Chapter 3: Sleep Paralysis

Something was pressing down against him, causing Shi Ruijie to unable to move. At the back of his mind, Shi Ruijie knew that he was in a sleeping state. But he just could not wake up. Was this the phenomenon known as sleep paralysis?

It had never happened to him before so he naturally felt anxious. He tried moving a finger, then a toe, and after a few minutes passed, he discovered that he had broken out of it. As soon as he could move again, he rolled over onto his side and reached for his phone on the bedside table.

4:00AM.

It was too early for him to be awake, but he could no longer return back to sleep. Leaving his bedroom, he headed for his study where the three books still sat on his table. There was one thing he had to find out—how did Li He die in the book?

Snatching up the book, his eyes tore through the pages hungrily, desperate for answers. He stopped flipping the pages when he got to the part of the book where Li He was arrested and tortured in prison. After Li He was sentenced to death by poison, he was taken back to his residence and placed under house arrest. During this time, Princess Yong'an secretly met with the protagonists of the novel, Liu Yijun and Xu Ruoxue, who were the friends that Li He made when he was in disguise outside the palace. Wanting to save their friend, Liu Yijun and Xu Ruoxue enlisted the Emperor's help in a last-resort plan to fake the death of Li He. The Emperor then acted out a play of betraying and abandoning his brother. With the help of Princess Yong'an, who found herself in the Emperor's political camp after marrying the Emperor's best friend under an Imperial Edict, the whole bunch of them fed Li He a fabled medicine that would stop his pulse and heartbeat from being detected for a couple of hours. Li He was revived a few hours later by his friends after he was smuggled out of the palace. After that, the trio continued on their quest of upholding social justice and taking down the evil officials and ministers in the palace.

Shi Ruijie closed the book and slid it on the table, feeling faint. All that anxiety and painful struggling in his dream was for naught? He scoffed. To think that it was just a ploy to rescue Li He!

He did feel slightly cheated and hoped that when Li He woke up, he did not hate Princess Yong'an too much. As he was gasping for air earlier, Shi Ruijie had felt the torrents and torrents of hatred that Li He had against Princess Yong'an and her relatives. It was... rather unpleasant for him. Especially now that he realised that Princess Yong'an was not just a minor character in the book, but was actually a tritagonist.

His gaze fell on the name of the author which was printed on the book cover. Picking up his phone, he dialled a number after seeing that it was ten minutes past 6AM. The call connected and a male voice sounded on the line.

"Dapeng, please help me to look into an author called 'Yu Juan'— 'Yu' meaning 'extra', and 'Juan' meaning 'volume' or 'Juan' for the verb 'roll'. I also need you to investigate into the sender of this mysterious parcel I received last night. I'll send you a picture of the delivery information."

***

While waiting for his assistant in the Association to report his findings, Shi Ruijie studied the other two books closely. Both books were also by the same author, Yu Juan. Snow Path was a xuanhuan novel while Dear White was historical fiction set against the backdrop of the Chinese Republican Era. Having experienced life in the Tang dynasty only last night, he was apprehensive about reading another story set in the ancient times. A little espionage thriller at the moment interested him more.

Dear White followed the tumultuous lives of secret agents and spies loyal to different organisations and countries as they try to outwit each other to further their organisation's values, goals and mission. The structure of the novel was relatively simple. From enemies to lovers, the male protagonist teamed up together with the female protagonist to carry out an important mission of delivering a highly-classified information from one base to another, while in disguise and attempting to evade the police, foreign agents and enemy organisations. Ultimately, the good and righteous will triumph over evil and peace will be restored to the war torn country, but not after the shedding of innocent blood and the noble sacrifices of comrades and loved ones.

But Shi Ruijie couldn't care less about where the main protagonists were and what they were doing at the moment. All it took was a single blink for him to end up transmigrating into this book to take the place of a minor antagonist.

One moment he was at his desk turning the pages of the book, and the next he was sitting inside a cabin onboard a vintage train. Feeling around his brown three piece suit, he found an identification card. So, it turned out that the identity of his host was Yang Yi, a young entrepreneur whose father was a high ranking official in Manchukuo. Based on the train ticket also inside his suit jacket pocket, it seemed like his destination was Harbin.

The cabin door suddenly slid open as a young woman stood in the doorway looking slightly perplexed. She looked down at her ticket and at the suite number before entering the compartment to take the seat opposite his. Placing her suitcase close to her feet, she slowly took off her gloves before stuffing them into her winter coat pocket. With the same slow casual speed, she took off her hat and placed it on the sofa seat next to her. It was only after she had settled down comfortably that she looked at him, gave a polite nod with a small smile and turned to gaze out of the window.

