Iroi

"Iroi called in sick again? Her paid time off and sick days ran out ages ago. Feels like her paycheck's been getting docked."

"She doesn't seem to care about her paycheck… She once said she wouldn't mind paying to work. It didn't sound like she was joking about it."

"That's so nice. She works pretty hard. I didn't know she was just working to experience the world…"

Iroi has been prone to sickness since childhood. She couldn't attend regular schools. Luckily, her family was well-off, so she had a private tutor all the time, and she became as educated as someone who has done general university coursework.

After finishing her studies, her parents wanted her to integrate into society, but her health couldn't handle the demands of a regular job. Iroi wanted to work at a social welfare organization, so her parents sent her to the Sunward, an anomaly charity house, to volunteer, where she also helped with the simpler anomaly intake work.

Iroi's current personality is deeply shaped by the vibes of the charity house. Before going there, she hadn't had much contact with others. Her tutor and butler were cold and rigid, always overly cautious, while her parents doted on her too much. Iroi understood that not all human beings were like them, so she instinctively chose to blend in with "everyone else."

Life on the island wasn't exactly smooth sailing. Things were a lot tougher than they were back home. Nevertheless, Iroi enjoyed that kind of environment much more, because she felt more alive.

During the Teehee Bear incident at the charity house, Iroi the volunteer provided significant help to the Bureau, and the Bureau staff took notice of this talented Esper. At the same time, Iroi found herself drawn to the Bureau's work. They came to an agreement and Iroi joined the Bureau of Anomaly Control. Given her strong control over her powers, she was recommended to join CSU-2.

Life has a way of moving on.

For most people, dreams are unstable and ephemeral. Iroi's Esper Ability stabalizes dreams, making them constants that do not cease to exist when impacted by external factors.

Iroi can send her dreams into the consciousness of other living beings. The number of beings she can affect at the same time varies, depending on the targets' mental strengths. If the target's mental strength is too high, she may not be able to break in at all. She also can't affect beings without sentience.

Two gates exist at the entrance of Iroi's dream world, a Horned Gate and an Ivory Gate. Sometimes she conceals one of them when necessary.

If one enters the Ivory Gate, they are forced to experience a long and bizarre dream of creatures fighting and devouring each other. No one knows why this is the case.

If one enters the Horned Gate, they reach Iroi's true dream world and can have a nice dream. The real Iroi is hiding somewhere in the corner of this world.

In other words, the "Iroi" people see on the outside is not her true self.

The Iroi people see is nothing but an illusion created by her powers. The external Iroi, after taking over the original, is in essence a non-human consciousness that mimics human beings.

Don't be afraid. The external Iroi has posed as a human for about twenty years. She's not that different from a genuine human. She won't bite.

No need to panic.

The Bureau of Anomaly Control and the charity house have entirely different vibes. Still, Iroi was able to get used to the different pace, and she got along with her new teammates, Mint and Shinku.

While Shinku's powers could drive her berserk, Iroi can use her powers to calm Shinku down in the dream world. As a result, Shinku frequently enters Iroi's dream world, and they got along.

However, after a certain mission, things changed. Shinku's attitude towards Iroi shifted for the worse, almost harboring animosity. Iroi didn't know what caused this change, but she responded with the same attitude. The two of them were friendly no more.

Mint noticed the awkward tension between the two. After some poking around between missions, she finally figured it out. Shinku had seen "the other Iroi" in her dream world. Shinku mistakenly assumed that the external Iroi had taken over the real one, and disgusted by what she thought was happening, she held a grudge against the external Iroi.

After that, Mint worked hard to convince Shinku and Iroi to clear up the misunderstanding. Once Shinku learned the truth about the Iroi in the dream world, she realized she assumed wrongly and apologized to Iroi.

"You saw that pitiful being in a dream and threw out everything to stand up for her, what a hotheaded dragon who doesn't think things through!"

"Arrgh, why are you still so mean after I said sorry? You… Ramtenna!"

"Okie-dokie, problem solved! Let's get along with each other like this!"

That's how Mint earned a lavish meal from Shinku and Iroi.

