ED | Chapter 2

Shen Xiangnan let out a huge breath, almost as if he were going to expel every last bit of foul air from his lungs. Just as he was about to escort Shi Jiu inside, he heard the person within add, “Let him in. Go on with your work.” Shen Xiangnan froze at the doorway. In an instant, delighted, he drew back the half-dry, still-dirty leather shoe he had already stepped out with, and signaled to the person beside him with his eyes.

The man who had been holding Shi Jiu up the whole time gently opened the door, shoved him inside in one motion, and shut it at once.

He used too much force, and Shi Jiu had not expected such a sudden push, so he staggered several steps forward and slammed one hand onto a desk. He thought that with such force, it was like tossing a hot potato. If not for the desk, he would have crashed straight onto the floor.

Shi Jiu, who had been treated like a hostage all along, was starting to feel annoyed too. He steadied himself, slowly straightened, and finally saw the face of the person Shen Xiangnan feared. Chen Ai was right before him. Under the lights, his face gleamed, and the line of his jaw was sharp as if carved with a knife.

After hearing the noise from Shi Jiu’s side, the eyelids he had been slightly lowering lifted a little. His eyes, deep blue as the sea, remained calm, but the instant he saw Shi Jiu, his expression moved uncontrollably. The still lake seemed to churn with violent waves for a brief moment. He set down the pen in his hand and said in mild surprise, “It’s you?”

“Hm?”

“It’s me?” Shi Jiu repeated, chewing over the words once more. He straightened up, tugged his wrinkled clothes into place, glanced around again, and finally looked back at him, putting on his standard whatever expression.

Would someone from a dream know him? So he shoved both hands casually into his pockets and sneered without a care. “What, you know me too?”

The moment he asked that, the man’s expression immediately turned cold again, as if what had just appeared was only an illusion.

He said, “No.”

He closed the file in his hand and set it aside, then looked at Shi Jiu and asked coldly, “Name.”

“Shi Jiu.” He was extremely impatient.

“Where do you live?”

“Live in…” Shi Jiu thought for a moment. If this was a dream, should he tell the truth or make something up? But if he made something up, the people in the dream probably wouldn’t be able to tell. Yet a dream was an echo of one’s own consciousness and subconscious. If he knew he was lying, his dream should know too.

Shi Jiu chose to tell the truth: “Hai’an City.”

As soon as he said it, the other man’s brows knitted slightly. He sat up straight, his expression clearly more serious than before, and even the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. He spoke, word by word, “Where do you live!”

Shi Jiu repeated irritably, “Hai’an City!”

Fortunately, the mister did not make things difficult for him any further, and instead asked something else. “How old are you this year?”

Shi Jiu made something up at random. “27, 28, 29, 30.”

Shi Jiu saw the man across from him relax. He leaned back, languidly sinking into the softness behind him, and just stared at Shi Jiu. When the stare made Shi Jiu somewhat uncomfortable, he tugged at one corner of his mouth and said with a faint laugh, “Do you really think you can sit there acting like this because you’re strong enough to break double-layer graphene rope?” Though there was a hint of a smile on his face, there was not the slightest trace of it in his tone. What came through more was intimidation.

Shi Jiu clicked his tongue. A contemptuous breath slipped from his nose. He did not even look at the person in front of him, instead glancing around casually at the small office, and said carelessly, “I don’t know what this double-layer graphene rope you mentioned is, but I’m telling the truth. If you don’t believe me, that’s your problem.”

“My problem?” The man with the deep blue eyes smiled faintly, as if this was the first time he had heard such sophistry. He lifted one corner of his mouth. “Seems you really want to go to the Reeducation Center.”

Reeducation Center… He had heard it several times. The first person he saw when he woke up had mentioned it too.

Shi Jiu looked back and asked, “What’s the Reeducation Center?”

The so-called Reeducation Center was not for reeducation in this world. Rather, it existed for alteration.

After people turned twenty and became adults, they could undergo brain evolution. So-called evolution meant changing the brain’s structure and connecting it to the cosmic frequency, creating a channel in people’s minds. Those who were granted mutual access could achieve thought transparency and use consciousness communication.

But before evolution, they had to undergo a test to determine whether their genes were qualified and whether they carried any infectious disease. If they passed, they evolved. If not, they were sent to the Reeducation Center for comprehensive reform. Only, the Reeducation Center was not somewhere people wanted to go…

Shi Jiu knew nothing, and the person who had been snapped at by him earlier, and thus had no intention of answering him directly, said with a mocking tone, “You don’t even know what the Reeducation Center is?”

Then he gave a light laugh, his face full of provocation. “If you don’t know, that’s your problem.”

Shi Jiu’s face went green, his heart red, his temper exploded. He could not be bothered to talk more with the person in front of him. He lifted a hand arrogantly, but unexpectedly the desk was not as heavy as he had imagined.

With both hands raised, the table between them was actually flung right over. Papers from the folders scattered out, flying through the air in a loose spray before crashing down all over the floor in a mess. Along with them, some of the other things on the desk were damaged too, like a pen split into two pieces, and a teacup shattered into countless fragments. Water from the cup soaked the papers, including those already signed and those about to be signed.

“……”

“……”

Shi Jiu’s hands froze. For a moment, he still had not reacted to the scene.

