Zhou Huaixia clearly noticed that she had been frequently intruding into other people’s dreams recently.
Maybe it was because she had just started college and changed to a new environment.
Now, in one night, she could jump into different people’s dreams, not only girls but also boys.
The straight-line distance to the nearest male dormitory from Building 23 was at least 300 meters.
The dream-entering experience she had accumulated over the years was subtly loosening.
Zhou Huaixia sat in the last row, raised her hand to cover her face, and yawned.
She couldn’t hear what the teacher was saying at all.
The only time she could rest quietly every day was between 7 PM and 9 PM.
Now, as soon as class started, she wanted to sleep.
Fortunately, the daytime dream intrusion that happened last week hadn’t occurred again.
After enduring until the class ended, Zhou Huaixia slowly got up, followed the crowd out of the teaching building, and turned directly towards the dormitory.
Yesterday afternoon, she had bought a bag of bread at the supermarket, just enough for today’s lunch.
She was too lazy to go to the cafeteria.
On her way back to the dormitory, she ran into Lü Jin, who was coming from another direction.
“You freshmen already have to do animal experiments?”
Zhou Huaixia was not a medical student and was not familiar with their courses.
While walking back to the dormitory together, she casually asked.
Lü Jin was carrying a heavy white leather backpack.
She swiped her card to open the dormitory entrance door and then let Zhou Huaixia in.
“No, why do you ask?”
Zhou Huaixia walked in, reached out, and slowly took a strand of white fur off Lü Jin’s sleeve.
“Is this from a lab animal?”
Lü Jin let go of the door, looked at the white fur in her fingertips, and then reacted.
She pushed up her glasses.
“No, I petted a cat on my way back.
It must have stuck to me then.”
“A white cat?”
Zhou Huaixia let go of the fur, and it floated to the ground.
“Mm… sort of.”
Lü Jin took out her phone from her pocket, opened her album, and showed a photo while walking.
“Except for the tip of its tail, which is black, the rest of its body is entirely white.”
Zhou Huaixia looked at the picture.
The cat lazily leaned against the bamboo, with its black-tipped tail slightly covered in mud.
“There are stray cats in the bamboo garden?”
Zhou Huaixia asked.
This morning, Lü Jin had taken a computer science book.
The computer lab was in the training building, near a bamboo garden.
“There are about four or five.
The teacher in charge of the training building’s equipment often feeds them.”
Lü Jin didn’t deny the bamboo garden.
She scrolled through more photos.
“This cat is not afraid of people, but the tabby cat is more aloof and runs away when it sees people.”
Her eyes lit up when she talked about cats, showing how much she loved them.
When they reached the dormitory door, Lü Jin held her phone with her pinky finger while unlocking the door with her other hand.
She continued scrolling through photos with her thumb.
“There’s also a little calico cat.
It’s super cute.”
Sure enough, Zhou Huaixia saw a picture of a little calico cat lying on its back with its paws in the air.
She nodded in agreement.
“Very cute.”
“Right?”
After unlocking the door, Lü Jin pulled out the key.
As she let go of the lock, her thumb accidentally swiped her phone, revealing a previous photo.
In a black experimental box, a white mouse’s tail was tied with white tape, hanging upside down.
Lü Jin pushed open the dormitory door, turned sideways, and followed Zhou Huaixia’s gaze to her phone.
Seeing the photo, she casually explained,
“Oh, this is the tail suspension test.”
Zhou Huaixia was not a medical student and didn’t know what a tail suspension test was.
But this was clearly an animal experiment, and Lü Jin had just said that freshmen didn’t do animal experiments.
Maybe her confused expression was too obvious, so Lü Jin took the initiative to explain.
“I attended the class as a guest.”
Only then did Zhou Huaixia remember that Lü Jin had mentioned her mother was a professor at their medical school.
The other medical professors must have been familiar with her as well.
“Do you want to go to the cafeteria together…”
Lü Jin put down her backpack and went to wash her hands.
She had just come out and was about to invite Zhou Huaixia to lunch when she saw her sitting at the desk, biting into a piece of bread.
Zhou Huaixia turned her head and raised the bread in her hand.
“I’m eating this.”
Seeing this, Lü Jin had no choice but to go to the cafeteria alone.
Zhou Huaixia ate slowly.
It took her ten minutes to finish a slice of bread.
After dawdling for a while, she changed into her pajamas, climbed into bed for a nap, and sincerely prayed before sleeping:
May the world be dreamless.
“Meow!!!”
Zhou Huaixia first heard a shrill cat cry.
She frowned, opened her eyes, and gradually adjusted her blurred vision.
What came into view was an old white tiled floor with square patterns.
A strange environment.
Without a doubt, she had entered someone’s dream again.
This seemed to be a bathroom.
