Volume 5: Bottomless Sinkhole Chapter 251: Like a Dream, Not a Dream
"I am..." said the chef who stood up.
"Your restaurant...how many years has it been open here?" Ke Lan stared at him with wide eyes, as if she was afraid that he would suddenly disappear.
"Four years...what's wrong? Sir, how did you..."
Before he finished speaking, Ke Lan interrupted him again: "Before you, was this place a clinic? It was a clinic opened by a Slav named Ivan--"
"No, no, no...Sir, I think you may be mistaken. Before my restaurant opened, this was a small commercial bank. It went bankrupt due to poor management, so I was able to bid for the right to use this land at a good price...If you are looking for a clinic, there are several in the next block." The restaurant owner said, "If possible, I hope you can leave here now. Your behavior is serious..."
"I know. Sorry." Ke Lan said a little frustrated. He turned around, his arms hanging limply at his sides, and walked towards the door of the restaurant.
He vaguely heard someone behind him calling him a "lunatic". He slowly turned his head, only to see a blond and blue-eyed young girl clumsily using chopsticks in her hands to try to pick up a springy meatball.
She failed once, twice, and the third time, the meatball rolled off the edge of the soup pot and fell to the ground.
For some reason, Ke Lan always felt that the meatball was raw, and that pot of delicious, steaming soup seemed to be filled with bright red blood.
Is there such a dish in Chinese cuisine? Is this a pot of "Maoxuewang"?
Ke Lan suddenly felt very irritated. He didn't want to think about these details. He just felt that the restaurant seemed very noisy, and he didn't want to stay here for even a second.
"Before my restaurant opened, this was a small commercial bank..." The restaurant owner's words were still echoing in Ke Lan's head. If the clinic only existed in her imagination, it meant that Ivan had never existed. All of this was an illusion...
No, it's a paradox!
Ke Lan woke up suddenly. If Ivan didn't exist, he would not have been infected by the Seed of Erosion. If there was no infection, there would be no need for her to go to the underwater city to look for the "flesh-eating worms", and she would never have met Zofia... This didn't make sense, it didn't make sense at all!
This world seems normal, but it is full of loopholes!
Ke Lan suddenly discovered that the faces of the diners in the restaurant were blurry. Only when she focused her attention on those few people could she see their features clearly. As for those people in the corner of her eye...all of their faces were just the simplest outlines!
Not only that, even this scene was pieced together! The plates used to hold food in the restaurant were printed with the logo of a barbecue restaurant that he often visited; those incredibly exquisite dishes were based on scenes from old movies that he had watched... Even the rusty was copied from the wall of the grain warehouse that served as a safe house!
This is a dream! A dream made up of fragments of my own memories!
Everything here is something that I have seen or thought about before, even the people in this scene are the same!
The owner of that restaurant looks exactly like Ivan!
Ke Lan quickly turned back and pushed open the kitchen again, but this time, he found that there was no one in the kitchen, the workbench was empty, some broken kitchen utensils were randomly piled in the corner, and the ground was covered with a thick layer of dust...
Ke Lan turned around in astonishment, only to see that the restaurant lobby was also in a state of disrepair. The decorations on the walls and ceiling had aged and faded, and the tables, chairs, and cabinets were in tatters. On the dirty glass exterior wall, there was a notice that read "Shop for Rent", but even this notice had turned yellow and brittle.
"This restaurant has been closed for a long time." Zofia said standing at the door, "Are you planning to buy this piece of land? As an office for the new hunting group?"
Ke Lan raised his head and looked at Zofia's face... There was nothing incongruous about this face... It was exactly the same as the Zofia in his memory.
"This is a dream, right?" Ke Lan asked.
"What did you say?" Sophia asked in confusion.
"I'm trapped in this dream. I know this is a dream, but I don't know how to get out."
"...Are you having a nightmare?" Zofia asked cautiously, "But you look sober now..."
"I have to get out of here..." Ke Lan no longer paid attention to Zofia. He looked around and then stopped his sight on the car that Zofia drove.
He walked over quickly, opened the car door, took out a pistol from the glove box, and then put the muzzle of the gun into his mouth.
If I kill myself, I should be able to escape from this dream, right?
However, just as he was about to pull the trigger, he hesitated - he thought of those relic hunters who went crazy after coming out of the tiankeng. Some of them shot themselves and the people around them... Presumably, some of them also found themselves trapped in a dream and planned to use this violent method to wake themselves up...
However, when they pulled the trigger, they actually killed people in the real world...
Am I awake or in a deep dream... or in other words, am I in a state between half asleep and half awake?
If I pull the trigger, will the bullet go through my brain? Will I wake up or die immediately?
Ke Lan suddenly understood why those people went crazy.
He loosened his fingers and pulled the pistol out of his mouth. He turned around and saw Zofia standing silently behind him, without making any sound and without any expression on her face.
She did not stop Ke Lan from committing suicide, and she didn't even move.
She was like a puppet with its strings cut, standing quietly on the street, staring at Ke Lan indifferently.
Ke Lan raised the gun towards her, aimed, and then slowly lowered it.
"I won't shoot because I don't know if I'll actually kill you if I pull the trigger... I'm just wondering, if it were in the real world, your bodyguard would have come out to stop me."
Zofia did not react to this... because Ke Lan had never seen how she would react when facing her own gun, and Ke Lan had never imagined such a scene, so this part of his memory was blank...
Nightmares are "taken" from one's own memories. They cannot create things that one has never seen out of thin air, but they can induce oneself to go crazy step by step, and even to self-destruction.
However, Ke Lan refused to fulfill its wish.
