Sitting up

This wasn't reality...

After waking up half a month ago, Kallen had spent nearly a week accepting and verifying that he had transmigrated to another "real world," rather than experiencing a dream or a figment of his imagination.

But right now,

what he was facing

was definitely not reality!

He should... no, he definitely was still in the Immerlis Family's basement.

All these strange changes had begun when he tried to turn Jeff's head.

And with those enormous red high heels and the woman's face before him, these utterly unrealistic sights and surroundings, beyond all rational comprehension, could only mean one thing: he had been "hypnotized."

"Hypnosis" had many interpretations. Here, it meant that he had been stripped from his physical existence and imprisoned within a mental one.

Put loosely, it meant he was now... dreaming.

The static from the radio continued to crackle.

And above him,

the woman's mouth began to open slowly.

Even after it stretched to the limits of a normal human face, it kept splitting wider. He could even clearly hear a rasping sound like the teeth of a zipper scraping together.

Eventually, her mouth completely divided her face horizontally. Her once closely packed teeth spread apart as it widened, leaving enormous gaps, while her huge, agile tongue dropped rapidly toward him with an even more uncanny dexterity!

Like a gecko about to swallow a tiny mosquito.

"Bzz!"

Kallen felt his entire body enveloped in wet, sticky warmth, and then he was hauled upward.

When someone was grabbed and rapidly lifted, or, more generally, moved at high speed, as on a pirate ship ride or a giant pendulum ride, they would feel a "ticklish" thrill;

and once that sensation intensified beyond a certain point, it could easily disorient them or even make them pass out.

This is a dream. This is a dream...

Kallen repeated it silently. What he needed to do now was "wake up," immediately.

He did not actually understand what had caused this situation, but that did not stop him from dragging the unknown into a field he knew and excelled in so he could deal with it.

It was like solving a problem. Rather than sitting there tearing his hair out, he might as well try plugging in formulas he knew, little by little, even if... he had to force them to fit.

The human mind had always been an extremely mysterious "place."

When ordinary people dreamed, they would naturally wake at a certain point. In exceedingly rare cases, they might realize they were dreaming but be unable to wake up immediately. This was also called "sleep paralysis."

Among another group of enthusiasts, it was called "lucid dreaming." Through training and certain techniques of autosuggestion, people could increase their chances of entering a "lucid dream."

Most people who initially tried it out of interest eventually began avoiding it at all costs. Every time they forced themselves awake, the "despair" they felt, like a drowning person rising from the bottom of an abyss, was enough to drive them mad and leave them terrified afterward.

People whose mental faculties were regularly exercised by their work could, in such circumstances, easily construct an even more realistic "dream," effectively "weaving their own prison."

In more serious cases, the dream could have several layers. The subconscious would begin "working" on its own, using dreams to deceive them, allowing them to "wake up" only to "awaken" into another layer of dreaming, weakening their resistance to the "dream." This was truly deceiving oneself.

If an ordinary person's "sleep paralysis" was merely a matter of rising from an abyss, then this was like a winter swimmer surfacing from a dive, only to discover a thick sheet of ice overhead.

What happened if someone could not wake from a dream... remained undefined. There was no box marked "died in a dream" to check on a death certificate, and those who experienced an "awakening from the great dream" would let the matter drop because it had only been a dream and their bodies had suffered no actual harm.

Wind whipped fiercely past his ears. The tongue was highly elastic, and after wrapping around Kallen, it delivered him into the mouth at tremendous speed.

Next came

an incessant barrage of chewing and sucking sounds.

Each sound, every one of them,

kept pouring into Kallen's ears.

You're being eaten. You're being torn apart. You're being swallowed...

You're dying... you're dying... you're dying... you're... dead!

Kallen understood that if he did not wake up now, his fate would be grim.

Someone who had died once would not necessarily become indifferent to life and death... instead, he might cherish the beauty of being alive even more. Kallen was such a person.

He did not want to die!

