Returning from that futuristic operations room to his own familiar bedroom, Zhe felt as though he had stepped back from another world.
He shook his head, forcing the distractions aside.
Now was not the time to stand around in a daze.
He threw himself straight onto the bed and, almost like forcibly shutting down a machine, collapsed into sleep the moment his head touched the pillow.
His consciousness sank once more into that familiar realm.
Amid flowing golden light, he stepped again into the golden palace built from obsession.
The sight before him was even more "lively" than when he had last left it.
The palace no longer held only Nicole and the first two children. Now there were more than a dozen kids of varying ages gathered inside. They wore simple, plain clothes, utterly mismatched with the absurd luxury around them. Though the children's faces were bright with the joy of reuniting with "family," chattering merrily around Nicole, a closer look revealed a faint but unmistakable confusion hidden deep in their eyes—
and an invisible kind of restraint.
They could not leave this golden cage.
"Zhe! You're here!"
Nicole spotted him at once, and her face instantly lit up with a bright, cloudless smile.
Practically skipping with delight, she ran over, naturally hooked herself around his arm, and pulled him over to the children.
"Everyone, look! This is the Big Brother Zhe I told you about before—the one who always takes such good care of me!"
A chorus of curious little eyes landed squarely on Zhe as the children called out unevenly:
"Hello, Big Brother Zhe—!"
At that moment, one little boy who looked far too clever for his own good rolled his eyes and suddenly declared loudly, "No way! Nicole, who's always so careless, actually found herself someone? That's impossible to believe!"
"Yeah—! Since when did that happen?" the other children immediately piled on, as though they had just discovered a brand-new toy.
"Wahhh! Y-you little brats, don't talk nonsense!"
Nicole's face went crimson in a single burst. She hurriedly let go of Zhe's arm and flailed in a panic, trying to cover the mouth of the child who had started it all.
"He's not my boyfriend! We're just... just normal... good friends!"
"Right, right! Normal friends! Super normal ones!" Zhe also straightened up and chimed in with righteous seriousness, though the faint redness at the tips of his ears sold him out completely.
"Ehhh—? Do normal friends casually hold onto each other like that?" another little girl with horn-shaped pigtails asked innocently, pointing straight at the way Nicole had just been clinging to his arm.
"T-that was... it was etiquette! Yes, a gesture of friendliness!"
Nicole argued stubbornly, doing her best to preserve her dignity as the "older sister."
But amid the good-natured laughter and the awkward back-and-forth between the two of them, Zhe's heart only grew heavier.
He drew a deep breath and forcibly dragged the conversation back on track.
"Nicole," he said, his voice turning serious, "I need to tell you something important. Listen to me—this is your dream. That 'Nightmare' we ran into last time is invading this place. You have to wake up as soon as possible, or something terrible is going to happen in the real world!"
Unexpectedly, Nicole showed no sign of surprise.
She only lowered her head slowly and said in a very quiet voice,
"I know... I know this is my dream."
She raised a hand and gently stroked the hair of one of the children beside her, her eyes filled with tenderness and reluctance.
"But... only in my dreams can I see them again. Only here can I be together with everyone the way we used to be at Warm Home. This feeling... I just can't bear to let it go."
"But you have to think about the children!" Zhe's tone turned urgent. "In the real world, they've all fallen into comas for no known reason! Their families—their parents—must be out of their minds with worry right now! You can't keep them trapped here!"
"Families?"
Nicole jerked her head up. Tears instantly welled in her eyes, and her voice trembled with grievance and pain she could no longer suppress.
"Does that mean I don't count as their family?! Yes! In reality they all have new homes now, new families! But what about me?!"
Her voice rose higher, years of loneliness and hurt breaking loose all at once.
"Where is my family?! The headmistress is gone! The orphanage is gone! In that so-called 'reality,' all I have is a cold little rented room! I have nothing left at all! ...Only in dreams... only in dreams can I find that feeling of home again!"
"Nicole! You..."
Pain stabbed through Zhe's heart.
Of course he knew that Nicole had been alone all these years. Looking at her tearful accusation—those eyes that were always filled with sly laughter now overflowing with shattered pain—he found himself speechless.
Every argument he had prepared caught in his throat, and not a single word came out.
"I thought... you of all people would understand me, Zhe."
Nicole looked at him as the intensity in her eyes gradually dimmed, giving way to disappointment and distance.
"If that's how it is, then go. Go back to your reality."
