My Measurement: The Villain Desires a Satisfying Payback

After the talk with Teacher, break was soon to finish and lessons resumed.

Once lunchtime arrived, I decided to do something unusual; instead of going straight to the rooftop, I approached a certain classmate and called out to him.

"Yuu Shimura."

"Hm? Oh, Itou-ssei! Yuu Shimura, at your command! What could a great one such as yourself require of this humble servant?"

Speaking in a peculiar and comedic tone as usual, he grinned and gave an exaggerated bow.

"Come with me. I want to ask you something."

After blinking twice as if to process what I had said, he smiled and lifted a clched fist.

"The peerless one requires my knowledge? Of course, I shall do my best!"

Without wasting any time, we made our way to the school refectory and sat at a more secluded table. Rather than bringing him to the roof, I chose this place because it avoided any possible distractions while still staying inconspicuous and able to hold a private discussion.

Specifically, I didn't want to be interrupted by Saburou barging into the rooftop space in the middle of our conversation.

"So, Oscar, I know I usually act like a goofy idiot and all, but seriously, you've helped me a lot and I hav't had the chance to pay you back yet. I also want to repay you for helping out Souta a while back; I don't know what you did, but Nishitani's bullying all ceased after your intervtion. So, if there's anything I can do to help, I'll do it."

Nodding at his tone that had turned serious, I cut right to the chase.

"I'm researching metrisology, so I'd like to ask you some questions about your experice with Measuremt evolution."

I planned to directly ask those who had expericed a natural Measuremt evolution what it was like in order to solidify my understanding of the subject and hopefully gain a deeper insight as to how it works.

From what I had found, each person's experice with Measuremt evolution differed, and since Truth wasn't great at answering subjective questions like that, I figured it would be much more effective to just ask straight from the source.

This was something I had contemplated doing in the past couple of weeks, but I was so focused on the actual production of the I.M.E. drug and the other projects leading up to the confrontation on Saturday that there wasn't a ton of time for it.

Now, though, I had plty of time.

"Oh, really? Wow, Oscar, that's actually pretty cool, isn't it? Researching... Th, do you want to become a scitist or something? You've definitely got the smarts for it."

"Something like that. Can you help?"

"For sure! What do you want to know about it?"

The first question was simple.

"Just tell me what it was like."

I had high confidce that this plan would work, and I had ev read through a few records belonging to the governmt researchers of interviews with people who had gone through natural Measuremt evolution and shared their experices with it.

Many of the answers acquired from those interviews led to big discoveries in the metrisology scitific community, and ev the psychiscope was an example of a tool developed using information from these interviews.

With the successful synthesis of the personalised I.M.E. drug I had giv to Liam, I had progressed further than ev those governmt researchers with mountains of funding.

If I were to th gain more of a comprehsion through fully understanding what the natural experice of Measuremt evolution was like, th I have no doubts that the next I.M.E. drugs could be vastly improved.

After nodding and tapping his chin with a finger in thought for a momt, Yuu Shimura spoke.

"Well... It actually started wh I was asleep."

"I don't know if it's because my Measuremt is related to dreams, but I think that's probably likely."

"Before the incidt, I used to just be able to glimpse into people's dreams, you see, but only wh I was beside the person sleeping."

I listed as he explained how his Measuremt worked in the past, which was all information I already knew.

"You expericed sleep paralysis, right?"

Interrupting him, I asked.

"I overheard you mtion something like that before."

He forced a wry smile and touched the back of his neck with his hand.

"Yeah. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever expericed in my life. Honestly, I still get nightmares about it sometimes, and that's related to the next part of the story."

I raised an eyebrow at his words.

Truth be told, after I had found out his Measuremt had evolved, I was already thinking about how to artificially apply that to myself and others like Liam and Selina, so I had quickly forgott about Yuu Shimura.

"So, the sleep paralysis basically consisted of a demon that stared at me from over my bed, and I couldn't move. At some point, it thankfully moved away, but knocked over the wardrobe in my room in the process."

"Th, I woke up in cold sweat."

"And the wardrobe was on the floor."

"Everything was exactly the same as it had be in the sleep paralysis dream."

I listed inttly to his story without interruption.

"Obviously, the only two reasonable explanations I could come up with were that either A, the demon in my sleep paralysis that knocked my wardrobe over affected the real world or the evt was real itself, or B, my brain had registered the fact that the wardrobe had fall over and implemted that elemt in my sleep paralysis subconsciously."

One might ask how it was a reasonable explanation for a demon to be real, but in this world where an unpredictable and seemingly random power like Measuremts existed, it wasn't so easy to cross out unreasonable theories wh evidce existed for something ev as ridiculous as that to have happed.

"I told my parts, of course, and in the d, I wt with my dad to the related clinic for a check-up of my Measuremt. I don't really understand the equipmt they used, but they took a look and found out there was a high chance that my Measuremt had evolved."

So far, everything he said was what I heard him mtion in class. It was already interesting, but we were only getting started.

"Do you know what it does now? It should still be related to dreams, right?"

"That's what the doctor told me, too. She said they didn't have a way to idtify exactly what had changed, but I would figure it out soon."

Hm?

"What do you mean?"

"Ahh, well, supposedly, wh people experice Measuremt evolution, it's usually hard to control and just activates haphazardly, so I was told to be careful."

Ah... I understand.

Similar to wh I was at the hospital and Liam's doctor said he was blind; that wasn't a symptom of the drug or his cardiac arrest―it was simply that he was looking at the world through his Measuremt.

He was unable to control its activation, so that kind of side-effect happed.

"Wh I explained to them what happed wh it evolved, they said there was a chance my dreams could have an adverse effect on me physically, so ever since th I've be sleeping with a device that monitors my vitals and forcefully wakes me up if it detects something abnormal."

It was true that something like that was necessary.

I knew thanks to Truth that his Measuremt had evolved to manifest his dreams into reality, but there was no way for the doctors or Yuu Shimura himself to know this for sure at first.

If there was another evt where he had sleep paralysis, or ev just an ordinary nightmare, and it became manifested into reality, th there was a definite risk he could get seriously injured, or worse, killed.

Thinking about it, it was quite a frighting scario.

Going to sleep, having a nightmare, and having that very nightmare be made reality and kill you in your sleep.

How scary...

"..."

"Huh? What is it?"

Seeing Yuu Shimura now, I think I could look at him in a new light.

I used to think he was a worthless fool with an unnecessarily big heart, but wasn't he rather brave?

After all, I wouldn't imagine there to be many kids our age who could play a with such a smile despite facing the risk of death every time he wt to sleep.

"...No, nothing."

"O-oh, okay."

Well, considering that he had survived until now, I don't think anything would happ to him.

It's already be a couple of weeks, so he's bound to have regained a substantial amount of control over his Measuremt.

Ring~!

At that momt, the bell rang, signalling the d of lunch.

It wt quicker than I had expected, but that was fine.

"I'll probably have some more questions to ask you tomorrow."

Standing up from my seat, I informed him that our time wasn't over yet.

"Oh, yes! That's perfectly okay! Th, let's continue tomorrow and return to class, shall we, Itou-ssei?"

Restoring himself back to his larger-than-life, melodramatic persona of a fool, he jumped up and flashed a grin at me.

"...Yes."

Sighing internally, I followed along as we exited the refectory.

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