It's been a week since the "Faceling" incident.

*

I had a wonderful dream.

In the dream, I was in a pure dark space, and although there was no light, I could see my body uncandidly, and at the same time, my feet did step on the fairly flat ground, but the ground seemed to be painted as dark as this space. As far as the eye can see, the dark space stretches infinitely in all directions, and the so-called horizon cannot be seen, and the dark space and the dark ground seem to be skillfully integrated.

The strange thing is that there is a door five meters away on my right, and it is only placed here with the panel, and it is not connected to any building.

The door panel is wooden, dark brown, with a silver-gray L-shaped doorknob, which seems to be the main entrance of a house that can be seen everywhere.

I recognize this panel, but I wonder why it's here, because it shouldn't exist anywhere in this world. But when I think that this is a dream, my heart is relieved.

Yes, I know I'm dreaming, it's a so-called "lucid dream".

Then I pushed the door and entered.

Behind the door is no longer a dark space, but a living room with a TV and a sofa, and a child sitting on the sofa watching a TV program, it is me when I was a child - not from this life, but from a previous life. Although it is also "me", let's call it "he" for the sake of convenience. His appearance is not worth mentioning, nothing more than short black hair, black eyes, and childish face, which is barely a little cute, but because of his straight face, it is not cute.

The TV is playing an anime, a bloody battle theme, and the protagonist and his party try to take risks in order to stop a villain group that is trying to destroy the world with a "bomb to blow up the earth". It's also an anime I watched in my previous life, but I didn't watch much at the time, so I didn't watch it anymore, and I don't know if it's a good ending or a bad ending.

I sat down next to the child and asked, "Do you like to watch?" ”

"Hmm." He replied in a childish voice.

"Want to be a hero too?"

"Yes."

"Like in this anime?"

"Nope."

"Why?"

The anime is playing as the protagonist yells at the villain who smiles confidently, and he points to the scene and says, "Looks like a fool." ”

I looked at it and nodded in agreement, "Indeed." ”

"I hate bad people, and when I see someone doing bad things, I want to take them down." "But in many stories, the heroes are always angry, sometimes weeping, sometimes shaking; And the villains are always confident, smiling, and unwavering in pushing forward with their plans. Don't you think such a hero is very unusual? ”

"It's not true."

"So although I want to be a hero, I don't want to be this kind of fool hero." "It's okay not to laugh, but it's to be confident and determined," he said. You can't be emotional, you have to do what you can. ”

"Insightful."

"Sometimes you have to be cruel to yourself, but you also have to learn to accept sacrifice."

"That's right."

"When the villain kidnaps the hostage, he can bomb and kill the villain with the hostage, and letting the villain go will only add more bloodshed."

"I beg to differ."

Hearing this, he suddenly turned his head to glare at me and shouted, "Fool! ”

Then he quickly jumped off the couch and slumped through the previous door.

I also walked out, but this time I didn't go back to the dark space just now, but came to a classroom, which was the classroom of my previous junior high school, where the students were sitting in their seats neatly, and the teacher was teaching from the podium.

And he became the appearance of a junior high school student, sitting in the last row, with his head down, as if taking notes.

I came behind him, lowered my head, and when I looked at it, I was dumbfounded, it turned out that he was not taking notes at all, he was writing a personal novel. That's right, when I was in junior high school, I was not a person who liked to listen to lectures, but I was addicted to all kinds of stories, and I immediately came up with the idea of writing my own novel, but after I wrote it, I couldn't find a place to submit it, so I had to write it for myself.

He even draws illustrations on one page of the novel, which is the image of the protagonist. When I think of my previous life, when I was in junior high school, I wrote the protagonist as a projection of myself in the novel, so this is also the image of myself in fantasy.

The illustration depicts a man in a black cloak, a short-beaked beak mask, and a rusty machete in his right hand, like a strange doctor who has emerged from a plague-ridden medieval painting, or a serial murderer in a fancy costume, who is about to kill someone, or has already killed someone, and is on his way back.

As I watched, I thought, "Yes, the reason why I chose the short-beaked beak mask a few years ago was because I had fantasized about myself in my previous life." It is true that he once wore a black cloak because of this, but he was too shy to hide the black cloak. Where are they hidden?

"Didn't you say you wanted to be a hero?" I asked, "This is not a hero." ”

"If you dress up like this, the bad guys will be scared when they see it." He replied, "So it's better that way." ”

"It's your own liking." I say.

