[Exciting escape game, the loser will die!]Awakening in Others' Dreams Every Night

Chapter 1 1 Charlie's Castle Frozen in Summer Dusk 1

It was seven in the morning, and no sooner had the alarm gone off than Zoe Miller had opened her eyes.

There was the same familiar ceiling, the same familiar room setup, and the window was filled with shimmering daylight.

Zoe Miller woke up and went to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth as usual, but as she did so, she saw a slight bruise on her hand in the mirror.

Hmmm? She wondered, and reached up the sleeve of her left pyjama top to see a large bruise on her lower arm; Zoe Miller was very white, and the bruise stood out against her snow-white skin.

She pressed down on the bruise with her fingertips and there was only a slight dull ache. Most of all, she had no memory of the bruises.

She frowned, although bumps and bruises were usually unavoidable, this large bruise on her small arm still concerned her somewhat. She loved her body and was very aware that a healthy body was everything, plus the fact that she was currently in a very poor state trying to earn money to save up for school, she just couldn't afford an unhealthy body.

She probably checked her other arm and there was nothing else wrong with it, which put it behind her for the time being.

She washed up and changed, throwing on a denim jacket and heading out the door.

Currently Zoe Miller was a sophomore computer science student at Haiku University in Mountain City, and outside of school, she worked a series of part-time jobs such as tutoring and cashiering to support her school expenses. In short, going to school and working part-time to earn money is basically all she does in a day.

At the end of a busy day, Zoe Miller dragged her tired body back home. Although she was familiar with the pace of life, she was still tired from the day's events.

She took a quick shower and washed up in bed, went over in her mind what she had to do tomorrow, and went to sleep.

Then she opened her eyes in a scarlet evening sun.

Brush - some fleeting memories flooded her mind and she remembered them all. This was not the first time she had come here. To be precise, she had been coming to this place every night after falling asleep for three days in a row now.

She rose from the ground and raised her eyes to look around. It was as if she was in the ruins of a huge western-style castle, surrounded by huge gravel, broken walls, and flowers growing wildly in the cracks. The entire sky was covered with scarlet evening sunlight, reflecting the entire ruins in scarlet, like a dreamland so unreal that it could no longer be unreal.

For three days, she remembered that this sunset had never changed, and night had never fallen here, as if time had frozen.

Zoe Miller calmed down, she combined her memories of the previous three days to organise her current situation.

Firstly, every time she woke up during the day, she would lose all recollection of the night. And each night she would wake up in the same spot where she had lost consciousness last night and the memories of the night would return to her mind.

Secondly, all senses were very real in this place, including touch smell etc. She tested it by pinching herself here and the pain was also very real. Therefore she couldn't be 100% sure that this place was a dream world, although she never dreamed before, she doubted that a normal person's dreams should not be this clear either.

Thirdly, the injuries sustained in this world would instantly remain after waking up during the day. This was because she had accidentally fallen and injured her arm while trying to climb over these large pieces of wreckage last night. And the injury on her hand carried over into the real world.

The general situation was clear, and at the moment she had two choices, either stay quietly where she was and wait for daylight to wake up in her own bed, or make sure she continued to explore without injury. And sitting around was not her modus operandi, she quickly decided to follow up on yesterday's exploration progress and move on. Looking around the week, she quickly chose the direction in which to set off.

The first three days of exploration had not been without their rewards, at first it was a large expanse of open space, as she kept moving in one direction the ruins of buildings slowly became more and more, last night it got to the point where it was a bit hard to walk in any direction, and gradually some intact walls and stone pillars appeared as well. She guessed she was probably getting closer to the centre of these buildings.

She had been walking throughout the vast ruins for I don't know how long when she finally came across a fallen courtyard with an abandoned fountain pool in the middle of it.

As she approached, she saw that the fountain pool was piled up with dead leaves, with three tiers of stone basins spread out in the middle, and at the very top there was a golden bird, lifelike and spreading its wings.

Zoe Miller climbed into the fountain pool, padded in, and reached out to gently touch the bird. Everything here had too much of a tattered beauty that she was a little reluctant to destroy.

Just a snap was heard, and the bird, as if it had merely stood on a golden branch, fell off the branch at the slightest touch. With the bird's fall, the corner of a cowbook was revealed in the pile of fallen leaves piled up in the highest stone basin.

Zoe Miller took out the book and looked through it.

The book was densely written with beautiful English calligraphy, most of the inner pages seemed to have been soaked in water, already wrinkled, and the text was swooshed out and unreadable, only a few passages remained to be read. The contents were mostly written in Old English, but strangely enough, when she saw the words, her mind automatically understood their meaning.

"On the 1st of June, just as summer was approaching, I met a young boy in the Summer Palace, with dark hair and eyes, dressed in strange clothes, the kind of dress that would get you arrested if you were seen. I had never seen him before, and yet he appeared in my garden out of the blue, and the first thing he asked me was, Who are you? This is inexplicable, he trespassed into my territory and instead of kneeling down and asking me for forgiveness, he asked for my name."

