ED | Chapter 5

“How did you get in?” Chen Ai asked coldly, their raised hand not wavering in the slightest, the gun held steadily on Shi Jiu as their muscles tensed.

Their expression was anything but joking. The oppressive atmosphere was already so thick that it was suffocating even without trying to feel it, and Shi Jiu knew that if he said the wrong thing, that bullet would really go through the back of his head.

“How did you get in?” Chen Ai asked a second time, and this time their voice was even more unbearable.

Just as Shi Jiu was about to speak, another question blocked him again.

Chen Ai lowered their voice and asked, “Is your ability teleportation? Or what?”

Ability? What ability? Shi Jiu thought quickly. In the last dream, the researcher named Shen Xiangnan had asked him the same thing too: what ability was it, to open the glass and break free of the double-layer graphene rope?

In this dream, they seemed to have some kind of ability system. Perhaps everyone had different abilities, but from the researcher’s questioning back then, being able to open glass and break free of the graphene rope seemed like some rare, or powerful, ability.

Teleportation was too.

And now, the person before him, someone others feared and respected, perhaps someone of high status, also seemed to be guarding against his ability.

Shi Jiu tilted his head slightly, and a fitting answer flashed through his mind. But because of that tilt, the gun at the center of his forehead was mercilessly pressed forward another fraction, its cold metal touching even more closely.

“Three.”

“Two.”

“One.”

An emotionless countdown.

Shi Jiu hated this devil’s countdown. The instant he saw the finger on the trigger twitch, he blurted out, “I’ll talk!”

Chen Ai’s finger stopped moving, and their eyes did too. They stared straight at him, fixedly and unblinkingly, controlling even the rhythm of their breathing with perfect precision, just waiting to kill him like crushing an ant if the answer was unsatisfactory.

Shi Jiu lifted his head a little and sighed, pretending to be helpless. “But could you please put the gun down? I’m really worried it’ll go off.”

He had originally thought the other side would tell him not to play tricks, but Shi Jiu hadn’t expected them to really lower the gun.

“Speak.” Chen Ai withdrew the gun and stepped back, giving Shi Jiu enough distance to breathe.

Shi Jiu froze for a moment, thinking that this person was oddly nice. He flexed his somewhat stiff neck.

“Speak!” Chen Ai repeated, their tone turning somewhat harsh, pulling Shi Jiu’s gaze back.

Shi Jiu recited the line he had prepared: “My ability is that when you imagine what ability I have, then at that moment, I am that ability.”

So when he escaped prison, who had assumed he possessed the ability to escape at that moment?

And when he returned to the office, had the thought in his own head, that only teleportation could explain this, really given him the ability to teleport to his office?

Shi Jiu made his breathing slow down, pretending to be very justified, and thought, Dream people shouldn’t be this smart, right? But then what Chen Ai said shattered his fantasy.

“But I think your ability is to turn into a leopard?”

“Hm??”

Shi Jiu blinked. He had not turned into a leopard, nor into any other animal. He was just Shi Jiu, standing there unchanged.

Chen Ai gave a mocking laugh, leaned back into their chair, crossed one leg over the other again, and just stared at him. Shi Jiu hadn’t changed at all. The only thing that had changed was Chen Ai’s expression.

He had underestimated the other side.

When the handcuffs were fastened around his wrists, Shi Jiu felt dazed for a moment.

Chen Ai’s face openly showed mockery. Then they made a call and said coldly, “Come to my office and pick up the person.”

“Hey! Blue eyes!” Shi Jiu struggled once, then received a cold glare from the other side.

The other gave him a lazy smile and said lightly, “You’re lucky. I don’t have any anesthetic left.”

Shi Jiu: Thanks, I don’t need that kind of luck.

A familiar plot, a familiar prison, only this time it was a different room.

To prevent him from escaping again, the guards this time simply pushed a rolling table full of equipment to the doorway of Shi Jiu’s cell.

Shi Jiu snorted. “That really isn’t necessary.”

The person outside was eating, and while eating, he answered, “No. If I have to explain it to Mr. Chen one more time, I’ll die of guilt.” Between bites, he kept glancing back over his shoulder. Mr. Chen had ordered anesthetic for this detainee, but when would the Safety Management Center people come to deliver it?

“Oh, Mr. Chen. What’s his name?” Only then did Shi Jiu realize he had never been curious about the man’s name, so he asked casually. Leaning against the wall and sitting on the floor, he idly studied the things on the wall of the room while he looked and asked.

This room used something like cultural stone cladding, though it was only an accent ring set into ordinary whitewashed plaster, and at the center of the accent was a canvas oil painting. The painting showed… perhaps a battle.

The person outside looked at him as if he were a monster, but still answered, “Chen Ai, the Chen in silence, the Ai in white.”

“Chen Ai?” Shi Jiu frowned when he heard the name. He turned to look at the person outside, as if confirming it, his confused expression clearly visible.

Chen Ai… Chen Ai…

He silently repeated the name several times in his mind, chewing it over and spitting it back out.

He only heard the person outside continue, “But don’t call him by his full name, you know?”

“Why?” Shi Jiu didn’t understand.

“Why?! Cough cough!” The other was clearly startled, so startled that he choked on his food. After a violent fit of coughing and once he had recovered, he went on, “You? You don’t know? You never went to school?”

Shi Jiu was silent for two seconds, then suddenly put on a fake smile that did not look much like a smile at all. “Yeah. Never went. My family was poor.”

