Chapter 134
Chapter 134
Qingshui lay on a recliner covered with a thin mattress. The Director sat beside her, holding a silver pocket watch.
This was Qingshui’s second treatment session.
At her own insistence, the Director had finally agreed to try hypnosis. Qingshui wanted a clear look at the things hidden inside her mind, at those hazy, fragmented images that had always slipped beyond her grasp.
“Relax.” The Director’s voice was soft, as though coming from somewhere far away. “Keep your eyes on it…”
The pocket watch swung slowly before her eyes.
As the silver watch swayed in a steady rhythm, Qingshui’s gaze followed it, and the world gradually began to blur.
“Take a deep breath…”
She did as instructed.
“Let your body sink… Imagine yourself lying on the surface of the water… drifting with the current…”
Qingshui’s consciousness began to float. The sensation of the recliner beneath her grew distant, and the lamplight faded into a blur. Only the Director’s voice remained, echoing softly in her ears.
“Now, what do you see?”
Images surfaced.
They were indistinct fragments, like glimpses of something beneath a rippling sheet of water.
A brightly lit room.
Sunlight streamed through the window. Two people sat at a table, talking.
One wore a white lab coat. It was Aunt Chen. The other was dressed in an olive-green military uniform.
A teenage Qingshui sat nearby, listening quietly.
“The vaccine… How is it coming along?” the uniformed woman asked.
Aunt Chen’s voice sounded weary, but steady enough. “It’s progressing fairly smoothly… but those…”
She paused, frowning.
“For most of the samples, every single piece of data is identical.”
The uniformed woman frowned as well. “Identical?”
“Yes. It doesn’t matter which rift entrance the samples came from or when they were collected. Their DNA sequences, protein structures, cellular activity… Every piece of data is exactly the same.”
“That’s impossible,” the uniformed woman said. “Biological samples can’t be completely identical.”
“I know.” Aunt Chen sighed. “But they are.”
Silence fell.
Then the uniformed woman spoke again, lowering her voice.
“Are they the zombies that crawled out of the rifts?”
Aunt Chen did not answer immediately. She looked out the window, her gaze unfathomable. “Yes.”
She paused.
“I don’t know… whether a vaccine made from them will be of any use.”
The scene began to waver.
The Director’s voice reached Qingshui through the depths of her consciousness, distant yet perfectly clear.
“What do you see?”
Qingshui parted her lips. “No… Not this…”
This wasn’t what she wanted. This wasn’t what she had been trying to see.
She wanted to know why they had forced her into treatment. She remembered that painfully bright laboratory. Someone had held her down. Someone had tearfully told her, “You’re sick.” Someone else had said that person didn’t exist.
“…I remember…” Her voice came in halting fragments. “Someone said I was insane… They said someone didn’t exist… They forced me into treatment… All I felt was… grief…”
“Do you believe she really existed?” the Director asked.
Qingshui did not answer. She simply lay there, her eyelids trembling violently.
She recalled those dreams.
An embrace… words of warning and advice…
Dreams that had filled her with grief so real it hurt. Images that made her weep in the darkness. Memories that made her heart feel as though it were being crushed whenever they surfaced.
“I…” she whispered. “I think… she really existed.”
Scattered fragments rose to the surface.
The two people who had held her down. The two who had wept as they told her, “You’re sick.” They had been her teammates. She still remembered them. She remembered their names.
But why?
Why had they forced her into treatment?
“Search for it,” the Director’s voice came again. “Your heart hasn’t forgotten. Go and find it.”
Qingshui desperately tried to remember. She was like someone adrift in the middle of the ocean, with endless water beneath her and not even a piece of driftwood to cling to.
Wave after wave of memories crashed over her, dragging her down into the depths.
…………
Bone-chilling cold.
She was soaked to the skin.
She trudged through a world of driving snow and ice. Snow flew into her hair and down her collar, melting against her skin and bringing piercing pain. She was almost completely engulfed.
Not only by the snow, but by anguish.
The Director’s voice came from far away. “What do you see?”
“So cold…” Qingshui’s lips moved, her eyelashes trembling. She could clearly see the Director’s face before her, yet at the same time, she seemed to be standing amid that frozen wasteland in person, shivering uncontrollably from the cold.
