Pain!
So much pain!
My head — it hurts so much!
The bizarre, whisper-filled dream shattered rapidly into fragments. Zhou Mingrui, still half-asleep, felt a piercing throb in his skull, as if someone had swung a club at it. No — it was worse than that, like something sharp had been driven into his temple and was being twisted around!
Hiss… In his dazed state, Zhou Mingrui tried to turn over, to clutch his head, to sit up — but he couldn't move his limbs at all. His body seemed to have lost all control.
Looks like I'm not really awake yet. Still in the dream… Maybe soon I'll get that false sense of waking up when I'm actually still asleep… Having experienced similar episodes before, Zhou Mingrui strained to focus his willpower, trying to break free from the shackles of darkness and illusion.
Yet in that liminal state between sleep and waking, willpower drifted like smoke — impossible to control, impossible to gather. No matter how hard he tried, his thoughts kept scattering and stray notions kept surfacing.
Why, perfectly fine just a moment ago, middle of the night — why does my head suddenly hurt so badly?
And it hurts this much!
Could it be a cerebral hemorrhage or something?
Damn it, am I about to die young like this?
Wake up! Wake up!
Huh? It doesn't seem to hurt as much as before? But there's still this feeling of a dull blade slowly sawing away inside my head…
Can't keep sleeping like this — how am I supposed to go to work tomorrow?
What am I even thinking about, work? With a genuine, bona fide headache, of course I'll take a sick day! No need to worry about the manager nagging!
Thinking about it that way, maybe it's not so bad, heh — stealing half a day of leisure from life!
Wave after wave of throbbing pain allowed Zhou Mingrui to accumulate slivers of illusory strength. Finally, with one concerted effort, he arched his back, pried open his eyes, and broke free entirely from the half-awake state.
His vision was blurry at first, then veiled in a faint crimson tint. As his sight cleared, Zhou Mingrui saw a natural-wood desk before him. At its center lay an open notebook, its pages rough and yellowed, with a line of text written at the top in unfamiliar alphabetic script, the ink deep black and almost dripping with intensity.
To the left of the notebook, near the desk's edge, sat a neat stack of about seven or eight books. On the wall to their right, grayish-white pipes were embedded, connected to a wall-mounted lamp.
The lamp had a distinctly Western classical feel, roughly the size of half an adult's head. Its inner layer was transparent glass, while the outer layer was framed by a black metal grille.
Below the extinguished lamp, at a slight angle, a black inkwell was bathed in a faint crimson glow. The raised pattern on its surface formed the hazy image of an Angel.
Before the inkwell, to the right of the notebook, a dark fountain pen with a rounded barrel rested quietly. Its nib glinted with a faint light, and its cap lay beside a brass-colored revolver.
A revolver? A pistol? Zhou Mingrui was completely frozen. Everything before his eyes was utterly foreign — nothing resembled his own room in the slightest!
Still reeling with shock and bewilderment, he noticed that the desk, the notebook, the inkwell, and the revolver were all draped in a gossamer veil of crimson — light streaming in from the window outside.
Instinctively, he raised his head, his gaze drifting upward little by little:
In midair, against the "black velvet curtain" of the sky, a crimson full moon hung high, casting its serene glow.
This... Zhou Mingrui was struck by nameless terror. He shot to his feet, but before his legs could fully straighten, a sharp throb lanced through his head once more. It sapped his strength in an instant, and his center of gravity collapsed downward involuntarily. His backside slammed hard onto the seat of the wooden chair.
Crack!
The pain failed to faze him. Zhou Mingrui pressed his palms against the desk and stood up again, spinning around in a panic as he surveyed his surroundings.
It was a small room. On the left and right walls stood a brown door each, and against the opposite wall was a wooden bunk bed.
Between the left door and the bed sat a cabinet — double doors on top, five drawers below.
At the edge of the cabinet, roughly at head height, a grayish-white pipe was embedded into the wall just the same, but this one connected to a strange mechanical contraption with gears and bearings exposed in several places.
In the right corner near the desk, a coal-burning stove was piled alongside various kitchen utensils — a soup pot, an iron wok, and the like.
Past the right door hung a full-length mirror with two cracks in it, its wooden base bearing a simple, unadorned pattern.
With a sweep of his gaze, Zhou Mingrui caught a hazy glimpse of himself in the mirror — the self he was now.