Zhou Huaixia raised her eyes and, through the glass partition of the shower, saw the shower switch on the wall.
Then, her gaze froze
A white cat’s tail was tightly tied to a wall-mounted handrail with a black shoelace, hanging upside down.
That miserable cat cry just now had come from it.
There was also a piece of used white tape stuck on the handrail.
Through the glass door, the scene looked exactly like the tail suspension experiment photo on Lü Jin’s phone except the experimental box was replaced by a bathroom, and the white mouse was replaced by a white cat.
Zhou Huaixia examined the half-black-tailed white cat, then looked at the hanging cat.
It looked exactly like the one Lü Jin had petted at noon.
Cats are naturally agile, and the handrail was embedded in the wall.
The white cat screamed a few times, then arched its body, struggling to claw at the wall.
The entire wall was covered with small white tiles.
The cat gripped the tile gaps with its claws, leaped forcefully, and managed to grab the handrail, flipping itself up.
At that moment, a gloved hand suddenly reached out, pulled open the glass door, and grabbed one of the cat’s hind legs.
Then, another hand holding a scalpel moved in.
Zhou Huaixia immediately had a bad feeling.
Sure enough, in the next second, that hand decisively sliced off the white cat’s hind paw.
“Plop!”
The small, furry paw fell onto the tiles, rolled twice, and revealed the raw, red wound.
Blood dripped onto the aged, yellowish tiles, emitting a strong metallic scent.
Almost simultaneously, the cat let out a sharp, agonized scream, thrashing in pain.
“Gag!”
Zhou Huaixia woke up drenched in sweat, retching.
She sat up, momentarily dizzy from low blood sugar.
She reached into the basket by her bed, took a piece of candy, and popped it into her mouth.
After a while, she finally felt fully awake.
The dormitory was dark.
The door was locked, and the curtains were drawn.
She could vaguely see the shape of someone lying on the opposite bed.
She grabbed a pillow and suddenly threw it over.
“Ah?”
Lü Jin groggily woke up, startled.
She yanked open the curtains.
Sunlight instantly flooded the room, brightening the once-dark dormitory.
When Lü Jin finally saw clearly that the shadow standing still on the opposite bed was Zhou Huaixia, she leaned against the bedframe and let out a long sigh of relief.
“What are you standing there for?”
The dormitory ceiling was 3.3 meters high.
But with a 1.7-meter-high loft bed and desk, Zhou Huaixia couldn’t stand up straight on the top bunk.
Yet, instead of bending, she stood rigidly upright, then tilted her head.
In the dim light, her shadow looked almost like a ghost except her hair wasn’t that long.
Lü Jin clutched her chest, her drowsiness completely scared away.
Zhou Huaixia slowly climbed down from the bed.
“I had a nightmare.”
Lü Jin responded with an “Oh” at first.
Then, she noticed the yellow duck pillow on her bed and, after a brief pause, widened her eyes.
“You had a nightmare, so why did you throw a pillow at me?”
The two of them weren’t particularly close yet.
For her roommate’s bizarre behavior, Lü Jin tried to maintain some composure and politeness.
Zhou Huaixia walked over to Lü Jin’s lower bunk, raised her hand, and gestured for her to return the pillow.
“I accidentally tossed it.
I was just thinking about how to take it back without waking you up, and then you woke up.”
Her gaze was sincere, and she spoke slowly and deliberately, making it hard for Lü Jin to doubt her.
Lü Jin looked at the distance between the beds and reluctantly believed her.
She handed the pillow back to Zhou Huaixia and couldn’t help but comment.
“You have quite the arm strength.”
“Maybe because I was startled by the nightmare.”
Zhou Huaixia took back the pillow but didn’t leave immediately.
She looked up, as if casually chatting, and asked Lü Jin.
“What about you?
What did you dream about just now?”
“Me?”
Lü Jin thought for a moment.
“I don’t really remember.
It was probably a nice dream.”
Zhou Huaixia scanned Lü Jin’s face, considering the chances of her roommate being a psychopath.
She wasn’t always able to see the dreamer’s face when she entered dreams.
Most of the time, dreams were chaotic and distorted, only revealing fragments of things.
Most of the dreams Zhou Huaixia entered were nightmares.
That was because nightmares brought the strongest emotions to the dreamer especially fear.
Simply put, the dreamer was usually the one feeling hurt and afraid.
But the dream just now something was off.
The one being hurt was a cat.
And the hands in the dream moved the scalpel too quickly, without any hesitation.
Zhou Huaixia even faintly felt a sense of enjoyment rising from the white cat’s struggles and screams.
The dreamer was clearly the perpetrator.
Zhou Huaixia was now seriously suspecting that her roommate was a psychopath.
Lü Jin had no idea what Zhou Huaixia was thinking.