“Snow… Snow…”
And yet none of that physical pain could compare to the agony in her soul.
She stumbled onward, tears streaming down her face.
A name spilled from her lips over and over, only to be swallowed by the wind and snow.
“[…]…”
It couldn’t be heard.
Only her lips moved. Only her tears continued to fall.
Through the snow filling the sky, several figures appeared in the distance. Soldiers dressed in military green.
At last, she collapsed.
The soldiers rushed over and caught her.
“Comrade Qingshui! Hold on!”
The scene swayed and blurred, the voices far away.
The Director’s voice mingled with the soldiers’: “What about now?”
Qingshui couldn’t speak.
She simply stared as her past self was carried onto a helicopter by the soldiers. The rotors thundered, and the ground receded beneath her.
The helicopter flew toward an island in the middle of the sea. Then the memory sped up like a silent film being fast-forwarded.
She was taken into an operating room. Several doctors crowded around her and immediately began treatment. Instruments flashed, figures moved, and indistinct voices drifted through the room.
Then her teammates returned. They rushed in and gathered around her bed. They were crying, the nurses were shouting, and the doctors were shaking their heads.
“[…]… […] is gone…”
Once again, the name was blurred out.
The memory slowed.
Her two remaining teammates shook their heads, their faces filled with terror. The scene slowed further and further, until all she could see were their horrified expressions and their moving lips. She couldn’t hear a thing.
“I can’t hear them.” Qingshui’s voice trembled despite her efforts to suppress it. “I can’t hear them.”
Her eyes stretched so wide they almost split. She strained desperately to hear, desperately tried to-
“Can you truly not hear them?” the Director asked calmly. “Or do you not want to?”
Qingshui’s entire body jolted.
I… don’t want to hear them?
Her heart began to pound violently. The sea grew still. The silent film of her memories began to play at normal speed.
In the grip of overwhelming terror, Qingshui finally heard those words. The voice came from within her memories, so clear that it grated against her ears.
“Sister Qingshui, Li Wei’an… Who is that?”
Li… Wei… an…?
Pfft!
Blood burst from Qingshui’s mouth.
It stained the front of her clothes red, splattering the edge of the recliner and the Director’s outstretched hand.
“Qingshui!”
The Director pulled her into her arms and held her close. Her hands gently patted Qingshui’s back as if soothing a frightened child.
But Qingshui could no longer hear the Director’s voice.
At last, she saw them clearly. Those fox-like eyes that had always been hidden from her.
“If… this is… the end of the world…”
“Take good care of yourself… I hope you’ll be happy…”
So… she was… Li Wei’an.
So the reason she had followed Qingshui so readily was that she had known her all along. They… They had known each other all along.
The warmth in those dreams, the sorrow in those embraces, that inexplicable sense of familiarity… It had all been real. It really had.
Then her past self broke down and screamed:
“Have you all lost your minds?! Li Wei’an is Li Wei’an!!!”
The scene shifted again.
She was handcuffed in an interrogation room.
A cold metal chair. Blinding white light. Two women sat across from her, thick files spread out before them.
“As the only person to return from the White Hole,” one of them began, her tone formal despite the trace of sympathy in her eyes, “what did you see inside?”
Qingshui heard her past self answer in a hoarse, broken voice. “Dark… It was so dark… Li Wei’an disappeared… She was right there… and then she was gone…”
The two women exchanged a glance.
Then came another question.
And another.
Qingshui couldn’t explain. She couldn’t explain anything.
The woman who had spoken frowned, profound sympathy flashing through her eyes. She remained silent for a long time before finally saying,
“I’m sorry. There is no such person as Li Wei’an.”
Qingshui’s body shook violently.
“I think perhaps you should undergo another psychiatric evaluation.”
There is no such person as Li Wei’an.
The words were a knife plunging straight into Qingshui’s heart. Tears silently streamed down her cheeks.
She does exist. She does. Her name is Li Wei’an. She likes sweets and cats, and she hates foolish people…
She exists. I just… seem to have lost her again.
She had already lost her once before. In that other world, the world beyond this one, she had lost her once before.
Qingshui closed her eyes as the tears continued to flow.
Her lips moved. At last, the name emerged from deep within her throat.
“Li Wei’an.”
At that moment, a voice sounded in her mind.
“I’m… here.”