Chapter Two: A Well-Intentioned Lie That Is All Too Easily Uncovered

Qin Qianbai was a peculiar girl.

Her speech and mannerisms were always lively, and at times she would even do something as extreme as threatening to stab someone in the eye with a knife. Yet on her delicate face, there was never the slightest ripple of emotion to be seen.

Life, after all, is a stage where actors dance and sing behind their masks, and in this sense, her only difference from others was that her mask and her face had fused into one.

If this too could be called an act, then this young lady would surely be a contender for Best Actress—a true powerhouse.

Most people have to work hard to get close to others before their mask slips, but a person’s face, after all, cannot be removed. In that case, besides herself, who could possibly know the real her?

Was what she presented all a pretense? Were the words from her mouth nothing but fabricated lies? Was the laughter and banter she shared with her three friends a mere charade to maintain the illusion of a normal life?

Harboring such impolite thoughts, Gong Sunce waved goodbye to his two friends.

After the earlier commotion, he had treated everyone to four ice creams out of his own pocket. Shiyu and Caldacia, walking in the direction of the campus’s back quarter, had chosen vanilla and durian-purple rice milk tea flavors, respectively.

For himself, he bought a matcha ice cream, and together with Miss Qin, started on the path back to their apartment.

“Mmmph.”

The expressionless girl walked beside Gong Sunce.

She took a huge bite, devouring half of her chocolate cone at once, and made an adorable sound.

Even the emotionless girls in anime would show some reaction when eating something delicious, but Qin Qianbai was utterly unmoved.

The young man glanced sideways at her, hoping to catch even a glimmer of emotion on her face.

His efforts, once again, were in vain. Sensing his gaze, the girl turned her head toward him, a smudge of chocolate at the corner of her lips.

“What are you doing?”

Gong Sunce answered honestly, “I’m pondering the irrationality of your existence.”

“As far as sexual harassment goes, I’d say this is quite avant-garde. I’ll give you credit for originality.”

Miss Qin nibbled at the edge of her cone, resembling a little hamster.

“I consider myself an upright and proper person. Why would you make such disrespectful associations?”

With the cone in her mouth, she stretched out her arms and spun around once and a half, stopping in front of him in a move so dramatic she nearly lost her balance.

Her jet-black hair cascaded down like a waterfall, revealing her smooth forehead and clear eyes. In them, his own upside-down figure was reflected.

“See, see? This is my ‘mocking you’ face. Someone who falls asleep alone at a fast-food restaurant table has no right to call himself proper.”

The cone, loosened by her speech, fell from her mouth, but Gong Sunce intervened, making it float inexplicably in midair.

Qin Qianbai reached out and retrieved her ice cream. “Thank you. Now, can the rigorous and solemn you—or perhaps the strict and reserved you—give me an answer?”

This was bad. Very bad.

He could sense the stares of people around them—it wasn’t his imagination. Even if they were just passing by, anyone would be curious about such odd behavior… which meant that in a city full of eccentrics like Cloud City, he still managed to stand out as one of the strangest, just by talking with her.

He could already hear a group of middle school girls nearby whispering about whether this was some sort of ability-user bullying. Please, don’t jump to conclusions.

If anyone was being bullied by this invisible pressure, it was the poor young man named Gong Sunce, not the silly girl still munching on her ice cream.

Resigned, he bit off a third of his own cone in one go.

“So cold!” The only thing he could feel now was the sharp chill, not the cone’s flavor. He grimaced and bared his teeth. “Did you really just eat half of this in one bite?”

Qin Qianbai popped the last little bit of her cone into her mouth.

Munch, munch.

“You lose, Ah Ce. In this invisible, brutal war of ice cream, you’re defeated.”

“I don’t remember ever signing up for this pointless contest.”

“Such blasphemy! The God of Ice Cream will curse you.”

“We’re in college now, can we stop taking those urban legends from high school seriously?”

He straightened his glasses and gingerly licked his green ice cream. “Back to the point—what I was doing earlier was just an experiment.”

People had stopped giving them odd looks—probably because Miss Qin had finally returned to a normal stance.

Thank goodness.

They arrived at an intersection and waited for the signal to change.

“An experiment to see if we’d eat your lunch ahead of time?”

A car passed, followed by a convoy of ten bio-horse carriages.

The horses, their eyes reddened and breathing heavily, bore glowing green circuits along their sides.

It was said that these new cloned horses, developed in the Cecil Laboratory of Central United University, had “far higher energy efficiency than gasoline engines,” were bred cleanly and humanely, and only cost “slightly more than current alternatives”… Frankly, Gong Sunce scoffed at such claims. Any ordinary citizen with common sense would call the police after seeing that. What did these so-called scholars and scientists think this place was?

“No, it’s an experiment about dreams… about that nightmare.”

“Knew it. You usually only mention it in the mornings, saying you had the same nightmare again. It’s rare to see you dreaming during the day. Has the dream changed?”

The content of the dream hadn’t changed.

Everything was just as it had been three years ago.

It wasn’t really a dream, to begin with.

Dreams are illusions, hazy and fleeting, conjured from the scraps of reality in the mind. But what he saw in his sleep were fragments of memory—scenes from three years past, so vivid they refused to fade.

Gong Sunce carefully considered how much to say.

