17 Chapter 0.5: Another Night in Neverland (5)

Running for what seemed like miles for hours (only a few minutes in actuality), Lloyd brought himself to a halt. He was still within the school. Despite having spent two years in it, knowing its ins and outs, memorizing every corner there was to it, he was starting to feel lost in his own school. All the hallways seemed to be the exact same, which wasn't strange at first glance, but in a dream like this, it was extremely alarming.

Was it due to his blurry vision? He may have regained control back over his body, but the pain, the effects, from earlier still presumed. Even in this alleged dream, his body was aching with the pain of a thousand trucks dropping down on him from up high.

Lloyd held on to the wall railings as he continued down the hall, before making a turn to the right, only to see the familiar desolate halls once again — as if it was a continuous pattern. If anything, he thought that a glooming presence of a dead ghost with a twisted face behind him would not be too far-fetched to believe, it would complete this ludicrous scenario with a fine bow.

Truth be told, this whole dream was starting to become laughable in Lloyd's eyes. He felt like a character lost in an awful Halloween flick.

A giggle pulsated through the halls, the pitch was deep, emitting a — if someone would say — sinister premonition. Without a doubt, that familiar giggle belonged to whatever resided within the body that pretended to be Juno.

— So you're playing, huh.

He stood at the intersection, dumbfounded by the situation he was in. He gazed at both directions of the hall, but his vision could not help him ascertain if someone had stood in the hall at all — his vision was getting worse. Lloyd, jaded by the cat and mouse game the dream of the endless had thrown him into, retraced his steps.

If this scenario indeed played by its own rules and within its own world like Lloyd started to predict (like a normal dream), then this scene would be over long before he even realized it.

But why would it honor its rules? Lloyd would think again. It was a dream, a senseless dream that spanned milliseconds in reality.

He carried on with his stride towards the dining room, however…

— Something's wrong…

Every time he would turn at an intersection, he would see the same familiar hall once again. The corridors weren't ending. But the school wasn't that big, he would think. With barely any strength, he felt an uneasy feeling sink over him down to every point in his body. He tried to open any of the doors to escape the sickening hallway, but they wouldn't budge. The only choice left to him was returning back to the first classroom he stumbled upon, it was the only place he remembered at that moment.

But once again, the corridors weren't ending, everything was the same. With that unsettling feeling sinking in deeper, Lloyd felt the walls around him close in on him. He could no longer tolerate it. He dashed into one of the doors he had found, breaking it open.

— Finally, one opened...

However, another corridor came into view beyond the door instead of a room. Lloyd could not fathom the scene. He closed and opened the door once again, yet it was still the same. He slammed the broken door back and rested by it.

All of a sudden, the sensation of an eerie blare sweeping into his ears sprung up. He held both his hands against his ears trying to deafen out the sound as he slowly slid onto the corridor floor. The sound came through like a sting. On the surface, it simulated the sound of a screeching static; beyond that, Lloyd could hear slight mutters and whispers, words he could not come to perceive at the minimum. It was as if his eardrum was on the verge of bursting out. He would almost shout but his voice wouldn't come out, and tears wouldn't come out of his eyes.

— Just stop. I've had enough of this.

"So that's how you intended to take it. Once a cheater, always a cheater." A voice echoed like a blessing from the sky.

The noise. The pain. All of it dissipated into nothingness. It was never there, to begin with.

What formed in front of Lloyd, however, was something else entirely. He regained his composure, stood up, and watched the scene that the ghost of the past had presented him with.

— This is...

※※※

Two boys sat in a clubroom by their lonesome. It was a small clubroom, roughly a quarter size of a normal classroom of thirty students. Everything was packed to the brim, the corners harbored cardboard boxes that seemed to have been filled with disc covers or something of the sort. The only things that resembled a touch of the school's appearance were the two shelves placed near the windows, and the tables and chairs right in the middle of the room.

Sunset's faint reddish and lulling luminescence had just dawned in the room through the windows. The bizarre screen of carmine shading the scene was no longer present. It was just another normal day in the world, a quiet day.

There were always two instances in a day that Lloyd favored. The time of rain… and the time of twilight. This was one of them.

But he was too busy to think about how he was pulled from a grave situation to a situation like this.

He was engrossed in the scene in front of him, in his memories.

The two boys appeared to have been in their teens, judging by their adolescent looks and the school uniforms they donned. It didn't take a second for Lloyd to recognize one of them. He had all the exact descriptions he knew: the light brown hair, the blue eyes, the slender physique, the outlandish manner in which he sat, the simple red t-shirt underneath the uniform, and most importantly, the bright, silly, ghost of a smile on his face. That face, it was a face he knew far too well, a face he had seen every day for all his life.

