(Continued from Part 1)
Lin Yuan stayed crouched in the empty room, holding the badge, not moving. A faint, dark yellow light had appeared on the badge's surface. He stared at it for a long time. He didn't know if that button really existed. Maybe somewhere, in an old house, under a bed, a button lay covered in dust. Maybe that person had died long ago. Maybe he was still alive, in another city, another family, having long forgotten the button.
Lin Yuan stood up. His legs were a little numb. He put the badge in his pocket, left the room, walked down the hallway, down the creaking stairs, through the weaving workshop full of looms, and out of the factory.
In the yard, Su Wanqing had already smoked two cigarettes. A third was in her mouth, unlit. She leaned against the van, hands in her field jacket pockets. When she saw Lin Yuan come out, she took the unlit cigarette out and put it back in the pack.
"Caught it?"
"Caught it."
"How long did it take?"
"I don't know. Didn't check the time."
Su Wanqing looked at him. "You look pale."
"I'm fine."
He walked to the van, opened the door, and sat inside. Su Wanqing didn't ask again. She started the engine.
On the way back, Lin Yuan stared out the window. The sky was almost dark, the streetlights not yet on. The plane trees' shadows turned into dark masses in the twilight. Lights came on in the distant buildings, one by one. He thought about how those people didn't know nightmares existed, didn't know someone else was cleaning up the things that leaked out of their dreams. They lived, ate, slept, worked, fought, made up, had children, raised them, grew old, died. They didn't know.
"What did it say?" Su Wanqing asked suddenly.
"The button is under the bed."
"What?"
"It was waiting for someone. When that person left, a button fell off his shirt. It's been unbuttoning that button for years, not knowing how many. At the end, it said, 'The button is under the bed. Tell him.'"
Su Wanqing was quiet. The van crossed a bridge. The river below was dark, its bottom invisible. A streetlamp on the bridge swept light across her face for a moment, then went dark. Her expression didn't change, but Lin Yuan noticed her hands tighten on the steering wheel.
"You helped it," she said finally. "You got it out of that loop. It doesn't have to wait anymore."
"I know."
"But you still feel bad."
Lin Yuan didn't answer. He took the badge out of his pocket and held it in his palm, looking at the faint dark yellow light. He thought about whether, if he died one day, someone would wait for him. Would a shadow crouch in some corner, repeating a meaningless action — waiting for him to come back, waiting for him to say a word, waiting for him to fulfill a promise that could never be kept?
---
Back in the library, Old Zhou had returned from his meeting. He sat behind his desk, his tea cup full, steam still rising. He looked at the badge in Lin Yuan's hand, then at Lin Yuan's face, and nodded.
"Grade D, first solo mission, qualified." He took the badge and held it up to the light, examining the dark yellow glow. "This nightmare's obsession was very pure. Pure ones are easy to absorb. The hard ones are the mixed ones — those that love and hate at the same time, want to leave and want to stay. Those nightmares contradict themselves, and you can't find their anchor."
"That nightmare," Lin Yuan asked, "what was it before?"
Old Zhou opened a thick register, its pages yellowed and corners curled. His finger moved down the page and stopped on a line. "Three years ago, a woman went missing near here. Her husband had gone to work in another city and never came back for ten years. She lived alone in the staff dormitory behind the textile factory. After the factory closed, she moved away. No one knew where she went."
"Did she die?"
"I don't know." Old Zhou closed the register. "But her obsession remained. Obsessions don't die. They just wait — until someone comes to collect them, or until the world forgets them."
Lin Yuan took the badge back and put it in his pocket.
"Old Zhou, how many grades of nightmares are there?"
"F, E, D, C, B, A, S. F is the lowest, S the highest. What you caught today was a D."
"What about C grade?"
Old Zhou looked at him. "C grade will attack. It will speak, lie to you, make you think you're its friend, then jump on you from behind when you relax. If you run into a C grade now, you wouldn't even be able to escape. But you will. Sooner or later."
Lin Yuan didn't ask anything else. He turned to leave, but at the door, Su Wanqing called out.
"Lin Yuan."
He looked back. Su Wanqing stood by the bookshelf, holding the Nightmare Classification and Handling Manual, open to a page.
"The button that nightmare talked about," she said, "don't go looking for it. The button isn't there anymore. The bed isn't there. That dormitory building was torn down three years ago. You don't have to look for it."
Lin Yuan looked at her. Her expression still hadn't changed, but her eyes were different — for a moment, he felt her eyes were saying something else, something unrelated to the button, something about her own story, a story she would never tell him.
"I wasn't planning to look for it," he said.
Su Wanqing nodded, closed the manual, and put it back on the shelf. "Good."
Lin Yuan walked out of the library. The sky was completely dark. The wind was strong, rustling the ivy on the walls. He stood at the entrance of the History building, took the five-cent coin out of his pocket. The coin wasn't hot anymore, but he could feel it vibrating — very faint, like a pulse. He closed his hand around it, put it back in his pocket, and walked into the wind. The wind slipped under his collar, cold, but he didn't shrink back. He looked up at the sky. The clouds were thick, hiding the moon. But he knew the moon was up there, behind the clouds, just temporarily invisible. Maybe one day, he too would become something invisible behind the clouds. But not today.
(End of Chapter 6)