Zhu Shoucheng’s scalp tingled, his hair stood on end, and his swelling passion cooled quickly under the blade, turning into cold sweat that poured out of his pores.

”Xiao ……Xiaochi……” Zhu Shoucheng said warily, “What are you going to do?”

The fish he had caught that day with its eyes rolled back inexplicably appeared before his eyes.

Fish that think they have bitten off the spiced bait are cut on the lip by the iron hook, flung ashore and end up on a plate covered in spices.

Chi Xiaochi asked softly in return, “I should be the one asking. Sensei, what do you want to do?”

The questioning was as soft as a whisper.

While questioning, the blade of the knife wandered under Zhu Shoucheng’s body, the blade shifting left and right on his three-piece suit.

This was Zhu Shoucheng’s favourite flirting position, and he loved seeing the confused, shameful faces of the young boys when he did it.

Now, however, he saw himself in Chi Xiaochi’s pupils, drenched in cold sweat and looking like a living ghost.

Zhu Shoucheng’s face was white, not daring to move a muscle: “Xiaochi, this is a misunderstanding ……”

Chi Xiaochi said, “There is no misunderstanding. It’s you I’m looking for.”

Zhu Shoucheng tried to explain, but a tidal wave of excruciating pain swept over his head, causing Zhu Shoucheng to let out a frenzied scream of insanity.

…… He really stabbed it in?

How dare he?

Zhu Shoucheng could not believe it, but the pain in his body did not deceive him.

It was as if a swarm of wild hornets had been thrown into his crotch, causing him to roll straight down and bang his head on the ground.

His legs spasmed wildly, he forgot how to call for help, and a painful, intermittent gurgling sound escaped his throat, like a live pig being scalded in hot water.

Zhu Shoucheng’s eyes were glistening with tears and he was arching his body forward like a worm, moaning and groaning as he tried to crawl out of the bedroom for help.

But a foot stepped on his back and crushed the worm underfoot.

Pain can make a man mad as a wild beast or weak as a puddle of mud.

Zhu Shoucheng is the latter.

Not all wicked people have the courage to turn their backs.

Without any courage to resist, with trembling lips, he turned back to Chi Xiaochi, who was backlit.

Tears distorted his vision, making Chi Xiaochi look like a ghastly, voluptuous ghost.

The wound touched the floor and Zhu Shoucheng squirmed in pain, turning on his side and rubbing his hands nervously on his chest in a begging pose, “Xiaochi, let me go, I didn’t mean to do it, give me a break ……”

Chi Xiaochi gave him a response by piercing his already half-missing organ with the blood-stained paper cutter, leaving the blade poking straight into the floor.

Zhu Shoucheng’s mind went blank with pain and he lost all control of his limbs, falling to the ground, his teeth clacking together.

He thought that he might be dying.

The son was out of the country and he hadn’t had any recent deliveries or letters coming in, so it probably wasn’t until his body stank and he was parked with flies that he was discovered.

Then the scandal of his death would spread throughout the building and even to the school.

He was bare-legged and belly-flopped, with the most important parts cut away from his body like a frog that had been disembowelled in biology class.

Men say that after death they don’t care about the flood.

But when it comes to death, humans are rarely so dashing.

A great sense of emptiness and panic overwhelmed Zhu Shoucheng, his bones tingled and chilled, so much so that he wanted to cry.

He was choking back his own snotty tears.

In reality he had howled himself hoarse: “Somebody! Help!!! Kill someone ……”

He forgot, however, what time it was.

It is a time that he has carefully chosen after numerous field tests.

There was no one in the building who could offer him help during this time.

Even if someone ……

As Zhu Shoucheng was almost overwhelmed by the feeling of suffocation, Chi Xiaochi added the last straw: “…… You can go on calling, even if you want to call the police, the phone lines are all down now.”

Zhu Shoucheng’s eyes rolled back in his head as he suffered both physical and psychological torture.

