[Mortal World]
City Park

Miya was about to shake Hataru's hand, but then the battle continues. "I'm Tsukamoto," she says, before watching him run off to the battle.

Heeding her classmate Hinata's advice, Miya the martial artist backs off from the battle a couple of paces. After all, there's swords and people turning to stone and snake ladies from India and flame arrows and little hiding boys and now flaming dogs...that's it!

Everything starts to make sense now.

It's all a dream. It has to be. After meeting with her Spirit Mother, Miya's mind recoiled at night from having much of her beliefs shattered in one night, and it started trying to make sense of it all during the night. This battle's probably a symbol of school or something, with people she vaguely remembers and snakes and stuff.

That has to be right...right?

Whatever the case, Miya definitely does not want to die in this dream. She heard once that, if you die in a dream, you really do die in real life, but of a heart-attack or something.

And if she dies right now, nobody would find her for days, until the neighbors complained about the bad lawn, and Miya would get a bad afterlife and would be separated forever from her mother and...

She shakes herself from her line of thought and crouches behind a tree in a fetal position, holding her mother's heart-shaped amulet very tightly in her hands. "Please wake up," she tells herself. "You have to wake up right now."