Chapter 2: The Dream of Zhi

  （1）

  The grand piano room was always the most popular place in school. The Gothic carvings and antique piano stools all showed off the classic elegance of music. It's also because of this that, apart from specific practice sessions, this is where the girls at our school dream of meeting their prince charming - after all, in so many stories, the piano room is always the romantic first choice for the male and female leads to pour out their hearts and seal their love forever.

  Girls who play the piano are all princesses. Yu Chen has always believed in this sentence. Because when he first met Ge Tianyu, she was playing the piano. He still remembers that Ge Tianyu wore a pale blue princess-style lace dress at the time, with her long hair draped over her shoulders and her slender fingers playing out a dream wedding on the keys. That scene still makes him feel amazed and warm to this day.

  But now it's different, he thought. Maybe his memory had mixed up Ge Tianyu and Ou Zhiyu, otherwise why would Ou Zhiyu be wearing the same dress, with the same hairstyle, sitting on the piano bench. The romantic melody of "Wedding in a Dream" flowed from her fingers - He admitted that Ou Zhiyu was always a beauty, otherwise he wouldn't have wasted his time on her back then. However, the scene before him was neither stunning nor warm, and after experiencing the dream with Qiao Mu, he no longer thought this was real - or maybe it was in reality - He knew he was dreaming again.

  The sound of the piano gradually faded away, becoming inaudible. [After the prelude ended, memories were about to be shattered] Yu Chen's heart was a bit nervous, perhaps Ou Zhiyu would take revenge on her for being forced to drop out due to pregnancy in this dream. However, after standing with weak legs for over half an hour, Ou Zhiyu still sat upright - the word "upright" is used because at that moment, Ou Zhiyu's back had a stiff and lifeless feel. Yu Chen plucked up her courage and walked over.

  Ou Zhiyu was already dead. Her lips still had a familiar sweet smile on the edge. Wave after wave of nausea came, in the last dream, he didn't see Ou Zhiyu's tragic death, so he only felt panic, but this time - intense fear tightly grasped his heart: blood flowed from Ou Zhiyu's wrist and flowed into her lace skirt through the gaps between the piano keys. Her hands were gone, and the fine flesh was evenly distributed on the piano keys, dyeing the white keys crimson red.

  "Yu Chen, aren't you the one who loves playing the piano? I'll give them to you, let them take you to hell, and both Qiao Mu and I will be waiting for you there..." Ou Zhi's pupils suddenly rotated as he spoke in a gentle voice, causing Yu Chen's heart to stop beating. He retreated backwards like a madman, his elbow knocking over the sheet music on the piano.

  He crouched down shivering, black notes dancing before his eyes.

  Zhi's Dream: With hands as cocoons, binding the soul

  Exchange for a pass to hell

  I'm willing to sink with you into an endless dream

  （2）

  Yu Chen didn't go to school. Aunt Zhen called the doctor. This old Chinese medicine practitioner, who was said to be a descendant of Zhang Zhongjing, took one look at him and sat down to write a prescription. The long string of Chinese medicine names made Yu Chen's head spin.

  "Overthinking." The old Chinese doctor tossed out this sentence without even lifting his head before walking out of the room. Aunt Zhen glanced at Yu Chen on her way out, and the insightful look in her eyes made Yu Chen feel guilty.

  Ge Tianyu called him at a little past two in the afternoon. Looking at the name flashing on the screen, Yu Chen made up his mind and pressed the answer button. The soft and gentle voice of the girl made his heart skip a beat, "Ah Chen, why didn't you come to school today?"

  "Playing games till dawn... just got up." Yu Chen glanced at the calendar on the wall, June 23rd, his father's real estate company's anniversary dinner, and he immediately became annoyed.

  "And didn't even give us a heads up, making everyone anxious!" Ge Tianyu scolded, then said in her typical mysterious and gossipy tone, "You know? Today a wandering Taoist priest passing by our school said that there's a thick layer of death energy about 10 meters above the campus - no wonder people often die here - I think I'll transfer schools, or else I won't be able to avoid dying with severed limbs."

  Yu Chen's sharp ears caught the word "cut off" in her words, and his heart skipped a beat. He hastily interrupted his girlfriend's endless talk about ghosts and gods, "Has someone died again?"

  Ge Tianyu was apparently not very pleased at being interrupted, but she cooperated and answered anyway. After all, she had always been interested in this type of event. "Yeah, it's W City Music Academy too, I don't know how she suddenly went crazy and ran to Y University to commit suicide, Y University has simply become a holy land for suicides! I saw her corpse - originally I was going to practice piano - oh my god! That girl was dressed exactly like me when I participated in the piano competition at the beginning of the year! I bet she must have seen that photo of me competing!"

  Yu Chen lay on his back on the Simmons mattress, the luxurious crystal chandelier refracting a dense fish-scale-like light and shadow onto his face and eyes, but he didn't see it. He could only hear the girl's endless talk in the phone.

  "I heard that the girl is their school's campus belle, named Ou Zhiyu. However, I heard that her behavior is problematic, she got pregnant with someone in high school and had an abortion... it was all bloody, on the bed, on the floor, everywhere. I'm not daring to go there again, it's too scary..."

  Zhī zhī mèng, ràng rén shēn xiàn. Nà bù zài shì yī shǐ, gèng bù huì shì zhōng jié.

  English Translation:

  A dream that traps people deeply. It is no longer the beginning, nor will it be the end.

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