But strangely enough, he couldn’t pass out.

With an immensely lucid brain, with nerves sharp to every end, with impotent rage, he begged, cried for mercy and broke into tears.

But nothing could sway Chi Xiaochi in front of him.

He calmly performed the not-so-scientific anesthetic-free surgery, slowly removing by root what he felt should be removed, with no intention of leaving him with anything.

I don’t know if it was the pain or the desperation, but Zhu Shoucheng’s limbs were paralysed and he had no power to resist.

Like a kingly shell made of iron, he was glued to the floor by a giant geomagnet and watched as Chi Xiaochi collected the cuttings, picked a large lapidary bowl at random from the cupboard, dropped his parts into it and later poured them into the juicer where he usually made juice for the children.

The roar seems to be stirring Zhu Shoucheng’s brain.

Zhu Shoucheng watched with dishevelled, mucus-covered eyes as Chi Xiaochi’s black-patterned foot took a step towards him, pulled open a drawer, pulled out a candy, and shoved it through his slightly open mouth.

As the sweet smell of sweets spreads, Zhu Shoucheng finally passes out as he had hoped.

……

Zhu Shoucheng sat up with a start.

The window sweeps in the trails of the setting sun, falling just at the edge of the bed.

He slept all afternoon?

Was it just a dream?

Zhu Shoucheng was in a trance for a few moments, but the real, sharp pain of the dream bit him like a poisonous snake.

Zhu Shoucheng cried out and rolled out of bed.

The sheets were wet with a human-sized stain of sweat, and his trousers were soaked through with a warm liquid that gave off a faint, pungent smell.

Zhu Shoucheng pulled down his trousers like a madman and was relieved to find that he had all his parts and pieces, but he was still shocked.

How could he have had such a strange dream?

Zhu Shoucheng’s legs and belly are spinning, and he is circling the room in an aimless manner.

There are no Chi Xiaochi’s workbooks on the table, the chair he always sits in is leaning against the door, there are no green bean ice lollies in the fridge, the dishes and juicer are all in their place.

Zhu Shoucheng was startled by the sight of the juicer, but then he finally came to his senses.

Yeah, it’s a dream.

He vaguely remembers that the power went out in the whole building during his nap.

So how can Chi Xiaochi possibly drive a juicer.

But the dream was so powerful that even after he figured it out, Zhu Shoucheng’s body was still so clammy and heavy that it felt like insects were crawling around from his stomach to his little tongue.

He staggered over to the public washroom, aimed at the mop sink and threw up all the food he could with a woop.

The patter of acid burned his oesophagus with a sharp pain.

Zhu Shoucheng clenched his fist and hammered hard on the yellowing tiles.

What the fuck kind of dream is this?

But soon, he spotted something that made his eyes glaze over.

– In his vomit, there was a milk candy with tooth marks, not even digested yet, lying intact.

Zhu Shoucheng’s eyes glazed over, he took a few steps back, propped up his newly changed trousers again and looked in.

…… is crazy, he or she must be crazy.

Zhu Shoucheng wiped his bitter mouth and emerged from the toilet in a huff.

The homes have been added to the sound of human speech and television, and at the other end of the communal kitchen, spatulas clash with the bottom of pots and pans, frying to a loud melody.

It’s a good thing there’s no one in the corridor at this time of day, otherwise Zhu Shoucheng’s wild ghost-like green face would have scared people.

Zhu Shoucheng, not daring to look askance, rushed to his door and found that the door, which had just been hidden, had been closed by the wind.

His eyes swept up to the slightly rusted iron door of the Chi Family next door, and his chest lurched as if he had eaten a dead fly in disgust, subconsciously turning his gaze in the exact opposite direction –

Chi Xiaochi is standing at the entrance to the stairs on the first floor wearing the little vest and shorts he has seen in his dreams.

He stands quietly, carrying a small bag of chicken cake in his left hand and holding a green bean lolly in his right.