In these circumstances, he had to bolster himself with enough conviction and courage to break through the barrier of this "dream," allowing his consciousness to return to his body, to reality.

In the past, because of his work and his own interests, Kallen had encountered similar situations. Though they had not been as uncanny or terrifying as this, he did have a practical method for dealing with them.

Illusion had to be pierced with reality;

weakness had to be reshaped through ideals;

evil had to be dispelled with truth!

When his own strength failed him, he could try borrowing strength.

And so,

Kallen began to sing,

throwing his whole being into a shouted song:

"Arise, you slaves of hunger and cold, arise, all who suffer across the world;

our blood is boiling with passion, we must fight for truth..."

At a time like this, he needed conviction and faith to become an explosive force of will, allowing him to break free of this mental mire. Besides, in his previous life, Kallen had been a staunch materialist.

As he sang,

the sounds of his body being chewed slowly diminished. Kallen felt himself rising. Still singing, he slowly lowered his head.

He saw the woman's teeth, her tongue,

then her mouth,

her entire face,

and finally,

he saw the face between those two legs, seemingly growing there, yet also seeming to bind them together... it was a profoundly unsettling sight.

And at that moment,

the static stopped.

Then,

the male voice that had spoken earlier sounded again, with a hint of confusion:

"Huh... who are you?"

Then,

"Where... is this?"

Kallen raised his head

and began stirring every sensation in his body.

Open your eyes.

Open your eyes.

Open your eyes!

"Bzz!"

Kallen opened his eyes

and saw Aunt Mary crouching before him, looking at him anxiously.

"Huff... huff... huff..."

Seeing Kallen awake, Aunt Mary sank onto the floor, repeatedly patting her chest.

"You scared me to death, scared me to death. Kallen... do you have any idea how frightening it was when you suddenly collapsed and passed out...?"

Her nephew had only recently suffered a serious illness and nearly died.

If something happened to him now, Aunt Mary really would not know how to explain it to her father-in-law. After all, the boy had come down to help her move a body.

Kallen took a deep breath

and forced a very strained smile.

He said,

"I'm all right, Aunt. Maybe I'm still a little weak."

Kallen looked up and saw that Jeff's face, on the stretcher in front of him, had returned to its proper position.

"Meow..."

A cat's cry came from outside his aunt's workroom. The black cat, Paul, poked its head in, seemingly curious about what was happening inside.

Kallen braced both hands against the floor and tried to stand, only to suddenly feel pain in his face. Then a warm surge flowed through his nose, and blood began dripping out.

"I... I patted you a little just now, to wake you up," Aunt Mary explained.

That was... patting?

But what could Kallen say? He could only reply,

"Thank you, Aunt."

"Go upstairs and rest. Ask Mina to clean you up. I don't need you here anymore."

Aunt Mary hardly dared let her nephew stay here any longer.

Kallen nodded. After getting to his feet, he looked again at Jeff, lying on the Stretcher Cart. Instinctively, he felt that his sudden dream had been connected to this corpse. If he left his aunt working here alone, might she encounter danger too?

Just then,

his younger cousin Lunt called from the spiral stairway into the basement:

"Mom, Grandpa's back."

Grandpa was the absolute head of the Immerlis Family. Normally, when he came home, everyone in the house, especially the women, had to greet him, even if... they were working.

Lunt ran over. He saw the corpse on the Stretcher Cart too, but showed little fear.

Once something frightening regularly came and went through your home, you stopped thinking much of it.

"Lunt, take your brother to your sister and have her use the first-aid kit to stop the bleeding," Mary instructed.

She was worried that she might have damaged something inside Kallen's nose when she slapped him earlier. Without treatment, the nosebleed might not stop.

"Oh, okay, Mom. Come on, Kallen."

Kallen tilted his head back, covering his nose with one hand while Lunt held the other and led him out. As they passed the stairway entrance, he sensed someone standing ahead of them.

