That Really Hurts

Rain beat incessantly against the umbrella canopy, drumming a dense, hurried rhythm. Though a bluestone path ran through the courtyard, swept-along sludge flowed steadily from above, nearly submerging the tops of his boots. The deeper in he went, the more urgent the rain and mire seemed to become, like a symphony building toward a full crescendo. Karen placed his hand on the rusted doorknob and turned it gently. The knob turned, but the door would not open. It didn't seem to be locked from within, just completely broken. Taking half a step back, he raised his boot, measuring his force. *Bang!* The door gave way under the kick. A harsh scraping sound tore through the air, like someone sawing wire across steel. He stepped inside. As if caught by a sudden gust of wind, the door behind him slammed shut. *Bang!* The door closed itself, and with it, the chaotic clamor of the rain was sealed outside. From uproar to dead silence, the transition was so abrupt that Karen had to pause a moment to adjust. The entryway was somewhat filthy. A corner seemed deliberately arranged as a mushroom patch—presumably so the kitchen could harvest what it needed without having to run outdoors. Moving past the foyer, he reached the edge of the living room. Seated on chair after chair were golem figures. They were not particularly lifelike; distinct seam lines were plainly visible across their faces. Under a lamp at night, they would have looked utterly horrifying. Wine, coffee, and various refreshments were laid out across the dining table and coffee table. It looked as though a lively party had just been held—or perhaps was still underway, never having stopped. Karen found an empty chair, patted the cushion gently with one hand, turned around, and sat down. Shifting into a comfortable posture, he crossed his legs, seemingly blending right into the ambiance of the golems. He took out his cigarette case, drew one out, put it between his lips, lit it, and took a deep drag. Part of it was to soothe the soul injuries that flared up from time to time lately, and part of it was to introduce a trace of "freshness" into the room. The atmosphere here was cloying. Despite the luxurious furnishings, everything felt as though it had been coated in a layer of wax—not solid, but slick, on the verge of dripping at any moment. *Was this the environment Philomena grew up in?* Karen took another drag and leaned back. Slowly exhaling smoke rings, he continued surveying his surroundings. He had arrived, yet had not fully arrived. The host did not seem particularly welcoming of him as a guest, though Karen felt no grievance at being given the cold shoulder. Regardless of whatever old grudges his grandfather had shared with this family, the curse had been laid by his grandfather. If the grandson showed up at their doorstep and received an enthusiastic welcome, he would have found it unsettling instead. With the cigarette still burning between his fingers, Karen lifted a wineglass from the side table with his other hand, raised it before his eyes, and gently swirled it. Different scenes were reflected in the glass and the red wine within. Some people were laughing and chatting; others were dancing; still others were enthusiastically playing an accordion. Then, an old woman's face leaned forward, a chilling smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She seemed about to say something, but Karen tilted the glass, spilling the red wine directly onto the already greasy, expensive carpet. He tossed his cigarette butt into the remaining drops of wine at the bottom of the glass and set it back on the coffee table. Then Karen crossed his hands over his knees and closed his eyes. Grandmother and granddaughter surely had things to say to each other. He would wait until they finished. As a guest, it was only right to accommodate the host's convenience first. Karen's breathing gradually slowed. He genuinely intended to take a brief nap and rest. Just then, the sound of a rubber ball bouncing and rolling across the floor came from upstairs. Once. Twice. Three times... Karen heard it distinctly, yet he neither opened his eyes nor moved. Having gone through countless struggles within spiritual spaces, he was already thoroughly experienced and well versed in dissecting all manner of illusions. He understood full well that the moment he fell into the other party's rhythm and responded, she could drag him wherever she wanted. The other party did want to entertain him; she had no intention of ignoring him completely. But if the party was starting in the main hall, she clearly wanted to arrange him in a side room