Chiaki's first Nightmare episode

Sanada Chiaki’s first Nightmare episode occurs in her second year of high school and marks the beginning of a recurring psychological condition. The episode is first disclosed years later, when another onset prompts her to remember how the experience began: an ordinary gathering with classmates abruptly gives way to terror and a disorienting change in perception.

Circumstances and Onset

Sanada Chiaki is at the home of a classmate whose parents are away. The group watches an explicit video that has not been rewound, so it begins in the middle of a scene. Sanada Chiaki cannot recall how long she watches. She remembers that her stomach begins to hurt, then, without warning, she is overwhelmed by a fear she cannot name.

The episode is rendered as a sudden break in perception rather than as a clearly understood event. Sanada Chiaki experiences something like a strobe flashing before her eyes, while a different scene seems to unfold in front of her. The account does not explain what that scene contains; its force lies in the abruptness of the transition and in her inability, at the time, to make sense of it.

Recurrence and Effects

The first episode becomes the start of a pattern: by the time Sanada Chiaki recalls it, the Nightmare has visited her seven times. She identifies the loss of sexual desire as its earliest warning. Even when she tries to have sex to relieve the anxiety, the experience feels disconnected from her, and orgasm becomes impossible. At times, she loses track of where she is or what she is doing.

The episodes do not follow a fixed timetable. One period lasts 938 days, making the condition an extended interruption rather than a brief disturbance. Sanada Chiaki describes desire as if it has become unable to reach the surface, an account that connects the internal experience to its outward consequence: she recognizes that something is wrong before she can say precisely what is happening to her.

Self-Observation and Narrative Return

During these states, Sanada Chiaki sometimes feels that another person is watching her from the ceiling. She recognizes this watcher as herself, observing herself from outside. At first she asks the imagined observer to stop looking; later she falls silent, afraid that speaking to it too much might divide her into two people. The first episode thus retrospectively acquires significance as the beginning of a fractured, alienating form of self-perception, not only as a moment of fear.

The memory returns when the Nightmare starts again years later. The narrative moves from Sanada Chiaki’s present distress back to the high-school gathering, then uses her account of recurrence to show what the first episode initiated. Its cause remains uncertain: the video and the onset of pain precede the terror, but the recollection does not offer a definitive explanation. The episode’s importance lies instead in the pattern it inaugurates and in the way later returns make its beginning newly legible.