Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 13: Sleepwalking in Dreamland [Complete]

1561: Shoreis' Decision

In the following few days, Qiao Yuansi felt like she was in a trance, experiencing a long dream. To call it a dream, she could clearly remember everything that had happened over these days, but to say it wasn't a dream, she felt as if she was not in her original place—as if someone had extracted a large part of her self from her body. Now, that self and the person who owned her body were no longer Qiao Yuansi.

No, that's not right. To say it like that is as if an outsider had taken over her body; more precisely, before the deformation of her face, her 'self' had started to change first.

The night she discovered that she couldn't understand her lesson plan, Qiao Yuansi could hardly describe her feelings at the time with words. Neighbors could turn into monsters, and the world could end, but if she lost her intellect, she wouldn't know who she was or how to survive. The foundation of thirty-three years of life suddenly collapsed and shattered; she buried her face in her arms and cried silently for an unknown amount of time before finally being persuaded by Shoreis to put down the lecture and go to bed, harboring a faint hope that maybe it would be okay after sleeping.

The next morning, she felt completely fine.

Shoreis seemed to have not slept all night. Upon hearing Qiao Yuansi's footsteps, he sat up from the sofa, his eyes following her as she moved around the room.

Just as she was about to prepare breakfast in the kitchen, Shoreis stopped her, spread her teaching materials on the dining table, and asked, "Can you understand it?"

Qiao Yuansi stared at the paper for a moment. "I recognize every word... but it's so hard to understand when they're put together like this and what it's all about."

"Then read it slowly, one sentence at a time."

Qiao Yuansi couldn't help but roll her eyes and bury her head again. She forced herself to read slowly for several minutes, only to barely understand one or two sentences; this little progress frustrated her even more, and she pushed the table and stood up, saying, "What's the use of reading this? I'm hungry; I don't want to read anymore."

Shoreis said nothing. He sat at the other end of the dining table, watching her go into the kitchen and make breakfast for one; not until she had slowly finished eating did he speak again.

"The red marks on your face have lessened," he said calmly.

"Oh." At the reminder, Qiao Yuansi touched the red marks on her face. "It's no big deal. They should be completely gone in a few days."

"You still think you won't deform?"

"No." Qiao Yuansi waved her hand, finding this idea utterly absurd. "I'm a living person. Why would my face suddenly deform? What scientific reason could explain it? There's none, so it's impossible."

Shoreis' expression was as if he had suddenly heard something unbearable, and he stared at her with furrowed brows. "What?"

It's hard to explain why, but Qiao Yuansi suddenly felt like she had been stepped on, and all her defenses were up. "What do you mean 'what'?" she said, looking at him cautiously. "Those deformations and doomsday, are you the only one talking about them? Was it on the morning news? Was it in the newspaper? Why didn't I see it?"

Shoreis rubbed his face, seemingly unable to believe the situation at hand. "You've forgotten what you saw with your own eyes?"

"What I saw must have an explanation," Qiao Yuansi said. "I've been hiking and camping for so long, and driving tired me out. I could have seen it wrong. And even if I did deform, so what? I still eat, sleep, and live my life, don't I? Even if I became a monster, the school would still pay me. Don't talk about this anymore; it annoys me. I don't want to hear it."