Zuo Chengjie looked down at his hands; there was not the slightest change! The tumor masses bulging and drooping from his brow bone down across his face were still right there!
For a split second, an overwhelming surge of disappointment and sadness gathered within him, yet the moment he wanted to call out the name of the person before him, he fell into a daze… This person… who was he again?
“Chengjie! Why did you come out by yourself… Mom’s been looking for you for ages!”
The abruptly appearing female voice interrupted Zuo Chengjie’s recollection, while also pausing Qiu Mian’s steps as he prepared to leave.
Mother Zuo’s eyes were red and swollen, as though she had been crying for a while. She held Zuo Chengjie close, letting her emotions settle for a long time, perhaps fearing that applying too much force might hurt him.
“Mom, where… did you go?”
“Nothing much.” Mother Zuo wiped away a tear and looked at Qiu Mian. “And this is?”
“He’s…”
Zuo Chengjie hesitated for a moment. Clearly, he had just been talking to him moments ago, yet he had forgotten the specific conversational content, leaving behind only some vague impressions.
“He’s… a very kind big brother.”
Qiu Mian: “”
The first time in his life someone called him kind.
He had expected resentment, considering this brief dream-travel hadn’t directly removed the tumors on his body.
Mother Zuo, however, naturally assumed Qiu Mian had been keeping Zuo Chengjie company and chatting while she was away, naturally harboring goodwill toward him: “Handsome young man, thank you so much. Come eat some fruit.”
“No need.”
“I’m truly sorry…”
Mother Zuo lowered her voice, pleading as she requested: “Could I trouble you to stay with him a little longer… M-My emotions are really hard to control right now. Sorry for the trouble!”
Qiu Mian didn’t actually buy into this routine. When he wasn’t in the mood, even a centenarian kneeling and begging would leave him completely unmoved; his stubbornness was formidable. However, a casual glance caught a folded piece of paper sticking out of Mother Zuo’s shirt pocket,
Certificate of Death.
Mother Zuo turned pale with fright, hurriedly signaling him with her eyes not to speak of it.
Clearly, however, Qiu Mian lacked the awareness to catch her cue, and she had no inkling that the person she was desperately trying to keep secrets from was actually the very culprit who had issued that Certificate of Death.
“Fine.”
Pondering for a moment, Qiu Mian ultimately agreed to her request. Mother Zuo gratefully wiped her tears and pushed Zuo Chengjie back into the hospital ward, pretending nothing was amiss.
Qiu Mian followed behind, surveying the ward. It was a rare single room. The overhead main light was on, and even though it was late at night, the curtains remained unpulled. The accompanying caregiver’s gear, however, looked rather shabby; Mother Zuo’s cot featured only a thin, worn blanket, fortunately, it was summer. The bedside table was also quite empty, with a fruit basket occupying the majority of the space. Aside from that, there was a paper box covered with a paper lid.
Mother Zuo tidied up a few scattered items, pulled up a stool for Qiu Mian, and silently fished out her ID card and household register to hide them in her bag. Zuo Chengjie’s attention wasn’t on her; he ingratiatingly rummaged through the fruit basket, his tone carrying a smile.
“Big brother… help yourself, whatever you want, fruit…”
Qiu Mian glanced at it: “No thanks.”
“This is fruit Chengjie’s classmate brought him, all imported fruit, cherries, kiwis, and things like that. The two of us can’t finish it anyway and it goes to waste.” Mother Zuo assumed he was just being polite and kept recommending them.
In reality, Qiu Mian didn’t know how to exchange polite pleasantries; he simply hadn’t seen anything he wanted to eat, given his unique palate heavily devoted to gnawing raw lemons.
He didn’t press the matter, offering an evaluation instead: “Your classmates treat you well.”
“Yeah, yeah, they are, very good.”
Zuo Chengjie nodded happily, his tone gentle: “A year ago, I wasn’t… this severe, I could still go to school. Even though it was only… one semester, they never… forgot about me.”