He had never told his friends the specifics of his dream. This wasn’t out of distrust or deliberate concealment; sometimes, it’s simply better for everyone to know less.

The carriage convoy passed, the light turned green.

As they crossed halfway over the zebra crossing, the young man, after much thought, said, “The dream itself hasn’t changed. The content is the same, the people appearing in it are the same, everything is as before. Because the dream is just a replay of memory—a memory I’d rather forget. What worries me isn’t the dream’s content, but its frequency. Based on past experience, as long as I don’t deliberately dwell on the past, I only have the dream once or twice a month. But…”

They had reached the other side. The apartment district was still about ten minutes’ walk away.

“I see. The dream’s become more frequent recently. Knowing you, you’ve probably tried all sorts of methods, maybe even the hypnosis tricks from those trashy magazines, doing everything you can to clear your mind, yet the nightmare still comes.”

Qin Qianbai quickened her pace and overtook him by half a step, then spun around 180 degrees to walk backward.

Could this girl ever walk properly?

And did she just mention something odd—what trashy magazines?

“That’s why you’re anxious, why you’re reckless, doing something so unlike you as falling asleep, defenseless, in a busy fast-food restaurant—hoping that in such a special environment, the dream would stay away.”

There was only a little matcha ice cream left; he finished it in one bite.

He let go, controlling the cone to float in midair, the girl’s gaze following its rise and fall.

Gong Sunce sighed, leaning against the wall. “I’d rather you call it a bold attempt. As you said, I failed. Memory doesn’t take orders—it always slips out at the worst possible moment.”

“See, see? This is my ‘subtly caring’ face. So, what’s your nightmare frequency now?”

Where was the subtlety, or the kindness, for that matter?

“Half a year ago, it increased to once a week. Then it got worse. Starting this week, it’s every day.”

“As a physics major, my professional advice is for you to see a psychologist immediately.”

“Thank you for your sound advice, which has nothing to do with your field of study. I’ll figure something out.”

Crunch, crunch.

He gnawed at the cone, as if venting his frustration.

He was ready to change the subject, but Qin Qianbai hadn’t moved, as if she had no intention of leaving.

The black-haired girl tilted her head, meeting his eyes.

“I know a really skilled specialist—maybe they could help… What’s your dream about? If it’s too much trouble, you don’t have to answer.”

She asked about the content? That was rare.

They’d known each other for a while now.

Among the four who’d dined together at the fast-food restaurant, he’d known Qin Qianbai the longest. He believed they understood each other better than anyone else in the group.

To outsiders, the four of them seemed inseparable, and that was mostly true. Yet, even among such close friends, they never pried into each other’s business—a fact outsiders would find strange, but here, it was perfectly ordinary.

Whether ability-user or not, in this City of the Skies, everyone understood and agreed with such discretion.

“To be honest, it’s nothing that big. But let’s be clear—you’re not allowed to laugh when you hear it.”

“I promise there’s a 99% chance I won’t laugh.”

“Please don’t leave that 1% margin now. In short, it’s this: it’s the sort of disaster every teenager might experience… One day, I was writing a very important letter about my feelings—sincere words, heartfelt.”

“Mhm.”

“I’d just taken a shower and was only wrapped in a towel. Halfway through, I felt stuck for words, so I went to my computer for inspiration, but accidentally clicked on an, uh, explicit comic.”

Qin Qianbai nodded slowly.

“That was careless.”

“Indeed.”

“Very careless.”

“That’s right.”

“Utterly, utterly—”

“Let me finish! Anyway, just at that moment, someone walked in, catching the perfect view of me, towel-clad, pen and paper in hand, and the full-page close-up on my screen. The scream and the chain of disastrous events that followed are what I can’t forget.”

Qin Qianbai hooked her fingers at both corners of her mouth.

“Hahaha, hahahaha, hahahahahahahaha!”

“You promised you wouldn’t laugh!”

This girl…!

She clapped with perfect seriousness.

“Impressive—you beat the 1% odds.”

“Don’t try to excuse your bad manners with lines straight out of the final battle in a super robot anime.”

“See, see? This is my ‘serves you right’ face.”

“All right, if you want a fight, let’s go now.”

But a fight requires two combatants, and with only Gong Sunce willing, his declaration fell flat.

The girl stepped forward and pointed to a side street. “I’ve got a shift these next couple days, so I’ll head off now. The neighborhood’s been unsafe at night—take care of yourself.”

“Thanks for the concern. You be careful too.”

Qin Qianbai’s figure receded from view.

He stood still for a while, and only when she was completely out of sight did he move again.

Had his feeble lie been seen through, or did he manage to get away with it?

He didn’t care, and he doubted she did either.

It wasn’t the content of words that mattered, but the attitude behind them.

They’d known each other for years, but neither he, nor Shiyu, nor Caldacia, had ever asked the reason for the girl’s impassive face.

Walking home, Gong Sunce wore a wry smile.

How terrible—could he even call himself a friend?

Yet sometimes, that’s how things had to be. Because they were friends, he didn’t want to drag others into his troubles.

And, likewise, the reverse was true.

How long would it be before he could finally ask her that question?

While interrogating his own heart, the young man headed toward his apartment.

It was now half past four in the afternoon.

About five minutes later, a piercing scream echoed at the entrance of an apartment building.