In such a place, even a needle falling would sound as loud as breaking glass, let alone footsteps.
In the deathly silent confinent room, Ji Minghuan woke from sleep, lying motionless on the bed, his faint snoring continuing.
He glanced out of the corner of his eye at the slender figure in the darkness.
The ntor’s footsteps were getting closer, the hem of his long coat rustling as it swept across the floor.
This wasn’t the first ti the ntor had suddenly paid a visit; it had happened many tis before.
Like Kong Youling, the ntor was a psychic superpower user.
Perhaps because a person’s Spirit is weakest when they are dreaming, he always wanted to silently enter Ji Minghuan’s Spirit while he was asleep, seeking so kind of answer.
This ti was no different.
The ntor stood with hands behind his back, pausing by the bedside, silently standing in the dark, a pair of slender eyes behind reflective lenses, observing Ji Minghuan’s sleeping face.
He reached out, gently placed a hand on Ji Minghuan’s side of the head, and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the ntor saw an old attic. The bookshelves beside him were teetering, surrounded on all sides by piles of yellowing books, the floor creaking as if it might collapse at any mont.
It was a moonlit night, and outside the window hung a full moon high in the sky.
He understood that everyone’s Spirit is divided into three layers, and their unconscious "Id" is hidden in the third layer. If he could find their "Id," the ntor could ask for all their secrets.
This empty attic was the outermost layer of Ji Minghuan’s Spirit.
The ntor had been here several tis and knew the attic door was locked, so he moved through the attic, stepping on old bookshelves and dusty piles of old books, jumping to the attic skylight, and climbed up by pushing against the eaves.
But as he looked up, it was not the sky nor the high reaches of the Welfare Institute that t his eyes, but a quiet dormitory building.
Each dormitory door was closed, with masks hanging on them. So masks read "Indifferent," others "Passionate," and so "Mischievous."
He walked down the empty corridor, peering through the hole of a door marked "Indifferent Mask," seeing a child with lifeless eyes inside playing a puzzle ga alone, their gaze empty as if an abyss.
The ntor checked the handles of these doors one by one, the clicking sound spreading in the deathly silent corridor.
Every door was tightly shut, and inside each lived a similar child, distinguished by different expressions on their faces: aloof, exuberant, mischievous, irritable...
Soon, the ntor finally found an unlocked door in the corridor.
He turned the handle and pushed the door open, and the world before him transford once again.
This ti, what greeted the ntor was a warm little room, empty inside, with a photo fra of a young couple by the TV, and a warm fire burning in the fireplace, everything shrouded in a bright glow.
The wood crackled as it was consud by the flas.
The ntor followed the rembered path to the second floor of the house, finding a room almost filled with toys and snacks. Pages of paper were scattered all over the floor, each bearing the word "Liar" scrawled in red crayon.
Outside, the wind howled and thunder roared.
He walked with hands clasped behind his back, stepping over the half-torn snack packaging, pushing aside the toy train tracks with his foot, then arrived at a corner of the room, stopping in front of a wardrobe, raised a hand, and gently knocked on its surface.
Inside was quiet for a mont, then ca a voice: "Co in."
The ntor smiled, gently opening the wardrobe.
He looked down to find a boy in white pajamas hiding inside, curled up, arms wrapped tightly around knees and shoulders.
"Hey, little guy... What are you doing hiding here?" the ntor bent down, bringing his face closer to ask.
The boy whispered, "Mom and Dad said... I should hide in the wardrobe and not co out until they co back."
He looked up, eting the ntor’s eyes with a tender face, appearing about four or five years old. The boy had wrapped his body in tissues from the wardrobe over and over, like a white cocoon.
If nothing unexpected, this was the "Id" within Ji Minghuan’s Spirit.
The "Id" would not hide anything from you. In previous experints, the ntor had extracted desired information from the mouths of many criminals’ "Id."
But sohow, when it ca to Ji Minghuan, he always returned empty-handed.
"I want to show you a picture," the ntor suddenly said.
