When I woke up in a siren dream, the man was lying on his side. The air was cold and slightly damp, and I was lying on the hard, cold grass, my cheeks pressed against something warm and soft, and I felt like someone was slowly caressing my hair. When he looked up, he met the siren's immature face and quiet gaze.

I was still on her lap, just like I had done the last time I woke up from this dream. A false impression arose that this was the reality, and that the reality was the dream I had as I pillowed on her lap.

I stood up, surrounded by the dark mountain forest, and the full silver moon hanging high in the night.

The siren stood up as well, and she slowly smoothed the folds of her skirt before reporting back to me on the progress of extracting the spirit shards.

She is able to devour the spirit fragments of those killed by the Siren's Blade, and extract memories from them. The fresher the fragment of the spirit, the faster and more complete it will be extracted; Otherwise, it is slower and more incomplete. The memories of the intermediary have been extracted, and the memories of the old bones still take a little time, but they will be able to be resolved before I wake up.

"Let's take a look at the memories of the middleman first." I say.

The siren nodded, and gestured towards the grass.

I saw an ethereal figure like a ghost rising up in the grass, and it was the middleman. He stood still without saying a word, as if he had become a puppet that would not move without orders.

"It's a memory map of the middleman." "If you want to know anything from him, ask him directly, and he will answer all your questions truthfully; It is also possible to read his memory itself directly to get more information. ”

"What exactly is reading memory itself?"

"Simply put, you'll experience his life like a dream."

"Sounds like I should do it even more." I say.

It's good that the intermediary will answer all my questions truthfully, but on the other hand, I have to generate questions before I can get answers from them.

And if I'm going to have a problem, I have to pay attention to the suspicion first.

In other words, if there are some doubts objectively, but I am not able to detect them subjectively, then I may miss some important information.

"Questioning" is also an advanced brain game, and my brain power is only at an ordinary level, so let's take a stupid approach first.

Just in case, I started by asking, "Are there any side effects of reading memory itself?" For example...... His memories are going to erode my personality, or something? ”

"Not really. Admittedly, this practice by other warlocks is likely to result in the erosion you mention, but I have already processed this memory here and will escort you as you read it. You don't even have a 1 percent chance of being amnesiatric. She said, "But...... I don't really recommend that. ”

"Why?" I asked.

"You may become in a bad mood." "If you watch a bad movie in the cinema, you're going to be full of complaints when you leave the table," she said. This is especially true if you look at it from an immersive perspective. ”

"What else?" I asked, "Aren't there any other risks?" ”

"Nope." She shook her head.

"That's fine." I said, "Rather than missing an important clue, let's do it this way." As for mood problems, it's good to overcome them with willpower. ”

At this point, I asked, "By the way, you said to experience his life...... It won't be the whole life from birth to death. ”

"When you read his memory, you can first meditate on your own questions in your mind." "That way, you'll only read the memories that are relevant to the question." ”

I nodded and walked over to the middleman, "What am I going to do now?" ”

"Touch his body." The siren said behind me, "You can do anything." ”

"Okay." I silently read the question while holding down the door of the middleman's head.

The question I pondered at the moment was why he wanted Joan so much.

This question always lingered in my mind during the whole process of being an enemy of the middleman, and it was not answered until the end. As a tester, I think this question is just right.

But I may have taken it lightly, but I realized that the question was about his original motive for becoming a psychopathic murderer. And this original motivation has run through most of his life.

He used to live a normal life, why did he become a perverted murderer?

The reason for this was presented in front of me in the form of a dream......

——

(Here's the middleman's perspective)

Since I started a family, I haven't had much time to play, and I'm tired after work every day. Even though I bought a game console and kept it at home, it was hard to find the whole time to relax, but my friend's son came to visit and play more.

The relationship with his wife is also poor, with a cycle of verbal abuse and cold violence; And because I was always working, my daughter was closer to her mother and her attitude towards me became colder. They, especially the former, treated me like an automatic money-making machine. I tried to make a change, but I couldn't stand it and failed several times, and finally gave up. At the end of the day, my wife and I are just a makeshift marriage, and we don't have love for each other. I even have my own crushes, and I can't say how spiritually loyal I am to this marriage.