so he could play on his own. Karen chose to decline. Yet the bouncing of the ball drew steadily closer, until it sounded as though it were right beside his ear. Karen sighed inwardly. He had wanted to feign ignorance of her hints to politely decline the host's "kindness," but the host had simply reached out and grabbed him by the arm. He opened his eyes. The scene before him was no longer the ground-floor living room, but rather the landing of the second-floor stairwell. A little girl in a yellow dress knelt on the floor, rolling a ball toward a man who was also on all fours. The ball rolled up to the man. He opened his mouth, caught it between his teeth, sat upright, then bounded forward, snapping his neck to fling the ball back toward the girl. The ball rolled back before the girl once more. The girl picked it up and looked across at her drooling, wildly excited... father. Then she shifted her gaze toward the grandmother sitting beside them, knitting a sweater. The grandmother alternately looked down at her knitting needles and looked up with an affectionate smile at the frolicking father and daughter. In truth, the little girl had no desire to play this game, yet she had to, because her grandmother wanted this feeling today. The game of catch between father and daughter continued. Karen sat directly across from Madame Felscher. The "four people" present formed a diamond layout. Karen had little interest in Madame Felscher; instead, he studied the young Philomena quite intently. At this age, a trace of childish innocence still lingered on her face, though not much of it remained. "Grandma, I don't want to play anymore." At last, the girl gathered her courage and deliberately tossed the ball in the other direction. It rolled all the way to Karen's feet. "Child, you must be good. And a good child must first learn to obey." The knitting needles in Madame Felscher's hands floated into the air. Karen looked down at the small rubber ball that had rolled to a stop beside his boot. Just as he reached out to pick it up, the ball suddenly turned into Madame Felscher's face. Her eyeballs bulged abruptly. In the next instant, two knitting needles burst straight through them. No blood splattered; instead, a tearing sound resonated, like fabric being violently punctured. *Hum! Hum!* Karen's eyes were pierced through. The two knitting needles acted like long nails, penetrating his pupils and pinning him to the back of his chair. *Drip... drip...* Blood trickled steadily from the corners of Karen's eyes, running down his arms to his hands, before dripping off his fingertips onto the floor. ... "He reminds me of someone." Madame Felscher stood hunched, staring straight ahead, though there was nothing in front of her. Philomena stood beside her grandmother. In her sight, she seemed to see a familiar figure slumped motionless in a chair, blood dripping incessantly and pooling on the floor below. Yet when she blinked, the figure vanished. When she tried to look again, it felt as though a film of pressure had clamped directly down over her vision. "A similar feeling. Especially when I pushed open the window earlier—for a moment, I truly thought he had come. But in this world, how could there ever be a second him? It's impossible." Madame Felscher reached up, gently stroking her wrinkled, aged face. "Yet I know he is waiting for me. He has been waiting for me all along. I will go find him. I will go see him. I want to tell him how much I have missed him. He was like a beam of light that dazed me for more than half my life. "Yet no matter how beautiful my new clothes are, none would be worthy of the moment we meet again. That is why I want to become young—so that in the form of my youth, I can stand before him and tell him everything that has lived in my heart all these years. "Philomena, can you help Grandma fulfill this wish? "You've always been the most obedient to Grandma, haven't you?" Philomena shook her head. "Grandma, I want to leave this place." "Leave?" Madame Felscher laughed. "How can you leave? The person who brought you here has already fallen. But it doesn't matter. Once the family gathering is over, I'll wake him up again. After all, he still has to take my precious granddaughter away, doesn't he?" "Will he be all right?" Philomena asked. "You care about him? Heh. He might be left with some psychological trauma, but if we can be quick about this, it shouldn't be too bad. Still, I have so much to say to you right now, so we can't rush. "He's that Karen, isn't he? Indeed, he looks even better in person than in the newspapers—a handsome young man. Does my granddaughter like