Chapter 22: Dream

After ending the call, the faint smile on Jiang Hui’s face quickly faded.

The surroundings were quiet. In the distance, the faint sounds of footsteps and muffled conversations could be heard. Shuttle buses traversed the designated orbital paths above, and the massive, ever-present planet in the sky continued its silent rotation. It was undoubtedly a perfectly ordinary day on this planet.

Yet, for Jiang Hui, a native of Blue Star, it was anything but.

She stood dazed in the pavilion for a while before slowly rising and heading toward the entrance of the nearby apartment building.

The lobby on the ground floor was, as always, characterized by its modern aesthetic. The space was dominated by palettes of white, light blue, and a steady, muted grey-brown, with high-tech materials covering every floor, wall, and ceiling. To be honest, she was quite unaccustomed to it. This stark, minimalist style carried a certain mechanical, industrial chill that lacked any sense of warmth—something a person like Jiang Hui, raised in the interpersonal-focused culture of Huachao, found deeply unsettling.

It served as a constant reminder that she had arrived in a world entirely different from her own—one from which she could never return.

The front desk was manned by an intelligent robot, and behind it stood a wall filled with small compartments resembling parcel lockers, which, according to her memories, served as the mail distribution center.

The intelligent system detected her and politely asked if she needed any assistance. Jiang Hui was merely looking around and had no need for help. After lingering for a while longer, she followed the signs to take the elevator to Building B and headed home.

People in the interstellar era seemed to prefer living in spacious environments; due to the ongoing expansion across the stars, homes were habitually built with plenty of room. Take the apartment the original owner had lived in: there was only one residence per floor, and even the surrounding greenery and common areas effectively belonged to her alone.

Building A had a larger foundation and housed two families per floor—still quiet, but Jiang Hui preferred this arrangement.

Building B featured a circular layout. After stepping out of the elevator and rounding a decorative screen designed for privacy, she finally saw her front door.

It seemed the Helios Group really was wealthy; the replacement door was of much higher quality and significantly sturdier than the previous one. It even featured a high-end wood grain finish. How extravagant.

With this thought, Jiang Hui used iris recognition to unlock the door.

*Click.* The door opened instantly.

It hadn't opened this quickly before, as the intelligent system previously required time to verify biometric data and record the entry. However, the core of that intelligent system had been removed by the Helios Group, leaving only a few automated smart furnishings in the house.

In a way, it felt closer to the high-tech dwellings she knew on Blue Star—barely within the scope of her understanding.

That was fine. Her current state of mind was better suited for this; being forced to confront too many overly futuristic things at once made her feel lost, unable to distinguish reality from a dream.

***

She stood at the doorway, dazed, her eyes unfocused as the door closed behind her with a dull thud.

"Only those whose brain waves have completely ceased can be considered brain dead." The thought surfaced in her mind once again.

When she was busy, she didn't feel it, but there had been a heavy, stone-like weight pressing on her heart, a stifling frustration she couldn't vent. Now that everything had quieted down, the weight she had been suppressing poured out, unstoppable.

"We're home," she said to the empty room.

There was, inevitably, no one to answer her.

She turned back to ensure the door was locked, then walked through the lobby, rooms, and hallways—all completely unfamiliar—until she reached the bedroom at the end of the corridor.

A large section of the wall next to the bedroom had been dismantled, leaving a gaping void where the interface for the intelligent system had once been.

The door detected the owner’s presence and opened automatically, and she walked straight in. This was the only part of the home she felt remotely familiar with.

The room was exactly as it had been on her first day, save for the absence of the intelligent robot. It was quite large—much larger than her initial impression, perhaps over sixty square meters. The bed was positioned north-to-south, facing a semi-circular area draped with thick curtains that sealed the interior away from the outside world.

The motion-sensor lights glowed with a soft, warm hue, the brightness just right.

Jiang Hui stood motionless in the room for a moment before collapsing onto the soft bed. It should have been a comfortable experience, but in the blink of an eye, a completely foreign atmosphere washed over her, and she stiffened instantly.

She rolled over, grabbed a fluffy pillow, flipped it, and pressed it against her face. She held her breath until a slight sense of suffocation set in, only then feeling barely convinced that she was still alive.

"Sigh, never mind. My head is killing me..."

The girl’s murmuring grew fainter, eventually replaced only by the sound of her breathing.

The bedroom lights shut off at the right moment, plunging the room into darkness.

Jiang Hui couldn't tell if she was awake or dreaming. Was this... her home?

Had she finally returned? Could everything before have been a dream?

***

She wandered through her small home like a ghost, and as she did, the realization dawned on her. This feeling of weightlessness, where her movements and thoughts felt beyond her control, only happened in dreams. Clearly, this was her dream...

Right. On the day of the meteor shower, because of a bowl of instant noodles and a computer malfunction, she had inexplicably left Blue Star for a world in the distant galaxy that measured time by the interstellar calendar.

There, in a very short time, she had witnessed countless technologies unimaginable on Blue Star.

For Jiang Hui of Blue Star, this was an incredibly foreign land. The suspected brain death of the original host filled her with a heavy sense of unease.

At some unknown moment, a soul had perished, and she, a wandering spirit from who-knows-where, had inherited this body, this identity, and this entire life.

It wasn't that she didn't want to live, but she didn't want to occupy someone else's body. She was grateful to the heavens and to the original host for the chance at a second life, but she would have preferred to return to her own world to continue her ordinary existence.

Regrettably, the original host seemed truly gone, and she clearly could not return to her own world.

Where should she go from here? Jiang Hui had no idea, just as she had no idea about this dream that felt all too real.

Sigh. Could someone tell her why, when one knows they are dreaming, they still cannot wake up in time?

If this is a dream, please let me wake up soon. She truly felt that the scene before her—a reminder that she could never go home—was unbearable.

She wandered through her dream-home once more, finally stopping before the gargantuan, strangely mutated computer embedded in the floor-to-ceiling window. A flicker of emotion crossed her mind.

Even after changing worlds, she still dreamed of computers; it showed how deeply she felt she had died unjustly. Yet, in this dream, the other culprit was nowhere to be found—she felt those instant noodles had played quite a significant role as well.

*Sob.* To think that before dying, she hadn't even managed to finish a bowl of instant noodles. Being a wage slave is truly miserable.