Qin Qianbai was a strange girl.
Her actions were lively, energetic, and occasionally violent enough to involve stabbing people in the eyes with cutlery. Yet, her exquisite face remained as still as a frozen lake, devoid of any ripple of emotion.
If life is a stage where actors dance wearing masks, then she differed from everyone else in one crucial way: Her mask had fused with her face.
If this was a performance, she deserved a Best Actress award.
For ordinary people, removing the social mask requires intimacy and trust. But a physical face cannot be removed. If that was the case... who, besides herself, knew the real Qin Qianbai?
Was her behavior a disguise? Were her words mere lies? Was the laughter shared with their three friends just a performance to maintain the illusion of a normal daily life?
These are incredibly rude thoughts, Gongsun Ce scolded himself as he waved goodbye to his other two friends.
After the commotion at the fast-food joint, he had treated everyone to ice cream as an apology. Shigure (Vanilla) and Cardia (Durian-Purple Rice Milk Tea—a crime against culinary arts) headed toward the campus in the Spine District.
The young man, holding a Matcha cone for himself, walked Qin Qianbai back to the apartment complex.
"Nom."
The expressionless girl walked beside him. She bit off half of her chocolate ice cream cone in a single mouthful, making a cute sound that contrasted sharply with her deadpan face.
Even the kuudere girls in anime would show a flicker of joy when eating sweets. She showed nothing.
Gongsun Ce glanced sideways, scrutinizing her profile, trying to dig out even a speck of emotion from her features.
His attempt failed. Sensing his gaze, the girl tilted her head. A smudge of chocolate stained her lip.
"What are you doing?"
Gongsun Ce answered honestly, "I am contemplating the irrationality of your existence."
"That is a very modern approach to sexual harassment. I have a slightly higher opinion of you now."
Miss Qin began nibbling around the edge of her cone like a hamster.
"I consider myself an upright and rigorous person. Why would you make such a rude association?"
She clamped the cone in her mouth, extended her arms to the sides, and spun around—one and a half turns, like a dancer—before stopping in front of him. She leaned back so far it looked like she might fall, her long black hair cascading down like a waterfall, revealing her smooth forehead and eyes.
Her pupils reflected his inverted figure.
"Look. Look at this face. This is the expression of mocking you. A person who falls asleep alone on a fast-food table has no right to use the word 'rigorous.'"
As she spoke, the cone slipped from her mouth. Before it could hit the ground, Gongsun Ce's invisible telekinesis caught it, letting it float casually in mid-air.
Qin Qianbai reached out and plucked the cone from the air. "Thank you. Now, can the serious, cautious, and strictly disciplined Mr. Gongsun give me an answer?"
This is bad. Super bad.
He could feel the gazes of passersby. It wasn't his imagination. Even in the Azure City, where weirdos roamed in packs, a girl leaning backward like The Matrix while talking to a floating ice cream cone was... unique.
He could hear the whispers of middle school girls nearby. "Is that some kind of ability bullying? Please don't let it be that..."
The one being bullied by invisible pressure is me! The pitiful Gongsun Ce! Not this airhead girl munching on ice cream!
Out of frustration, he took a massive bite of his own cone—about one-third of it.
"Brain freeze!"
The delicious matcha flavor was lost to the sudden, piercing pain. Gongsun Ce squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced. "You just ate half of that thing in one bite? How are you not dead?"
Qin Qianbai popped the last crunchy tip of her cone into her mouth.
Crunch, crunch.
"You lose, Ah Ce. In this invisible, cruel Ice Cream War."
"I don't recall signing up for such a boring war."
"How dare you speak such blasphemy. The God of Ice Cream will curse you."
"We are university students now. Please stop treating urban legends from high school as facts."
He adjusted his glasses and cautiously licked his green ice cream. "Back to the topic. I was just conducting an experiment earlier."
Passersby stopped staring, likely because Miss Qin had finally resumed a normal standing posture. Thank heavens.
They reached a crosswalk and waited for the light to change.
"An experiment to see if we would eat your lunch while you slept?"
A car drove by, followed by a convoy of ten bio-carriages. The horses pulling the carriages had red eyes, panted heavily, and sported glowing green circuits on their skin.
These "New Cloned Horses," modified by the Cecil Lab of the Central Union University, were said to have "energy efficiency far surpassing gasoline engines." The marketing claimed the process was clean, eco-friendly, and humane, with the only downside being "slightly higher costs for now."
Frankly, Gongsun Ce scoffed at the propaganda. Any normal citizen seeing these creatures would call the police. What do those madmen posing as scientists think this city is?
"No," he said. "It was an experiment about dreams. About that nightmare."
"I figured. You usually mention it when we meet in the morning—'I had the same nightmare again.' It's rare for you to dream it during the day. Has the content changed?"
The content of the dream hadn't changed.
Everything was exactly as he had experienced three years ago.
Strictly speaking, it couldn't even be called a dream.
Dreams are illusory, hazy fantasies woven from reality. What he saw in his sleep were fragments of memory. Replays of an event from three years ago that left an impression too deep to fade.