So when I found out that she was cheating, I was not touched, but in my mind, I vaguely recalled the scene of catching a certain girl who had committed suicide.

It was my unrequited love when I was a student, and I thought it was my first love. Later, I knew that the first love should have the premise of two loves, so I couldn't help but feel ashamed of my confusion, but I still called it my first love in my heart.

The appearance of the first love is quite standard, the family is well-off, and the good upbringing is even vividly expressed in the details of sitting and standing. Her hips occupy only the front half of the chair during class, her back is straight, and she is engrossed in the lecture. The attitude towards her classmates is downright and generous, and her slim posture is as neat and delicate as the books she has carefully wrapped in bookpaper. Whenever I heard her speak to me softly, I blushed and hesitated.

But at the same time, I always feel that she is vaguely lacking in vitality, as if she is holding on to a decent image. It turned out that my idea was not wrong, perhaps because of the unpredictable chemistry of the family's overly strict education and the sensitive and changeable mind of adolescence, and I witnessed her jumping from a height when I was walking down the path from school. Then, I didn't hesitate to catch her.

At that time, the school's girls' uniform was still a black and white mix of tops and long skirts, and she fell in the air like a light butterfly. But no matter how light it seems, it is also a person of dozens of pounds, and if you catch her heroically, you will inevitably be seriously injured. Later, I also saw the news on the Internet that some people who fell from the building accidentally killed passers-by, but at that time I was lucky, I was only knocked unconscious, and when I woke up, I was in the hospital, and I heard that it was an ambulance called by witnesses. After a period of hospitalization, I returned to school intact.

She also fell into a coma, I thought she was in a coma because she was smashed with me, but it was only later that I accidentally learned that she actually regretted it in mid-air, and was so scared that she lost consciousness, so I was very grateful to the person who saved me back then. But that's for another time.

Since I have this afterword, it means that I still haven't said anything about saving her after all. Actually, I had a lot of imagination in the hospital. Whether it's filthy as a urinal or fantasies as beautiful as unrealistic, there's a lot of ...... With this life-saving grace, will I be able to have a relationship with her? However, this illusion was shattered when school resumed next semester. She had a crush during my hospitalization, a senior boy. I saw from afar the happy smile on her face as she talked to the boy, and I could no longer put my lust and fantasy into practice.

Just be an unsung hero, or, when they break up, I'll tell the truth and take advantage of it. It was probably because of this dark thought that I was always close to her, and I didn't dare to really get close.

However, this calculation also fell through, and the two are still inseparable from school to society. Instead, I made friends with the boy by accident, and when I had trouble finding a job, he introduced me to a job. My friend and I often get together for a drink, talk about all kinds of troubles in the workplace, or share all kinds of interesting things in life. But it is not entirely true to say that there is nothing to talk about, and I have never said it to him, and I still have a strong affection for my first love that is difficult to let go.

And he often congratulated me on how crucial his first love was to his moral support. There were times when he couldn't hold on, and it was his first love that brought him back from his discouragement.

Due to the huge difference in family background, the relationship between friends and first love has never gone well, but those difficulties have also disappeared with the first love resolutely cutting off contact with the family.

Years later, we finally got married, had a son, the same age as my daughter, and went on to the same school we attended that year. Although he is a son, his appearance is like his mother, milky white skin, slender figure, wearing a sportswear-style school uniform that now conceals sexual characteristics, and in a trance, he feels that he has seen his first love back then.

Unlike his mother, he didn't study very well and was more interested in games, but his parents wouldn't buy them for him. Once a friend and his first love brought him to visit the house, and he accidentally saw the game console I bought, and he often looked for opportunities to come over after that. The daughter seems to have a crush on him, and is happy to see it, and his wife acquiesces to it; My friend and my first love don't object, because I also tutor my daughter when she is tutoring her homework, which is half a tutor. I benefited even more from it, and when he was present, my wife and I would stop abusing endlessly.

