Takagi-San. After the festival...

Dreams...

Time moved on, but on one particular night, both of them had dreams, both of them unpleasant.

In both the dreams they had returned to middle school. In Takagi's dream, she had been teasing Nishikata as usual, and then told him to meet her at the back of school. She watched him blush and squirm all day, and when the time came around she said,

TAKAGI: "Can I borrow a pencil?"

NISHIKATA: "What? That's what this is about?!"

TAKAGI: "Yeah." *giggles*

NISHIKATA: "You know what? No! I'm sick and tired of your teasing, It's driving me insane!"

TAKAGI: "Wait, Nishikata!"

But Nishikata just left. When she got home, in the dream she cried and cried, until eventually, she returned to the real world.

In Nishikata's dream, he had been going to school, and was going to meet Takagi at their normal meetup. When he arrived, she was nowhere to be seen. He presumed she had something to do and had left early. When he arrived at school, he sat down, only to be greeted by Kimura who sat down next to him.

NISHIKATA: "Hi Kimura, why are you sitting here? What about Takagi?"

KIMURA: "Who's Takagi? I've always sat here."

NISHIKATA: "What do you mean, you sat-"

He looked to where Kimura normally sat only to see a table full of stationary.

KIMURA: "Are you okay? That's the spare stationary table."

NISHIKATA: "Okay, but where's Takagi? Is she trying to tease me again?"

KIMURA: "Who's Takagi? I've never heard of them."

NISHIKATA: (What? Does she not exist? If so, that means I can't get teased anymore, but if that's true, why do I feel so empty?)

The dream played out for a week, there was no evidence Takagi existed. Her parents said they didn't have a child called Takagi when he knocked at her house and there were no photos or anything. Nishikata began missing Takagi more and more, until he just broke down and behind the barrels where they hid together, he just started sobbing until he woke up.

They both woke up at roughly the same time, they looked at each other, realising that it had all been a dream. They smiled at each other and began crying tears of joy, thankful they were still there, and fell back asleep in each other's arms.