As if noticing Zhu Shoucheng’s instantly white face, Chi Xiaochi licked the bean-green sugar juice from his lips and looked at him with a quizzical head.

Zhu Shoucheng’s mind buzzed and he reached for the wall, his legs instantly filled with greasy cold sweat.

Across the street, Chi Xiaochi takes a few steps forward with a look of disbelief in his eyes.

Zhu Shoucheng clamps his legs together and takes a hasty step back, fumbling haphazardly with the keys in the flowerpot.

”Teacher.” Chi Xiaochi’s clear teenage voice reached his ears, causing him to shiver fiercely, “Are you not feeling well?”

Keys, where are the keys?

Chi Xiaochi took one step closer and said, “Didn’t we say 3pm tutoring? I went to knock on your door and you didn’t open it.”

When his fingertips touched the familiar coldness, Zhu Shoucheng was saved, and with a shaking hand he slipped the key into the eye of the lock.

”Teacher, you are not young, take care of your health ……”

As we speak, Chi Xiaochi comes closer.

The door opens with the twist of a key and Zhu Shoucheng turns his head to find Chi Xiaochi standing still by the screen door that opens to the right of his body.

…… him and him, separated only by a veil.

Zhu Shoucheng slammed himself inside and closed the door with a thud.

Chi Xiaochi knocked on the door from outside: “Teacher, what’s wrong?”

Zhu Shoucheng leans his back against a thin door, his newly changed clothes already damp with cold sweat once again.

He tried to sound slightly more normal, “Sorry, the teacher has a bit of a cold today and I’m afraid I’ll infect you.”

”Ah ……” Chi Xiaochi said, “Well then Mr Zhu, take care of your rest and I’ll come back tomorrow.”

What used to sound like a pleasant teenage voice is now a small knife that is slowly being ground against Zhu Shoucheng’s dental nerve.

”…… Teacher, see you tomorrow.”

Footsteps outside the door sounded again, followed by the rustling of keys as the door to the next room was opened and closed again.

Only when he heard the door close did Zhu Shoucheng let out a sharp breath and reached out to tug at the lamp cord.

The tungsten filament in the bulb dims for a moment and slowly lights up.

Standing in the brightness, Zhu Shoucheng’s body crackled with cold sweat.

He pulled off the stained sheet like a madman, balled it up and threw it into the dirty clothes basket, then picked up the stained trousers he had just taken off and examined them, front and back, to make sure there was no trace of blood on them, before he sat down at the foot of the bed as if his spirit had been drained away.

Zhu Shoucheng doesn’t have the energy left to count the sweets stored in his bedside table.

For he had found a fresh, still jumbo paper sugar paper in the crevice between the bedside table and the bed.

Zhu Shoucheng’s eyes were blank as he thought, “What the fuck is going on here?

He himself was beginning to wonder if he had eaten any sugar today.

Zhu Shoucheng grabbed his hair and cursed fiercely.

A wall away from him, “Chi Xiaochi”, with his head bowed, tidying his bed, is changing shape.

When he looked up at his watch again, his face was fully restored to its original form.

Lou Ying made up Chi Xiaochi’s bed, fetched his towel and confirmed that Chi Xiaochi’s parents would be back in about fifteen minutes, then re-covered the door to his room, carried the chicken cake he had just bought, went downstairs and opened the door to his own room.

Chi Xiaochi has been asleep in his bed for a long time.

With one hand on his stomach and Lou Ying’s sports vest over his body, he is nestled comfortably under his summer blanket, his fingers and belly covered in wrinkles from the hot water that peeks out from the corner of the quilt.

What Chi Xiaochi does is simple.

As Zhu Shoucheng invited him into his home and turned to fetch a green bean lollypop, he alternately glued an advanced hypnosis card, an advanced dream-making card and a hypnotic wake-up card onto his back.