him?" Philomena shook her head. "You don't? There's really nothing to be embarrassed about. A woman liking a handsome man is just like a man liking a beautiful woman—the most normal thing in the world. "He was very handsome too. Truly. Heh." "Grandma, can we end this now?" Philomena slowly raised the Nightmare Blade in her hand. "Ah." Madame Felscher sighed. "Grandma only wanted to walk with you slowly through the final stretch of your life. Why can't you understand Grandma's intentions? "You should learn gratitude, Philomena. Truly, you must learn to be grateful." "I want you dead. As soon as possible." "You're a bit more cheerful than before." Madame Felscher stretched languidly. "Today counts as a family gathering. Those who should come have arrived, and the one who shouldn't has been left to his own quiet. "Now, it's just between you and me. My good granddaughter, it's time for you to repay Grandma. "Answer me: "Will you stand there willingly and let Grandma do as she pleases?" "No." "Then you might want to look down at the blade in your hand first." Philomena looked down and found that the Nightmare Blade she held had turned into a vertical flute. This meant she had already been pulled into a different layer of dreams by her grandmother. Here, her grandmother's will could alter anything. Madame Felscher reached out and took the flute from Philomena's hand. "When you were just born, you loved to cry. If I pricked you with a needle, you cried; if I frightened you, you cried. I couldn't threaten you at all, and you weren't afraid of me in the slightest. But your crying truly irritated me so much. "So I picked up a flute and began to play. "Wasn't it strange? The moment the flute played, you stopped crying at once. "I used it to coax you, to keep you from crying, until you gradually grew older, until you began fearing the needle in my hand, my tone of voice, my gaze. "After that, this flute was never played again. "After so long, I actually miss it a little. "Don't blame Grandma. Though Grandma gave birth to your uncles and your father, I never raised them for a single day—there were servants to help look after them. "When it came to you, there was no one left to help, so I had to do it myself. Though so many times I wanted to just choke you to death, thinking of the future, I held back in the end. "Do you want to hear this sound once more?" Madame Felscher raised the flute to her lips and began to play. A melodious tune drifted out. Philomena lunged toward her grandmother, daggers and short swords shifting incessantly in her grip, yet her grandmother, who seemed right before her eyes, appeared impossibly distant the moment she struck. After a long while, Madame Felscher smiled. Looking at the panting Philomena, she said: "I don't believe my granddaughter prepared only this much for today. You should know that the true battlefield between you and me lies in dreams, not in reality. "I have told you many times: reality is a dream. There is really nothing for you to cling to, because in reality, you will never be a match for your grandmother." Philomena said in a deep voice, "I have dreamed for so long. Now, I want to wake up." The moment she spoke, the floor around Philomena began cracking rapidly outward. The chandelier overhead swayed violently, the plaster peeled from the walls, and everything around them began warping like a shattered mirror. "Keep dreaming." Madame Felscher raised the flute and struck downward. *Bang!* *Pfft!* Philomena coughed up a mouthful of blood and sank onto one knee. Everything that had been crumbling instantly restored itself, returning to its original appearance. "My good granddaughter, do you feel the gap between you and Grandma now?" Madame Felscher walked slowly toward the kneeling Philomena, speaking as she went: "This isn't because Grandma has dreamed longer than you. It's because you think what you've endured growing up can be called pain? Only your grandmother understands true pain." Madame Felscher pointed her index finger at Philomena's forehead, right between her brows. "Woof! Woof! Woof!" Just then, someone came crawling over in a rush. The corner of Madame Felscher's mouth twitched. She spun around, raised the flute, and drove it into the man's chest, pinning him to the floor. "Awoo... awoo..." The man stuck out his tongue, unable to move, yet his head remained turned toward Philomena kneeling ahead. His hand was curled loosely, repeatedly brushing against his daughter's shoe. "You're just a dog. Did you really take her for your daughter?" Madame Felscher gave a mocking sneer at her son lying in a pool of blood. "All right, come. Grandma