Jiang Wanning put the book back on the bedside table and stared blankly at the crack in the wall.
Suddenly, she remembered something.
When the young woman in her dream had said, “Wanwan, don’t come out,” her voice had been calm. Not the kind of calm someone forced themselves to maintain, but genuine calm.
It was as though she had already known how things would end. She knew she could not stop whatever was coming, yet she had still stood in its way. Just as she had when she handed over that wild fruit, when she took off her outer garment, and when she carried the girl on her back, she had already prepared herself for everything.
None of them had ever expected to survive.
They had only wanted that foolish girl to live one more day. Just one more day.
Jiang Wanning did not know why she was thinking about these things. She had always been an emotionally detached person.
She had grown up in an orphanage, and no one had adopted her. It was not because she had a bad personality, but because she could not smile, not the sweet, pleasing kind of smile that made people want to take a child home with them.
She had tried. She had practiced in front of a mirror, lifting the corners of her mouth and showing a few teeth, but her eyes remained cold, like two glass beads.
Eventually, she stopped trying.
She accepted that this was simply the kind of person she was. She could not feel sad for others, nor could she feel sad for herself.
She had not been sad when she failed an exam, when her classmates isolated her, or when she left the orphanage at eighteen.
To her, sadness was a luxury, like an expensive piece of clothing she could not afford to wear.
But now, the deaths of those people in her dreams made her sad.
It was not the kind of faint sadness that could simply be ignored. It was heavy, pressing against her chest until even breathing felt difficult.
It was like someone had placed a stone over her heart. At first, it was only a small one, but then more and more stones were added, growing heavier and heavier, until she had no choice but to admit that it was there.
Jiang Wanning lay down again and pulled the blanket up to her chin.
The bedside lamp was still on, its warm yellow light falling across the ceiling and forming a blurred patch of brightness.
She stared at it and slowly evened out her breathing.
She remembered something else Doctor Fang had once said.
“You don’t need to feel ashamed because you can finally feel sadness. This isn’t a step backward. It simply means you are finally allowing yourself to receive those signals.”
At the time, she had thought that was nonsense too.
Now, however, she felt that perhaps it was not.
Perhaps those dreams were a kind of signal.
Not from that foolish girl, but from herself.
Perhaps her own body was trying to tell her: Look, you are not incapable of feeling sad. You simply buried it too deeply, so deeply that you needed someone else’s story to draw it out.
She turned onto her side and faced the window. The curtains had not been fully closed, and a thin sliver of light filtered in from outside, the peculiar orange glow of the city, mixed with streetlights and neon.
Dawn was approaching. In the distance, she could hear the rumble of a garbage truck and the calls of birds waking early.
Jiang Wanning closed her eyes.
This time, there was no dream.
There was only a deep, soft darkness.
Something within that darkness seemed to be slowly settling, like silt sinking through water and finally coming to rest at the bottom.
She did not know when she fell asleep.
She only knew that when she woke up, sunlight had already squeezed through the gap in the curtains and fallen across the foot of her bed, warm and gentle.
Her phone showed 7:42.
There was a new message.
It was from Doctor Fang again, but this time, it was not a link to an article. It was only one sentence: “If that dream comes again, try to find a safe place within it. Even if all you can do is stand far away and watch. You are an observer, not a participant. You don’t need to bear everything for them.”
Jiang Wanning read it twice but did not reply.
She got up, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and changed her clothes.
Her eyes looked slightly swollen in the mirror, but her expression was calm.
She stared at her reflection for a few seconds before turning and leaving.
The sunlight was pleasant, and the breeze was light. Steam rose from the breakfast stalls by the roadside. A child walked past her while holding his mother’s hand, mumbling something indistinctly.
Jiang Wanning did not turn around.
But she knew that the dream might come again tonight.
Those who had died might appear again, and that foolish girl might once more curl up in a corner and whisper, “I’m scared.”
She did not know how to face them, nor did she know what she could do inside the dream.
But she knew one thing.
Those people were real.
That girl was real. Their protection was real.
Their deaths were real too.
Not in reality, but somewhere she could never reach, at some point in time she had already forgotten, there had once been people who lived like that and died like that.
And now, she could finally grieve for them.
This sadness hurts. It was heavy enough to make breathing difficult.
But it was real.
More real than any emotion she had ever pretended to feel.
Jiang Wanning entered the subway station, tapped her card at the gate, and waited for the train on the platform.
A gust of wind rushed out from the tunnel, lifting her hair.
She lowered her head and looked at the yellow safety line beneath her feet. Suddenly, she remembered the young woman’s final posture, using her own body to block the gap and hide the girl behind her.
She wondered, if she were that young woman, would she have done the same?
The answer was that she did not know.
But what she did know was that she could finally ask herself that question.
She would not have asked it before because she simply had not cared.
She had not cared about anyone else, and she had not cared about herself.
But now, she cared.
Because someone had died in her dream, suffering terribly and dying quietly, while still saying, “Don’t be afraid.”
She could no longer pretend not to care.
The subway arrived.
The doors opened, and she stepped inside, finding a place to stand in a corner.
There were not many people in the carriage. An elderly woman sat across from her with a small child in her arms. The child looked to be around two or three years old and was eating a biscuit, leaving crumbs all over his face.
The elderly woman lowered her head, wiped the crumbs from the corner of his mouth, and said something.
Her voice was too soft for Jiang Wanning to hear clearly, but she saw the look in the elderly woman’s eyes.
She had seen that look in her dream.
It was the same way the grandmother had looked at the girl.
It was not pity, nor was it charity.
It was a natural, instinctive kind of protection, as natural as breathing.
There was no need for a reason and no expectation of anything in return. It was simply because you were there, and I wanted you to be safe.
Jiang Wanning looked away and watched the tunnel walls race past the window.
Darkness, then light, then darkness again, followed by light.
Suddenly, she felt exhausted.
Not physically exhausted, but weary in the way someone might feel after something buried for a very long time was finally uncovered.
Like a room that had been locked for years and was suddenly thrown open, sending dust rushing into the air and making one’s eyes sting with tears.
But the room had to be opened eventually.
And the dust had to be cleared away.
Standing in the swaying subway carriage, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, the noisy announcements, and the screech of metal against the tracks, she closed her eyes and slowly let out a breath.
Those who had died.
The girl who had survived.
The dream that kept returning.
She decided that she would no longer run away.
When she left the subway station, she encountered a strange old woman.
“Miss, you’ve been having dreams quite frequently lately, haven’t you?”
Jiang Wanning stopped and turned to look at the white haired old woman.
The old woman grabbed her hand and pulled out a jade bangle, slipping it onto her wrist with startling force.
Jiang Wanning was startled and immediately tried to take it off, only to discover that no matter what she did, she could not remove it.
Then she realized that the old woman who had been standing before her had suddenly disappeared.
Unable to remove the jade bangle, Jiang Wanning checked the time and saw that she was about to be late for work.
So, for the moment, she hurried off to work.