Earth, Beichuan Province.
In the morning, the sun had just risen above the horizon, lighting up the entire eastern sky.
Inside an apartment in the heart of the bustling city, a young man slowly opened his eyes.
Still groggy from waking up, he rubbed his eyes, picked off a little crust, and tossed it into the trash can beside his bed.
He stretched, threw back the covers, and got out of bed, then went to the bathroom to wash up.
He gazed sleepily at the plain, listless face in the mirror as he brushed his teeth vigorously, then splashed clean water over his fair face.
"I'm never staying up till midnight watching anime again. This feels awful. I'm so sleepy..."
"Oh, right, I think I had a pretty long dream last night. What was it again?"
"Shit, I can't remember."
"Forget it. No point thinking about it. It'd take a ghost for me to remember that."
"Off to work."
Once he had everything ready, the young man hurried to the office. For an employee like him who clocked in at the last possible moment, not a second on the road could be wasted, or he would lose several hundred of his precious bucks.
He clocked in at the office, sat down at his workstation, and looked at the spreadsheet on his computer, slipping naturally into slacker mode.
"Why do I feel so empty inside? Did I not sleep well?"
"Probably. I did get less than five hours of sleep..."
"Man, at this rate, I'll drop dead sooner or later..."
"Oh, right, what was that dream about? I hadn't dreamed in ages, and now that I finally did, I've forgotten the whole thing."
"But even though I forgot it, I feel so tired afterward. Umm... why does it also feel kind