Gongsun Ce carefully considered how much to reveal.
He had never told his friends the specific details of the dream. Not out of distrust, but because sometimes, knowing less is better for everyone.
The carriage convoy passed, and the light turned green.
Halfway across the zebra crossing, having weighed his words, the young man spoke. "The dream itself hasn't changed. The events, the people—everything is the same. It's just a replay of a memory I don't want to recall. What worries me isn't the content, but the frequency. usually, as long as I don't actively think about the past, it only appears once or twice a month. But..."
They reached the other side of the street. It was about a ten-minute walk to the apartment complex.
"I see. The frequency has increased recently," Qin Qianbai said. She quickened her pace, overtook him by half a body length, then spun 180 degrees to walk backward, facing him.
Can this girl not walk normally for five minutes?
"Knowing your personality, you must have tried everything. Maybe even self-hypnosis techniques from cheap occult magazines to clear your mind. Yet, the nightmare still came."
Did she just say "cheap occult magazines"?
"That's why you were anxious. That's why you were reckless enough to fall asleep defenseless in a crowded fast-food restaurant. You hoped that in such a noisy, special environment, the dream wouldn't appear."
He finished the last of his matcha ice cream.
He opened his hand, letting the empty wrapper float up and down in the air. The girl's eyes followed it, bobbing up and down in sync.
Gongsun Ce sighed and leaned against a wall. "I prefer to call it a 'bold attempt.' But as you said, I failed. It seems memories don't take orders from humans. They always crawl out when you least expect them."
"Look. Look at this face. This is the expression of subtle, caring concern. What is the current frequency?"
Where is the subtlety? Where is the care?
"Six months ago, it increased to once a week. It's been getting worse. Starting this week... it's every day."
"As a physics student, I use my professional knowledge to suggest you see a psychiatrist immediately."
"Thank you for that piece of common sense that has absolutely nothing to do with physics. I'll figure something out."
Crunch.
He crushed the wrapper in his hand, venting his frustration.
He was ready to drop the subject, but Qin Qianbai stood her ground. The black-haired girl tilted her head, staring directly into his eyes.
"I know a very capable expert. Maybe they can help... What is the content of the dream? If it's troublesome to say, you don't have to."
She asked about the content? That's rare.
They had known each other for a while. Of the four people in their group, he had known Qin Qianbai the longest. He believed their understanding of each other ran the deepest.
To outsiders, they were inseparable friends. And they were. Yet, even as best friends, they never pried into details. In the outside world, this might seem strange, but here... it was normal.
Whether Esper or non-Esper, everyone in The Azure City understood this rule. They respected the silence.
"It's not a big deal, really. But promise me—you are not allowed to laugh."
"I guarantee there is a 99% chance I will not laugh."
"Please don't leave that 1% insurance policy! Fine. It's a tragedy that could happen to any teenager... One day in the past, I was writing a very important letter. A love letter, full of sincere emotion."
"Mmhmm."
"I had just gotten out of the shower, wearing only a towel. Halfway through writing, I felt my vocabulary was lacking, so I opened my laptop to find some reference material. But in my haste... I accidentally clicked on an adult manga."
Qin Qianbai nodded slowly.
"Very careless."
"Indeed."
"Extremely careless."
"Exactly."
"Truly, truly..."
"Just listen! The moment I accidentally clicked it, someone opened the door and walked in. They got a front-row seat to me—naked except for a towel, holding a pen and paper—and a full-screen, double-page spread of that. The scream that followed, and the chain of accidents after... that is the memory I cannot forget."
Qin Qianbai used her fingers to manually lift the corners of her mouth.
"Hahaha. Hahahaha. Hahahahaha!"
"You promised not to laugh!"
This girl...!
She clapped her hands with a straight face.
"Amazing. You broke through the 1% probability."
"Don't use hot-blooded lines from the final battle of a Super Robot anime to justify your rudeness!"
"Look. Look at this face. This is the expression of mocking you for reaping what you sowed."
"Alright. If you want a fight, let's go. Right now."
A fight requires fighting spirit from both sides, so Gongsun Ce's declaration fell flat.
The girl turned and pointed to a fork in the road to the right. "I have a part-time job for the next two days, so I'm heading this way. The security has been bad at night recently, so watch yourself."
"Thanks for the concern. You be careful too."
Qin Qianbai's figure receded from his view.
He stood there until she completely disappeared from sight before moving again.
Was that clumsy lie seen through? Or did I get away with it?
He didn't care. And he figured she didn't care either.
What mattered wasn't the content of the words, but the attitude behind them.
They had known each other for a long time, but neither he, nor Shigure, nor Cardia, had ever asked why the girl had no facial expressions.
Walking home, Gongsun Ce smiled bitterly.
This is terrible. Are we really friends?
But sometimes, it has to be this way. Precisely because they are friends, they don't want to drag each other into their own troubles.
The reverse was also true.
When will I be able to ask her that question?
Torturing himself with these thoughts, the young man walked toward his apartment.
The time was 4:30 PM.
Approximately five minutes later, a scream rang out from the entrance of an apartment building.