Chapter 301: The Final Chapter of Doomsday Wonderland, This Is The Truth…
Translator: Pluto Editor: Vermillion
"Hey, stop sleeping. Our boss came to the company just now."
Through her drowsiness, Lin Sanjiu heard a familiar voice drifting from somewhere very far away. She felt someone nudging her. Lin Sanjiu opened her eyes in a daze. She blinked and froze for a few seconds. It was only then that her brain processed that murky voice.
The computer in front of her was in standby mode, and the window screensaver had been changing non-stop. It was now showing a picture of a large peony she had already seen for over a year. Lin Sanjiu rubbed her eyes.
She felt her eyelids under her fingers. Her arms felt slightly numb. She could also feel the poor blood circulation in her legs which stemmed from her long sitting time. These realistic sensations gradually grew clearer as her drowsiness and confusion faded.
"You're a pro. You must have had a deep sleep. We found you sleeping even after we came back from lunch." The colleague, who was speaking to her, stuck his face out from the adjacent cubicle. He flashed an ambiguous smile, "You didn't sleep well last night? What did you do?"
Lin Sanjiu opened her pair of amber eyes and stared at him blankly. This particular male colleague of her was exceptionally sweet to all the females in their office. To put it in another way, he was a little frivolous. Sometimes, the way he spoke was also—
"Wait, where am I?"
Lin Sanjiu shuddered. While she took a very quick glance around, she suddenly jolted up from her chair as if she had been electrocuted...
Unfortunately, she didn't feel the firm, familiar muscles in her legs support her. Instead, her body felt very heavy, as if it wasn't listening to her. She accidentally hit the corner of her cabinet with her shin. It hurt so much that she even took a deep breath.
"Ugh…"
The pain instantly made her mind a lot clearer. She noticed her male colleague's surprised expression from the corner of her eyes. "It's nothing. I think I just had a dream," she muttered.
"It was a dream, right?" Lin Sanjiu thought to herself, feeling a little uncertain, despite her answer.
The tall, rich, handsome boyfriend that she killed, the desiccated bodies in Hyperthermal Hell, the scary-looking duoluozhongs, her companions with their different appearances and characters… Since the perceived sense of time is different in a dream compared to reality, in her dream, it felt as though a couple of years had already passed. She even had a "what-is-this-year" feeling. Lin Sanjiu slowly returned to her seat again. She sat in a daze for some time before she laughed at herself.
That dream was as if it was another part of her life. However, when she woke up, she was still just a lowly office employee in a big city.
"What's this? I'm really quite imaginative…" she shook her mouse and her screen lit up again with the desktop picture of a grass field with blue skies and white clouds. "If I write this dream down, I think I can have a novel."
Her dream faded into the background, as she came back to reality. She started worrying about the mundane things in her life once more, "Oh, I think I need to hand in some report and data this afternoon."
Shaking her head, Lin Sanjiu opened her folder in a well-practiced manner. She stared blankly at the screen for a while before she started typing noisily on her keyboard.
Apart from her exceptionally realistic and eventful dream, this was an uninteresting day for Lin Sanjiu. There wasn't even anything worth mentioning. When it was almost the end of her workday, her slightly outdated iPhone suddenly lit up.
"Don't forget, you have a blind date with that doctor tonight. Do you need me to bring some cosmetics over for you?"
The person who messaged her was Zhu Mei.
Lin Sanjiu looked at that name, and her hand froze as she fell into a daze. After a few seconds, she replied, "Okay, please bring some mascara for me."
It was as if she could see the image of Zhu Mei dried-up corpse from her dream clearly in front of her...
"It's such a bother. Why did I dream of something so irksome?"
Lin Saniiu sighed and locked her computer. When her screen turned black, she saw a reflection of a large, snow-white face. A pair of hollow black eyes were staring back at Lin Sanjiu.
She should have screamed when she saw that. However, Lin Sanjiu scared herself with her instinctive reaction. She stood up and lunged her body forward. Balancing her body on one leg, she kicked backward with her other leg. The chair she was sitting on rolled backward and hit the person behind her directly.
"Ouch! What are you doing?"
The slightly frivolous male colleague held his abdomen. He exaggerated his movements and voice, "I just wanted to see who you were messaging. Do you really have to… Ouch…"
Lin Sanjiu was a little stunned. She looked down at herself. Her calf muscles, which she barely trained since she was usually desk bounded, were starting to ache from this sudden burst of activity.
"Sorry, you scared me," she smiled at the male colleague and tried to sound as friendly as possible.