"Okay."
"Do you recognize the person in the picture?" the ntor took a photo from his sleeve, it showed a figure encased in a Pitch Black Restraint forming a giant Black Cocoon.
It hung upside down beneath a billboard, illuminated by the police lights on a patrol car.
The boy in the wardrobe shook his head, "I don’t recognize them."
The ntor was silent for a while, then softly said, "I can take you out. Do you want to co out of the wardrobe?"
"I don’t want to."
The ntor tried to pull his hand, but the "chains" made of countless white tissues forcefully pulled the boy back, firmly confining him inside the wardrobe.
"Alright then..." The ntor thought for a mont, then said, "Have you ever considered that your mom and dad might not co back?"
"They will co back!" The boy buried his head in his knees and shouted loudly.
"What if they don’t co back?"
"They... they promised ."
"They’re lying to you."
The boy silently looked up, his gaze resentful as he stared at him, like a fierce young wolf.
Soon, he closed the wardrobe again.
"Are you interested in superpowers?" The ntor thought for a mont and asked outside the wardrobe.
"I don’t know about superpowers... I just want mom and dad to co back." A voice ca from inside the wardrobe, carrying a sob.
"Have you ever experienced anything strange? Like suddenly discovering you have superpowers." The ntor paused, "As long as you get superpowers, you can bring mom and dad back, no need to wait for them any longer."
"Really?" The boy asked softly, gently pushing open the wardrobe, "As long as I get superpowers, can I bring them back?"
The ntor was taken aback for a mont: "Yes, then you..."
Tears welled up in the boy’s eyes as he softly asked, "But I... I’m just an ordinary person. If you have superpowers, can you help bring them back?"
His expression was like a little dog soaked in rain. The ntor was silent for a long ti, then reached out to ruffle his hair, stood up, and slowly walked towards the outside of the room.
Stopping outside the door, he glanced back at the boy hiding in the wardrobe. The door of the wardrobe quietly closed again.
The rain outside grew heavier, as if trying to drown the whole world.
The ti to enter another’s ntal world is limited, if one stays too long, their spirit might get contaminated or assimilated, eventually losing themselves.
If he doesn’t leave now, it will be too late... Amidst the sound of rain, the ntor’s figure gradually vanished from sight.
This ti, he returned without success once again.
After the ntor’s figure left, the boy in the wardrobe suddenly pushed open the door and walked out.
From beneath his feet, the white rolls of paper spread out like tides, as if a group of venomous snakes with tangible life, devouring the entire world in an instant.
Like scratching off the outer covering layer of a lottery ticket, a real world was revealed in front of his eyes.
Ji Minghuan stood silently, his body still in the form of a four-year-old.
This is a library and also the deepest part of his ntal world. Every book stored here is closely tied to his life.
After awakening to his superpower, each ti a ga character’s mory is loaded, he finds the library seems to have "received new stock" from the outside.
Empty bookshelves suddenly have a batch of books and photo albums added to them.
Just by opening a book, one can read every thought and idea that character had up till now; by reading the photo albums, one can see every big and small event that character has experienced so far.
At this mont, as he looked up, he could see two figures hanging from the ceiling of the library.
The first figure wore a black tailcoat and a red-black mask;
The second figure wore a white hooded sweatshirt, with a handso face.
A circle of rope was tied around each of their necks, their heads drooping down, and their bodies motionless in mid-air.
They should have been dead for so ti.
After glancing at the "Black Cocoon" hanging from the ceiling, then at the "Chess Player," Ji Minghuan felt much more at ease.
He wondered how the ntor would feel if he had entered his true ntal world and seen this scene.
"Really worry about when these two might co back to life..."
Ji Minghuan whispered to himself, moving to sit in the last row of the library. A figure of a white-haired girl sat beside him, accompanying him as they watched the sunset outside the window.
The reason he could conceal his ntal world from being discovered by the ntor as his true "self" began on the day Kong Youling awakened her superpower.
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