The desk was gone, leaving nothing between the two of them. Suddenly facing each other, one standing and one sitting, the seated one paused, then folded his arms. The look he gave Shi Jiu was chilling. Without the desk to buffer it, his aggression crashed forward all at once.

Shi Jiu was silent for a long moment, just about to say something.

“Click.” Handcuffs appeared on both of his wrists. The other man’s movements were so fast that Shi Jiu had almost failed to notice them. He only felt a surge of icy cold crawl up his wrists, and he shivered.

The man turned around to make a phone call. His voice was still as calm as ever. After flipping his desk over, he somehow seemed not the least bit angry. “Arrest a citizen who attempted to commit violence. Come and take him away.”

Arrest him? Overestimating himself. Shi Jiu reflexively tried to pry the handcuffs open, but after a couple of tugs, there was no reaction.

Why wasn’t there any reaction? Wasn’t this a dream? A dream he could not control? Shi Jiu’s expression changed instantly.

When Shi Jiu was sitting on the floor of a room connected by pipes, he finally couldn’t help but laugh helplessly. He really had been arrested in his own dream.

This place was fairly large, enough for one person to pace back and forth inside. There was a single bed, a sink, a toilet, and a mural.

The place where he was held was not bright. Pale light fell over each gray cell. Both the ceiling and the floor were the same metallic gray. The wall with the room door was made up of tangled, interwoven pipes. There was no lock hanging anywhere. The door was simply sealed shut by suction, and even pushing it would not open it. Shi Jiu had never seen such a design.

He looked up at the ceiling and thought of the design draft he still had not finished.

Strangely, he could not hear a single sound in here. Shi Jiu leaned out slightly. Wherever he could see, every room was empty. There was no one, and when he arrived, it seemed as if he had not seen anyone either.

By the time he heard voices from outside again, it might have already been the second day in the dream, or perhaps the third. Shi Jiu was a little unable to tell.

Someone was speaking, then came the sound of footsteps, steady and forceful, neither hurried nor slow. And then, the one he had flipped the desk on appeared on the other side of his iron window.

He appeared outside first as a side profile, then as a head turned slightly and those deep blue eyes, and finally he turned fully around. Looking down from above with an indifferent gaze, he faced Shi Jiu head-on. Shi Jiu, lying on the bed, also raised his head and met his eyes.

This person was trying to use some invisible mental pressure to subdue him, but he simply refused to believe in that.

After a moment, the person outside said in a deep voice, “How is it?” He stood with his hands behind his back and did not even look at Shi Jiu.

Shi Jiu assumed he was not being asked. He rolled over, lazily lying back on the small bed, not at all worried about his situation. He simply let his hands rest behind his neck and yawned lazily. “Not much.”

The other looked at him quietly and said, “Fine.” Then he turned and left without mercy.

“Hey, wait.” Shi Jiu called after him. He rolled up quickly, then moved leisurely toward the door. He saw the man stop, but he did not turn back.

Shi Jiu propped his head up, his arm resting on the pipes that formed the door, and asked with a half smile toward the outside, “This mister, I am a little curious. When you saw me for the first time and said, ‘It’s you,’ what did you mean? Have we met before?”

The mister had his back to him, his tone cold. “What do you think?”

From Shi Jiu’s angle, he could only see the other’s back, not his expression, but Shi Jiu felt it should be an unhappy one. So he came up with a very clumsy fishing line and said lazily, “Ah, I was in a car accident some time ago, hiss, I can’t quite remember what happened before. Why don’t you tell me?”

He had originally wanted to know why the person in his dream recognized him. In the end, the other man lifted a foot and, without even granting him a cold glance, walked away without looking back. He did not answer a single word.

Still those firm, steady footsteps, one after another, fading from Shi Jiu’s eardrums. There was no attachment to anything, no emotion at all.

The footsteps finally disappeared completely at the end of the corridor, leaving behind an utterly empty silence. Everything was gray, making the mood seem even more dim.

Shi Jiu felt bored and resentfully lay back down on the small bed.

He should not be bound by a dream in this tiny room.

Thinking of the unfinished design drawing, Shi Jiu, who had lain there for a while, irritably rolled over and got up. He thought, since this was a dream, he might as well just crash his way out.

As soon as he thought it, he charged at the pipes. But the moment he did, there was a bang and a massive pain in his forehead hit him. He only felt a wave of dizziness and blackness before his eyes.

Then he seemed to fall into some bottomless pit. An intense sensation of weightlessness surged over him, and wind howled past him, cutting at his face until it burned and choked him.

A few minutes later, anxious knocking and a panicked shout came from outside Chen Ai’s office. “Mr. Chen, something’s wrong. The person you sent in two days ago, he, he, he ran away!”

Chen Ai frowned and set down the pen in his hand, then stood up. When he once again stood before the empty room, the person behind him stammered in fear, “He really didn’t leave through the door. I swear, I stayed right here. I didn’t sleep and didn’t do anything else. I wanted to go in and bring him some food. When I went in to look, he was already, already not there!”

Chen Ai answered softly, “Mm.”

There was no surveillance, and the guard had not lied. Chen Ai slowly walked around twice. The sound of his steps against the floor was a little like the rhythmic tapping of a death god’s sickle against the ground.

There was no abnormality, no damage, nothing missing, not even a speck of dust.

Chen Ai said coldly, “Notify the Safety Management Center.”

This person had suddenly appeared, then suddenly disappeared,