"Tang Wuqing, Wuqing Tang. He said he's an Oriental, why are Oriental names so hard to pronounce. No more learning, no more learning, I'll just call him Tang from now on. Ah, but it's kinda nice when he calls me Charlie softly."

"If I had to define him, I would say he is an extremely ignorant but at the same time very thoughtful man. He doesn't know the latest theories of philosophers, hasn't read the latest literature, hasn't seen the latest baroque opera in Italy. Even with all this ignorance, he actually managed to be unassuming and unashamed of himself in front of me. He was just curious, simply curious, simply admiring my life my everything, without envy."

"On the 9th of June, I asked him where he was from. He mused for a moment and told me about his country. He said he came from an ancient eastern country, and he told me that their country had a long five thousand year history unbroken to this day. Such big talk would have been my first thought of absurdity, but he said it so earnestly that it was incredible."

"On the 13th of June, at dusk, he was sitting on the windowsill of my study reading an article that had come out in the last few years. I went over and glanced at it; it was a discourse on astronomy by a person who signed his name Galileo. He read it carefully, word for word, and then said to me thoughtfully that those who wanted to challenge the authority of the times were true warriors. I didn't understand what he was saying, and he tried to explain it to me again, telling me that people's knowledge of the celestial bodies was progressing, and that now it might take time for people to accept that the earth was not the centre of the universe, and that it would take time to accept heliocentrism. After that, with the continuous development of astronomy and technology, we will be able to accept a bigger universe, even if our perception will be continuously overturned. I find his ideas dangerous, bearing in mind that Galileo's writings are still banned by the Church. As a devout Catholic, I should have agreed that people with such ideas should be stifled, but, looking at the way he was explaining it to me very carefully, I just couldn't say anything to report him."

......

Zoe Miller was about to turn the next page when a voice suddenly sounded around her in cold silence, "Hello, strange visitor."

She immediately looked up towards the source of the voice, only to see not far ahead of her a stone archway crawling with vines, and in the middle of it stood a blonde-haired teenager with a typical European face, light brown eyes, and dressed in elaborate, traditional courtly garb. Only Zoe Miller, with her only shallow knowledge of European history and dress, couldn't recognise what era his outfit belonged to.

"Hello," Zoe Miller echoed the greeting, "and may I ask who you are?"

The teenager said softly, "You can call me Charlie."

Zoe Miller immediately thought she had just seen the name in her notebook.

She raised her hand slightly to indicate the cowhide book in her hand, "Excuse me, is this diary yours? I'm sorry, I've opened it and looked through it without permission."

Charlie smiled, "That's fine, I don't mind. Come with me dear guest, I should have treated you well when you came to my palace."

Zoe Miller was actually instinctively a little wary of the strange surroundings and the sudden appearance of strange people, but at the moment she had no better choice but to follow.

"Where is this?" She asked the most crucial doubt in her mind.

Charlie answered as he led the way in front, "This is Rosie's Castle, my palace. I am the master here."

Zoe Miller followed him round the corner and then saw a guard not far from his stalwart post behind the corner.

Zoe Miller wanted to talk to a few more people to gather more information, but after a moment's hesitation, she decided to follow Charlie forward.

With Charlie's appearance, everything had changed. The palace became complete and vibrant, with no clutter or dilapidation to speak of. Along the way there were a number of guards and maids, who bowed to Charlie and looked at Zoe Miller's appearance without surprise or strangeness.

Charlie took her to a restaurant and politely asked her what she would like to eat, but Zoe Miller, who by now was famished after her long journey, politely declined his offer. It was common sense not to eat in a stranger's territory.

Charlie smiled and didn't mind, but then beckoned the maid to take Zoe Miller to her room to rest.

"Oh yes, dear guest, I haven't asked your name yet."

"My name is Emily," she responded quickly. Not giving her real name out of caution.

Charlie nodded, "You should be tired today, go ahead and get some rest. We'll talk tomorrow."

Zoe Miller thanked the maid. She was really unusually tired tonight, she took a shower and changed out of her dirty clothes, then sat down in front of her bed, her mind quickly going over what she had experienced so far.

After a long time, she found a fountain pen in her room. She was left-handed and at the moment she had written two words, Charlie, on her right arm.

I wonder if this mark will stay in the real world until tomorrow, she thought to herself. If that didn't work, would self-mutilation be the only way to get the message across? She had a jolt at the thought. She didn't want to destroy her body, not one bit.

Hoping she'd be lucky, she climbed into the big, soft bed and soon drifted off to sleep.

----

I don't know how much time passed in the darkness, but the door to the room suddenly moved with a slight sound. A figure walked in. He didn't take a candle, but walked straight to the bed in the darkness.

And the bed, empty.

He gazed at the empty king-size bed, his eyes gentle but inexplicably grim, and he said softly, "I'll see you tomorrow, Miss Emily."