CH 743

9-12 minutes 26.03.2023

The water droplets slid down the mirror. Shen Luo looked at the AI butler in the mirror. His brain was numb. He didn’t give any order, so why did the butler appear at the bathroom door? He held the sink and turned around. The butler’s near-human face made him very uncomfortable. Shen Luo grabbed the electric toothbrush. He wanted to poke it into the butler’s face!

When he had that violent thought, the invisible butterfly in his brain secreted something. It encouraged him. “Don’t come any closer!” Shen Luo never thought that he’d be scared by his own butler. He shouted at the machine, but it was pointless. The butler appeared to have gone out of control. It blocked the bathroom door, looked at Shen Luo, and didn’t stop laughing.

“Go away! Don’t get any closer!” Shen Luo shouted anxiously. The butterfly in his brain flapped its wings. All he could hear was that sound. “Get out!” Shen Luo lunged at the butler. He was like a caged beast. He knocked the butler over and stabbed the toothbrush into its face again and again!

When Shen Luo regained his senses, the butler’s face was ruined. It was scary.

“No. I didn’t mean to do it. It’s your problem!” Shen Luo crawled away from the butler. He knocked into the couch and fell to the ground. He kept glancing at himself in the mirror. His reflection was anxious, and his face was pale, but his expression was strange. His face was slowly changing. His nose and mouth slowly opened. Shen Luo’s reflection’s face slowly morphed into a giant blood butterfly.

“Ah!” Shen Luo was scared. He grabbed the remote on the couch and threw it at the mirror!

The mirror shattered, but the pieces became transparent butterflies and flew at Shen Luo!

Shen Luo hugged his head and screamed. His body shook. Then, something even more terrifying happened. The butler with the holey face slowly climbed up from the ground. It slowly moved towards Shen Luo!

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“You’re just a machine. Why would you do this?” Shen Luo resisted the pain and stumbled to the door. He held the wall and cried for help. The only news was the butler was very slow. Shen Luo keyed in the password and ran out the door. He asked his neighbors for help.

A few seconds later, the neighbors came out. They approached Shen Luo carefully.

“Xiao Shen, is there a thief in your house?”

“Call 120. His illness is acting up!”

The neighbors came over to help. When Shen Luo saw them, his tension released slightly. He pointed at his house. “There’s a ghost! There’s a ghost inside my house. There are butterflies everywhere, and my AI Butler wants to kill me!” He was rambling, and his neighbors were confused. One of the braver young men headed to Shen Luo’s house with a golf club. He didn’t see the butterflies and ghosts. He only saw the broken mirror, the turned-over furniture, and the AI Butler on the ground with the broken face. The young man walked out of the house with a strange expression. “Shen Luo, are you sure there is a ghost? Did… you forget to take your medication today?”

“Really! I’m not lying to you!”

“Don’t worry. I’ve called Deep Space Tech’s customer service for you. They’ll come over soon. If their AI Butler had hurt someone, this would be big news.” A middle-aged neighbor said.

A few minutes later, the maintenance worker from Deep Space Tech and the local security came. They entered Shen Luo’s home. The worker split open the butler’s misshapen head and took out the recording box inside.

“This is the recording box we use to protect the Ai Butlers. Normally, they are not activated. They’ll only trigger when the butlers are being attacked.” The worker inserted the box into his device. Then, the video played on the virtual screen. In the video, Shen Luo was a different person. He was crazy and cruel as he rode on the butler and stabbed its face with the electric toothbrush. He was like a crazed murderer from the movies!

The neighbors moved away from Shen Luo. No one dared to stay too close to him.

“Listen to me. I was doing that out of self-defense! The butler had gotten out of control. It didn’t listen to my order, and it moved on its own!” Shen Luo argued, but the video proved him wrong. The butler was always honest. The person who had gone mad was Shen Luo. He was unhinged. He gave conflicting orders to the butler and kept shouting at his own mirror reflection.

“Dear customer, did you suffer any huge trauma lately?” The worker replaced the butler’s face. “Our suggestion is for you to rest or take time to accept a treatment.” The meaning was clear.

“I’m not ill!” “We know. You’re just under a lot of pressure.” The worker reactivated the AI Butler. He planned to leave after that. “Please take care of your Ai Butler.” The way the neighbors looked at Shen Luo changed. A few of them persuaded him to see a psychiatrist. Half an hour later, the crowd dispersed. Shen Luo returned to his own home, but he didn’t dare to close the door or activate his Ai Butler. “The incident recorded and the incident I remembered are different. Am I really sick?” He switched on the computer and planned to have a long-distance consultation with a psychiatrist. He looked for a long time before a doctor actively contacted him. He didn’t need to make an appointment or pay any fee upfront. He looked very sincere. Shen Luo, who didn’t think he was ill, chose this doctor. He switched on the camera and entered the doctor’s virtual consultation room.

The white light shone on his face. Shen Luo was not used to this. He widened his eyes and looked around. He noticed the doctor’s room was very unique. Half of it was light, and the other half was dark. There was no certificate in the room. Other than two chairs, there was nothing else.

“Hi, doctor. My name is Shen Luo. This is my citizen card.”

“You can call me Doctor Bai.” The doctor sat on the darker side of the room. He looked very young. “Your mental condition is very unstable. You have met something unusual recently. These things are completely different from your normal lifestyle.”

“You can say that.” Shen Luo slightly calmed down. “I’m a veteran financial trader. My work is very high pressure. Therefore, I wanted to play games to relax. But in the game, I face even more pressure!”

“Game? An immersive horror game?”

“No, it’s an Iyashikei game. You should have heard it before. It’s called Perfect Life.” Shen Luo told the doctor about his experience. He didn’t hide anything. He didn’t have any friends in real life, so he could only tell these things to his doctor.

“I believe you have PTSD. After experiencing extreme trauma, your normal mindset has been twisted.”

“Twisted?”

“Your experience in-game was so different from your daily life that your mind couldn’t adapt to it.” Doctor Bai smiled at Shen Luo. “For example, if a door closed in real life, you’d think it was the wind. However, in the game, you’d think it was a ghost, and you were faced with the threat of death! At that moment, your main consciousness and subconscious were in contrast.”

“But…” Shen Luo was confused. “Why would I feel a butterfly has flown into my brain? I really want to crack open my head to look at it.”

“Butterfly?” Doctor Bai studied Shen Luo. “Where did the wound on your arm come from?”

“You mean this butterfly-shaped wound?” Shen Luo raised his arm. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. I only remember maddening laughter.”

“Mr. Shen, your condition is rather unique. I suggest you come to meet me in person. My clinic is at Xin Lu’s Northern Countryside. It’s called Pure White Soul.” Doctor Bai sent an email to Shen Luo. “The email details everything you need to bring. I anticipate seeing you.”

The doctor disconnected, and Shen Luo was kicked out of the room. He opened the email and saw that the doctor wanted to see his gaming record and a recording from his perspective.

“Does he still not believe me?” Shen Luo clicked on the menu. He refreshed the page and realized he had many new private messages. As the last player to be saved by Huang Yin, Shen Luo became famous too. The most well-spread picture on the internet was Huang Yin climbing out of the abyss. Behind him, the night collapsed, and Shen Luo was unconscious, hanging around his shoulders.

“Now, my image is all ruined.” He opened some of the messages. Most of them wanted to know what was inside the abyss. Some were invitations from guilds. They believed players who had been in and out of the path were powerful players.

“This is funny. I can’t even say what I’ve experienced.” Shen Luo was about to close the tab when he saw a strange message. It was filled with pictures of butterflies. Shen Luo rubbed his eyes to make sure that he wasn’t seeing things. He clicked open the message. It only said one sentence—Master, are you back?

“What madness is this?” 4887

Shen Luo felt revolted seeing so many butterflies. “Why would they paint so many butterflies?” Shen Luo then keyed in the term butterfly and filtered through his inbox. He was shocked. He had more than 100 messages related to butterflies. They either had butterfly pictures, or they had mentioned butterflies in words. The messages came from all over the country. Most of them were normal, but some of them seemed to be written by murderers and crazy people. There were some which were written using the limbs of dead animals. “How come it feels like I’ve been targeted by crazy people everywhere? Will they come to find me?”

Shen Luo immediately closed the messages and set his info to private, but it appeared to be a bit too late.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the front door, and a hoarse voice said. “Hello. Your delivery is here.”