The person outside was completely baffled. He nodded in disbelief. “This is the first time I’ve heard of… anyway, don’t call Mr. Chen by his full name. That’s disrespectful.”

Shi Jiu gave a slight nod and remembered the researcher’s earlier behavior. “So all of you fear him?” While speaking, Shi Jiu turned back around to study the painting again.

In the painting was a tall tower. Near the windows close to the top, one could see the chaos of battle below, while the people beneath the tower held weapons high. It was somewhat like the mirror-image technique in the image reproduction field, and that technique and the ideology were displayed very clearly in the painting.

Looking back at the content of the painting, Shi Jiu noticed that the weapons in the hands of the people beneath the tower were all aimed at themselves, making the tower seem like the meaning of the Tower card in tarot.

Self-destruction…

The person outside set the bowl aside with a crisp clink. The smell of food still lingered. He quickly wiped his mouth and answered, “Not fear, respect. Everyone respects him very much. You could understand it as fear too, but not the kind of fear you’re thinking of. Anyway, Mr. Chen is a very good person.”

“…A very good person?” Shi Jiu pulled his thoughts away from the painting. He simply could not understand that sentence at all, and it felt like their understanding of the phrase might be hugely different.

Before the other person could answer, messy footsteps sounded at the prison entrance, accompanied by a torn cry for help.

“I didn’t hit him! I really didn’t! He fell on his own!”

A pair of sneakers slapped the floor in a disorderly rhythm, sounding like someone was being forcibly dragged along, and another pair of leather shoes landed steadily.

Shi Jiu heard them drawing closer to him.

“Go check for traces upstairs! I didn’t hit him! The Civilization Center can’t do this!”

A teenager gradually appeared in Shi Jiu’s field of vision. He was struggling hard, while someone behind him, seemingly a security officer, was escorting him and restraining his movements.

The teenager was locked into the small room beside Shi Jiu. He lunged at the door and slapped at it, shaking the entire prison into a clamor.

When the security officer turned around, Shi Jiu saw the words on the uniform: Safety Management Center.

Safety Management Center. He had some impression of it.

The person outside said, “I’m sorry to bring you to prison. Because you’re a minor, we can’t connect to your consciousness, and we already know something about the truth at present. There was only you at the scene, so we can only detain you for now. Once the situation is clarified, we’ll release you at the first possible moment.”

The noise died down, leaving only a few weak slaps.

That same voice sounded again, but this time it was not speaking to the person being held. He said, “The anesthetic requested by Mr. Chen is already on the way. It’ll arrive soon.”

“Ah, okay, okay, no rush!”

Shi Jiu’s brow twitched.

The footsteps moved away, then finally disappeared. The teenager in the next room stopped making noise, and the prison fell quiet.

Last time he teleported away from here, he had crashed into the door. Though the process was jaw-dropping, it had at least gotten him out.

Thinking this, Shi Jiu planned to repeat his previous move. He had even settled into position when he suddenly heard a faint voice.

“Do you believe there are ghosts in this world?”

Shi Jiu’s dash came to an abrupt stop. He turned to look at the only person who could possibly be speaking to him, the unfamiliar voice, and asked in confusion, “You’re talking to me?”

Turning his head, he met the eyes of the teenager who had just been locked in next door. Seeing the other nod, he confirmed that the gaze was indeed fixed on Shi Jiu.

The teenager sat on the floor, his wrists resting on his knees. He looked as if he were about to melt, and in a gloomy voice he said, “I was driving down the mountain just now, and a person suddenly rushed out from the roadside, hair all over the place, scaring me. But I didn’t hit him. I heard that person keep shouting something about ghosts, ghosts, and it was creepy, but I still stopped the car and asked if he needed help. That person ignored me and just kept shouting while running up the mountain, so I left him alone and kept driving. Not long after, that same person somehow fell from somewhere on the mountain and slammed into my hood. He died.”

Shi Jiu frowned. “You…”

He was just about to say something when the teenager opposite him suddenly stood up, rushed to the spot closest to Shi Jiu in one motion, and gripped the thick pipe tightly with both hands. The bloodshot veins in his eyes bulged as he stared wide-eyed, his voice hoarse, and with his throat constricted he let out a low, strangled roar: “I’m asking you, are there really ghosts?!”

His eyes seemed ready to split open. “Why do I feel like there really are ghosts in this world?”

When he finished, he gave Shi Jiu a smile showing eight teeth up top and eight on the bottom, a smile so chilling it made one’s blood run cold.

As if in a daze, he stepped back two paces, then sat down again on the floor of the room, his back against the wall, trembling all over as he lowered his head between his knees and began muttering to himself, as if talking in his sleep: “Don’t trust anyone.”

“Don’t trust anyone.”

“Civilization is fake. Freedom is fake. Don’t trust anyone.”

“Doomsday is coming.”

“It is coming.”

“It is going to return.”

The further he spoke, the lower his voice sank, until it sounded so unsettling, as if an ancient god were whispering right against his ear.

Just then, a loud voice from outside the prison broke through that shadowy, ghostlike murmur: “Hello, the anesthetic Mr. Chen requested.”

Shi Jiu’s thoughts were thrown into disarray. His heartbeat stalled for half a second, and his gaze silently shifted from that young man to the hard surface of the pipe.

Half a minute later, the small jailer who had just received the anesthetic and was preparing to inject Shi Jiu as Chen Ai had instructed called Chen Ai in a panic, nearly falling over himself as he dialed.

“Mr. Chen, th-that… he escaped again!!”