She was completely awake from the scare and simply climbed down as well, getting ready to head to the classroom.
“If you frequently have nightmares, it might mean you’re feeling anxious or under stress lately.”
Lü Jin stuffed books into her bag while speaking to Zhou Huaixia.
“You should adjust your mental state in time.”
She picked up her insulated tumbler, turned around, and saw Zhou Huaixia looking at her strangely.
“What’s wrong?”
Zhou Huaixia asked.
“Your mom is a medical professor.
Does she put pressure on you?”
So that’s why you’re a psychopath?
“Pressure?”
Lü Jin turned back, her back facing Zhou Huaixia, and poured something into her tumbler.
She quickly tossed something into the trash bin under the desk.
“Not really.
My mom taught me dissection and suturing techniques early on, and I’ve always been interested in surgery.”
To Zhou Huaixia, this sentence automatically translated as:
“I’ve been a psychopath since childhood.”
“I’m heading out first.”
Lü Jin turned around, waved at her, and walked out with her backpack.
She showed no signs of being a psychopath at all.
Zhou Huaixia sat down at her desk, thinking.
She had heard that people who abuse cats are potential killers.
Maybe Lü Jin was just thinking about experiments, which was why she incorporated the white cat into her dream.
Just like that bun-haired girl who messed up her data.
Medical students always had more gruesome dreams.
Zhou Huaixia tried to rationalize her roommate’s dream.
But the image of that tiny, bloodied cat paw kept appearing in her mind.
And she couldn’t forget the vague sense of enjoyment she had felt in the dream.
By evening, just as Zhou Huaixia stepped into the dormitory building, the sky turned dark with thick clouds, and torrential rain poured down.
Lü Jin, as usual, was not in the dormitory.
Afternoon classes were for her major.
With only a small group of students, Zhou Huaixia forced herself to stay awake.
But as soon as she returned, she started yawning uncontrollably, quickly washed up, and went to sleep.
10:17 PM.
When Zhou Huaixia opened her eyes, she saw a wet, round, ductile iron manhole cover.
On it was an engraving: “700×800” on top, “EN124 D400” below, with a silver circular plaque in the middle.
She had entered a dream again.
She sighed, feeling a bit exhausted.
Everything around was pitch black.
But she clearly saw a stamped number on the plaque—LIB02-RD05-013.
A flashlight beam swept past, illuminating the plaque briefly.
Whose ultra-high-definition dream was this now?
Soon, Zhou Huaixia saw a hand wearing white medical gloves hooking the manhole lid and prying it open.
A putrid, sewer-like stench mixed with the damp earth immediately rushed out.
It looked like this was another medical student’s dream.
She wondered what this student was planning to do with the sewer.
As Zhou Huaixia was aimlessly guessing, another hand held a bulging black plastic bag and started dumping its contents into the sewer.
In the dim night, the flashlight flickered.
She vaguely saw blood-stained, white, fluffy chunks falling out.
As the bag emptied, a rope-like object slipped onto the edge of the manhole, not falling in.
A furry tail, half white, half black, with deep strangulation marks, still attached to some flesh.
Zhou Huaixia recalled what had just been dumped in.
A realization struck her.
She turned her gaze, trying to see the dreamer’s face.
Suddenly, a force pushed her consciousness out of the dream.
Zhou Huaixia jolted awake, wiping the cold sweat from her forehead, and popped a piece of candy into her mouth.
She pressed the side button of her watch.
10:19 PM.
Lü Jin still hadn’t returned.
After steadying herself, Zhou Huaixia picked up her phone and opened her contacts.
“Hello?”
Lü Jin’s voice was low, almost whispering.
Zhou Huaixia got out of bed and pulled a jacket from her closet.
“Where are you sleeping?”
“Huh?”
Lü Jin heard the rustling of clothes over the phone and couldn’t keep up with her roommate’s thought process.
Her voice remained low.
“I’m not sleeping.
I’m still in the library.”
“Library Two?”
“Uh…”
Sitting in the library corridor, Lü Jin looked around.
She didn’t see Zhou Huaixia anywhere.
“How did you know?”
Library One and Library Two both had plenty of medical books.
How did she know she was here?
Before Lü Jin could ask further, Zhou Huaixia abruptly hung up.
Lü Jin stared at her phone screen, feeling confused.
“?”
The manhole plaque in her dream had been too clear.
So clear that it didn’t feel like a dream.
Even the numbering seemed logical.
Zhou Huaixia searched for the number online.
And then she found an old tender document for the university’s sewer manhole covers.
Her dream’s numbers matched exactly.
Two minutes later, Zhou Huaixia put on her jacket, walked to the door, and paused.
It was just a dream.
She just needed to confirm it hadn’t happened in reality.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the night.