Tang Ye had seemingly beco a vegetable in an instant; and not just because he had blinded himself by covering his entire field of view. After darkness totally filled his vision, all his senses disappeared at that mont—he couldn’t sll the air around him, couldn’t hear the sounds, couldn’t feel his body, his limbs, nor the flesh and blood molecules of his body that he could normally move at will. He could no longer feel the existence of another self!
It was like yesterday... no, it should be the day before yesterday, like that night at the zoo. After the darkness shrouded everything he could see, soon after, he saw a speck of light which quickly stretched into a line, then widened...
The lost sense of touch returned; the first thing Tang Ye heard was the noisy blare of horns, sounding like thousands of cars stuck on the road, with drivers incessantly honking at the cars in front to move.
Tang Ye, extrely sensitive to sound, was quickly awakened, and then he saw the soft light streaming in from outside the window, and then the hotel room’s ceiling.
"Huh?"
He stood up from the bed and glanced towards the windowsill, which was covered by curtains. Both windows seed to be closed, but that did nothing to block the sound of car horns outside.
Tang Ye was sowhat confused, as if there was sothing he hadn’t done? But he couldn’t rember. After sitting on the bed thinking for a while, he gave up, picked up the mobile phone he had brought with him from the nightstand—the screen was not lit, and in the upper right corner, he could see a piece of flesh he had put down yesterday, faintly rembering that it was done to prevent the phone from turning off and not being able to be turned on again.
The honking outside continued, seemingly penetrating all barriers, leaving Tang Ye with this resounding noise by his ears, irritably glancing at the windowsill, his brows suddenly furrowed.
Sowhere seed off..?
Putting the brought-along phone on the table, Tang Ye took out his own phone to check, and it was just past eight o’clock in the morning. Yesterday, he woke up earlier than today; initially, he thought it was the rush-hour traffic with so many cars continuously honking outside and hurried for ti. But thinking about it, there didn’t seem to be such a situation yesterday?
Placing the phone aside, Tang Ye, sitting on the edge of the bed, fell silent as if pondering sothing. Last night’s mories slowly surfaced.
He had gone out after the curfew with the purpose of seeing what would happen to those shadow graffiti after the curfew. But not long after he went out, without finding anything unusual, he returned to the hotel room, went to bed, and slept until he woke up just now.
"Did I do sothing like that yesterday?"
Muttering to himself, suddenly, Tang Ye rembered a na—Lu Xiaojie!
In this place, violating the prescribed behavior seed to be a bad choice; he didn’t know whether Lu Xiaojie had ever explained what would happen if you violated the regulations. Maybe she did, or maybe not, he couldn’t recall, but from what he felt, breaking the rules seed to co with a heavy price.
"Price..."
The word escaped Tang Ye’s lips as another mory started to erge in his mind. Last night, after the curfew began, he went out. But unlike his original mory, he didn’t co back, but instead encountered Lu Xiaojie, and they went through so things at the recycling station.
This mory had beco extrely vague for Tang Ye, filled with a sense of unreality, as if he should be asking more questions if he weren’t in such a muddled, dream-like state. Questions like why Lu Xiaojie here always retains her mory and doesn’t beco an ordinary person? If one always abides by the prescribed behavior, can one maintain the status quo indefinitely? Is there a secret in those paintings in the hallway, under the recycling station? What exactly are those recycling ssengers? One second they get beaten up, the next they’re fine as if nothing happened?
Is this a ti loop?
Tang Ye also observed the ordinary people here, and the molecules that composed their bodies were no different from those of people outside.
According to Lu Xiaojie, dying after breaking the regulations, in reality, ant that the person would go to a deeper "world" to continue living their life without realizing that they had "died" once before. So, if Tang Ye woke up now—did that an he had "died" once?
And now, is he in this deeper "world"?
Then, compared to the first day he entered this place, wasn’t he on the second day no longer the original living self? But whether it was the first or the second day, there was no change in the mass of the ordinary people. By Tang Ye’s logic, to Dairya, these ordinary people seem to have lost their value, rely left as waste with only a bit of inorganic matter after being drained of their essence.
In Lu Xiaojie’s explanation, she claid that she was only trying to make Dairya, this hungry ghost, eat less in its "last al," but what’s the significance of stealing away these ordinary people, who have beco waste? Her work seed to have no difference from those recycling ssengers—if to point out a difference, one side might be on the governnt’s payroll, and the other a neglected self-employed individual.
In summary, these are just side issues, but the most puzzling part was that in so of the conversations with Lu Xiaojie, intentionally or not, it was implied that when a certain being dies, although they will enter that so-called deeper world, at the place of death, a shadow graffiti will appear. Each shadow graffiti represents one of Tang Ye’s kind. In that case, doesn’t that an Dairya is like a zombie hive with the ability to spawn zombies?
Of course, whether these Dairya-produced zombies are real or not, they further prove that all of Lu Xiaojie’s efforts are aningless! Whether real or fake, if the forr is the case, it ans you have not only to deal with humans here but also the zombies, requiring twice the effort! And if it’s the latter, then doing nothing is better than pointless busyness.
These are questions that Tang Ye should have asked at the ti, but now after "waking up," he realized how muddled he was back then, just like the haziness one feels while dreaming! Looking back, it felt like that experience and everything he saw at the ti were shrouded in a layer of white fog, the details unclear, bizarre yet unforgettable.
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