MMMS 114

That night, Ryuuto lay beside his mother on the hay-strewn bedding inside the cave.

When he stirred and cracked open his eyes, still half-lost in sleep, he felt something warm curled around his waist. It was her tail—Tiamat’s long, serpentine tail, gently wrapped around him like a silken rope.

Again.

He’d told her not to. More than once. She’d promised—again and again—that she wouldn’t do it anymore. And yet here they were.

With a quiet sigh, he sat up and carefully unwound the tail. It slipped away without resistance, retreating back to its owner. He glanced down at her sleeping face, bathed in soft silver light.

She hadn’t changed. Not in over ten years. Not one line marred her beauty, not one trace of time dulled the quiet allure in her features. She looked exactly as she had the day they first met—impossibly beautiful. Otherworldly.

“Mmm...”

Her lips parted slightly, a faint breath escaping between them. She murmured something he could barely catch.

“Drink more… just a little more, so you grow up healthy…”

Ryuuto blinked. “…What kind of dream is that?”

Rolling his eyes, he eased back down beside her. His breath left him in another sigh—exasperated, almost fond. Even in her dreams, it was always about him.

Really, she was just—

Wait.

Dreams?

The word hit like a dropped stone. His body went still. A chill crept down his spine.

Dreams?

He hadn’t dreamed in… how long?

More than a decade. Not once, not even a flicker of one. And stranger still, he had never even thought to question it.

Why?

Why had he never wondered?

The realization bloomed like a slow dawn across his face.

Ah. Of course.

He couldn’t dream—because he had nothing real to dream about.

No world. No truth. No pain, no future, no past.

Dreams were born from reality. Without it, there was nothing to shape them.

“…Ah.”

Memory returned.

He wasn’t truly here.

Only his soul had been drawn into this place. His real self—his physical body—was still locked in battle, facing the armies of the Two Kings.

This world wasn’t the real one. It was a dream.

Tiamat’s dream.

More precisely, a dream she had created for him.

He remembered now—the ritual, the link between them formed through Erosion, the moment he fell into this dream. Tiamat had used the Holy Grail given to her by Goetia to build this world. Not for herself, but for her child.

Everything here existed for his sake.

Even her ability to dream inside a dream made sense now. This world obeyed different rules.

For Tiamat—the Mother—he was the world.

Her child was all there was.

Understanding everything now, he quietly closed his eyes and reached out to take her hand.

Her fingers were slender and cold, as delicate as the dreams she had spun for him.

“…Yeah. I like it here,” he whispered. “I’ll stay with you forever, Mother.”

His red-black dragon tail coiled gently around her lapis-blue one, the two winding together like twin strands of fate.

The next time he opened his eyes, the truth would be gone—erased from memory. All that would remain was the peace of everyday life, at his mother’s side.

…

“So why,” Ryuuto asked, his voice low and trembling, “did it end up like this?”

He stood in a world of absolute black, a space with no floor, no sky, no stars—only the void. In that emptiness, he clutched Tiamat’s wrist and stared into her eyes.

Tiamat didn’t meet his gaze. She lowered her head and hugged herself like a child caught breaking something precious.

“I’m sorry… please forgive me…”

Her voice, though strange and melodic—like a hymn sung in reverse—was perfectly clear to him. The bond between their souls let him understand her completely.

When his consciousness had stirred, it wasn’t to the warmth of sunlight or birdsong.

It wasn’t the familiar hay bed in their cave.

It was here. This place.

A hollow abyss that pulsed like a sea of silence. A realm not of space, but of negation.

This was the Imaginary Number Space—the true domain of Tiamat’s form.

She had been cast here long ago by her children, exiled to this cold, dark ocean because her boundless existence stifled their growth. The womb had become too vast for the life inside it.

“…Haah.”

The dream he’d clung to.

The dream he never wanted to wake from.

It was over now.

And the one who had ended it—was her.

The very person who had created it.

His hands curled into fists.

“You’re the one who trapped me in that dream,” he said coldly. “And now, without asking, you’re tearing it all down. What’s the meaning of this? You should’ve begged me to stay. Clung to me and cried, ‘Don’t go… don’t leave me.’ That’s what you should’ve done.”

Tiamat’s eyes shone with sorrow.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. “Bringing you into the dream was a moment of weakness… a selfish wish I couldn’t let go of.”

She paused.

“But Ryuuto… you can’t sleep anymore. Your spirit can’t grow in a dream. And I… I can’t teach you anything worth knowing there.”

Her voice dropped to a murmur.

“You have a place you must return to.”

“I chose to stay, I wanted to stay with you.”

Tiamat gave him a gentle smile and slowly shook her head.

“But… waking a child from a dream is part of a mother’s duty too.”

Ryuuto turned away, lips pressed into a line. He stood there, unmoving, lost in silence for a long moment before exhaling sharply.

“…What a selfish mother.”

Her reply came softly, almost too soft to hear. “Yes… I must be a poor excuse for one. That’s why they all left me.”

She paused, then added in a whisper, “I never intended to leave the Imaginary Number Sea. But then… he gave me a Holy Grail.”

Her voice turned wistful. “It was beautiful. Gold, and shining… it looked just like you did when you were small. So I took it. I told myself it was a substitute. That it was you.”

She glanced up, her eyes drifting to the boy’s back. “Ryuuto… did I cause you trouble?”

There was a brief silence.

“…So that’s what happened.”

He stood still for a moment longer, then turned his head slightly.

“You didn’t cause trouble. Keep the Holy Grail for now.”

His voice had softened.

Tiamat’s eyes widened faintly. She stepped closer, hesitantly at first—then closed the distance in a few quiet steps. Wrapping her arms around him from behind, she pressed her face to the back of his head and whispered, voice thick with tears:

“Thank you, Ryuuto… You’re the first child who remembered me. The only one who ever came looking for me. The only one who stayed…”

Her arms tightened.

“I’m so happy. So, so happy… Even if it was just a dream… these ten years with you were the happiest of my entire existence. Billions of years I’ve waited, and still—just remembering those ten years… it would be enough to endure another two hundred million.”

“It wasn’t a dream,” he said softly.

“…Eh?”

He turned slightly, enough for her to see the calm certainty in his face.

“The ten years I spent with you weren’t an illusion. They weren’t fake. They weren’t just dreams. That time belongs to us. And that makes it real.”

Tiamat blinked. Then slowly, joyfully, she nodded—again and again.

“Yes… yes… not an illusion,” she murmured, smiling through her tears. “Hehe… Ryuuto speaks like such a grown-up now.”

She giggled, warm and bittersweet.