Romeo and Juliet

The buildings were medieval European in style. Briar and rose vines climbed the gloomy walls, blooming with delicate, vivid flowers. Low eaves lined the streets, and a Catholic church towered at the end of the road.

Xie De had gotten separated from the others again. He was inside that church, utterly done with life.

They had entered the film Beiwei had drawn, arriving in the so-called second layer of the dream. Their memories probably hadn't been affected too badly yet.

This place was warmer and quieter than the other films, with nothing remotely eerie about it. He just couldn't tell which film this was.

Outside, there were only muddy roads and horse-drawn carriages. It really felt as though he'd traveled back in time. So where were the others?

There was hardly anyone in the church, and no one came to greet him. He wandered around and found a long poem carved into a wall in a secluded corner.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

..."

-An excerpt from Shakespeare's Sonnets, Sonnet 18

He didn't know what sentiment it was meant to convey, but it was obviously a love poem.

Xie De stared at it for a moment. "455, do you think this film might be Romeo and Juliet? It fits the romance genre."

455's loading icon spun lazily. Under the dream's influence, 455 was lagging so badly that it couldn't put together a sentence even after ages.

"C-bzz-could, could bzz-be..."

"Never mind. Just stop talking. You're lagging so badly you sound like electronic music."

The server-busy image on his phone kept spinning. "...W-bzz-wait, let me bzz-buffer..."

455 had crashed. Again. And again. And again.

Xie De tapped his phone. Finding it completely unresponsive, he wanted to complain but didn't know where to start.

He tucked his phone into his pocket. Thankfully, this place wasn't frightening, and he hadn't run into anyone, much less any ghosts. Otherwise, with none of the heavy hitters around and 455 crashed, he would have had to find somewhere to hide. If he couldn't hide, he might as well just die.

Still, despite all that, Xie De left the church and looked around the medieval European town.

Fortunately, all the residents acted as if they couldn't see him. He seemed to be nothing but air. No one spared him a glance, and everyone went about their business.

But all the residents looked drab and gray, leaving him with nothing to go on. Worse still, they spoke English with an accent, which left Xie De completely dumbfounded. He wasn't a simultaneous interpreter. He couldn't understand a thing!

Before he could completely give up, a luxurious carriage passed by, and a notice was posted on a conspicuous stretch of the town wall.

It was still in English, but at least he could puzzle out some of it through guesswork. Xie De stood behind the residents who had gathered to look and strained to read the writing.

Some kind of party? At the Montague Family mansion?

Montague? Wait. Xie De suddenly remembered. Wasn't that Romeo's family? He'd guessed right. He really had entered the film Romeo and Juliet!

Wei Yanchi was so smart that he must have figured it out before him. Maybe he was already waiting at the party venue.

Just as Xie De turned around, he met the gaze of an unusually quiet presence. That presence said calmly, "Hello. You're the 39 Wei Yanchi mentioned, aren't you?"

He was a remarkably faint sort of person, strange as that description sounded.

His hair and eyebrows were a very pale yellowish brown, and his complexion was perfectly ordinary. His lips curved upward slightly, making him look as though he was always smiling, but a closer look revealed how indifferent his expression really was.

Xie De had the feeling that if this man hadn't spoken, he would never have noticed him.

His guard shot up. When had this man gotten behind him?

His voice inevitably turned cold. "Who are you?"

"My name is Hu Songlin. I'm a veteran player in this instance and an old friend of Wei Yanchi's. I've heard him mention you."

Hu Songlin shrugged indifferently, his words utterly perfunctory. "You can come with me. I'll take you to him."

"Why should I trust you?"

"Whatever. Don't, then."

Uh...

This faint sort of man was a little strange, but considering he was the protagonist's friend, wasn't that normal?

How could the protagonist of a world possibly have ordinary friends?

So, after some thought-though he hadn't really thought much at all-Xie De decided to believe Hu Songlin with clear-eyed, wholehearted stupidity.

The tall, silver-haired man even curled his lips in good humor. His green eyes, filled with an unreadable meaning, swept over Hu Songlin as he uttered, "Fine."

A flicker of surprise crossed Hu Songlin's calm eyes, but his emotions were so muted that the trace of surprise was practically negligible.

He headed forward, and Xie De followed close behind. They had barely gone a dozen steps when 455 finally managed to come back online. The server-busy message on the phone was replaced by a cutesy emoticon.

"(ᕑᗢᓫ∗)˒ Host! I'm back! I've got all the strength and tricks I need. Hahaha..."

"Mm..."

Before Xie De could continue, 455 let out a familiar, piercing shriek.

"What the hell is that in front of you?! Why are you with villain number two?!"

"Huh?"

455 began solemnly checking its data. "Hu Songlin isn't with the Laboratory. He's with another mysterious organization, the Club. According to the current timeline, he shouldn't have appeared this early! But it's very possible that hiding the villain disrupted the timeline, causing this guy to show up ahead of schedule."

Xie De immediately felt like stopping. He didn't want to follow anymore.

"Is he dangerous?"

"How should I put it? I checked the script, and Hu Songlin's superpower is absolute luck. Even if you fired a shot at him right now, it could miss for any number of reasons. Meanwhile, he could clear this instance just by standing still."

"...Heaven really is unfair."

455 nodded. "Exactly. But when God opened a door for him, he closed a window. He has absolute luck, but there's a drawback: his presence is incredibly weak. Not just in a crowd, but in people's memories, too. No matter what he wears or what he does, people can't remember him when they meet him a second time. Even if they stay with him the whole time, they'll subconsciously overlook him."

No wonder he hadn't sensed someone standing behind him earlier, even with his guard up.

Xie De was speechless. For someone as socially anxious as him, how the hell was that a drawback? The guy in front of him had snapped up every good thing. An ugly emotion called jealousy burned in the heart of Xie the slacker.

"Wait, let me ask you something. How did he become villain number two?"

455 scratched its head. "Uh, probably because he was bored. He has absolute luck and an absolutely negligible presence, so nothing ever happened in his life. Then he got bored, then he turned twisted, then he went crazy, and then he started wreaking havoc on everyone."

Xie De understood. "Either perish in silence or turn twisted in silence? Damn, I want to punch him twice right now. Is he really Wei Yanchi's friend?"

"No. You know how he turned twisted in silence? Because the protagonist is one of the few people who notice him, he decided the protagonist was his nemesis, like your typical villain in a hot-blooded action manga. He kills the people around the protagonist whenever he gets the chance. He's the one who killed Yue Xiamo."

"...Fuck. So now he's coming after me? Can I strike first and put a couple of bullets in him?"

455 was on the verge of shrieking again. "Stay calm for now. I'm trying to figure out where he's taking you!"

"Hell if I know."

Xie De stared fixedly at Hu Songlin, his face expressionless. "455, I suddenly can't stand the sight of him."

Terrifying killing intent surged like a tide. Hu Songlin glanced back with curiosity and immediately met a pair of eyes as cold as an icy pool. Perhaps it was all in his head, but even the air around him felt bone-chilling.