After the Little Crybaby Enters the Nightmare Cycle

Highway 404 (14)

Chi Nan looked at him, thought about it very seriously, and asked, “Will I be caught and dissected at the Dawn Base?”

You Yu was stunned for a moment before smiling. “Rest assured, no one will treat you as a guinea pig.”

He paused before adding in a half joking and half serious manner, “As long as I am here.”

Chi Nan told him, “Oh, thank you.”

He thought that You Yu had probably greeted his colleagues.

You Yu lowered his eyes and turned the iron ring on his ring finger. “I warned her that you must not be harassed.”

Chi Nan wondered, “Then what did she say?”

You Yu turned around, put on slippers, and walked into the bathroom. Before closing the door, he softly answered Chi Nan, “She said that she ships it.”

Chi Nan thought, ‘Ship? What ship?’

You Yu came out of the bathroom after taking a shower and found for the first time that Chi Nan hadn’t fallen asleep. You Yu sat cross-legged on the bed facing him. “Were you waiting for me?”

Chi Nan nodded. “There are some things I want to ask you.”

You Yu said, “Okay. There is still a long time anyway.” Facing Chi Nan, he had the patience to accompany him to the end.

Unfortunately, the moment he finished speaking, Chi Nan yawned. His eyes were wet as he blinked. This made You Yu smile. “Then hurry up.”

Chi Nan asked, “That day, why did you leave your pocket watch with me?”

You Yu thought about it before saying with a smile, “Didn’t you always want to see it before? I let you have it so you can always look at it.”

Chi Nan: “……”

You Yu smiled. “Seriously, you know that the pocket watch is my death token. I don’t like to leave this type of thing that exposes my weakness on my body. I always wanted to find someone to keep it for me. Unfortunately, there was no suitable person.”

Chi Nan cocked his head. “Am I the right person?”

You Yu looked at him. “You have kept my body for 11 years. You shouldn’t mind keeping my pocket watch?”

“I will try not to lose it.”

“It doesn’t matter.” You Yu smiled again. “You have other questions, right?”

Chi Nan wondered, “Can I ask about the instance’s characters?”

You Yu shrugged. “Of course. Your character’s plot has been completed and I can tell you anything you want to know, as long as I know it.”

“Why did the younger brother hide the older brother and then dress himself up as the older brother to live as the older brother?” Chi Nan could accurately judge the quest and direction of the instance, but he couldn’t read the emotions behind the dream maker’s carefully designed character.

“If you had gone to the infirmary of the welfare home, then you might’ve understood,” You Yu said with a pout, “There is a record that the younger brother is suffering from an incurable disease. He wouldn’t have lived for another year even if the older brother hadn’t killed him.”

Chi Nan thought about it seriously and shook his head. “I still don’t understand. What does this have to do with the older brother?”

You Yu stared deeply into his eyes. “The death of the younger brother in a hospital bed can only make his older brother sad for a while. No matter whether it is one year, 10 years, or 20 years, the older brother will one day walk out of the shadow of the younger brother’s death and even gradually erase his younger brother from his life.”

“Instead, in the year before his death, he lived as the older brother and penetrated every detail of his brother’s life with his own behavior in all aspects. This way, his older brother will never be able to escape his influence and he will always remain in his older brother’s life.”

“The younger brother’s 19th birthday wish was to be killed by his older brother’s own hands. This way, his older brother is even less likely to forget him.” You Yu was silent for a moment. “The younger brother’s personality is probably an unscrupulous, sick person.”

Chi Nan looked at You Yu again. “Then you are?”

“Huh?” You Yu was a bit surprised by the rhetorical question. He thought about it and smiled. “Sort of.”

Chi Nan: “……” Then he could understand what a sick person was.

You Yu looked at him. “However, I wouldn’t do such a thing. It is too boring.”

If he cared about someone, he would never play the other person using the inferior means of perishing together.

It was too boring and too wasteful.

You Yu thought about this when his expression suddenly froze. His eyebrows twitched indistinctly.

Care about someone? He never considered this possibility before… He thought this and looked at Chi Nan again. The influence brought to him by this little evil spirit was a bit beyond the ordinary.