It was Lloyd Ashford… sitting at the table. That was correct. Lloyd Ashford stood beside the window in awe, watching himself speak with someone else.

He was sure by then that he had reached the depths of sleep, the deepest stage. In every dream, it was always him experiencing them. But now, he had assumed the role of an outside observer, an overseer, watching over himself.

This was all a memory, disguised in the form of a dream, but a memory he could not bring himself to remember.

That was why he couldn't recognize the other boy. At first glance, he thought it must have been Nathan from the presence of mind he posed, but he was anyone but his friend.

His fluffy hair, which was coated in the light shade of snow, stood out in the most elegant manner. It was quaint, yet complimented his complete pale skin and bright red eyes. That said, his uniform did not blend well with the rest of his appearance, but it was still acceptable to look at, almost fantastic. If you asked anyone, they would have thought that guy to have been a human-like ice sculpture, not an actual living and breathing human being.

He was truly mesmerizing to the eyes, an epitome of winter.

But the sudden shift in tone in the scene pulled Lloyd out of the trance, and it was all thanks to him.

The Lloyd before him stood up in wrath, almost flipping the table that sat between him and the other guy.

"Bullshit!" He swung out both his arms.

On the table was one of the oldest games known to a man, a classic game of chess. They seemed to have been at it for quite a while before Lloyd arrived at the scene, as the pieces were all over the board and not in their respective tiles at the start of the game. Chess wasn't a game beyond Lloyd's comprehension. He wasn't the best at it, but he was still good enough to play it — even if he would take his sweet time to make a move every time the turn was over at him.

"I'm surprised, to be honest." The pale boy chuckled, his voice was gentle, which was not that unordinary coming from someone like him. His smile was a sight to behold. "Never thought that brain of yours can actually sit through that for more than a minute. But you've pulled more than you can count."

"Oh yeah? Then what's your take? What could your mind have possibly deduced?"

"Easy." The boy tilted the chair to the back, "You tried to pull a Bullhead Formation, you got cornered, you cheated."

The Bullhead Formation, a move that was often considered a guaranteed success for a checkmate. It consisted of ten golden moves that would come to form a barrier around the King piece through the help of the other pieces. But it would still depend on the player's wits to not be spotted from a mile away.

Unfortunately for Lloyd, that was the case.

"Those are some claims, coming from a smartass like you!" He crossed his arms.

"It's not my fault you were so subtle about it — and you sure took your time with it as well." The boy postured himself back to a straight position. "Besides, it wouldn't have worked the way you thought it would anyway. It never works. There's no logic in developing both Bishops in the fourth rank, they're in different directions after all. And let's not mention the Knights," he grabbed a knight piece from off the board and placed it on the table, "Their positions just hinders your Pawn-play options, if we're being honest here. The method itself is completely flawed. An incomplete apparition of false perfection."

He was just another young man like Lloyd, yet it felt like he housed the knowledge and wisdom of elders, whether that knowledge and wisdom were correct or not. It was clear in his crystallized red eyes that he led on less than what he actually knew.

Despite that, there was not a semblance of memory within Lloyd's mind that could help him determine who that boy was. From their interactions, they both seemed like very close friends, but there was still no feeling of any form of familiarity coming from him.

The other Lloyd raised his hands in applause, "Always like to flex your deductions, huh."

"That's the game. A matter of mind."

"A matter of mind, a matter of patience, a matter of whatever… I've heard it come out of your mouth dozens of times, I get it."

"Well anyway, the game's afoot." The boy closed his eyes with a satisfactory expression, stretched his arms, and then moved them over behind his head, before resting on the chair's back. "It's incomplete. We can't go on now."

"Whatever you say, Sherlock." Lloyd started collecting the pieces and returning them back to where they originally were. "You just wanna start over because things aren't going your way."

"Is that wrong though? Imperfection is stale. Once a person realizes that it's only right for them to want to start over. Everyone wants to end it on their own terms, right?"

"Uh-huh…"

He was still busy with organizing the pieces back; he didn't pay much attention to the boy.

The boy could feel the disinterest in Lloyd's eyes and the energy starting to wane.

It was then that a thought came to the boy's mind; an incredible, almost impossible thought. At its core, chess was just a game of intellectuals trying to outsmart one another, but it was still defective enough to bore someone, at least in the boy's eyes. If he wanted to move forward, then he needed to spice things up, to truly develop the unjust game he had always dreamed of.

"How about a new game then?" His voice echoed in the room.

"Huh?!" Lloyd looked at him with surprise, "What do you have in mind?"