“At noon, Beibei… came to… see me.” Zuo Chengjie suddenly grew talkative. “She also brought… this silkworm.”
Zuo Chengjie lifted the paper lid, revealing a white silkworm about five centimeters long inside. The silkworm was plump and stout, quietly curled up in the corner, nearing the stage of spinning silk.
“You really like silkworms.”
“Very cute, and also… popular.”
For some reason, Zuo Chengjie felt an urge to pour his heart out while facing this big brother, even though they had only chatted for a little while.
“I want to… become a silkworm.”
He curled up quietly in the wheelchair, gently stroking the larva in his hand. Within his narrow field of vision, only this small paper basket could fit.
“Carefree, without worries, spending a lifetime… without pain, needing only… to spin silk.”
“Its life is very short,” Qiu Mian countered. “And your original wish was far stronger than this.”
Inside the convergent dreamscape, turning into a giant worm to disrupt the city was never Zuo Chengjie’s own inherent desire. Stripped of the consciousness forcibly implanted by outsiders, the wish that existed from beginning to end was solely that colossal, bright Jupiter.
What was the meaning of Jupiter? Qiu Mian hadn’t understood it initially, but seeing Zuo Chengjie’s abnormal appearance and the brightly lit room inside the ward, he seemed to vaguely comprehend.
When the optic nerve was compressed by tumors, leaving the field of vision dark and lightless with only a narrow slit of sight remaining, the child on the verge of blindness had naively fantasized,
A giant lightbulb had appeared in the night sky, larger than the moon, clearer than the sun, hanging brightly overhead. With its illumination, the boundless darkness would surely be chased away.
Thus, within the dream, he had exerted every ounce of strength to chase this ray of light, just like how he exerted every ounce of strength to survive in reality.
Zuo Chengjie possessed an intense desire to live.
Yet he himself hadn’t even realized it.
His mother, however, possessed an unwavering will. Patting his head, she said, “Chengjie, once you’re cured, you’ll still get to experience many things and see many sights. You’ll be much happier than a silkworm, Mom promises!”
Zuo Chengjie didn’t speak, lowering his head in a gloomy slump. Mother Zuo fought back her tears and continued cheering her child on.
Lacking any situational awareness, Qiu Mian abruptly asked, “When did the illness start?”
“…It’s congenital and hereditary. His dad had it too, but it wasn’t serious, just some spots on his face. Chengjie had them when he was little too, and we didn’t have any awareness about it. His dad was actually quite happy back then, saying father and son shared the same birthmark, and at a glance you could tell he was his flesh and blood.”
Mother Zuo gave a light laugh as she said this, unsure whether she was laughing at her own ignorance, the absurdity of the deceased, or perhaps both.
Until close to starting school, I found out that Chengjie’s intellectual development was a bit slower than his peers, and his vision and hearing weren’t great either. That’s when I thought about taking him to the hospital to check, and then… this fibroma was diagnosed. Back then, Chengjie’s appearance hadn’t changed much yet. I went to several hospitals; the doctor at the county hospital recommended conservative treatment and continued observation, but the doctors in the city said the brain tumor had already pressed against his nerves and suggested surgery as early as possible. However, his father refused.
Mother Zuo raised her head and laughed again, this time carrying thick self-deprecation: “We couldn’t possibly call our family wealthy, but teeth could be gritted to save up enough money for a surgery. At worst, we’d just struggle a bit harder these past two years. The result was that I fell for that dead man’s excuse…! Some conservative treatment… He just wanted to save money to gamble with it himself! Because of this delay, we missed the optimal treatment window… It’s only been half a year, just half a year!”
Qiu Mian handed over a tissue, waiting for her emotions to settle. Fortunately, mindful of Zuo Chengjie’s feelings, Mother Zuo merely wept silently for a moment before speaking again: “In March this year, Chengjie developed externalized symptoms of fibromas. When I brought him to the hospital for a checkup again and got a thorough examination, I made up my mind. I sold some inheritance left by my parents to scrape together the surgery fees, thinking we could finally rest easy after that. I never expected that would be the beginning of a nightmare…”
“Mom…”
Seeing Zuo Chengjie tremble, Mother Zuo dazedly realized she had spoken carelessly. Perhaps having had nowhere to vent for too long, she happened to run into Qiu Mian, a listener who wouldn’t wear expressions of what a tragedy or how pitiful, and inexplicably ended up saying too much. She once again gathered her strength to encourage him: “It’s fine, it’s fine. Nightmares end too, and the illness will be cured!”