But he came here specifically to play games, and whenever he finished his homework, he had to play a lot. I also played games with him sometimes, probably because of this left a big friend image in his heart, and he also had the courage to play tricks on me frequently, as if to treat me as a toy, and the face similar to my first love made me lose my mind many times. In front of my daughter and wife, he would quickly return to his normal color, and the feeling of sharing a secret was even more wonderful. I would occasionally joke with him that if he changed into a girl's clothes, he would be no different from when his mother was a girl, and I tried to portray him in my mind.

But what exactly was I thinking? Finding traces of first love in a friend's son is an abnormal perverted act no matter how you think about it. However, this also shows how indelible my feelings for my first love are, and every time I get hurt from my wife, and then talk to friends and first love, I will feel from my first love that she has inherited many beautiful qualities since she was a student.

Sometimes when I see a friend and my first love smile sincerely, and when I hear my friend tell me about the countless support that my first love has given him, I will shamelessly feel that it is not my friend who stands next to my first love, but myself. But that fantasy seemed both obscene to me and a betrayal to my friend. In order to hide those dirty and dark thoughts, I always tried to act to them as if I was not losing to them, and I was happily married.

Perhaps what really makes me unable to forget my first love is not her, but the present that is diametrically opposed to her in my heart.

Acting is a performance after all, and my wife's insatiable greed for assets finally made me unbearable, and the conflict between us ushered in an unprecedented outbreak.

After a heated argument and verbal abuse, I slammed the door and asked a friend out for a drink.

My wife also seems to have the idea of finding a "friend" to hang out, and my colleague took a picture of her walking into the hotel holding the arm of a strange man. And when I learned that she was cheating, I was not touched, but in my mind, I ghostly recalled the scene when I once caught a certain girl who committed suicide.

If I had spoken out back then......

That night, my friend and I got drunk. He asked me if I had quarreled with my wife and daughter, and I habitually acted like a happy marriage even when I was drunk. And he was convinced, and through the wine, he told me a past that shocked me to the core.

“…… I know you caught her back then, because I was the witness who called an ambulance for you. He said to me, "When she woke up, I lied to her, saying that I saved her." She said that she also regretted it when she jumped, and she fainted in the air in fright, so she was grateful to the person who saved her. ”

I just felt like the world was spinning," she ...... Know about it? ”

"I confessed to her very quickly after you were discharged from the hospital, and she forgave me and said that she was still willing to be my girlfriend."

"That'...... Why did she ......?"

"I begged her not to tell you. Because I'm afraid she'll end up disappearing from me. "But I knew I had done something wrong, so I took the initiative to make friends with you and try to help you in any way I could." And now that you're happily married, it's all the better, and I'm relieved to confess to you......"

I don't remember much about what happened after that. It was not only alcohol that overwhelmed me, but also rage, and more cloudy feelings that I couldn't distinguish.

I beat him over and over again, and by the time I came to my senses, he was unconscious.

I returned to my house like the walking dead, and my friend's son came to visit me again. When I opened the bedroom door in a frustration, he was playing a game inside. When he saw me return, his lovely face burst into a smile and he stood up to meet me. And the moment I saw him clearly, my confused mind suddenly turned into a blank slate.

He wore the nostalgic black and white dress school uniform that his mother wore when she was a student, and he also wore a shoulder-length wig. The slim figure was as neat and delicate as a book she had carefully wrapped in bookpaper. In a trance, I seemed to go back a long time ago, when I was a teenager.

"What's the matter, last time you said that I must have changed my skirt similar to my mother, I secretly took out her previous school uniform and changed it on." He said with a grin as he approached me.

I unconsciously backed away, staggering out of my bedroom, my back hitting the wall in the hallway. And he pressed closer, bewildered, and approached me. Suddenly, as if he realized something, he tapped his soft lips with his index finger, and then slowly reached over and landed on my cheek. Reflexively, I became red-faced and distracted.

He stared at my reaction as if he had found something funny, and smiled as happily as a goblin addicted to mischief.

And that was the beginning of my life that drove me into a crazy track.

(End of chapter)