...
Ren Yi took a sharp, gasping breath, like a drowning man being hauled onto the shore.
His chest heaved violently, and the lingering taste of dust and blood seemed to cling to his throat. It took several seconds for him to realize he was lying in the sleep pod. The soft indicator light at the top flickered once.
The pod door rose slowly.
【The Professional Allocation Test has ended. Test results will be announced simultaneously in seven days.】
【Please relax. Everything that just occurred was part of the test. Please take deep breaths, calm your mind, and exit the sleep pod as soon as possible.】
【Go out and eat something delicious, hug your loved ones, and we wish you a happy life.】
Ren Yi lay still for a while until the hallucinations faded. Only then did he process what he had just heard.
What the hell.
Ren Yi felt a pang of irritation so sharp it nearly made him curse out loud.
So, everything that just happened was fake.
The Alliance with its perfect welfare, the most comprehensive education system... right now, Ren Yi just wanted to give whoever designed all of this a solid punch to the face.
Wait, did his brother know what would happen?
He probably did. After all, with The Alliance's universal education, everyone from the mentally challenged to the autistic likely had to go through this ordeal.
Thinking of this, Ren Yi felt his anger flare even more.
He jumped out of the sleep pod, only to stumble and nearly fall, which forced him to notice his physical condition.
He was dizzy—dizzier than he had been in the hallucination. Fortunately, after taking a few steps, he confirmed that the floor wasn't slanted, there was no reddish-purple light outside the window, and no black waterfalls were falling from the sky.
The air felt real and heavy, and the world was spinning gently. His limbs felt hollow and weak, and a rhythmic numbness throbbed in his temples.
"...Brother?"
He called out in a low voice.
The response was the sound of a spatula hitting a pan coming from the kitchen.
Calm, familiar, and rhythmic.
At that moment, Ren Yi's brain finally registered that he was truly back on solid ground.
Everything that had just happened was gradually covered by a layer of fog, like a mirage, as his brain categorized it as a "hallucination."
Ren Yi took in the world with a sense of greed.
The sleep pod beside him hummed softly, and a slight breeze seemed to ruffle his hair.
The sensation of his feet on the floor was incredibly strange, like stepping on a cloud.
Water droplets danced and shimmered in the frying pan, the sunlight on the floor felt a bit loud, white currents of air swirled slowly, and the lake outside the window looked like tofu...
Speaking of tofu, it seemed there was fried tofu for dinner today.
I have to go tell my brother I'm awake, and then settle the score with him for conspiring with The Alliance to mess with my emotions!
Ren Yi slowly walked toward the living room.
The faint scent of cooking oil wafted through the air. The frosted glass door of the kitchen was closed, and he could only see Ren Man's shadow busy inside.
Ren Yi reached out to pull the door open, but out of the corner of his eye, he caught his own shadow seemingly wriggling on the wall.
He froze and turned his head to look at the wall.
On the wall, his shadow was moving with great enthusiasm, as if it had broken free from the constraints of flesh. Its edges were constantly undulating, almost becoming wavy.
It looked like a shapeless cloud of mist, struggling to confine itself within a human silhouette. However, a human shape was a bit too incompatible with the structure of a cloud, so it could only dance a disco within that skin.
Ren Yi: "..."
Was he still in a dream?
He felt his breathing grow shallow.
No, he suddenly realized he should be breathing, but had he actually been breathing just now?
He slowly looked down and saw a tentacle made of thick white mist.
Great, he wasn't human anymore.
Ren Yi took a step back.
However, just as a person cannot go back once they become conscious of their breathing, the human form held together by his subconsciousness suddenly collapsed. His entire body of flesh and blood instantly melted into a mass and slumped onto the floor.
His five senses were a mess. It felt like he had pressed his ears against the floor; one eye was looking straight at the ceiling, while the other saw nothing but white—as if it were inside his stomach. His mouth seemed to have tasted something salty, and his nose bumped into the corner of the table as he moved.
A harsh screeching sound rang out. He had knocked over a chair while backing away, and by the time he realized it, he had already crushed the chair into splinters.
The noise startled Ren Man in the kitchen. Immediately after, Ren Yi's ears on the floor heard a muffled call.
"Xiao Yi?"
No, no, no. If he let his brother see him like this, it wouldn't just be autism; he'd probably scare him into a mental breakdown.
Ren Yi panicked. Unfortunately, his hands were no longer hands and his feet were no longer feet. In the heat of the moment, he had to resort to the most primitive method of movement—he rolled under the dining table.
Clatter. The sound of the kitchen door being pulled open.
Tap, tap.
Ren Man walked out of the kitchen and then stopped.
He was likely shocked by the miserable wreckage of the chair.
As he rolled, Ren Yi's ears had managed to turn from being flat against the floor to facing sideways, which meant they were now directed toward Ren Man.
The bad news was that the eye outside his body had also rotated halfway, turning from the ceiling to the sofa, with its back to Ren Man.
The room fell silent for a moment. Footsteps sounded again, followed by the sound of the bedroom door opening and closing. Ren Yi realized his brother had gone into his room to check on him.
Before Ren Man could return, Ren Yi made a sudden leap and dove into the gap under the sofa.
Fortunately, his current body could be kneaded and flattened at will, allowing him to barely squeeze into that gap, which was less than ten centimeters high.
However, the space under the sofa was low and narrow. He had to flatten himself completely, instantly filling the small shadow beneath the sofa to the brim.
Fortunately, Ren Yi finally began to understand his current body, and this flattened state further helped him confirm the positions of his various organs.
So, he began to work hard at "digging out" his facial features.
By the time he had finally managed to gather one eye and two ears, he realized that his surroundings seemed a bit too quiet.
Logically, his brother should have discovered that he was no longer in the sleep pod, and the chair in the living room was in pieces.
In such a situation, a normal person would either shout for him or call the police.
No, wait. A normal person might, but Ren Man might not.
He recalled some psychology he had studied in his previous life; someone with autism might become so anxious in this situation that they couldn't make a sound at all.
Ren Yi felt a bit panicked. While he struggled to dig out his mouth, he moved the eye he had found toward the outer edge of the sofa.
However, his progress was painfully slow. After moving for a long time, he could only see a corner of the gap through his peripheral vision.
In his desperation, he began to stretch his eye. To his surprise, his field of vision began to elongate and rise, slowly expanding from the original ninety degrees to one hundred and twenty, then one hundred and eighty.
Finally, his vision encompassed the entire gap of the sofa facing outward.
It was pitch black outside. In this short amount of time, the last lingering light of the sunset seemed to have vanished.
Why aren't the lights on? Did Brother faint?
Then he realized that even in total darkness, he could see everything clearly. Even a single splinter from the broken chair was vividly visible.
Ren Yi wanted to grit his teeth, but he couldn't find them. Ultimately, he planned to literally roll to his room to see what was going on.
Fortunately, he finally managed to dig out his other eye at that moment.
This eye appeared on the back of his current body. He followed suit and stretched this eye as well, instantly gaining a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of vision.
But in the next second, his movements froze.
This eye was facing the opposite direction of the other, toward the gap between the sofa and the wall. That gap was only two centimeters wide; normally, all this eye should see was the dark surface of the wall.
However, at this very moment, a pair of eyes was suspended there, quietly staring at him. He didn't know how long they had been watching.
Rate on N.U.