“What’s wrong?” Chi Nan noticed You Yu’s unusual gaze.

You Yu shook his head. “What else do you want to know?”

Chi Nan had never been polite in his questions. “Did you enter the nightmare instance this time because you promised to see me on the day of the birthday party?”

“This is the main reason.” You Yu didn’t hide his intentions. “However, there are also official affairs. I came in to check the nightmare of my colleague. It is equivalent to acting as a supervisor. It just so happens that there was a suitable role this time and I helped in the performance.”

“Supervisor?” Chi Nan hadn’t expected the dream makers to be so busy. In addition to designing nightmares, they also needed to supervise the work of their colleagues.

You Yu shrugged. “You don’t know how my colleague originally designed this nightmare instance…” He paused before finding the right adjective. “How ridiculous it was.”

Chi Nan was suddenly a bit interested. “Can you tell me about it?”

“The way you cleared the situation when you entered the welfare home was that you dressed up as the younger brother and lay in the coffin in the cemetery, right?” You Yu touched the ring on his ring finger again. “Originally, this wasn’t the case. It required the older brother fulfilling his younger brother’s greatest wish to successfully find his body and escape from the welfare home.”

“Isn’t the younger brother’s greatest wish to let his older brother remember him forever?”

“Yes. It is a more symbolic wish. It needs a strange ceremony to be held in the welfare home, which is equivalent to…the younger brother and older brother using the little ghosts of the welfare home as witnesses and making a contract for the binding of their souls.” You Yu pointed to the rings on their ring fingers. “This pair of rings is the product of the old version. Due to some preferences, my colleague didn’t delete it.”

Chi Nan tried to translate the words of You Yu into a picture. “It sounds a bit like the type of ceremony that human men and women often hold.”

You Yu looked at him and smiled.

Chi Nan wondered, “Why was it updated to a new version?”

You Yu pursed his lips with interest. “Slipping in personal interests is serious. It can be reported by sleepwalkers and there is nothing the dream makers can do if they are reported.”

Chi Nan nodded sympathetically. At this moment, there was a sense of helplessness like the dream maker was a corporate drone of Party B.

“Do you still have any questions?” You Yu’s patience in this life was spent on Chi Nan.

Chi Nan finally shook his head. “There are none for now. I’ll ask again when I think of something.”

You Yu smiled. “No problem. You go to sleep first.”

After committing suicide and finding the body, Chi Nan was already sleepy to the point of confusion. He lay on the pillow for less than five minutes before falling asleep. He woke up from a dream several times in the middle of the night and vaguely heard the sound of You Yu moving lightly and carefully opening and closing the room door.

Chi Nan wanted to ask where he was going, but before he could ask, he fell into a deep sleep.

***

Lu Baizhou entered the motel room and locked the door. Then she stayed alone in the cheap, enclosed room nervously.

She waited like this for half an hour and finally couldn’t sit still. She simply swallowed two sleeping pills in the hopes of reducing the suffering and pain caused by waiting for death.

Soon, she fell asleep under the strong effect of the medicine.

Numerous random dreams encroached on her sleep. Inside the mirror stood a girl she knew all too well—Xu Lantian.

At this moment, Xu Lantian was holding a swimsuit to cover her chest, which was barely visible. She looked shy about the overly revealing swimsuit. “Baizhou, I’m a little bit afraid of water and I only dare to play in the shallow water of the swimming pool. Will it be risky to go to the sea?”

“You don’t have to worry with me here,” Lu Baizhou, the other soul in her consciousness, was convincing her, “Didn’t you promise me earlier that you would let me teach you how to swim?”

Xu Lantian hesitantly said, “That’s right. However, can’t we go to the pool to practice first…?”

Lu Baizhou said, “It doesn’t matter. If you encounter a risk, I will take over. I am really good in water, you can rest assured.”

Xu Lantian saw her insistence and nodded. “Okay…”

The dream changed sharply. A huge wave hit their face and their body was swallowed by the sea. They were swept into the deep sea away from the crowd.

Xu Lantian struggled desperately in the seawater and choked on a mouthful of salty seawater. She instinctively called out for help, “Baizhou! Come out and help me! Baizhou! Baizhou!”

