Natsume Sonoko rarely felt such an urgent desire to understand a complete stranger.
Yet now, she couldn't help but slip into another person's perspective, her expression shifting between curiosity and surprise in response to the other's actions and words.
The stark contrast in their personalities felt refreshing to Natsume-san, especially since the other girl wore a face nearly identical to her own.
It was an eerie sensation, like looking into a distorted mirror. Natsume-san's attention was completely captured by that rebellious shrine maiden.
This was her first time directly confronting her so-called past life.
The other girl wore a simple Shrine Maiden outfit, her long hair tied up in a traditional bun. Her wooden geta made only soft, muted sounds against the floorboards.
Every movement, every gesture, displayed refined grace and etiquette—the result of years of rigorous training. She perfectly fit Natsume-san's mental definition of an ojousama, even if the standards for propriety had shifted drastically between their eras.
It was as if time and space had warped, connecting two existences that should never have intersected in this bizarre way.
Dreams often reflect fragments of reality, sometimes even replaying a person's experiences; the brain unconsciously weaving memories into vivid, lifelike dreams.
And now, Natsume-san was essentially 'watching' snippets from that Shrine Maiden-san's past life.
"It's over? Was the dream really that short?"
"Now that I think about it, they were arguing, weren't they? That Shrine Maiden-san from my past life didn't want to be a proper shrine maiden anymore, and her friend was trying to talk her out of it."
Snapping back to reality, Natsume-san sat dazedly at her desk, her mind still filled with the scenes she'd just witnessed.
This wasn't quite what she had expected. She'd initially assumed that Shrine Maiden-san was a good, dutiful shrine maiden. Turns out, she was actually a bit of a bad one.
Strangely, this made Natsume-san feel a bit happy. 'That sounds like a choice I'd make.'
She herself wasn't a fan of all that feudal superstitious nonsense either.
However, the situation Shrine Maiden-san faced was completely different from Natsume-san's own. Natsume Sonoko's dislike was just a personal preference.
That Shrine Maiden-san, though, had to contend with societal and public opinion pressures.
Drawing a parallel, even though so many adults treated them like lab rats, and her friends often found themselves in danger or under attack, Natsume-san herself had never once considered rebelling against the science side. One had to admit, that felt like a significant step back.
But, what could she say? As long as Natsume-san was content with it herself, that was enough. She knew these were her own genuine feelings, unaffected by any external influence. That Kamijou-senpai's right hand could attest to that.
"So... the Shrine Maiden-san from my past life was named Hitomi, huh? Sounds a bit...perfunctory."
(T/N: the kanji 瞳子 translates to Hitomi, which means eye)
"It seems she didn't even have a family name. Just Hitomi. Was it because her eyes were beautiful, so they called her that?"
"But why has no one ever complimented my eyes? We look almost the same."
Natsume-san blinked, then instinctively opened the notebook on her desk, transcribing the information she'd gathered into a mysterious, martian-like script. 'Good. I hope future me can still understand what I'm writing here.'
She suddenly felt a strong urge to get a good look at her own eyes. But the bandages were still firmly in place, so she had to abandon that peculiar notion.
Although her eyes couldn't see anything, her brain had just perceived something far more distant and mysterious than any physical sight could offer.
"Judging from the dream's content, she probably encountered the same problem I did. That Hitomi-san... is very likely a transmigrator, too."
"Wait, that's not right. Hitomi-san is my past life. The memories of being a transmigrator shouldn't be different. If you consider her and me as a single entity, then there's only ever been one transmigrator: me."
"Something still feels off. Maybe we should be counted as two people. Hitomi-san was the transmigrator in the past, and I am the transmigrator in the present, connected only by a soul-link. How annoying. It's troublesome no matter how you slice it."
She rubbed her not-particularly-bright head. Natsume-san always liked to accompany her thinking with little fidgets; it seemed to help her focus.
Since she couldn't figure out which was correct, she decided to simply stop thinking about it. Both answers seemed plausible anyway.
But before that first problem was even settled, Natsume-san's mind immediately leapt to further connections.
Unsurprisingly, that shrine maiden likely possessed the same perceptual ability she did.
The wooden bow that helped Ladylee find liberation, and the power contained within it, were both things left behind by that Hitomi, and they were deeply intertwined with the Phases.
Furthermore, during her previous experiences, that strange sense of familiarity she felt within the ocean of Phases… part of that likely originated from Hitomi as well.
"Hitomi-san undoubtedly had that perceptual ability too. She saw the world's true form, which is how she could recognize the world's errors and the shrine's falsehood. This world, layered like some giant, multi-decker sandwich… who could possibly like seeing something like that?"
"Her decision to leave the shrine might have been partly because of that. A quest for the world's truth, or something along those lines."
As she pondered, Natsume-san felt a certain resonance with this girl she'd never met, even trying to guess what the other might have been thinking.
She'd long wanted to properly complain to someone about this messed-up world, but no one who could understand her had appeared, and she couldn't explain such bizarre concepts anyway.
Now, she'd finally found someone like that, but that person was already long gone from this world.
Outside, time flowed steadily onward, and one dream bubble after another was being observed.
Compared to the vast, branching river of dreams, the number of bubbles Natsume-san observed was a mere drop in the ocean. Yet, it was enough to give her a basic impression of that Shrine Maiden.
A flood of information concerning the shrine maiden poured into Natsume-san's mind. Most of it was worthless, chaotic dream fragments, but it seemed to be interspersed with some potentially useful intel.
In one of Shrine Maiden-san's dreams, there were records of some simple conjectures she'd made regarding her own perceptual ability.
Concerning the perceptual ability they both shared, unlike Natsume-san's almost perfunctory approach to exploring it, that Shrine Maiden-san had exhibited immense passion for it. For her, it was a crucial power that could help her break free from her cage and seek her true self.
The difference in their circumstances led to two completely opposing attitudes toward this power. Just like their personalities mentioned before, the two of them developed in entirely opposite directions.
But, to get back on track… In this world, the power to traverse between different Phases within the same world can be defined as Telesma.
In some magical societies dedicated to research and exploration, Telesma is even referred to as Angel's Power.
Simultaneously, this power can also be defined as a forbidden force, not circulated among humanity, and at most can only be manipulated and guided by a select few special humans.
As for the perceptual ability possessed by Natsume-san and the Shrine Maiden, it allows consciousness to wander through Phases and the cosmos. By dropping an anchor point, one could make the Phases feedback the desired information.
While it's impossible to confirm the relationship between this power, which exists only within Natsume-san's mind, and Telesma, merely judging from its ability to traverse Phases, it shares similarities with Telesma.
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T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL