Recap
Shen Ji stripped the doctor’s coat and put it on. To the frozen orderly, he said: “The clothes are mine. The man is yours. Do whatever you want — I won’t interfere.”
The orderly’s shattered head wept blood and tears. “Really? Whatever I do?”
This hulking man had the heart of a coward. Once he dreamed of freedom, then went mad, surviving by playing the fool. His greatest wish was to set a fire, burning this place clean, freeing the trapped souls.
Shen Ji smiled, voice firm: “This time, it’s your turn.”
At the moment of the doctor’s death, countless strange yet familiar memories surged back. Shen Ji finally understood what he had lost in the fourth dream — his memory.
Without knowing what was missing, the fourth dream began at a severe disadvantage. Though instinct kept him from going out at night, he still did not survive the next day. At breakfast, he left the line and went to the third floor, only to be pushed down the stairs by a doctor.
In his fifth dream, Shen Ji survived the night and followed the rules to queue for food. But when he glanced through the kitchen window, the cook snapped his neck and dragged him inside.
In his sixth dream, he ate safely, deduced from clues that he had awakened before, and secretly carved six scratches and a message beneath the table: This is NOT the first time you’ve woken up! He later died from poison hidden in the food.
In his seventh dream, he saw a severed finger in his meal, carved a second warning: Do not eat anything! After vomiting, he crawled into the ceiling ducts, only to be buried alive.
In his eighth dream, he escaped the ducts, disguised himself in an orderly’s uniform, but dropped dead the moment he stepped out of the hall.
In his ninth dream, a hidden map under his pillow was discovered. Two patients smothered him with pillows.
In his tenth dream, he was transferred to the intensive ward, where a madman split open his skull.
In his eleventh, he died on the operating table.
Twelfth dream, he was tortured to death.
Thirteenth…
…
By the seventeenth dream, he endured until the third day. The attending doctor declared the experiment complete. Shen Ji, the final feast, was devoured by fully mutated doctors.
Then came the eighteenth dream.
Eighteen deaths, eighteen rebirths. He had lost reason, memory, pain, fear — everything. Even if trapped forever in dreams, even if he lost himself, it was still him who saved himself.
Leaving the orderly behind, Shen Ji ran to the attending doctor’s office, kicked open the door, and searched for clues.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor. Outside, chaos erupted. Fire alarms blared like ticking bombs, pushing time forward at double speed.
Smoke and screams seeped under the door. The office was filled with haze. Shen Ji found only one thing: an ID card proving the doctor’s identity. On it was written:
Paradise Sanatorium, Yu Yi.
Pocketing the card, Shen Ji tried to reach the director’s office. But when he opened the door, smoke and screams froze. Before him stood the sixth-floor safety door of the apartment.
Startled, he touched his pocket. Inside was a rectangular object.
If the doctor’s ID was real, did the dreams truly exist?
He stepped into a ruined corridor. Blackened walls bore the scars of fire. Ash floated endlessly, trapped forever.
Walking forward, he saw doors welded shut by flame. He was a passerby in a disaster site, watching smoke rise, life and death persist, until all became ruins.
At the corridor’s end lay a homeless man asleep in the wreckage. Shen Ji did not wake him, but sat nearby to wait.
From his pocket, he drew the rectangular card. For the first time, he saw the doctor’s ID in reality.
The boundary between dream and reality blurred.
The card slipped from his fingers to the floor.
His hands trembled, as though soaked in blood, stained with guilt that could never be washed away.
Which was real — dream or reality?
A withered hand seized his wrist, forcing the card back into his palm. Shen Ji looked up into gray-white eyes.
The disheveled homeless man stared at him silently.
Shen Ji took out the candy. Before he could offer it, the man snatched it wildly, swallowing it wrapper and all. Shen Ji tried to speak, but the man stopped him in terror and drove him out of the sixth floor.
Shen Ji searched every stairwell, finally reaching the landlord’s room on the first floor. The door was unlocked. Nervously, he entered. The room was pitch black, empty.
The boy was gone.
He searched drawers, cabinets, and behind curtains. Nothing. At last he stood before the bathroom door, arm too heavy to lift.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor, distant yet near, stopping outside the landlord’s door.
The door opened slowly. Light spilled in. Shen Ji saw a pair of black leather shoes.
A man’s voice came from outside, distorted with static and the rasp of scales entwining:
“Landlord, long time no see.”
Shen Ji raised his head. A stranger in a suit stood in the dim light.
The man’s eyes lingered on his face, then he smiled apologetically. “Sorry, I mistook you. Isn’t this the landlord’s home?”
Shen Ji, unsure if he faced man or ghost, answered truthfully: “The landlord died not long ago.”
Regret flickered in the man’s eyes. He asked politely: “And you are?”
“I’m the landlord’s neighbor.”
“Hello. I live on the second floor. I was in the hospital until today.”
Their introductions were cautious, like mirrors facing each other. Shen Ji thought of the eighteen dreams, more certain the man was not human.
He asked: “Are you a patient?”
The man smiled. “I’m a doctor.”
“What kind of doctor?”
“A neurologist. I do know some psychology too.”
“What day is it today?”
“Monday.”
“Which hospital do you work at?”
“A sanatorium.”
“Which one?”
The questions were sharp, but the man remained calm, patient, as though speaking to his own patient.
“Paradise Sanatorium.”
Shen Ji’s gaze darkened. He asked the final question: “What is your name?”
The man smiled faintly.
“Yu Yi.”
___
T/N: ummm…
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Update: Monday, Wednesday, Friday