Shi Ruijie searched his memories for a description of a train scene like this in the book he was just reading, but there was no match. Had he not gotten to the part of the book which detailed Yang Yi's train journey?

Or was he currently living a part of Yang Yi's life which was not depicted in the book? If this was the case, it meant that he would have free control over Yang Yi's body and mind. The only downside was that he had no way of knowing what events would occur to him for now. He stole a furtive glance at the young lady in front of him, wondering if Yang Yi was acquainted with her—why else would they be sharing a train cabin? But seeing that she made no attempt to converse with him, he guessed that they might be strangers after all.

After a long while of agonising awkward silence in the cabin, the train finally pulled away from the station, heading for its destination. Shi Ruijie searched around Yang Yi's luggage and found a notebook. Scanning through the pages quickly, it seemed like the notebook was like a daily planner filled with to-do lists and scheduled events. According to today's entry, Yang Yi was to arrive in Harbin and attend a family dinner. Tomorrow, he would have to meet a few individuals who seemed to be potential customers for his business.

Flipping to an empty page, Shi Ruijie jotted down the crucial events of Dear White based on his memory of the plot he had read. Unfortunately, he was only halfway into the book when the transmigration happened. Given his calculations of the timeline of events, at this moment when Yang Yi was on a business trip back to his hometown, the protagonists were engaged in a game of guessing one another's identities after Yang Yi had sown some seeds of doubt in the female protagonist's mind. As a minor antagonist, he wondered when Yang Yi would be written off... Perhaps, soon after his return to Shanghai, or maybe near the end of the book when the main villain is finally revealed and he would get rounded off to the execution grounds together with the main antagonists other helpers and minions? If only he had more time to read the book—

"Did you purchase your ticket from a couple as well?" The young lady sitting across him in the compartment suddenly spoke.

Raising his chin from the notebook, his eyes met with hers. She stared straight at him with large clear and bright eyes, but there wasn't a trace of a smile on her face. Still, she appeared amiable and frankly, quite harmless. Seeing past the vintage make-up on her face, adorned with waves and curls that hung just over her shoulders, Shi Ruijie felt that she looked familiar and resembled someone he knew... but he couldn't quite put a finger on it. Perhaps, an actress who had played a character in one of those period dramas set in the 1930s? Or maybe the thick make-up just makes every woman appear similar.

Seeing that the young man across her was gawking at her with a blank expression on his face without saying anything, she repeated her question—this time accompanied with a long rambling and ending with a short laugh. "The tickets for this train ride was all sold out when I got to the station today. Thankfully, I overheard a couple who got into a fight and decided that they were not going on their trip. I quickly asked them if they could sell one of their tickets to me. Otherwise, I would miss my best friend's wedding! I suppose you managed to get your ticket from them as well?"

Shi Ruijie scratched the back of his head, slightly uncertain about how to respond. If meeting this girl on the train was not a scene written in the book, why was she initiating conversations with a minor antagonist of the book? Surely this interaction with an NPC like her would have some kind of driving force on the plot. Should he be concerned about travelling on this train?

"I'm not sure," he uttered while diverting his gaze away from her face. "I wasn't the one who purchased it."

There was some truth in his statement.

"Oh," she said while smiling politely, "what are you going to Harbin for?"

Was she trying to give him a quiz on his host identity? Why was she acting so friendly and speaking to a stranger so boldly?

"I'm returning home." Shi Ruijie crossed his arm and leaned back in his seat. "Why did you purchase a ticket only at the last minute? I thought you'd have purchased a ticket in advance if you were attending your best friend's wedding."

The girl looked slightly abashed. "I'm ashamed to admit that I had missed my train because I remembered the wrong timing. I'm actually quite the scatterbrain. I even went into the wrong train compartment earlier! Fortunately, I eventually found my way here."

Hearing her admonish herself while laughing softly in embarrassment, the edges of his lips could not help but curved up in amusement.

"When I walked into this compartment, I thought that I had made another mistake again!". The girl continued with a short giggle as she clapped her hands together. "To think that there was such a handsome young man sitting inside the cabin."

She sounded so earnest in her compliment—without any trace of shyness—that Shi Ruijie felt his face grew warm. But he quickly recalled that he was not in his own body at the moment. It turned out that she was complimenting another person and not him.

"Since we're going to be travel companions for this long train ride, perhaps I should introduce myself, " said the girl, stretching out her right hand for a handshake. "My name is Zhu Lirong. Please to meet your acquaintance."

***