"The Trickster's Game. It's a special form of chess, appealing to cheaters and intellectuals alike."

"You pulled that out of your ass, didn't you?" Lloyd was displeased.

"Not really. It's the oldest game in the book. And it's really easy to understand and get into. Rules are always spiraling in chaos. Players have the utmost freedom to what they want. But we're not the Kings here, we're just Bishops trying to dictate their own victory at any cost. An unfair game of trickery and deceit!"

"How is that gonna work?" He rubbed the back of his head in confusion.

"Like flipping a coin. The odds are in contrast."

Lloyd was suspicious of what the boy was saying, but he was nonetheless ecstatic about the game. With the details that we're being said, he was surprised he had never heard of such a game. A game that relied completely on unstoppable wits, and defied logic in its own way. It was almost too good to be true.

"All right!" He extended his hand for a handshake, "You've had me—"

It was at that moment that a third party infiltrated the scene. The door to the hallway, directly facing the other Lloyd, was swung open with force.

"E-Excuse me…" A cold and calming feminine voice came through.

At the doorway stood a very familiar face with an oddly unfamiliar expression. Her blonde hair, her face, her figure, all of it, they were all pointing to one conclusion.

— No way…

It was Emiya.

Although it was not exactly her, it was someone Lloyd could never believe he would recognize in a million years. If it had been the Emiya he knew, she would have burst inside with her annoying voice, shouting whatever nonsense was on her mind. She was full of life. However, this girl, even before speaking up, was completely devoid of emotion, one could easily tell. No smile. No anger. No sorrow. No feelings behind her face. There was no light in her eyes.

She was a complete divergence from who Emiya was.

"God! Emiya, the hell are you doing here?" Lloyd responded with anger.

There was no response on her part, just an emotionless look.

"If you're gonna screw around, do it elsewhere. I don't have time for you. (Always so clingy.)"

He brought himself to his feet and tried to push the helpless Emiya out of the room without any remorse. She did not try to resist and went along smoothly. There was no disappointment or sorrow in her eyes or expression.

It was all the same: nothing.

The Lloyd watching all of this felt deep pity for her, yet he felt something even worse ache within him. This was the moment the sense of unfamiliarity began to sink deeper than ever before.

— I don't know any of this. Just what the hell am I seeing?

The way he acted so vigorously and irrationally. The Emiya he had no knowledge of. The complex-minded pale boy who sat idly by the table. This whole "memory" started to seem like a pure fabrication born out of more bizarre dreams. Still, it wouldn't make sense for it to stem from his dreams of all things. He did not know the boy. He never pictured Emiya in that light.

It all felt too real to be a lie; all too fake to be the truth.

Deep down, Lloyd found himself calling out to Emiya, for her to do something, to lash out at him, to be herself. Even in this bizarre twisted trip of a dream, Lloyd wanted to cling onto a form of normalcy.

Why did he care so much?

It was all a dream.

Just a dream.

— ...a dream

"(You must dream…)"

Those words echoed in Lloyd's mind, in his dream. They were words that belonged to someone he trusted deeply, someone he felt safe around, like all the world's problems would fade the moment they stepped in.

It was after those words that the scenes before Lloyd faded and the world flashed by.

When he came to, there was only a scene he would never forget, the scene that started it all. Everything was dark, but in the distance, a light shone down on two figures, like the stage was ordering them to act. On the ground was Lloyd, yet another apparition of himself within his memories, completely fazed and shocked by what was happening, not to the void, but to what had transpired prior to that within the memories. Facing him was none other than Shogo Kuroiwa, standing in front of him with all his might and flashy confidence. His eyes were covered by his shades, as usual, but his reassuring smile bore all of his sanguine emotions.

That smile… the catalyst of it all.

It was the first time Lloyd was able to trust someone completely seconds after they had met.

They looked at each other like they knew fate had predestined their meeting. A boy found a mentor. And a mentor recognized an apprentice.

(Limitless potential…)

The words echoed again.

(Set your mind free… open up your imagination…)

And just like that, the dream faded away, back to nothing.

There was nothing but a void, a blank page; a blank page ready to be filled with imagination.

Within this stage was the stem of all imagination, the deepest part of light and darkness, just waiting to be ignited.

To tap into this potential, you must dream. You must venture within your own depths, to search for the oldest light. Read the construct of your imagination. Author it, for it was the end of a line and the beginning of another. Vanquish that which would hold the shackles of notion. A world made of unlimited, terrifying freedom lied beyond. Dream on. Wake up. Become the dream. Call upon the moon's presence in a final plea, for it harbored the most ancient dream.

That was the truth of [Limitless Requiem].