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Xü Beijin pushes Lin Qin away lightly, and tells him, “I should go to sleep now.”
Lin Qin then says, “wait, shouldn’t you tell me something in return first?”
“What?” Xü Beijin acts like he doesn’t know what Lin Qin is going on about.
Lin Qin, slightly miffed, narrows his eyes and says, “I like you… and?”
Xü Beijin then asks as if shocked, “I thought you didn’t want to hear a rejection.”
Lin Qin “…”
Bollocks! Why can there be someone as shameless as XĂź Beijin!
Xü Beijin is laughing. He rubs Lin Qin on the head, and then says, “I’m kidding… Don’t rush it. Be patient.”
“When do I have to wait until, then?”
“Your beloved wants to be a bit more coy about it.”
“Don’t be. I’m already here. I’m all ready to go.”
Xü Beijin “…”
His forehead twitching, Xü Beijin pushes Lin Qin away again, and says, “get your priorities in order.”
Lin Qin is clearly unwilling to go, saying, “so after the most serious thing, we can move onto less serious things, right?”
Xü Beijin answers, “depends on how well you complete the most serious thing.”
Lin Qin nods and says, “alright…” He takes a few steps, but then turns around all of a sudden and asks Xü Beijin, hesitantly, “but… the Tower, does allow us to… do less serious things, right? Does it support the feature?”
Xü Beijin is speechless, and if you look closely, you’ll find a pair of bright red earlobes.
He speaks with as calm a tone as he can, “we can try.”
Lin Qin stares at Xü Beijin for a moment, before saying, “so that means you already acknowledge my feelings, right?”
Xü Beijin simply says angrily, “leave!”
Lin Qin makes a prideful smirk, and waves his hand at Xü Beijin before quickly leaving like he knows what’s coming next. He’s pissed Xü Beijin off enough for the day.
Xü Beijin, both frustrated and amused at the same time, watches Lin Qin’s retreating silhouette, and takes some time to calm down.
His gaze drifts over to the apple juice on his cabinet. Since some time ago, the various brands of different canned drinks he has seems to have all but vanished save for this particular brand of apple juice. God knows where Lin Qin found so many cans of this.
This is a simple aluminium can with the imagery being that of a few apples.
Lin Qin would pull the tab up for him, stick a straw in, and hand it over to XĂź Beijin.
Lin Qin is already quite adept at this gesture that would usually be done for babies… and Xü Beijin has become used to it.
XĂź Beijin blanks out a bit looking at the drink, before closing his eyes and relaxing himself, looking for that familiar but estranged feeling of losing his consciousness, just before one falls asleep.
Maybe he’s been too mentally drained for too long, or maybe Lin Qin’s presence relaxed him a lot. He falls deep asleep in but a few minutes.
At the same time, outside the bookstore, over a dozen Missiontakers simultaneously cast their eyes on the door leading into the bookstore.
They all receive the same mental suggestion in their minds – that is, if they step through his door, they will enter a Nightmare.
This is like a guiding hint from the Server, NE, which exists for all the Nightmares. This time, though, there is an added sense of dread within.
Among them, possibly only Lin Qin is still relaxed.
Finally, Mu Jiashi says, “let’s go, we’re heading in.”
The Missiontakers all follow.
Ding Yi sees them off as Mu Jiashi leads the Missiontakers into the door of the bookstore.
To anyone observing, Ding Yi almost looks enchanted staring at the mundane-looking door to the bookstore. It takes until Jiang Shuangmei calls out to her from behind to wake her up.
Ding Yi snaps back to reality, turns around, then gently says, “Shuangshuang, let’s go.”
Jiang Shuangmei nods.
They, will also head for their own battlefields.
Mu Jiashi has imagined countless times what he’d see inside Xü Beijin’s Nightmare as he opens his eyes.
Perhaps an endless wave of madmen all rushing for him? Perhaps the terrifying scene of an ongoing Apocalypse? Perhaps, even the moment in time when they entered the Tower?
But all that happens, is that he’s stunned as he opens his eyes.
A grey fog.
A vast, endless expanse of grey fog is rolling gently before his eyes. He is standing inside the fog.
There is nobody else nearby. He is completely alone in the fog. There is nothing, but he swears, he could hear countless, barely perceptible mumblings, slipping into his hearing.
He immediately wonders where his companions may be. Where are they? If they are separated in some place like this, can they even meet back up?
Yet, the next moment, Mu Jiashi’s brain blanks out – what fills his brain in turn, is the essence of this grey fog. An emptiness. A calmness. A silence. A void.
He thinks he has forgotten a lot of things, but in return, he gained an understanding. An understanding of what this place is.
He should be shocked by this new understanding, but all he could muster, is an absurd calmness and apathy.
This is the landfill of the Tower.
A landfill not for the traditional forms of household garbage, but for, Nightmares, and those who succumbed.
There are two types here – a Collapsed Nightmare, and succumbed Missiontakers, representing either a Nightmare owner who has lost their sense of self, or a Missiontaker who has lost their sense of self.
Ultimately, they’re the same. Humans whose wills have succumbed and gone insane. They cause the Nightmare or themselves to Collapse.
When a Nightmare owner goes mad, the Nightmare Collapses. The corresponding Tower resident is never seen again; as for when a Missiontakers goes mad…
It’s difficult to say what effects they might cause on a Nightmare in progress, but one common feature is that they would all disappear from the Nightmare.
No one in the Tower knows where they’re gone, but they do know that, sometimes, Tower residents would inexplicably disappear from the Tower; and sometimes, so will Missiontakers.
They coined this phenomenon ‘succumbing to Collapsed Nightmares.’
But in reality, it isn’t a disappearance. They have simply been dumped to the ‘landfill’ of the Tower──At the grey fog outside of it.
They’re trapped here forever, reliving the repeated Nightmare over and over again. They cannot leave, and become prisoners of the landfill forever.
They have lost their sense of self, and their sense of reason. They will only fall further and further into the abyss through Nightmares.
Never, ever returning to the warm embrace of the sun again.
The same thing has happened to the Missiontakers who dared venture out into the grey fog.
Many years ago, when the Missiontakers were still trying to figure out what happened outside, some elected to walk into the fog to investigate.
Not a single one returned, and so the people had to put their curiosity aside, and rule that the world outside the Tower is hostile to them.
Here, and now, Mu Jiashi has gained an understanding. In fact, the people were not simply swallowed up by the grey fog, but have become its prisoners.
But Missiontakers like Mu Jiashi, who have entered the fog through Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, may bring a wind of change to all of this – because, they are still rational, and may still have a chance to remember.
The way to do that would be…
Ideas flash through Mu Jiashi’s mind, but before he could figure out a way to remember, a deeper, more disorienting, more depressing feeling rushes through him.
His weak, unprotected brain loses itself in the drowsiness in almost no time.
Mu Jiashi stands there, dazed, blanking out for a long, long time. He has no idea what he was, has been, and is doing.
When his thoughts gather up enough to support conscious thoughts, he looks around with murky eyes, and then, looks down at this hands. He is standing here… What was he doing? Why is he here?
Mu Jiashi tries to think about it, but no answers would come. So he looks up.
There, is a door that is almost entirely obscured by the grey fog.