knows you have an independent dream, kept specially for me. I'll treat it as a gift you've prepared for Grandma. "Just like a child building a castle on the sand, taking an adult's hand and saying which room is for whom. "Come, show Grandma around." Madame Felscher's fingertip pierced into the center of Philomena's forehead. Philomena's body began trembling violently. Beside them, tears welled in the eyes of the father lying on the floor. At last, the trembling ceased. "Come, Grandma will go with you." Philomena stood up with vacant eyes. First, she looked down at her father pinned to the floor by the flute. "Awoo... awoo..." Her father's dog-like paw tugged at her trouser leg, as if trying to hold her back. Then Philomena turned her gaze to the side. As blood dripped continuously from between her brows, her vision was gradually blanketed in crimson. She saw a young man pinned dead to a chair, completely motionless. "You still like him, don't you?" Madame Felscher asked. Philomena shook her head woodenly and replied, "He is different from everyone else." A warm, elder-like smile appeared on Madame Felscher's face. "Love usually begins like that." "This isn't love. Some people carry light on them." "See? You've found the exact same feeling Grandma had back then. We truly are grandmother and granddaughter." "However..." Philomena paused. "Who sleeps with the lights on?" Madame Felscher froze where she stood. Her gaze darkened, as if questioning her granddaughter's state of mind while speaking those words. Yet her suspicion could not be confirmed, for her granddaughter had always spoken this way. "You wouldn't understand. Staying beside the light is also a kind of happiness." "It blinds you." Philomena walked toward the bathroom. Soon, the sound of the shower came from within. Madame Felscher looked down at the dying dog of a man and said: "Son, Mother suddenly feels an uneasy sensation in her heart. Heh." The shower stopped. Stark naked, Philomena walked out of the bathroom. At home, she had always been like this. Only when bathing in Karen's office did she go through the trouble of closing the door, knowing Karen disliked it. Philomena walked into her bedroom, Madame Felscher following behind. The girl's bed had only a mattress—no sheets, no blanket, and certainly no teddy bears or anything of the sort. Without drying off, she lay on her back upon the mattress, droplets of water seeping outward from her body. Her unbound hair spread out like a blooming black rose. Madame Felscher lay down on the other side, lying on her side to look at her granddaughter. "Sleep, child." Philomena closed her eyes, and Madame Felscher closed hers as well. *Click...* Everything around them turned into shades of gray. Amidst the hazy gray, rustling sounds came from the floor. That dog-like man clawed at the gaps between the floorboards, dragging his own body forward inch by inch into the bedroom. Wherever he passed, a trail of dark brown blood remained, with a central groove carved by the dragging flute. At last, he crawled into his daughter's bedroom. But he did not stop, continuing under the bed until he reached his favorite sleeping spot from the past. His daughter slept on the bed, while he curled up underneath. He felt that in this spot, he could sleep in peace. Having adjusted his posture, he coughed up another mouthful of blood. With his chest wound rising and falling uncontrollably, he forced his eyes shut. *Click...* The lights went out entirely. Total darkness. A moment later; *Snap!* A beam of light shone down, isolating an empty space—as if a section of a previously cohesive realm had been forcefully carved out. Soon, a chair emerged in that light, along with the young man pinned dead to it. Chains of Order extended from the back of the chair, gradually covering the man's entire body. A rich aura of Order poured forth, wrapping him completely. Gradually, the man's body stirred from its stillness. He slowly raised his arms, his hands grasping the two knitting needles driven into his eye sockets. "Sigh..." A sigh escaped the man's lips, heavy with helplessness and reluctance. "Hoo... hoo... hoo..." A brief series of deep breaths, as though silently counting down: *3, 2, 1...* *Pfft! Pfft!* The man yanked the knitting needles out of his eye sockets. His back pulled away from the chair, and he sat straight up. The blood around his eyes receded, and the wounds in his eye sockets healed rapidly. It was as though nothing had happened—and indeed, nothing truly had. Yet Karen's hands still rubbed gently at his eyes, and he sucked in sharp breaths between his teeth. "Hiss... that really hurts."