Chapter Two

That night Yuki went to bed later than usual, she left her homework for the last minute and had to do it after dinner. She was very tired, it had been a long day, hopefully this time her sleep would be peaceful.

However, her sub-conscious had other plans for her. She had the same dream. She was in a field full of strange purple flowers, surrounded by a strange but delicious scent. As she walked through it, trying to find a way out, the sky suddenly turned a dark crimson, and a strong wind blew.

From behind a tree to her left came a white shape, which seemed very blurry at first, but after a few minutes it became clearer. It came towards her, nearer than it had before. She'd always assumed it was a white horse, but this time she saw it clearly: it wasn't a white horse, before her was a white Unicorn.

Like she always did when she saw it, Yuki felt a strong urge to stroke it, she begun walking towards it, and for the first time it remained still and let her stroke it. Its eyes were fixed on hers, there was something in them that seemed more human than animal, a strange intelligence emanated from them that made her sure this animal had a mind of his own. But as she tried to discern the meaning of the look in the Unicorn's eyes, it turned around and headed off breaking into a soft gallop.

She chased after him, feeling he wanted her to follow him, but she couldn't seem to catch up with him.

As the Unicorn reached a small clearing, where a boy waited, the boy looked back at her for a few seconds and, instead of turning away as usual, smiled warmly at her. She tried to reach him to ask where they where and what this all meant, but the boy turned, got on the Unicorn and rode away.

When they went out of her sight, a thick cloud of darkness enveloped Yuki, choking her, going inside of her and giving her a growing feeling of emptiness and despair...

Shaking, Yuki woke up suddenly, drenched in cold sweat.

--- That smile! It's Haru! The boy in my dream is Haru, I'm sure of it, that's his smile! This is where I've seen him before! I wonder if he might have had the same dream with me in it... no, people don't dream the same things. But how could I have dreamt with him, if I didn't even know him before today... I must have seen him somewhere before, during the summer holidays, I can't just imagine someone I don't know like that. I'll ask him again, I'm sure I must have met him somewhere before.

She looked at the clock and jumped out off bed, realizing she was running late for school! She got dressed, brushed her teeth, packed her bag, grabbed it and ran downstairs.

--- Yuki, aren´t you having any breakfast before school?

Akio, Yuki´s father, was a kind man, with a friendly, open manner that attrackted many people to him. He and Yuki had lived alone since she was 4 years old, after her mother had died of a strange illness called Cancer. He was always very attentive to her, and helped her with everything he could. Today he didn´t seem very happy to have his daughter skipping breakfast, but she couldn´t help it, she didn´t want to be late for school.

---Sorry dad, I´ll eat something at school, I have to hurry now. Bye, have a good day at work!

Before he could answer, Yuki took her bike out and cycled on it to school. She normally walked, but today she had to get there faster.

She entered the school gates in such a rush that she nearly ran a boy over. The strange thing was that the boy didn´t even attempt to get out of the way, he merely stood there and fixed his eyes on hers. Yuki stopped just in time, and realised it was Haru. He was out of breath, he must have been running to school.

--- Haru, sorry!! I didn´t see you in time! Hey, I know where I´ve seen you before now, I´ve been having a strange dream, I know it sounds weird, but you´ve been in it... though i´d be impossible for me to be dreaming of you if I hadn´t seen you somewhere in real life before... so we must have met, don´t you remember seeing me before?

Haru sighed, and answered slowly, as if weighing his words.

--- And why would that be impossible? Dreams are real too... in they´re own way. In fact, some may be even more real than what we call reality. And I´d never seen you before here, I don´t think we´ve met before outside of your dream.

--- But we HAVE met before in my dream, is that what you´re saying? You´ve had that dream too, haven´t you?

Just then the bell rang, she didn´t finish her sentence, she stared at Haru pleadingly and he just stared back with an amused expression on his face.

--- Come, we´re going to be late.

He turned around and headed for their classroom, and Yuki had no choice but to drop her questions and follow him. Luckily they were just in time. They went into their classroom with everyone else.

The rest of the day went by very slowly like the day before, Yuki couldn´t concentrate in any of the lessons, and Hana kept giving her worried looks. Throught the day Yuki tried to talk to Haru again, he knew something and wasn´t telling her. But she didn´t see him at breaktime, and they sat on opposite sides of the classroom, so there was no way to talk to him then.