However, her sub-personality Lu Baizhou seemed completely blocked and was indifferent to her pleas for help.

“Baizhou! Help me…!”

Xu Lantian was abandoned in the big waves of the deep sea and was helpless. It wasn’t until she was completely weak and gradually engulfed by the sea that her struggle stopped. Countless small white bubbles floated up in the chaotic blue sea, constantly floating upwards, spreading and finally disappearing… It was like her life.

Lu Baizhou, who was hidden in her subconscious, waited until the moment when her heartbeat completely stopped, then she successfully controlled the body. She waved her arms and legs gracefully and quickly floated up from the deep water, swimming toward the bustling crowd on the beach.

She couldn’t help smiling as she swam desperately.

Xu Lantian died completely in this body. Lu Baizhou successfully killed her. From now on, she could exclusively enjoy this imperfect body.

Lu Baizhou abruptly opened her eyes. Sweat wet the clothes on her back and the damp coolness soaked into her bones.

The sound of rushing water came from the direction of the bathroom, reminding Lu Baizhou of the desperate sound of Xu Lantian struggling in the sea in her dream.

“Who is in the room?” It was only when Lu Baizhou spoke that she realized her voice was shaking.

Naturally, no one answered her in the closed motel room.

Lu Baizhou got out of bed. Her heart was thumping in her chest and she instinctively lightened her steps as she walked toward the bathroom.

She pushed open the hidden door and found that the bathtub was already full of water at some point. The tap wasn’t closed and the water overflowing from the bathtub was enough to flood her ankles.

She hadn’t turned on the water to take a bath before going to sleep. In addition, among the four available rooms in this hotel, her room was the only one with a bathtub…

All the hints in front of her were clear. Lu Baizhou understood it instantly.

She took off the socks on her feet and sat down in the bathtub in a solemn manner that was full of ritual. She spoke into the air in a low voice, “You know that I can’t drown myself. Later, please use some force to let me die completely, please.”

She knew that Xu Lantian, who was killed by her character, was already waiting in the bathroom.

She closed her eyes and waited for the fate of imminent death.

***

In 209, Pei Mo didn’t cooperate like Lu Baizhou. His room was filled with the strong smell of gasoline, which made him cough.

The temperature inside the room was also rising rapidly. The confined space was instantly transformed into a large, suffocating oven.

Pei Mo took out a glass bottle from the welfare home from his pocket. He opened the lid and pointed it at the ghost of ‘The Judge’ who might be hiding in the room. “Come! If you have the guts, come out and kill me. Didn’t you want to take revenge?”

The moment he opened the bottle cap, the temperature of the room plummeted. As expected, the ghost was really afraid of this thing.

Pei Mo was thankful for his wits. Before leaving the welfare home, he took advantage of everyone not paying attention to take a bottle of the water from the angel fountain.

He knew that the right thing to do now was to lie down and let the ghost blow his body to pieces, but his fear of death overcame reason and forced him to act foolishly to protect himself.

“What’s the matter? Are you scared? Didn’t you want to get revenge?”

Pei Mo carefully raised the bottle of water with one hand and walked around the room like it was a mosquito coil. He thought, ‘So what if the driver locked the door and trapped me in the motel? No ghost will dare to deal with me when I have the angel ‘holy water’ in my hand!’

“If you have the ability, then don’t be afraid of this thing in my hand and kill me!”

Pei Mo sneered. It was very unlucky that just as he was acting proud, there was a click from the locked door.

It was the sound of the key being inserted into the door… Pei Mo’s heart thumped fiercely. He held up the ‘holy water’ in his hand in the direction of the door. “Who is it?”

You Yu opened the door and threw the door key of 209 to the ground.

Pei Mo’s eyes widened and he took two steps back. “What are you doing here?”

“I am helping the passenger who doesn’t want to cooperate.” You Yu closed the door and put on gloves.

Pei Mo moved the holy water in his direction. “Y-You aren’t afraid of this?”

He thought that the new driver who had just been dug out of the cemetery was also a ghost…

You Yu looked at his funny behavior and the corners of his lips curled up. “Afraid? It is more that I prefer it.”

After all, he liked Chi Nan’s tears.

Proofreader: Kat