Chapter 25: Forgotten Dreams (1)

21 March 2023 | kaiyang

I found myself stranded in a black void of space, traversing through what felt like a thick viscous jelly. In the distance, there was a tiny white dot; and as I took difficult large strides towards it, it began to look like a bright golden glow. The glow shone brighter and brighter but gradually I realised that it remained just a tiny speck in the distance. When I stopped moving, I was suddenly surrounded by many bright specks of light that glittered just like the stars in the night sky. Entranced and in awe, I held out a finger to touch one. I thought that it may burn me or fizzle out, but it felt like nothing.

I tried touching the light again—this time placing my palm beneath it. The golden little dot floated in the space, gravitating slowly towards my hand. Impatiently, I reached upwards to grab and enclose it within my fist and the little light started to emanate a kind of warmth that grew hotter and hotter. Feeling as if my skin was scalded, I let go in pain. The light suddenly shone brighter and brighter until it was a blinding white glare that swallowed up all the darkness around me. I closed my eyes and clamped a hand over them.

Waves of excited screams and enthusiastic shouts washed over me, gradually morphing into a collective voice chanting my name. I lifted my hands from my face, slowly opening my eyes against the blinding white light. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I was greeted with the sight of what looked like an auditorium—no, a stadium full of people whose faces I could barely make out. The sea of people spread out before me was illuminated with thousands of glowing light blue lights. Scattered LED boards with my name floated above the constant waves of blue lights. I looked down at the microphone in my hand, and noticed that I was wearing a white frill top with a black and gold bejewelled tulle skirt. This was... a concert? No, this was... my concert?

At that moment, an ear-piercing screech of feedback cut through the air. Wincing in pain, my hands shot up to cover my ears but not before I heard someone call out my name, a kind of hair-raising fear and dread in his voice. I looked up and even though my eyes were temporarily blinded by the stage lights, I was somehow able to see a huge black object crashing down towards me. My mouth opened to scream, but nothing came out. I forced myself to get out of the way, but my legs couldn't seem move.

"Yujuan!" A young man dashed out from the stage wings and leapt towards me. I felt a huge impact in my right side as the world around me seemed to crumple. Laying down on a cold surface, I tried to make sense of the situation. Through my blurry vision, there was a man a few feet away from me, crushed under a stage light. A sharp pain shot through my heart as I struggled to get up. When I managed to get up on my feet, I staggered towards him screaming incoherently; but just as I reached out to touch him, my world swayed and utterly collapsed.

And then my eyes shot wide open, tears trickling down the sides of my face.

*

I laid in bed breathing heavily and feeling an immense discomfort due to my damp pyjamas which had soaked up my perspiration. Peeling away the thick duvet over me, I slipped out of bed as the scenes of my very vivid nightmare played repeatedly in my head.

This was the second time that I had the same nightmare. The dream would start off beautiful and lovely, but always ended in a horrible tragedy.

Since the start of the year, I had been having different dreams ending in terrible nightmares. A couple of months back, I had another recurring nightmare of leaving a live recording a variety show midway and then being stuck in a lift which crashed. In those really realistic dreams, I had died in that lift accident, transmigrated into another person's body, and died again after saving someone. Despite searching online why I was having the same nightmares over and over again, there was still no way to stop it. Even if there was some kind of unresolved trauma or desire in my subconsciousness, I was certainly unaware of it.

Regardless, it was only just a nightmare. Reality was a hundred times worse.

Just like any other dreadful and ordinary day, I washed up and changed into my work outfit which I had hastily selected the night before, before rushing out of the house with the simple breakfast that my mom prepared. Walking to the metro station to join the rest of the rush hour crowd, I washed down the unpalatable hard boiled egg with some water. As soon as I boarded the packed train headed towards the central business district, I whipped out my phone to browse through the hot search lists while listening to a playlist of my favourite songs. I clicked on a number of trending topics—mostly related to current affairs; but as I continued scrolling mindlessly through the lists, a particular celebrity's name caught my eye.

Tan Qing.

I took a double take at the trending topic—#Tan Qing Why Not Take Another Look At Me#.

Tan Qing's latest single was on the hot search! How did I miss the launch of my favourite singer's new song?

As always, Tan Qing's songs never failed to disappoint. Listening to her song for the second time, I scrolled through her official account and found a post published two days ago announcing the release of Why Not Take Another Look At Me. From the comments, it seemed like this song was the theme song of a recent idol drama series of the same name starring popular actors and actresses.

My curiousity piqued, I searched up the drama to check out the plot of the story—it turned out to be an adaptation of a popular novel This World Isn't That Cruel by Wudi Xiaosheng, who was a famous web novelist who had had many of her stories adapted into dramas and movies. Many years ago, I once spent days with my nose stuck in This World Isn't Too Cruel as I immersed myself in the fictional world she created. Seeing such a great book being adapted into a drama, I was certainly excited.

But the thought of drama adaptations made me slightly nervous.

Sometime in October last year, I was suddenly contacted by a small but reputable local production company, Haixing Media. They wanted to sign a contract with me to purchase the IP rights to my web novel, Snow Path, with the plan of adapting my web novel into a web drama series and production to commence by the end of this year. After consulting with an IP lawyer recommended by Qian Sicheng and a couple of rounds of negotiations over the contractual terms of the agreement, I had finally entered into a contract with Haixing Media. As it was a small production studio and a small scale project, I was able to negotiate for some control over the screenplay and the casting. At this moment, the casting director should already be in talks with a few young and rising actors and actresses to audition for the roles.

I had kept such an important event in my life a secret from my family and friends (apart from my childhood friend, Qian Sicheng, and my university best friend, Ruan Dan'ni). After all, apart from them, I had never revealed to anyone that I was a closet web novelist.

Oh, there were actually two other persons with whom I shared my secret. One of them was Ai-laoshi and the other was the internationally famous singer Tan Qing; and being personally acquainted with Tan Qing was yet another secret of mine.

Many many years ago, when I was still in high school, I had met Tan Qing. Back then, she had just graduated from university and visited our high school choir for a choral workshop. Just as I was wondering why she seemed so familiar, she approached me and introduced herself as the student volunteer who had met me backstage during the choral competition the year before. We exchanged contact information on WeChat and remained in touch ever since.

If I told Tan Qing about this big news, I wondered if she would contribute to the original soundtracks for this drama series. But being a top-tier celebrity, this would be a waste of her time and resources, wouldn't it?

Maybe it was better to let her find out about my novel being adapted into a drama through an official Weibo post by the production team instead. I didn't want to impose on her all of a sudden and cause her trouble—I already had a list of favours which I owed and would probably never be able to repay.

"Good morning, xiao-Lu." Gu Jing waved at me with a bright smile on her face as I arrived at my workstation. "It's only morning—why do you already look fatigued?"

"Good morning, xiao-Gu," I replied. Pushing aside all thoughts and concerns about my secret career as a novelist, I mentally prepared myself for the new work day. "I have to attend an external client meeting with Editor Zhu today. There's also another meeting already scheduled on Friday afternoon. It's Professor Xu's book—the one on rocks. Meetings with him always overrun."

"Oh, I understand. Completely understand." Gu Jing wrinkled her nose and nodded sympathetically. "But wait—didn't you say that you have dinner plans with your high school classmates on Friday? Will you be able to make it?"

I tapped on my phone screen to double check today's date. Oh right, today was Guo Jialiang's birthday; and he had planned a dinner gathering on Friday to celebrate his birthday. Birthdays were of crucial importance to him, and he would always treat us to this yearly dinner gathering.

"Ah—well," I said, chewing on my lower lip with slight dismay. "Better late than never."

***