As the end of school bell rang Yuki felt frustrated to have failed to talk to him. Just then she had an idea, she´s follow him and talk to him, she´d follow him all around the city if need be.

Yuki asked Hana to take her bike home for her, on her way past her house, and begun following Hary from a discrete distance. They went down narrow passages, past hidden gardens, up steep stairs and turned many times down different streets. By then Yuki had lost her sense of direction. She´d never been in this part of the city before, and she´d been living there all her life! Finally, she found herself in a beautiful neighborhood, full of cherry trees. All the houses were traditional, made of wood, with beautiful well kept gardens. Haru walked to the end of the road and began walking up a footpath with pine trees on either side of it, that led into a big house. Just as Yuki was running to catch up with him, he opened the front door and went in.

Damm! I´ve lost my last chance to speak to him, and I don´t even know how to get back! She didn´t want to knock on his door, i´d be too obvious she had followed him and she didn´t want to look like she was stalking him.

But she didn´t know how to get home. She sent Hana a text message with her phone asking for help and sat in a grass area in front of the boy´s house and hoped Hana would get the message soon.

Yuki was beginning to daydream again, when she was she was startled by noise coming from Haru´s house. Well, to call it noise would be wrong, it was music. Someone was playing one of the saddest songs she´d ever heard on what sounded like a violin. Her mother had been a great violinist. Though Yuki didn´t remember any of the songs she ´d played, her father had kept her mother´s violin. It had remained untouched all these years. Many of her Akio´s friends had told him to sell it, apparently it was made of an unusual special and expensive type of wood. But her father hadn´t had the heart to give away something his wife had treasured so much.

Yuki leant against a pine tree and listened to the music. It was beautiful, yet it made her feel a very deep sadness. After a while her phone went off though, and broke the spell she was under. It was Hana calling her, asking where she was and promising to go get her straight away. Yuki read the street name to her friend off a sign and asked her to hurry. It was beginning to get dark and her father would be worried.

When Hana found Yuki, she scolded her for getting lost and worrying her and gave her a big hug. Then they began a brisk walk back home. Yuki was surprised her friend knew the way home, there were so many turns, passages and steps that it was easy to get lost.

The walked through a dark passage and were surprised to see that although outside of it the weather had been warm and still, inside the passage a strong wind blew and it was considerably colder. Yuki somehow managed to see something white on the floor blown to her feet, and stopped to pick it up. It was muddy and torn at the sides, but she could distinguish notes on it: it was a music score. It was folded in a bizarre way, and when she opened it up she saw it was an enormous piece of paper containing many pages of music.

Hana looked at it intently and pointed at a date near the top of the first page.

--- Look at the date of this thing! 1333, that´s veery old! I´m amazed it´s stayed this conserved... how could someone leave something like this lying around!? And it´s strange, it doesn´t have a title... all pieces have a title, even if it´s just a number... and no name of the composer or "Animous" written anywhere on it...

--- Yeah, it´s strange. Hana, do you mind if I keep it? I want to find out more about it. And I want to hear the piece on it, I wonder who could play it to us?

--- Sure. Well, we should hurry up, look at those clouds, it looks like it´s going to rain!

Luckily, when Yuki got home it was only beginning to rain. As she´d imagined, her dad was very worried. It was 7 pm already. She must have sat in front of that house for much longer than she thought. Yuki invited Hana over for dinner, when they finally sat down to eat she was surprised to find that she was starving.

After eating, Akio walked Hana home (she only live a few houses away, but it was very dark), and Yuki did some homework. At some she must have fallen asleep though, because soon after she entered the dreamworld once more.

She was walking through the purple flower field, taking in the delicious scent, feeling a refreshing breeze of air, and for the first time, hearing a beautiful violin melody. It was at times sad, at times happy, slow then fast, quiet then louder, staccato then legato. She´d never heard anything like it before.

She sat down under the same tree from which the Unicorn always came, and listened to the melody for quite some time. She was sure this tune was different from the others, it seemed to be telling her a story, she always felt on the verge of understanding some hidden words in the notes, some hidden meaning, some message it was trying to give her; but as soon as she began trying to make out what the words were they lost all possible meaning.