The man's figure was not especially imposing, but standing there, he gave off a feeling of utter steadiness, as though he could easily handle anything.

Much of Kallen's anxiety immediately eased.

"Grandpa," Lunt called.

"Grandpa," Kallen called too.

In his memories, his grandfather, Dis Immerlis, was a very stern man, but he often showed a tender side toward his "eldest grandson."

"Mm."

Dis nodded and came down without saying anything else or commenting on Kallen's nose.

Lunt seemed somewhat afraid of his grandfather and hurriedly led Kallen upstairs to find his sister on the second floor.

The basement lights were somewhat dim and yellow.

As Dis reached the bottom, he happened to see the black cat, Paul, approaching with elegant steps.

Dis stopped.

The black cat stopped too.

"Nothing to do today?" Dis asked.

"Meow..."

The black cat Paul swished its tail and tilted its head, seemingly unable to understand what Dis meant.

Dis waved a hand, apparently uninterested in continuing a conversation with a cat, and headed straight into his daughter-in-law Mary's workroom.

Mary was sitting there lighting a cigarette, still shaken by what had happened to her nephew. She had not expected her father-in-law to arrive so quickly, and hastily stubbed out the cigarette she had just lit.

A little of the smoke that should have come out through her nostrils escaped, only to be sucked back in and swallowed.

"Cough, cough... cough, cough..."

Mary coughed until her eyes watered.

Dis paid little attention to his daughter-in-law. Instead, his gaze first settled on Jeff. He reached out, pried open Jeff's eyelids, then placed his palm against Jeff's chest.

Then Dis's gaze sharpened slightly.

Immediately afterward,

he took a step back, apparently examining the surroundings in the workroom, and sniffed.

Mary immediately said,

"I won't smoke in the workroom again. Never again..."

Mary truly feared her father-in-law. It was not merely because she and her husband were living under his roof. Her father-in-law himself was simply a man who inspired... an inexplicable fear, even though he was also the kindly priest at Mink Street Church.

Dis waved a hand

and asked,

"What happened just now?"

"I... Kallen suddenly passed out. I only hurt his nose because I was trying to wake him. I..."

"Kallen passed out?"

"Y-yes."

"Then Paul came in, correct?"

"Paul?" Mary froze for a moment before realizing that this was the name of the family's black cat. She had never understood why her father-in-law had given the cat such an ugly, awkward name.

"I think... I..." Mary tried her best to recall. "Kallen woke up on his own. Paul... Paul didn't come in."

Mary had not noticed whether the black cat had been outside the workroom earlier, but she was certain it had not appeared in front of her. At least, it had not come inside.

"No?" Dis seemed to ponder this. "Kallen woke up on his own?"

"Yes, Father."

"Where did he die?"

"This is a Welfare Form, Father. He probably froze to death by the roadside last night."

"A Welfare Form? Call your husband back."

"Mason went to the Flowery Bay Sanatorium..."

"Call him back."

"Yes, understood, Father."

Even though Mary had lived in this house for quite some time, she still felt a sense of pressure whenever she faced her father-in-law. Many daughters-in-law in other families called their in-laws by their names, but she would never dare.

To her, the title "Father" had already taken on something of a religious significance.

His daughter-in-law left the workshop in a fluster,

Dis reached out and closed the door,

Then walked over to the Stretcher Cart and sat in the chair Mary had occupied earlier, looking at Jeff lying before him.

The workshop fell silent, with only the light bulb occasionally flickering slightly as the voltage fluctuated.

Dis reached forward,

Curling his hand loosely before him,

From beneath his feet,

Black shadows began to spread, like wildly growing vines, swiftly covering the tiles and surrounding walls, "wrapping" everything in the room;

Then,

Dis spoke:

"Tell me, how did you die?"

It was an absurd scene. He was actually asking a dead man a question.

But what happened next was even more absurd:

Jeff, who had long since died and lay on the Stretcher Cart, actually began to sit up slowly on his own...