Chapter 2

I crawled out of the mirror.

This was the room my boyfriend had rented in the player service area. It had everything he needed.

My black hair curled around a cup and hurled it to the floor. Shards scattered with a sharp crash.

I gathered them together and compared them carefully. At last, I confirmed my first suspicion.

The human brain’s processing power was limited.

An untrained brain couldn’t accurately simulate the way a real cup broke and its fragments scattered. That was why these pieces wouldn’t fit together.

None of this was real!

The moment I understood, the scene vanished. Everything in front of me twisted and changed again.

This time, I stood in a hospital corridor smelling of disinfectant.

A man with rotting flesh falling off his face staggered toward me, claws outstretched. On the other side, a nurse with a mouth full of blood roared in excitement.

In my hands was an enormous fire axe.

All I had to do was raise it, and I could kill both zombies with ease.

They lunged at me on a gust of foul air. I hesitated for a second, then crouched decisively and covered my eyes, waiting quietly for either the hallucination to end or death to come.

No pain came.

I had no idea how long passed. It was as though false dust were being wiped away, as though the truth were rising to the surface.

The surroundings, the people—everything warped and shifted until it finally revealed its true shape.

Groans. Wails. A hollow, restless thirst. Murmuring everywhere…

I opened my eyes. In the dim light, I could barely make out a narrow, sinister cell.

Sitting up, I could see a row of barred rooms across from me through the gaps in the bars.

A prison?

Was this a real place? Or another hallucination?

I looked down. A frail girl lay at my feet.

I turned her over. A clear ring of dark-red bruises circled her pale throat.

I remembered my boyfriend’s eyes rolling back as I strangled him in the dream.

Had I actually been strangling this innocent girl?

I hurried to check her pulse and breathing. Thank goodness she wasn’t dead, only in shock.

I moved her near the bars where there was more air and propped up her neck.

In the opposite cell, a man who had been slumped unconscious against the wall suddenly woke.

The instant his eyes opened, he sprang up, roaring, “You bastard!” He grabbed his unconscious cellmate and flung him to the ground!

“How could you do this to me? How could you? I must have been blind not to see what you were!”

Screaming shrilly, he seized the other’s head and smashed it against the floor, over and over.

His cellmate came to under the blows, letting out muffled groans and cries of pain.

“Stop!” I tried to stop him. “Wake up! None of what you’re seeing is real! It’s a dream!”

He ignored me. His eyes bloodshot, he kept smashing the other man’s face into the floor as though they shared a mortal feud.

I shouted until I was hoarse. It made no difference. I could only watch the man in the cell across from mine struggle and die.

The attacker was covered in blood, his head and hands drenched, yet an eerie laugh came out of his mouth.

As he laughed, his voice gradually faded.

A little later, his whole body jolted, as though he had woken from a dream.

Slowly, he lowered his head and stared at the blood on his hands. Then he looked at the body, already cold on the floor.

The dead man’s skin had turned ashen. One look was enough to tell he was no longer alive.

He shook the corpse frantically, to no avail.

“Hey! Ah Zhi! Wake up! D-don’t scare your big brother…”

“Ah Zhi! Can you hear me? Mom’s still waiting for us at home! Please, I’m begging you. Say something to me…”

Horror washed over me like rising ice water. I suddenly realized I was watching an unspeakably cruel joke.

The person this man had killed with his own hands, inside his dream, was his own younger brother.