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Jafar says: Read my lips and come to grips with the reality! This article is a stub and is in need of expansion. You can help Villains Wiki by expanding it. |
| “ | Yuji: When I was a kid, I wanted to fly, like a bird. So I tried everything -- Like taping feathers to my arms... It never did any good, of course. Then, I thought of doing it in my dreams. But when I actually dreamed... I'd laugh at myself. "You want to fly?" I'd ask. "How stupid are you?" My dreams were more real than reality. | „ |
| “ | Mari: You never told me about that. In dreams, anything should be possible. Why would he want to leave them? | „ |
| ~ Yuji Hirano and Mari, Den of the Sleep Demon |
The Sleep Demon is the titular main antagonist of the Junji Ito short story Den of the Sleep Demon, also titled Where the Sandman Lives.
Biography[]
A doppelganger of Yuji Hirano who exists as the version of himself within his own dreams, the Sleep Demon managed to discover the existence of the world outside of Yuji's mind, and now desires to exist in reality. To do this, the Sleep Demon intends to turn Yuji's body inside out, as the Sleep Demon literally occupies a space within Yuji's body, being the inverted form of his waking counterpart. When Yuji's friend, Mari, who had been listening to him telling her about the Sleep Demon's existence, questioned how this was possible, asking about how being turned inside out would work with regards to his internal organs, Yuji theorised that he was born with a hollow body, or that the deaths of his parents had left him literally 'hollow'.
At first, Yuji was able to keep the Sleep Demon in check simply by refusing to sleep, though as sleep deprivation took its toll, he had Mari try to keep the Sleep Demon restrained by using tape to hold him down, so that he might be able to rest for even the shortest amount of time. However, Mari took the tape off when Yuji fell asleep, causing the Sleep Demon to extend his arm through Yuji's mouth to grab Mari, trying to pull her inside Yuji’s body. Yuji woke up before this could come to pass, and forcibly pushed the Sleep Demon's body back into his own, including pushing back the parts of his arm that had been turned inside out by the Sleep Demon.
With the Sleep Demon temporarily restrained, Yuji explained that when he was a child, he dreamed of wanting to fly, but would stop short, reprimanding himself through lucid dreaming for wanting to do so. Mari wondered why the Sleep Demon would want to escape from Yuji if it could do anything within his dreams, but Yuji didn't reply; more than anything else, the Sleep Demon's prime desire was to become real.
Eventually, Yuji's sleep deprivation grew too great to ignore any longer, and, having lost the will to continue to fight against the Sleep Demon's inexorable advance towards reality, he warned Mari that the Sleep Demon was so intent on escaping because it 'wanted' Mari, a feeling which he shared, albeit in his love for her. Yuji then passed out.
Not wanting to abandon Yuji, Mari anchored herself to him by tying her arm to his with the tape. When the Sleep Demon emerged again, Mari refused to fight back, declaring that she wanted to go with Yuji as well. Unopposed, the Sleep Demon dragged her into his body, presumably resulting in her death, and completed his goal of becoming the 'real' version of himself.
Some time later, the police stopped by Yuji's apartment, and the Sleep Demon, having taken on Yuji's name, let the officers in. Noticing Mari's tote bag, they asked the Sleep Demon, whose full appearance remained obscured by shadow, if he knew about her whereabouts. The Sleep Demon replied cryptically that there was no use looking for her, as she had 'become my intestine', indicating that the reason why he 'wanted' Mari was actually so that he would have functional internal organs to allow him to survive outside of his former host.
As one of the officers approached the Sleep Demon and demanded to know if 'Yuji' had eaten her, he flatly denied this, instead saying that he had given her 'a one-way trip to my dream world'.
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