Same Dream

"Congratulations, Dream Experience Officers! You have successfully awakened. Zhu Family Village will distribute your dream rewards shortly. Please check your messages."

Zheng Wuyou stared at the message on her phone, feeling a headache coming on. The time displayed at the top was still 5:07 a.m.

Knowing her close friends, their phones should all have been set to automatically silence notifications at this hour.

Yuan Ling... Why had her phone chimed too?

Puzzled, she slowly pulled back her bed curtain and peered through the gap toward Yuan Ling's bed.

There wasn't a sound from Yuan Ling's side. It seemed she was still asleep...

Zheng Wuyou sighed. She must have been overthinking it. Maybe she'd accidentally turned off Do Not Disturb last night.

Just as she was about to let the curtain fall and check her messages, she heard the bed across from hers creak as someone turned over, followed by a faint sigh.

It was quiet, but in the stillness of the early morning, the sound seemed several times louder.

A faint light appeared behind Yuan Ling's bed curtain...

Was she awake? Had she turned on her phone?

Was it a coincidence? Had what happened yesterday kept her up?

Or...

Had she gone through the same thing?

Time passed excruciatingly slowly. It felt as if the night's rest in Zhu Family Village had melded with the entire night that had just passed, leaving her unusually alert.

She wanted to ask Yuan Ling about it, but worried she wouldn't understand. After all, it had only been a dream...

That was true. Maybe it really was just a dream. There was no telling who had sent that text as a prank.

She looked at the phone number. It was listed as a virtual number!

So it really was a prank!

Could someone have used some kind of brain-computer interface technology to send her into her subconscious?

But technology shouldn't have advanced that far yet...

Her thoughts were so jumbled that she tried searching online for information about it.

She found no useful information about the technology, but did come across a familiar news story...

H City Morning News: At 11:08 p.m. last night, a man was found unconscious in a KTV, his upper body exposed. The woman beside him tried to call for help for over three minutes, but the man suddenly fell ill and began convulsing. He died before the ambulance arrived. At the same time, two women died in a residential apartment on Ivory Street. The initial finding was that they had been dissolved by some substance. Police suspect that their roommate, who has a mental illness, poured a corrosive agent on them while they slept and then set the place on fire...

Zheng Wuyou couldn't bring herself to read any further. She stared at the familiar face in the news photo and blurted out, "Holy shit."

Cold sweat kept breaking out across her back, as if everything were telling her this was real.

The three victims' eyes had been blurred, but she recognized one of their faces... The roommate with a mental illness who'd been burned to death looked exactly like Xiao Xia.

Perhaps the commotion on Zheng Wuyou's end caught Yuan Ling's attention. Before long, Yuan Ling sent her a message.

Old Yuan: "Why are you up so early?"

Little Zheng: "...I had a nightmare, then read some horrible news. Now I can't sleep."

Old Yuan: "Don't even get me started. I also... had a nightmare. It was ridiculous, even crazier than the horror escape rooms I've been to."

Old Yuan: "And it was like the dream affected reality. I've always believed dreams can mean something, but... never mind, I can't explain it over text. I'll tell you when we get up."

Old Yuan: "I'm going to doze a little longer."

Little Zheng: "...Okay."

For some reason, she had a strong feeling that all the witnesses to last night's accident might have seen that NPC, Chi Ao Chi Yin... They just hadn't all entered the same dream.

She'd meant to catch up on sleep, but no matter how much she tossed and turned, she couldn't drift off. Zheng Wuyou picked up her phone to watch some videos, only to realize her earphones had fallen onto the desk below her bed.

She had no choice but to put her phone back beside her pillow and start racking her brain for details about Zhu Family Village.

She still clearly remembered the hands that had clutched hers as the water swept them away.

He was the one who'd pulled her toward the clock.

Had everyone else made it out safely?

She'd left Zhu Family Village safe and sound. Maybe the others had returned to their own lives, too.

One by one, her guesses filled her mind, until that final, blurry yet familiar figure in the water surfaced in her thoughts. Zheng Wuyou came to her senses and shook her head.

Zheng Wuyou, Zheng Wuyou, don't let a handsome face ruin your future!

He might be gorgeous, but she couldn't let herself get carried away.

Just then, the bed opposite hers suddenly shook. The bed diagonally across from it was pushed up against its frame, and someone sprang up with a shout: "Earthquake?"

"Yuan Ling, what are you doing? There's no earthquake!"

Zheng Wuyou hurriedly pulled back her curtain and asked in a hushed, urgent voice as Yuan Ling emerged from the bed across from hers, looking terrified.

The commotion in the dorm was so loud that even Gu Yunting, who'd been sleeping soundly, woke up. She peered out from behind her curtain, eyes bleary, and stared in confusion at Yuan Ling, who was standing by the bed ladder.

"No, no! Wushen's shaking!" Before she could finish, Yuan Ling, her hair a mess, anxiously pulled back Wushen's curtain and climbed inside.

Her words put Zheng Wuyou on alert. She quickly got out of bed and stood beside Wushen's bunk. Tall enough to peer over the edge, she pulled back the curtain and anxiously watched Yuan Ling performing CPR on her.

"Yunting! Quick, call the dorm supervisor and the infirmary!" Zheng Wuyou watched Yuan Ling's hands press rhythmically up and down on Wushen's chest. When Wushen stopped convulsing, her face was deathly pale, and she didn't respond at all.

Gu Yunting had just been woken up and had no idea what was going on. She only knew that something had happened to Wushen, but she did as she was told and quickly picked up her phone to find the dorm supervisor's number.

"Pfft..." Suddenly, Wushen spat out a mouthful of black blood, splattering it all over Yuan Ling. Then, as if her strength had suddenly returned, she shoved Yuan Ling away and sat up.

Wushen looked like she'd returned from the brink of death. She patted her chest and muttered to herself, "I'm alive. I'm alive..."

"Did you have a nightmare too?"

"Did you have a nightmare too?"

...Zheng Wuyou and Yuan Ling seemed to share an inexplicable understanding. They looked at each other, then turned their eyes toward Wushen, the protagonist.

Gu Yunting held her phone, still not having dialed the number, and stared at the whole scene, dumbfounded.

What nightmare? What had these three been up to without telling her? It was six or seven in the morning, and instead of sleeping, they'd made a scene like this. Was everything really all right?

Should she still call the dorm supervisor?

She was even starting to wonder if this was a prank or some kind of new human-to-human virus...