"How embarrassing! How embarrassing!"
"This is like hanging yourself naked—utterly mortifying!"
"Such a grown man, naked in front of girls! And letting them look! Pah! Disgusting! I knew to avoid people when changing clothes at three years old! If you have that kind of fetish, at least don't strip in front of people you know! Why not go find a pack of goblins in the woods? They lie through their teeth, so no one would believe them... But you did it in front of witches? High-ranking witches, no less? You've disgraced all of Puji Island!"
"Aren't you good at Transformation Spells? Why didn't you turn into a cat then? Aren't you very fast at turning into a cat? Even turning into a cat would've been fine! There are so many naked cats at school—does anyone care?"
"And you called yourself innocent? Pah! There's only one word for you: scum!"
"You definitely don't have any face left!"
"Vulgar! Lewd! Filthy!! You're not fit to be called human!"
A crowd of blurry-faced figures surrounded Zheng Qing, whirling rapidly around him, closing in, pointing at him and berating him loudly, spraying foul-smelling spit in every direction.
Whenever one of them spoke, its body abruptly swelled in size; when it shut up, it shrank back to normal, like a ring of spectral functions after a Fourier transform.
"No, I'm not, I didn't..."
Zheng Qing woke from his nightmare with a shout, drenched in cold sweat. The roars of those blurry faces still seemed to echo right beside his ears. He instinctively looked around. Dawn was faintly breaking outside the window. Dylan had not returned yet, and his Coffin lay open on the bed, its mouth gaping toward the ceiling in silent mockery. Tuantuan's snores rose and fell with Fatty Xin's, performing a lullaby together.