Volume 7 - CH 130.2

Lin Qin is also wondering what happened to Xü Beijin.

He’s fainted, but he looks like he’s having a nightmare instead.

His furrowed brows, and the cold sweat, and his mouth that is mumbling something inaudible.

Lin Qin is worried, anxious, and irritated. All the emotions mix together, to form something called, helplessness.

He is watching the one he loved suffer, but he is unable to even share in the burden.

Watching Xü Beijin, his gaze changes subtly.

He’s always been a mad dog, and Xü Beijin knows, though he’d hide his nature a little when he’s there.

Lin Qin is now wondering, if he ends the Nightmare here, would Xü Beijin be able to wake up?

He starts considering the possibility.

A-Two is watching Lin Qin’s expression with worry. Something terrible might be happening. Then he looks at Xü Beijin and quietly prays for him to wake up soon.

Xü Beijin is dreaming.

Dreaming in a Nightmare. It sounds like a joke, but that’s what is happening to him.

He can feel some kind of warmth surrounding him. A realistic warmth, like someone is embracing him.

He needs to wake up.

But for this moment, do let him indulge in this dream for a bit. Just for a moment.

He is dreaming of the past.

He once told Lin Qin, that after graduating university, he went and took over the family bookstore.

It’s exactly what it sounds like. A small bookstore in a little town without much business day in, day out. Xü Beijin himself was wishing only for an idyllic lifestyle, so he didn’t need much money.

His life was, well, as dull as dish water──But in a different manner to how it was in the Tower, he was free.

He could go on a trip if he wanted to, or laze about like a salted fish. Unlike in the Tower, when he has to force himself to idle as an Extra.

Forcing himself to idle, isn’t that much different to forcing himself to work, is it?

But anyway, Xü Beijin has been living quite the dream retirement life pre-Apocalypse.

And his parents were even more free than he was, always traveling the world somewhere, probably forgetting they even have a son watching the bookstore at home.

Then, the situation changed in an instant.

The Apocalypse…

Well, the word was something that would be brought up occasionally, or even often for some people, but enough in frequency that it’s largely lost its horror element. It was just another common word for something that gets thrown around a lot.

They didn’t think something would truly happen that deserved the original meaning of the word. It was the stuff of legends and myths. Exaggerated after years and generations of retelling and reimagining, until it was some fuzzy, unclear kind of… imaginary creation.

So when the Apocalypse did happen, no one realised or called it that.

The Missiontakers of the Tower now know it to be the Apocalypse, because they have the benefit of hindsight. No one knew in the beginning.

They just felt that, there were a few more insane people around, huh? And murder cases are on the rise, like they usually do. The neighbours are arguing more. The traffic is getting worse. Hospitals are overflowing with patients.

As they always bloody do.

No one could associate this with the Apocalypse in their right mind.

Who would? It’s the life they’re already used to. The minutiae is changing, little by little, and that’s it.

They won’t think it’s the Apocalypse. In fact, they don’t even think their lives have changed any.

‘Oh man, so many people have gone insane nowadays. Stress kills, am I right?’ is what they would think.

A casual conversation topic, all too easily abandoned for the next trough of topics.

Things changed slowly, bit by bit, and life went on.

It was that year’s winter when Xü Beijin received news of his parents’ passing. They were in the south where it’s warm, to stay the whole winter.

They said they wanted to come back for Chinese New Year’s, but they probably won’t make it. They couldn’t find any tickets.

Xü Beijin, bored, thought, maybe he could do something else than watching the CCTV New Year’s Gala, his parents aren’t going to be home anyway…

He would never see them again.

He wonders what separation in life and death truly meant. There’s always been a bit of a distance between him and his parents. He can’t tell exactly, but it’s like, his parents are always so far away, perhaps as far away as the other side of Earth.

Well, now they’re on the other side of the river.

In his dream, Xü Beijin watches the familiar scene replay. A snowy, sleepy winter day, when he was informed of his parents’ deaths.

Xü Beijin feels like, he is watching all this from on high, cold and distant.

Why?

Because he can’t actually remember.

Everyone thought he still remembered what happened in the Apocalypse, and still has all his memories. They thought he remembers everything that happened from the spread of the madness until humanity entered the Tower. Everything. Each and every ‘memory.’

They thought he had the ‘memory’ of this man named Xü Beijin.

But he actually doesn’t.

He just ‘knows.’ Unlike the Missiontakers, who haven’t even the inkling of what happened in the intervening time, he ‘knows’ what happened in the past, but he can’t feel any sense of immersion, or feel it was what he went through.

Because his memories are also cut off the moment before the Apocalypse – it was a lazy afternoon when he was reading books, lying on the couch. His parents were downstairs, talking about where to spend that winter.

Then, his memories are cut off. Some gargantuan, earth-rending black rift cuts though his mind there.

After that, all the things he ‘knew.’ Messy, complicated, disgusting. Both his own happenings, and those of others. He ‘remembers’ them, all of them, unable to forget.

Sometimes, he can’t help but wonder, is this really what he went through?

Did he actually receive news of his parents’ death on a snowy winter day? Did it really happen that way?

What about the others in his ‘memories’? Were their pasts exactly as depicted?

When he once said that ‘memories sometimes end up a curse,’ he does not only refer to his own memories, but equally, the memories of the others’ past that he remembers.

All these memories add up to an overwhelming sense of despair for Xü Beijin whenever he tries to view them.

If they were all genuine, then everything is beyond saving.

But if they were not, then, what was real?