He immediately blushed and bowed his head. I continued, "And you can't be a hero just by writing novels and drawing. ”

"Study hard, work hard, is it okay?" He retorted.

"You can't count on supernatural powers." I say.

He lowered his head again, his voice low, "But, what if it really exists?" ”

As soon as the words fell, the bell rang, the teacher turned around and walked out of the classroom, and the students also left their seats, and he also stood up with his head down and walked out of the classroom.

I followed out of the classroom, but instead of coming to the hallway, I came to another space, the editorial office of the magazine where I used to work, and there were some cubicles in the multi-person office area. And he became a young man, tired of rushing to the manuscript. Because the editorial department does not receive many qualified manuscripts, it is often necessary for the editors to write the manuscripts in person.

I came to him and asked, "Have you found the supernatural powers?" ”

"Where there are any supernatural powers, it's all a lie." He said gloomily, but after a long time, he finally added, "But it would be nice if there were." ”

"I'm so old, but I still speak the same words as middle school students."

"I'm only twenty-four years old, and I'm not married yet, so I'm old. Besides, let alone twenty-four years old, even if he is forty-two years old, a man's heart can continue to take in the teenager. ”

"Just unwilling to be ordinary?"

"Of course." "Because I know that the world is actually wonderful, and some people take it for granted that they live in a wonderful world." I also know that these people are actually very few ......."

He glanced back at me, "But why can't it be me?" ”

With that, he stood up and walked out of the office area.

I went out again, this time to an underground parking lot, and saw him again, but not more maturely, he was still twenty-four, shot several times, and fell to the ground. In the distance, a gang of criminals was scrambling to evacuate, and sirens were heard outside the parking lot. This is the last scene of my previous life, when I witnessed the transaction scene of the criminal gang, but instead of running away, I called the police, and then I didn't withdraw in time, but thought that I might be able to do something, and the end was naturally tragic.

I came to his dying side, crouched down and said, "Didn't you say that you should 'do what you can'?" ”

He rolled his eyes with difficulty, and his gaze fell on mine, but the focus seemed to be far away. He asked, "Am I going to die?" ”

"Will die."

"When a person dies, is there an afterlife?"

"I don't know." I said, "But maybe you can go to a new world." ”

"A New World...... There are those, like in the story...... Incredible power? ”

"Yes."

"Can I have that too?"

"No, you can't."

"That's not fair!" He said unwillingly, followed by a series of coughs, and there were more blood stains like plum blossoms on the ground.

"The world is just not fair." As I spoke, I looked at him and added, "But I can still try." ”

"Try to ......," he let out a complicated smile, then paused, unable to speak again.

The police rushed into the underground parking lot and exchanged gunfire with the criminals. Soon, the criminals were defeated. Then the policemen cleaned up the battlefield, and one more person came out of it, came to my body, took off his helmet, and revealed Xu Shengxing's face in his twenties.

This should have been just a dream fiction, because I didn't see the scene of the police and the criminals exchanging fire before I died, and it was even more impossible to see the policeman who looked like Xu Shengxing. I really don't know, if a psychology professor sees this kind of dream, what interpretation will he make?

I thought as I watched him crouch down, the man who looked like a young Xu Shengxing with a sighing expression, and then reached out and closed his eyes for my dead corpse.

As the corpse's eyes were closed, the surrounding scene faded like washed ink, returning to its original dark space.

*

But I haven't woken up yet.

I had to walk in the dark space to see where there was a way out. However, as I walked, I came to a bar that played jazz music, and I couldn't tell the middle link from "dark space" to "jazz bar". But since it's a dream, I can accept it. I looked around, but instead of seeing "me", I found another familiar figure in front of the bar.

It was my ex-partner, and I remembered that it was a bar I had been to a few times before.

I sat down on his right, his chin propped up, facing to the left, and he couldn't see his face. But the words were told to me, and he said happily: "This time it was really a big deal!" I didn't expect you to be able to kill even a first-level psionic. ”

Hearing this, my memories also came flooding out, and it seemed that this was another dream scene based on my memories. So he replied, as before, "It's a small thing." ”

"I'm in charge of information support, and you're in charge of attacking head-on, don't you think we're a good match made in heaven?" He laughed.

"Sort of."

"But I'm much worse than you, I can't fight, and unlike you, I'm immune to even psychic attacks." He sighed, as if thinking of something again, and said, "What do you say, if one day we fall to the point where we have to kill each other? ”

"For example?"

