverberated through the trembling soil, knocking the survivors to the ground, then the incoming black wave of water swept them away. Several flailing hands waved for a rescue, which will never come.

"Human, what are you doing here?" A husky voice, belonging to a woman, spoke.

Alex swung around to see a large black serpent's belly. He grimaced as he gazed up into the same pair of golden eyes.

"Oh FUUUUUUCK…"

Then the serpent shrunk to the figure of a young woman in her early twenties. Those golden eyes were now her eyes.

"WAKE UP!" He heard Takeshi's voice calling him. "OH MAN, JUST WAKE UP!"

With a shake of his body, he jumped from his chair, falling to the ground with beads of sweat rolling down his clammy forehead and the worried face of Takeshi greeting him in their dormitory bedroom.

The nightmarish imagery, which he had witnessed a second ago, was gone. Alex was back to reality as Takeshi pulled him up into his chair.

"Let's go to the university clinic." Takeshi's hand touched his forehead. "You are burning up… might have a high fever."

Alex pushed his hand away and reached out for the half empty tablet pack of Japanese anti-fever medication.

"Dude, your hand doesn't look like it is getting better from the infection," Takeshi glanced at his bandaged hand with a spot of greenish ooze.

"Quit nagging like my mom," Alex grumbled as he laid his head down on the table as Takeshi sat on the other chair.

"Look, you were calling out from whatever nightmare you are having over the weeks since the accident at the dig site. Screaming for people to escape. Seriously, our neighbours would have thought I was going on a mass rampage, YET AGAIN," Takeshi huffed in frustration, remembering how the police turned up at the door with their hands on the baton, ready to strike.

The police left quickly after looking at Alex's sickly face peeking out of the blanket in their shared room, too afraid to catch whatever he had.

Alex sighed as he glanced at the vibrating phone alarm to take his antibiotics. He reached out to a half empty blister pack and popped out two pills of antibiotics from the pocket of his jacket. "I feel a lot better now after the antibiotics."

"I don't think so. We have been friends since undergrad. That's like five years of knowing you and you've never looked this sick," Takeshi pointed out.

Alex nodded while rubbing his sore arm from the tetanus shot a month ago. The soreness never disappeared.

"Professor Fujita told me to pass you a message - he sent a request to the university on your behalf to grant you a week of leave to rest," Takeshi said as he pushed the laptop screen down in front of Alex to close it.

"No can do. In three weeks, we leave for Melbourne. I am still trying to decipher those strange inscriptions," Alex muttered as he laid his feverish head on the laptop.

"It's a hint. And screw the inscriptions, your health is more important. Besides, Japanese professors don't like it when a student collapses in their classes."

"Haven't collapsed yet," Alex mumbled.

"He thinks you will. Besides, if you drop dead, the research on the archaeological site will go to someone else."

"I can't stop…," Alex lifted his head to lean towards an uneasy looking Takeshi and continued, "somehow I have been having weird nightmares. I keep seeing this chick."

"Must be some icepick wielding psycho chick since you are screaming for people to run. I think…," Takeshi rubbed his chin and continued, "for the umpteenth time."

Alex lifted his head up and shook it before resting it back onto the still whirling laptop, where the minor vibrations soothed his mild migraine.

"Not ice pick," he groaned at Takeshi. "No expression on her face. And her eyes are like gold."

"Is she hot?" Takeshi asked, as Alex blinked in disbelief at his question.

"Yes, but… she is also a giant talking serpent."

"Dude, now that we established your strange bestiality fetish. As your good friend, I would advise you not to date serial killing snakes with the ability to talk."

With a loud groan, Alex threw an arm up weakly in frustration. "Nooooo not that. She uses no weapon. Wait, I don't even know if she killed all those people in my dream."

"Naked? Boobs big?"

"Arrrgghhh, you have a dirty mind."

"I am Japanese and we are kinky as shit. That's what Terry said to me."