She lifted a hand and pointed toward the great doors of the golden palace, the will of the dream's owner carrying an authority that could not be resisted.
"I don't want to see you anymore."
In the next second, Zhe felt an overwhelming force of rejection hit him. The golden light before his eyes instantly twisted and shattered. His whole body was violently hurled away by an invisible power, and after a dizzying whirl he crashed hard onto the cold, damp ground of a back alley somewhere in the dream world.
The golden splendor, the children's laughter, Nicole's tearful accusation—
all of it vanished.
Only endless cold remained, wrapping itself around him.
Zhe lay there on the ground, his elbows and knees burning with pain, but compared to the hurt in his body, the image of Nicole looking so utterly heartbroken left him feeling far more suffocated.
"Why did it turn out like this? Why?! Someone tell me why?! Aaahhhhhh!"
He pounded helplessly at the ground, his shout echoing through the alley. He had wanted to help Nicole, yet now he could not even take a single step forward.
Just then, the communicator rang at exactly the right time.
Zero's calm voice came through:
[ZZZ, it seems your attempt to persuade the dream owner has failed. In that case, change approaches and search for the Gate of the Mind. Waiting helplessly is not an option.]
Zhe struggled to his feet, brushed the dust from his clothes, and forced himself to gather his scattered thoughts.
"The Gate of the Mind... but where am I even supposed to start looking?"
[Dreams are built from obsessions. If Miss Nicole's deepest obsession lies anywhere, then it must be in the place most tightly bound to the "family" she keeps speaking of—that orphanage. Since this is her dream, that place must exist here in some form.]
[Come. Return to base first. You can ride the Code Zero-Eroder to any destination you wish to reach within the dream.]
"I understand."
Zhe's gaze sharpened again.
"Zero, send me back to base."
[The passage is prepared.]
With a single scene shift, Zhe returned to the hidden base behind the video store.
That red-and-white motorcycle—the Code Zero-Eroder—was standing quietly before him.
[Focus your thoughts,] Zero's voice said from within the bike. [Recall everything you saw in the files about that orphanage—photographs, written descriptions, anything at all. The more specific, the better. I will guide the energy and lock onto the dream coordinates.]
Zhe swung himself onto the motorcycle, gripped the handlebars, and closed his eyes, doing his best to reconstruct the image of the Warm Home Orphanage in his mind:
the somewhat faded outer walls, the swing that always creaked, the crooked tree by the entrance, the open yard where the children used to play...
The engine emitted a deep rumble.
A blazing white beam shot from the bike's front, sketching out the outline of a gate of light in the air ahead.
[Coordinates locked. Move out, ZZZ.]
Zhe twisted the throttle, and the Code Zero-Eroder shot into the light gate like an arrow leaving the string.
After a brief sensation of warped space, the motorcycle's tires rolled onto a soft dirt road.
He lifted his gaze and found himself on a quiet street that felt both familiar and strange.
And there before him—
was the Warm Home Orphanage, the very place that had existed in his mind only through documents and Nicole's descriptions.
It looked even older than in the photographs, but utterly real, as though time itself had frozen there.
He had arrived.
And now, within this dream-version of the orphanage, he needed to find the door that led to the deepest part of Nicole's heart—
the Gate of the Mind that would decide everything.
"It worked!"
Zhe's spirits lifted at once. He jumped off the bike and, without hesitation, pushed open the half-closed courtyard gate, its paint chipped and peeling.
Inside, the orphanage was silent.
The stillness stood in sharp contrast to the noisy "liveliness" of the golden palace.
He crossed the empty yard and headed straight for the main building. Pushing open the door, he found a dim corridor inside, along with the familiar children's activity room. His eyes swept sharply over every corner until, at last, they settled on the room at the far end—
the room that, in Nicole's memory, had belonged to Headmistress Demara.
And standing quietly beside that ordinary wooden door...
was another door, utterly different from the rest.
It was completely white.
On its surface were two abstract, symmetrical human figures, inverted top and bottom like the mirrored faces of a playing card. A faint, pure light radiated from it, standing starkly apart from the old and worn surroundings.
"Bingo," Zhe murmured, his heart beginning to race.
That was it.
This white door looked exactly like the Gate of the Mind Zero had shown him before.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 172)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 116)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter69)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter119)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 60
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 66
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 50
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 52
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 55
The Way the Umamusume Look at 42
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 40
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 36
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 30
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 26
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 26
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