“If it were just a dream, it would be simple.” Qiu Mian asked again, “When was the surgery?”
Zuo Chengjie stuttered: “April, sixteenth.”
He remembered this date very clearly, and Qiu Mian was not surprised at all, even helping him fill in the rest: “Three in the afternoon.”
“Mn…”
This was when the worm’s dream first appeared. At the time, Liang Rui had still wondered who slept at three in the afternoon; if it was surgical anesthesia, the logic lined up seamlessly.
“Handled by that doctor surnamed Cai?”
“No, he took over later.” Mother Zuo shook her head, feeling no confusion as to why Qiu Mian knew Doctor Cai, simply figuring Zuo Chengjie had chatted a lot with him. “We originally registered at the branch hospital, and the attending physician said the success rate of the surgery was very high, and even if it recurred, it would take a few more years. But in less than a month, Chengjie’s condition worsened drastically. Doctor Cai happened to be doing freelance surgeries there, said the other guy’s technique was no good, and recommended us to transfer here, saying he was willing to take full responsibility… And indeed, thanks to him, although Chengjie… is still like that, Doctor Cai runs around bustling to help us waive many fees, and even got us into a single ward… I’m grateful to him.”
Qiu Mian let out a cryptic hum.
In those mere ten seconds of dream-travel earlier, he had seen traces of dream remnants existing on Zuo Chengjie’s body, but those were not dreams belonging to his own worm; they belonged to someone else.
It was precisely the elements of this dream that had worsened Zuo Chengjie’s condition. Even though Qiu Mian wasn’t clear whether Zuo Chengjie’s illness would transform him from a child’s appearance into a monster scarier than a worm within three months, he was certain about his perception of the dream’s lingering elements, the countless dense, terrifying, and disgusting tumors on Zuo Chengjie’s body had been artificially grown by someone utilizing dreams.
And who that person was became self-evident.
Mother Zuo’s offhand mention of the beginning of a nightmare might genuinely have hit the mark: a beginning created by a nightmare.
Yet Qiu Mian had already ended the nightmare on Zuo Chengjie’s body.
As long as Doctor Cai was restrained and Zuo Chengjie stopped experiencing limitless tumor eruptions, he should still be able to roughly recover a normal human appearance through medical means.
To be frank, however, investigating this Doctor Cai fell outside Qiu Mian’s job scope. He prepared to dump this matter onto the Dream-Clearing Base to handle anyway; dropping by to plant a dream along the way was all it took.
Just as he was thinking this, a knock suddenly sounded outside the door, followed by the entrance of a tall man in a tailored suit. Qiu Mian naturally assumed it was Doctor Cai making rounds and casually greeted him: “Hello there, had a nice dream?”
“…?” The man was thoroughly stunned. “Qiu Mian?”
“?” Qiu Mian paused, somewhat surprised. “You know me?”
Chi Jianying plunged into a fleeting moment of self-doubt. Surely he wasn’t just some ubiquitous passerby lacking any memorable features, right?
Chen Xing, who had followed closely behind Chi Jianying, hesitated slightly as well, but maintained his etiquette with a smiling nod: “Mr. Qiu.”
Qiu Mian actually had a slight impression of this one: “Oh, you’re that assistant.”
Chi Jianying: “…You remember him, but not me?”
Naturally because Chen Xing consistently wore a suit and maintained a uniform attitude.
Qiu Mian cast a quirky look at him: “You changed clothes, I didn’t recognize you.”
Chi Jianying: “”
Chen Xing: “”
…Why did that sound so much like “You put on clothes, I didn’t recognize you”?