"Terry is an idiot with an anime fetish. Come on, he likes to spend so much on maid cafes." Alex rolled his eyes.

Both of them snickered. Terry loved visiting a maid cafe every week. Takeshi and Alex went together with Terry once and never again after looking at the bill.

"More of a yellow fever, he scares some of the female Japanese students," Takeshi chuckled and then pointed at Alex. "although you… some want to know you. Like Yuki, that chick with the serious chest of gold star hooters that can knock your socks off, and Sachiko, that 'kawaii' screecher."

"Nah. Not interested. We are just working hard on the same project on the symbology of that site."

Takeshi coughed. He heard the gossip from their Japanese classmates about those two girls - 'gaijin' hunters, girls who like to hunt foreign guys. He glanced at Alex.

Alex was a better looking 'halfie' than Terry. Alex's rare vivid green eyes and unusual long blonde hair radiating a rockstar look, versus a nerdy brunette Terry's boring brownish hazel eyes made the latter look less exciting.

Yuki and Sachiko have been extremely 'hardworking' since Alex was in their project group. Not before. Those late nights working with Alex was an excuse to sidle up close with him. They thought Takeshi did not notice.

"I will let them know you are only interested in real snakes with eyes of gold. I wonder what they might gossip."

"Whatever, man. I just don't care. But, there is something about the dreams, it's… I don't know… it keeps recurring all the time."

"You need to talk to the Shinto priest, and I am dead serious."

"Hogwash. We are scientists and you are the last person I expected to hear this advice from," Alex retorted.

"No, Fujita also said that if you experience anything odd beyond reasoning, you need to see that Shinto priest. I agree with him. The locals mentioned that snake spirits inhabit the place."

"We are scientists, not charlatans," Alex retorted. "Besides, it is just a nightmare."

"Better to be safe than sorry," Takeshi stared into his eyes with a deadpan, serious expression.

"Shinto deals with Japanese beliefs. The girl in my dreams…"

"Of your dreams," Takeshi corrected him.

"Whatever. In the middle of the forehead had a symbol from the last few dreams," Alex picked up a pen and drew an elongated Chinese script on a blank page of his opened notebook before filling more scripts in. "Like a Chinese talisman."

"Have you been watching too many Hong Kong movies? I have seen these written on those yellow talismans in those ghost story movies like Magic Cop shop," Takeshi tapped on the words. "For warding off demons."

"In my youth, but not now, no time except to research and decipher the language."

"I would be worried for you because one of these characters you scribble," Takeshi pointed to the squarish script. "Resembles the Kanji character for a calamity."

"Shinto doesn't deal with Chinese gods, besides my mom is more well versed in the Chinese gods. So yeah, what's the point of seeing a Shinto priest when it is a Chinese spiritual issue?" Alex said.

"We have migrant clans from the mainland, which tell us a history of interactions and migrations that might have taken place far earlier. One such migrant clan is the Hata who built Fushimi Inari Taisha and they may have brought the legend of the fox messengers from China via the Korean Peninsula." Takeshi mused about his previous study on the ancient connections via religious belief.

"So I am bothered by the now migrated supernatural beings of my other ancestral half? Come on, she didn't have a fox or three-legged crow…" Alex paused for a bit.

"You called her a snake. And we have many snake-kami in Japan, even shrines to snakes," Takeshi countered his point. "my friend, talk to the Shinto priest. I do not know snake spirits in either Chinese or Japanese lore to be benevolent at all. Most are destructive, like Yamata-no-Orochi."

"Yamata-no-Orochi is more like the Hii River when the earliest Japanese went to collect iron dust. The pollutants came from refining hence, the water destroyed the soil for crops. What the ancient couldn't explain, they attribute it to the supernatural, but now in our day of science, we know the explanations for their beliefs," Alex retorted.

"Still, you can't ignore supernatural beliefs - just think of it as an unproven hypothesis and the Shinto priest as your psychotherapist. No foul, no harm in being cautious," Takeshi said.

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