Iroi's powers create a stable dream for her, but a dream needs someone to be dreaming, and that person is the real Iroi within. The dreams created by her powers belong to her. The real Iroi always remains inside the dream world, always dreaming, and thus always sleeping.

The Iroi outside doesn't need to rest. In theory, she could stay awake forever. That said, sleep is something humans need, so she still goes to bed on time, pulls up the blanket, and shuts her eyes like everyone else.

She doesn't fall asleep, but she enjoys the cozy feeling of being wrapped in soft and fluffy blankets.

At first, Iroi's dream world was just a hazy, chaotic mess. As she grew up and experienced more of the world, three little kids, Morpheus, Icelos, and Phantasos, started trying to fill her dream world with color and life. The three kids worked together. Morpheus created passers by, Icelos created birds and beasts, and Phantasos created scenery that weren't based on living beings. Through their collective efforts, Iroi's dream world became a tiny world that rivaled reality itself.

As for when the three kids first appeared, neither Iroi remembers clearly, did they show up when her powers awakened? The real Iroi claims to have seen them since the moment she was born.

Morpheus likes to act cool and calls himself the boss, but he's actually the one who usually gets picked on. Icelos is cute and shy, but has a bit of a mischievous streak. Phantasos is a total airhead, always flying around aimlessly while blowing a little trumpet. For young Iroi, who spent so much of her time alone in hospitals and at home, they were her best friends.

"Iroi has new friends now. Is it time for us to leave?"

"No way, I don't want to leave her!"

"She's there… we're there… must not part…"

Iroi's health had been a serious concern as soon as she was born. Things only started to improve until her Esper Abilities awakened when she was one. Even now, she still wears a life monitor as a precaution.

The real Iroi, however, does not want to live.

Even so, her parents were determined to save her. No matter how much money it took, they kept sending her into surgery after surgery, refusing to let her go.

The thing is, when Iroi woke up in her mother's womb, still floating in water, she already knew she didn't want to be born.

Iroi's powers kept her alive. It shaped a new consciousness for her, one that took over from the Iroi who never wanted to live, and kept her going.

Her Esper Abilities may have saved her by keeping her alive, but in truth, they've been exacting a price from her all along.

The price of her powers is to live.

Neither Iroi believes they were meant to be born. Both see themselves as something that should have been weeded out by natural selection.

However...

"You're alive. That already proves you weren't supposed to be eliminated. Is that so hard to understand? There's no such thing as "should be" in this world. What's already happened cannot change. The fact that you're alive embodies more truth than any theory, isn't it?"

What makes a human human?

Before waking up, Iroi had a long, strange dream. It started in the pitch-black depths of the sea, slowly rising up, then stepping onto land, running like mad through a barren jungle just to avoid being eaten.

I heard everyone has a dream like this while they're still in the womb. You watch yourself crawl from the water onto land, slowly evolving into a human, and finally wake up naturally, right as you're being born.

But in that dream, Iroi wasn't born as a primate. Instead, she was sent on a different evolutionary path, becoming one of the Caprinae.

This should never have happened, and her human nature forced her to wake up from that dream. And so, she woke up in her mother's womb way too early.

Fetuses wake up, but Iroi's case was different. She woke up with complete consciousness. She touched around, felt the warmth around her, and caught the occasional glimpse of faint light. It was dim, warm, comfortable, with a pulse beating in rhythm with her own. So this is the "world," so this was what it felt like to be "alive."

She was taken away as her world opened up.

After living in the womb, the real world overflowed with light and empty space. It was terrifying. Her mind was shocked, and she no longer wanted to live. As a result, Iroi lost consciousness, and her body shut down. That's the beginning of her sicknesses.

At first, the Iroi created from her powers only knew that she must live.

When she was hungry or was in pain, she voiced her needs to attract attention.

Then she noticed that people made all kinds of sounds to express their thoughts. She slowly started to understand the sounds, then tried making them herself, and that, is how she learned to speak.

Just saying something out loud isn't always enough to make people believe it, so she learned all the right expressions.

Knowing what to say, to whom, and in what context, that's something she also had to pick up, however slowly…

Having grown up this way, how exactly is she any different from any authentic human being?

Humans usually do not question whether they are humans or not. She does. That's about it.