She felt as if there was something in the depths of her mind disturbing her and it made her feel very uneasy. After watching her male colleague grumbling as he packed his things and then left, Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath. She bent over and started tidying her desk. She switched off her computer and decided to tell Zhu Mei about her own unusual behavior when they met later.
The best thing about this company she was working in was that everyone could leave on time. Almost everyone would leave on the dot unless their team leader requested for them to stay. As she was distracted, after Lin Sanjiu took ten minutes to pack up her things, she realized that she was the only person left in the office.
As they had an electronic door lock, the last person could lock the office door after entering a password. It reduced the hassle of handling keys. Lin Sanjiu tapped the device with her employee card and her fingers hovered over the combination keypad for a moment. However, she just couldn't remember the password.
"Come on. What's wrong with me today…"
After she called her colleague and got the password, she finally took the lift downstairs. Zhu Mei was carrying a large paper bag and was already waiting for her. She certainly brought more than a tube of mascara.
Her best friend was so eager to see her get married soon that she seemed to be even more anxious than Lin Sanjiu. The restaurant for the date had an elegant atmosphere. They reached it 30 minutes early. After Zhu Mei gave her a makeover, Lin Sanjiu almost couldn't recognize herself.
"I feel rather uneasy today…" After the two of them sat down, Lin Sanjiu said softly to Zhu Mei while they waited for the doctor. "I had a dream this afternoon—"
"Hi! Doctor Chen. We're here!"
Before she could complete her sentence, Zhu Mei stood up suddenly and waved her arms at a young man standing not far from them. Zhu Mei only noticed what Lin Sanjiu had said before after Doctor Chen sat down and they introduced themselves. "What's your dream about? Doctor Chen, she was saying that she had a dream."
Looking at the plump man in front of her, Lin Sanjiu forced a smile, "It's nothing. I just dreamt that it was the end of the world."
"That's interesting!" Doctor Chen seemed pleased with Lin Sanjiu's looks. His smile widened and he started rambling, "Dreams help to fulfill human needs. Maybe, you have some needs that can only be satisfied in an end-world scenario... I went to Germany for a one-year overseas exchange during my university years. I learned quite a lot about psychology…"
Maintaining a polite smile, Lin Sanjiu felt as if her face was going stiff.
To be honest, Doctor Chen could hold a rather interesting conversation. He didn't seem like a bad person… However, as time went by, Lin Sanjiu felt like she was on tenterhooks. She felt as though she had forgotten something very important. Her thoughts had long drifted off. After a while, the two other people noticed this. Zhu Mei even pinched Lin Sanjiu lightly under the table.
"Excuse me, I need to use the restroom," Lin Sanjiu said hurriedly. Then, she left her table as if she needed to escape.
"What's wrong with me today?" she couldn't help asking herself while she sat on top of a toilet bowl cover, lost in thought.
"What if something suddenly attacks me when I'm so unfocused. Huh? What attack?!"
Lin Sanjiu scratched her hair. She found this worrying thought hilarious.
After she sat in the toilet for some time, as if trying to escape the current situation. She gradually calmed herself. Seeing that she had stayed in the toilet for quite some time, Lin Sanjiu stood up, "I shouldn't leave Zhu Mei there alone. It must be awkward…" she mumbled to herself as she opened the cubicle door.
However, her body stopped without any reason.
Following which, it was as if her body was acting on its own. Lin Sanjiu couldn't explain her own actions. She took out her phone and activated her camera. Then, she squatted and slipped her phone through the gap of the door and took a photo with the camera while she looked upward.
She pulled back her hand. The photo on her screen was a little blurred. It showed the bottom part of a basin and there was nothing unusual.
"Luckily, there isn't anyone around. I am sure someone would think I'm a pervert." She shook her head and laughed before she placing her phone back into her pocket.
Even though she had composed herself, the second half of the dinner date did not go as well as they had hoped. Doctor Chen probably noticed that his date was preoccupied so they ate silently for the next ten over minutes. Zhu Mei tried to make their conversation more lively but she knew that the blind date was a failure. Doctor Chen wiped his lips and called for the waiter.
"Let me pay for this meal. Keep your wallets, ladies," he said in a rather gentlemanly manner. He turned to the waiter and asked, "How much is the bill?"
"It is $382, sir." The very young waiter looked at the bill in his hand and asked, "Would you like to pay by credit or cash?"
"Um, cash." Doctor Chen smiled at Lin Sanjiu, "I'm a person that just can't get used to mobile payments, I feel more at ease when I bring cash around."
Lin Sanjiu nodded politely. She watched him as he took a few pieces of blue paper currency from his wallet.
He was holding money currency from Kisaragi Station World.