Name: Hypnosis – Wake Up Card (Intermediate)

Duration: set-up ready to use

Number of pieces: 1

Quality: Fine

Type: Single use item

Exchange points required: 5 remorse points

Introduction: To wake up a lover, you need a honeyed kiss; to wake up a child, you need milky sweets; to wake up a gourmand, you just need the smell of cooked rice and wheat.

To put it bluntly, the card requires a set condition to be set in order to awaken the person who has been hit by the hypnotic card at a specific time.

The conditions Chi Xiaochi sets for his awakening are that he sleepwalks and then eats a candy that is stored in his bedside table.

As Zhu Shoucheng puts down his ice lolly and heads to his bedroom, driven by a dizzying sleepiness, ready for his two-hour-long dream castration, Chi Xiaochi gets up, restores the chair he sat in, takes his homework with him, goes to the bathhouse for a hot shower, knocks on Lou Ying’s door and falls back to sleep.

…… During this period, Chi Xiaochi took a thorough bath every time he visited Zhu Shoucheng’s home.

After Zhu Shoucheng’s dream begins, Chi Xiaochi falls asleep with his intermittent wailing.

Probably having slept a little too well to forget that he had taken a shower, at around 4pm Chi Xiaochi got up from bed, kept up his semi-sleepwalking state, took another shower, got back in hot and went back to sleep.

Lou Ying puts the plastic bag with the chicken cake down at the foot of the bed and sits on the edge of it.

Chi Xiaochi’s sleep was slightly disturbed by the slight sagging of the edge of the bed, and after opening his eyes to look at Lou Ying, he rolled to the inside of the bed, giving up most of the bed to Lou Ying.

Lou Ying gazed at him, her heart softening.

He gently stroked Chi Xiaochi’s forehead, one by one.

Knowing who was coming, Chi Xiaochi lay on her back in a blur of consciousness and let him touch her.

After coaxing Chi Xiaochi for a while, Lou Ying did not go to bed and take his resting place, but folded his changed clothes one by one.

This is a change of clothes from just yesterday, no need to wash it.

Lou Ying thought as she folded her clothes that their plan, at last, could begin.

I just don’t know if Xiaochi will want to stay here for a while after this is over ……

Lou Ying thought, took his shorts, shook them out and was about to fold them when he felt a small hard object in the small right-hand pocket.

…… a disk?

Lou Ying thinks about it and doesn’t remember anyone going to the warehouse, either herself or Chi Xiaochi, to cash in on such stored items.

It is plain in style but, judging by its huge memory, not of this era.

Curious, Lou Ying placed the disk in her palm and tried to detect the messages inside.

Encrypted? 32-bit?

Lou Ying smiled when she realised this.

A 32-bit password.

If you don’t know the thinking of the person who set the code in the first place, it would be a nightmare to crack it.

Even if the cracking is done at a frequency of once every hundred milliseconds, the cracking time starts at half a lifetime.

Lou Ying was just about to put the disk down when a cutting pain shot through her brain, causing Lou Ying to blush and propped her hand haphazardly on the edge of the bed with a low “mmm”.

He looked up first to make sure Chi Xiaochi hadn’t been woken up by himself.

But Lou Ying’s vision is soon covered by a distorted picture that flashes rapidly, brightly and indistinctly, even with intermittent noise, like an old film with a damaged reel, rolling round and round on an old spinning wheel, pulling him, slowly, down towards the sea of memory.

It was only then that Lou Ying discovered that the disk had been created with a fragment of the original owner’s memory attached to it.

The memory of his thoughts on the original design of the code may have survived.

In the first instant of dipping into the sea, a light that could not see the form floated in front of him and the voice that came out was muffled: “…… What is your name.”

”My name is Lou Ying.”

”Age.”

”Sixteen years old.”

”Cause of death.”

”…… I’m not sure. I think it was a fall.”

”……”

”……”

”Basic information verified as correct. Lou Ying , I ask you, would you like to work for our system and get a chance to be reborn?”