Chapter 67.5 [An Yanling] Part Three
“Huh?”
I made a strange sound in response to your illogical statement.
I was surprised, and as I was still confused, you suddenly turned your back on me and left.
“Hey! Where are you going!”
“Don’t come find me until I count to one hundred~”
“Ah…”
I blankly reached out my hand, but could only watch you leave… In this subconscious world, it would be too easy for me to find you, but you don’t know that.
“There’s no helping it…”
You actually want me to find you myself; you really are a ‘willful’ guy.
But when I think about it carefully, it’s normal for you to act this way. After all, having come this far, you’ve lost all your memories, not even remembering who you are. What you say and do is all instinct.
Originally, finding you here would have been an incredibly simple matter for me, but this time, I suddenly don’t want to rely on that ability to find you.
Count to one hundred…
Perhaps because of the long centuries, even I have become a little different.
I closed my eyes and began to count.
“One, two, three, four…”
I counted slowly like this, and when I reached one hundred, you had already gone God knows where.
Hide-and-seek… that’s what you said. Then the game has already begun.
Where can I find you?
Although the range you can cover within one hundred counts is very limited, in this world, you can go anywhere.
If I were to say it, this world is endless. After all, it’s my dream here, constantly changing through unconscious shifts.
So, a carpet search to comb through every place is not an option, because it’s impossible to determine where you’ve been and where you haven’t.
Therefore, you can’t think with ordinary logic.
In the end, logic is reversed in this world. It’s possible for causes and effects to be swapped.
In other words, this is a completely chaotic world where anything can happen, and common sense cannot be applied uniformly.
It’s worlds apart from the world that person built.
Although both are mental worlds, my dream is chaotic, disordered, and cannot be maintained for long. The world she built, on the other hand, is almost indistinguishable from the real world, with a vast order established, and replicated minds with no significant difference from their main bodies.
So here, you can see all the joys and sorrows, love and hate, birth and death of humans.
This is something even I cannot do…
Thus, in my dream, besides bizarre scenery, there are no living beings. Creating characters like NPCs who speak fixed lines and act according to a script is possible, but it is meaningless.
And you, too, were born from that world.
So you shouldn’t have come here.
I will find you and send you back.
If normal logic cannot be used for thought and deduction, then go by feeling alone, searching by intuition. It may sound unreliable, but it’s actually the best way.
I successfully walked out of the mirror maze and chose to go up among the stairs going up and down.
Normally, if one were to hide, they would certainly not choose the upper path, because no matter how you think about it, there’s only a dead end above. Going up can only lead to being caught.
Anyone with even a little logical thinking wouldn’t choose to go up.
But if it were you, if it were me… we would make that choice.
Because although you are not my subconscious, you are very similar to me…
No, I’m seeing you as another possibility of myself.
What would it be like if I weren’t God? If I were just an ordinary human?
You might be the most truthful answer.
Because from birth, I have soared in the sky, illuminating the earth, so I instinctively move upwards.
Only idiots and smoke, and the sun, like high places.
Although we are no longer the sun, it seems that our foolish nature still remains… Haha, right, “foolish” is actually a compliment.
Upward, upward, constantly upward. This staircase seems to loop infinitely without end. Even if you see a door, it’s still stairs after the door.
You can’t see the next room, and there are no windows to confirm the current height.
But none of that matters, because I see your back.
You’re still walking upwards, and I speak to you from behind you, who are silent.
“Stop. There’s nothing ahead.”
You should know too that there will never be a moment when you reach the top.
Because this is a dream I created, a dream that sealed myself in a mirror for hundreds of years, constantly building.
“Hey, please, at least listen to me and face your inner self.”
Isn’t your purpose for coming here to find an exit?
Don’t you want others to remember you again?
Don’t you want to see your father again?
If you don’t leave here, people outside will never know where you are.
They won’t know you’re missing, they’ll even completely forget your existence, and finally, you’ll disappear because your existence cannot be proven…
Even though you finally got a place to belong, you could finally
“I want to help you, to free you from this nightmare!”
These are sincere words from the bottom of my heart.
Yet, you offer no reply.
If only you would turn to look at me… Why are you so persistent in going up? It’s utterly meaningless…
I felt powerless and a little annoyed, flames dancing and coiling around my fingertips.
“Enough! Stop this nonsense! I’m going to throw you out!”
I reached out my trembling hand to grab your shoulder.
But it passed right through.
“…Huh?”
I couldn’t touch you.
How is this possible?
You’ve already entered my dream.
And in my dream, you can’t touch the master of the dream, me, myself? How could this happen…
You and I are like being in two different worlds, unable to establish any connection… So why are you in my dream?
No… that’s not right. Why did I assume ‘you can definitely see me’?
In the end, it’s I who cannot prove my own existence…
In the mirror maze, the mirrors also couldn’t reflect my appearance. I had no outline, like a transparent person, thin and faint.
So until just now, I was following you like a ghost.
I can’t remember how long ago it was.
It seems like a very distant past, a stretch of extremely long time, or like a fleeting dream.
I’ve been dreaming, a dream I don’t want to wake from. And in that dream, I became you.
But… it seems… that’s not the case…
“So… the one dreaming… isn’t just me, but you too…”
“Dad! Hurry up and come here!”
“Okay, okay, I’m coming…”
Ah, I also fantasized, what if the person standing there was me…
What if I were you, how good would that be…
But… but…
“…Huh…”
Zhuang Zhou’s dream, the butterfly dreams of Zhuang Zhou.
Saito Kibicho, is this the answer you gave me…
Finally, you stopped, not because of me, but because the stairs reached their end.
You still ignored me, but I knew you were waiting for me.
I felt my heart clench, and spoke to you with a hoarse voice.
“I found you… An Yanling.”
This sentence was like a magical spell. The moment it was spoken, I could finally touch you, and I became substantial.
You finally turned around, smiling happily, and hugged me.
“Yes! You found me!”
You slowly disappeared, leaving me alone…
If no one finds me, I can’t get out of here either.
At the end of the stairs, there was another door, but I didn’t open it.
Instead, I carved words onto the wall with flames.
‘If anyone still remembers me, I hope you will come in holding hands, otherwise this staircase will loop infinitely.’
I will fulfill your wish…
I hope someone remembers you.
