Chapter 57: Meng Hui
The train’s roar stopped at the slaughterhouse entrance.
The three still alive didn’t hesitate at all and went straight through ticket inspection back onto the train.
Lu Jinzhao watched the life-buying money on her train ticket change from 1500 to 1900, confirming once again that this was indeed just an ordinary [B] level mission.
And her passenger level hadn’t increased at all.
The three after boarding didn’t communicate; that woman looked extremely fatigued, drowsily sitting in her seat, her wound already gone, presumably because she had spent some life-buying money.
However, her hand was still wrapped in clothes, making it impossible to see the hand’s appearance clearly.
It wasn’t until near the time to get off that she opened her eyes and looked at Lu Jinzhao.
“My name is Meng Hui. You probably don’t remember my name.” Saying this, she paused, then corrected, “You probably don’t remember any of our names except your friend’s?”
“But I hope you can remember me. You’re very capable. If there’s a chance next time, I hope we can cooperate, Chao Chao?”
When she said the two words Chao Chao, her tone carried a bit of doubt, because Lu Jinzhao hadn’t introduced herself like the others, and those two words were just something she had heard from Wei Ling.
Only after hearing her words did Lu Jinzhao belatedly realize that indeed, she hadn’t bothered to remember the names of her mission companions this time.
It was as if, from the very beginning, she hadn’t treated them as “companions.”
Clearly, now she still remembered the names of people she hadn’t even interacted much with in the [Summon Ghosts] and [Loss of Control] missions.
“Sorry.” She smiled, yet didn’t know what exactly to apologize for—was it because of her arrogance?
But Lu Jinzhao knew that it wasn’t because of arrogance, but for a reason even she herself hadn’t noticed.
“Meng Hui, I’ve remembered you. My name is Lu Jinzhao.” It was only after the mission ended that she told her mission companions her name.
Lu Jinzhao felt a bit irritated inside; she realized she hadn’t fully noticed the parchment’s change to her. She didn’t want to unknowingly become a stranger to herself.
She didn’t believe that in such a deadly mission, the behavior of not even bothering to remember companions’ names was something she could do from her true heart.
“Looks like I must be more cautious.”
“We’ve arrived at the station.” The train stopped, and Wei Ling timely reminded Lu Jinzhao, who was still lost in thought.
Leaving the platform, the three didn’t say much and each took their vehicle and left.
What they needed most now was rest.
Back in the dormitory, her roommates showed no reaction to her silent departure.
It was as if she had just returned to the dormitory after class.
However, Lu Jinzhao could tell that the other roommates’ relationships were clearly much closer; they would talk about jokes she had never heard, ones that happened in the days she was away.
One roommate even teased another, asking who the senior was who had sent her back to the dormitory yesterday.
Amid their laughter, Lu Jinzhao dazedly realized that this was part of the price of “convenience”—her sense of presence as a normal person was also slowly weakening.
Her interpersonal relationships could hardly be maintained properly. During missions, the train’s “protection” of passengers was also a forced “stripping away” from normal society. After too many times, even friends would slowly stop caring about this person, right?
By then, their social identities would no longer matter; [passenger] would become the only identity for people like them.
This was too terrifying.
Lu Jinzhao lay on the bed in the dormitory. She heard her roommates’ lowered voices; even though it was daytime now, and Lu Jinzhao had returned to the dormitory without saying a word and was about to sleep, they were polite enough to stop their loud laughter.
Lu Jinzhao thought she should get up and tell her roommates it was fine, that they wouldn’t disturb her, but as soon as she lay down, her body seemed to sink into a quagmire, her eyelids became incredibly heavy, and the jumbled thoughts in her mind didn’t even have time to sort themselves out before she sank into darkness.
She belatedly realized that she was actually very tired too. In the few days inside the platform, she had hardly slept at all, the food she ate was mostly what she had brought in herself, her brain had been running at high speed the whole time, and she had long been overloaded.
In the last second before fully falling into drowsiness, Lu Jinzhao thought that freshmen must live on campus, but if she was a “passenger,” requesting to move out and rent a place off-campus probably wouldn’t be refused.
She felt sorry for making her roommates keep quiet even during the day; she shouldn’t continue living with others.
Carrying a somewhat heavy mood, Lu Jinzhao fully fell into drowsiness.
Ever since signing the contract with the parchment, her dreams had become bizarre and grotesque.
She could no longer have normal dreams. Either she would dream of some chaotic, terrifying scenes, or there would be nothing—just a piece of darkness where her body felt like it was sinking continuously into a quagmire.
Whichever it was, it would make her feel discomfort. Each time she woke up, her body would feel especially heavy.
Her sleep was no longer peaceful, and she no longer liked sleeping.
Perhaps because of this, her weight was slowly decreasing. She should maintain her health to cope with the train missions, but nightmares lingered in her ears, preventing her from sleeping peacefully, forcing her to watch herself become gaunt.
Lu Jinzhao, fallen into sleep, could no longer control her expression well. Her body lay calmly on the bed, but her brows were tightly furrowed, as if she had seen something in the dream that made her extremely uneasy.
From time to time, her head would sway slightly, as if trying hard to escape her dream but unable to succeed.
In the dream, Lu Jinzhao was sitting on something. Though her hands and feet weren’t bound, she couldn’t move.
Her line of sight was blurry as if directly hit by the sun; she couldn’t open her eyes and could only vaguely see a glaring red in front of her, but she couldn’t tell what the red came from.
She only felt unease, panic, fear spreading in her heart. She seemed to know something, hence her extreme fear.
But only the “her” in the dream knew; Lu Jinzhao herself could only feel boundless fear and anxiety.
She should escape from here, yet for some reason, she couldn’t escape.
Some sound came from “outside.” Lu Jinzhao couldn’t make out what it was—too blurry, only a few intermittent syllables came through. With the sound’s appearance, something approached.
At first, it was just a blurry, somewhat pitch-black shadow figure.
Then the shadow figure got closer and larger. The closer it got, the more fear Lu Jinzhao felt.
She wanted to see clearly what it was, but she still couldn’t open her eyes.
Her vision was a blur; the shadow figure had already come before her in an instant, leaving only a large swath of black in her “line of sight.”
Fear was about to tear her apart. The Lu Jinzhao in the dream resolved to see what this shadow figure really was. She struggled to open her eyes, even as the “sun” made her eyes stream tears nonstop.
But just as she opened her eyes, she abruptly woke from the dream.
“Huff huff.”
It was her somewhat rapid breathing. The unknown fear lingered in her heart even after waking, lasting nearly half a minute.
Only until clear thoughts dispelled the dream’s shadow did Lu Jinzhao’s breathing slowly calm down.
“What… was that thing?”
She picked up the parchment by the bedside and questioned it.
There will be another chapter in a bit ovo