He thought for a moment, "Let's say, one of us has been manipulated in the mind......"

"It's just that you're being manipulated." I say.

"Okay, let's say that one of our family members has been kidnapped, and the people behind it have created a situation where we will kill your family unless we kill each other, and you can't seem to find a good way to resolve the situation."

"Then kill each other."

"So decisive?" He asked, surprised.

"You should be so decisive, you can't be interrupted, you can't worry about your stomach. Chop off the opponent's head when you find an opportunity. I said, "Then the survivors avenge the dead." ”

"Regardless of the circumstances in which you killed me, if I killed you, you would not hate me?" He asked incredulously.

"Sometimes you have to be cruel to yourself." I said, "Learn to accept sacrifice, too." ”

He drank thoughtfully.

At this moment, another voice interjected from the side, "What a hard-hearted man!" ”

Looking back, the person who interjected was a girl with black hair and a delicate face, leaning against the door of the jazz bar, smiling and greeting, "Hello, Faceling." ”

"Hello, Faceling." I spoke, observing the character in the dream. She used to be "Adam" and also "Chloe. DiCaprio". And she deserves the original meaning of the nickname "Faceling" more than I do. I wanted to kill her, but I also had a sporadic respect for her, so I named her after my nickname, who did not want to give her name.

In retrospect, this seems to be an act of arrogance. If I were someone else, and I saw me doing this, I might also think to myself, "Wouldn't this person be ashamed of himself for being so self-righteous?"

"Don't call me a 'Faceling.'" She said, "That's your nickname, and I don't mean to take it for myself shamelessly." But I do really like the nickname, so if I could make a comeback, I'd try to kill you and take it with my own hands. ”

"You speak as if you're not dead."

"But you didn't find my body, did you?" She smiled.

As she said.

At that time, she seemed to have a large number of phantoms, and she had a chance to win, but in fact, she thought highly of me. The moment he saw me catch up, he realized that he would not be able to escape my attack, so he first activated the "Living Dead Sigil", and then used dialogue to win the time for the sigil to take effect. Therefore, after she was struck by me, she did not die immediately, but switched places with the phantom at the door in her state as a living dead, opened the door, and escaped.

Once I left the psionic room, I couldn't catch up with her, and I couldn't find her afterwards, and it was easy for her to hide wherever she wanted with the evidence of division.

However, this does not mean that she can save her life.

The Living Dead Sigil could not heal her mortal wounds, at most prolonging her life by ten minutes. Ten minutes later, she was still dead. And the reason why I couldn't find her body was simply because she hid herself so deeply, as if she knew that her cat was about to run away and die alone in a place where no one could see her. The odds of her death are the absolute upper hand.

"However, as long as you can't find my body, you can't be completely reassured." She spoke my mind.

I put the question aside and asked, "What should I call you if you're not called Faceling?" ”

"How about calling it the 'Faceless Shadow'?" She said, "If you can't become a 'person', you have to be a 'shadow'." ”

"Well, Faceless Shadow." I said, "You can't hear the real thing, but I'm going to say it to you, just as if I was speaking to myself—"

Looking at her, I continued, "If you're still alive, you'd better not let me know or you'll die." ”

"Just because I killed Chloe. DiCaprio, and until then, gave the forbidden knowledge to Inoue Renta, allowing him to conduct a lot of human experiments? She asked rhetorically.

"Yes." I said, "You can understand that I have a hero complex, and I can put myself on the moral high ground by killing scum like you, in order to get some kind of spiritual pleasure." ”

"I really can't blame you when you describe yourself like that." She looked at me dumbfounded, and then said, "But you have to be mentally prepared too. You actually did that kind of thing to me at the last minute, and I will never let you go. ”

Suddenly, the whole scene vibrate.

She looked up and smiled at me, "It's time to wake up, goodbye." ”

With that, she turned around and gestured away. I also felt that my five senses were rapidly withdrawing from this scene, as if this place was gradually turning from a real place to a fantasy without support, and everything was becoming thin.

At the end, I asked her a question.

"Just unwilling to be ordinary?"

Faceless Shadow looked back, she glanced at me, then nodded and smiled, "Of course." ”

*

When I woke up, I heard the ringing of my work phone.

I rolled over in bed, took my phone, and glanced at the caller ID, which was an unfamiliar number.

When I got through, I asked, "Who is it?" ”

"It's me." Hasegawa, or rather, the voice of Naoto Inoue, came.