FFF-Tier System, SSS-Rank Wife-Chapter 31: Dreamscape

In the end, all my worries and doubts regarding this one room housing both of us ended up unfounded.

As it turned out, while Selia thought about valid logic and reasons, my mind was stuck in the gutter of a modern world, where every male-female relationship was bound to end up in the same realm.

’I really need to fix that filthy mind of mine, lest I want it to lead me to some trouble down the line,’ I thought as my consciousness started to fade.

Nothing happened.

Selia didn’t pounce on me with clear, sexual intentions. Heck, she didn’t offer even the slightest amount of intimacy nor indicated she was open to me initiating any.

And to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t help but think it was for the better.

I had enough worries on my head to go ahead and add the potential awkwardness of dealing with a potential relationship blooming between the two of us or, in the worst-case scenario, an even worse feeling of said relationship falling apart.

All of it led me to just toss around in the bed while making sure not to get any closer to its middle than I started at, keeping to my side of the bed at all times.

Yet, despite all of my exhaustion, despite how I expected to fall asleep right away, just the knowledge that Selia was right there, within an arm’s reach, was unsettling enough to keep me from properly sliding into the embrace of the nightly slumber.

It was only when I moved on to analyze every last bit of how stupid it was of me to expect anything out of this opportunity, right when my thoughts turned to how I was unlikely to fall asleep at all, that my body finally caved in to its exhaustion.

My breath slowed down, my body relaxed, following — all on its own — the whole procedure that I’d once learned for the supposed sake of rapidly falling asleep.

Yet, even then, with my mind fading away into the nothingness, I couldn’t get the well-deserved rest.

As it turned out, even when all that I did for the last few days was move around and think, I couldn’t rest — even while literally sleeping. Not because there was something wrong with my sleep; after all the struggle of actually falling asleep, I could swear I’d entered the phase of deep sleep the very moment I finally managed to go to sleep.

No.

It was because from the very moment I regained my consciousness within the realm of my dream, it turned out to be just more of the same.

Even though I couldn’t remember the goal, I continued to move ahead.

Never stopping, never as much as slowing down.

My mind couldn’t relax either, constantly calculating some numbers, probabilities, constantly jogging my memory in search for this one, very specific information that I just couldn’t recall.

Then, right as I felt I was finally about to grasp it...

My thoughts switched to something entirely else, throwing me all the way back to the very beginning of the process.

The same thing happened with me running, with the dream suddenly morphing into a whole new scenario whenever I was about to reach something that I could feel to be my goal.

As if the purpose of this dream was to show me the futility of my actions.

Whatever it was I was trying to escape from... or maybe, whatever it was I wanted to reach, would never fall within my grasp.

And when it came to my mind, the story would be worryingly similar.

Whatever it would be that I wanted to figure out, it would always end up slipping just outside of my grasp, easy for others to take over but lacking any sort of value in the eyes of all those who could properly grasp it.

And then?

Nothing.

It felt as if the usual dream-born drowsiness suddenly washed clean from my mind, allowing me to stay as sober within the dream as I would be in reality.

This change, however, came at a considerable cost.

For now that I could properly see what was going on, at least within the realm of the dream, it was as if everything around me simply vanished.

As if the mere act of observation determined that all the worlds that I was running through were proven to be perfectly empty, filled with nothing but illusions my drowsy mind couldn’t break.

But right now, I was simply too sober to see any of that, stuck in the world full of nothing but perfect emptiness.

A world that I’d visited again despite never coming here to begin with.

’A birthplace of paradox, huh?’ I thought upon realizing just what was this weird space, both so full and yet so empty at the same time.

A source of all that was and the endpoint of all that would be.

That, or I was simply going crazy within my sleep, a clear sign my mind was struggling to decide what to put into the carefully arranged boxes of my long-term memory and what parts of my short-term memory to discard.

A choice that all by itself felt like self-censoring, even if I knew it to be absolutely necessary.

And yet, within this world of whole emptiness, I didn’t have to worry about it at all.

The time for worrying would come once I would wake up and face the possibility that my mental burdens were quickly deteriorating my brain, potentially leading to some serious problems down the line.

For now, though...

’While this might be just a dream...’ I thought as I stood over the edge of the nothingness with nothing but more of it just beyond the edge. ’Isn’t this also a reflection of how I am in reality?’

The very moment this thought appeared in my head, I couldn’t help but swallow hard as a cold chill moved up my spine.

A world full of nothingness.

Wasn’t this just a perfect reflection of how I was in reality? So full of everything, yet, when it came to actual worth or value, I was just a baggage for others to toss around and take care of.

A useless, worthless man. A waste of space, air, and the time of others.

Sure, I was taking steps to rectify it, and yet...

I shook my head.

’This dream clearly isn’t normal,’ I decided, quickly noticing just how massive my mood swings were within this weird realm.

"But if it’s not just a normal dream, then..." I squinted my eyes as I looked around yet again, only to be faced with just more of the same emptiness that I’d noticed before.

"Then, what the hell is it supposed to be?"