After what seemed like a long time, she saw a white blotch moving quickly towards her and getting bigger. It carried something shiny, with purple on it. As it approached her she realized it was the Unicorn, with a man riding on it. The man was wearing a shiny silvery amour, the kind Yuki had only seen in movies. Except for that it was even more beautiful than the ones in the movies, underneath the main body, the armour had shoulder pads of a rich purple colour, the chest was also made of that fabric, and in it was embroidered a unicorn.

Yuki sighed and stood up, feeling inferior and unworthy of such a striking sight. She was beginning to back away when the rider took his helmet off and she was surprised to see Haru smilling at her.

He didn´t say anything out loud. He didn’t need to. He extended his hand to her and pulled her up on the Unicorn, then began heading back where he´d come from. Yuki didn´t feel uncomfortable like she would have felt when riding a horse (well, Unicorn) for the first time, she felt like she was flying, floating freely... it was a wonderful feeling.

In front of them, before Yuki´s very eyes was the setting sun... she could feel its warmth radiating on her, giving her strength, happiness, confidence... the Unicorn seemed to be floating into the sunset! So many beautiful colours surrounded them now: red, orange, pink, purple... and some others she’d never seen before, colours the human eye wasn’t normally able to see, because you didn’t see them, you felt them.

Haru turned to look at her and smiled, his black hair reflected the colours of the sunset, she’d never seen him looking so beautiful. For the first time, he spoke, with a voice full so strikingly powerful that it seemed to shake the earth.

--- Don’t be afraid... trust in... it doesn’t matter, you will see soon enough. Everything will be fine. We will meet again.

Haru and the Unicorn began fading away and she started to fall from a great height... she felt herself losing all confidence and fear was growing stronger in her heart...

Just then Yuki woke up. She felt very tired, and her body ached. She still felt scared, and an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach, the kind you get when someone scares you suddenly making you jump.

She looked at her watch and saw that it was only 5am, but even though she felt tired, she couldn’t get back to sleep. She turned her night lamp on, and took a little book out of a drawer. Her diary. She´d been writing down details about her strange dream since she´d begun having it. It was a different kind from common dreams. It felt real: she could feel with her with senses, and if she ran she would wake up tired, if it was cold there she'd wake up feeling cold. She'd written down each little variation she'd noticed in the dream from time to time. And reading it, she realised that it was after she met Haru that her dream began to change from day to day. That boy in her dream had to be Haru, now that she'd heard him speak she was posiive, he had the same voice!

Yuki waited patiently until it was time to get ready, she had some breakfast, then walked to school. She was early, but that didn't matter, perhaps Haru would be early too... she needed to talk to him about the dream, she needed to get him to tell her what he knew about it. Because he was hiding something, she could tell.

When she got to school, she realised there was hardly anyone there. She sat on a bench by the school gates, from which she could see anyone who entering the school. She waited for what seemed an eternity, and saw no sign of Haru.

Soon the bell rang and she had to head off for class. She´d given all hope of seeing Haru before class began, oh well, she could look for him at breaktime, she thought.

But as Daichi took the register she realised Haru hadn´t come to school in the first place. Her plans were ruined... but she would had to see him soon, she didn´t know why, but she felt it was very important she asked him about the dream as soon as possible.

For the first time since school had started Yuki finally managed to pay attention in her lessons, she manged to take her mind off her worries. Hana gave her a hug at breaktime, and told her she was glad to have her friend back... apparently Hana had noticed Yuki´s absentmindedness and had been worried about her.

It was during a maths lesson that Yuki´s mind went back to thinking about Haru and the strange dream. She quickly came to a conclusion: the only way she would be able to talk to him would be if she went to his house. That´s what she had to do... she now thought she knew the way to his house, she´d tell Hana she was going shopping or something. She had to keep this meeting a secret from her best friend, she´d worried too much about her last time, she would probably want to accompany her to his house in case Yuki got lost again, and she couldn´t let her do that. She needed to talk to Haru alone.

When the bell rang Yuki, who had already packed her books and put her jumper around her shoulders, was the first to leave the classroom. She waved Hana goodbye, and before she could ask her why she wasn´t walking home with her, Yuki left the school.

She turned left where Haru had turned left, went through the narrow passages he´d gone down, and repeated each step she´d taken before, almost automatically. When she reached Haru´s house she suddenly felt her determination waver. What would he think if she just walked up to his door and knocked? How would she justify knowing where he lived? He´d think she was stalking him... but she didn´t have time to finish that trail of thoughts, just as she was considering turning around, the front door opened and an old man stared at her questioningly.