Mo Du (默读) - Silent Reading

Humbert Humbert VI

The house was too big. The limited human energy couldn't soak through, and it sent out a smell of deep lifelessness.

It was a lifelessness that sunlight, fresh flowers, and lamps were all powerless to dispel.

He stood in the vestibule, hesitating.

Reasonably speaking, this ought to have been his home. But every time he set foot in the spotless vestibule and faced the room filled with sunlight coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, there was dread in his heart.

Faint music came from upstairs, a melodious female voice repeatedly reciting the refrain. He stood for a moment in a trance, as if he dimly knew that something was about to happen. He slowly began to walk, heading inside.

The sensation of the sunlight falling on him became strange, clammy and chill, not like sunlight, but like the wind during a rainstorm. It blew over his forearms, left bare by his summer uniform, raising a layer of fine gooseflesh.

He went up to the second floor. The music became louder and louder, the familiar melody sticking in his chest like a fishbone caught in the throat. His breathing became labored, and he halted, wanting to run away.

But when he looked back, he discovered that everything behind him had dissolved into darkness; everything seemed to be fixed, written and rehearsed. Before him there was only one road, one direction.

The all-encompassing darkness enveloped him from all sides, compelling him to go up the narrow stairs, compelling him to push open that door-

A loud roar. He thought that something had exploded beside his ear. Then he looked down and saw the woman fallen onto the ground.

Her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, and her body was suffused with a rigid pallor. But her eyes were open-it seemed that while her body was dead, her spirit still lived.

The woman stared straight at him, two trails of bloody tears flowing from her eyes. She coldly asked, "Why didn't you save me?"

His breath tightened, and he backed away.

The woman staggered to her feet and reached out a death-mottled hand. "You can feel everything. Why were you avoiding me? Why didn't you save me?"

The hand was surrounded by the consuming darkness. The darkness seemed to be alive, heartlessly swallowing her up. She let out ceaseless screams and questions, struggling with all her might to reach out her hand to grab him, but she was ceaselessly pulled into the darkness.

He instinctively took that icy and livid hand, heard the screams, felt that he was falling unstoppably. Suddenly, something pulled him from behind. His back pressed against a warm and solid body, and a pair of hands came around him, traveled up, and covered his eyes.

He smelled the faint scent of cigarettes on those clear-knuckled hands. Then, in the cracks between the fingers, there was a burst of light-

Fei Du was startled awake.

He was sitting in his own study. Going through a dull project plan, he'd read halfway through and had fallen asleep.

It was afternoon. A cool wind full of humidity was pouring in from outside the window. At some point the wind and clouds had risen outside, and a storm was brewing. The roaring sounds and flashing lights in his dream had been thunder and lightning. His phone was ringing interminably, displaying three missed calls-no wonder he had heard that music in his dream.

Fei Du took a deep breath. As he got up to close the window, he answered the phone. "Hello?"

Zhang Donglai's shouts crashed into his ear. "It's the middle of the day, Master Fei. Which beauty's body were you reluctant to climb off of? I've called you so many times, and you haven't picked up!"