The bedroom door opened.

The female ghost stood inside, raising one slender finger to her lips.

“Shh.”

Long hair, dark eyes, and a body as flawless and smooth as porcelain—the female ghost of this world possessed a complete and perfect human form.

She lowered her gaze, then stepped aside, allowing Ci’an to enter.

Ci’an couldn’t see her expression. All she could see was a bedroom indistinguishable from one in the human world.

A white rabbit was sleeping peacefully on the bed, beneath it a shocking pool of red.

This was Mother’s bedroom. Even the bedsheets were exactly the same.

Mother had become a rabbit.

Only the female ghost possessed a human body.

The female ghost closed the door, returned to the other side of the bed, and lay down. The singing began to echo through this tiny heart once more.

Beneath the bedside lamp, a music box quietly bathed in warm, dim light. Its gears turned, releasing a poignant, sorrowful melody—the source from which all evil had begun.

“Good girl.”

Ci’an held out the flower crown she had woven for the female ghost.

The rabbit merely tossed it aside without even looking at it.

“Good girl, tell me. Why have you come?”

The rabbit spoke.

“Mom, it hurts so much.”

“You know everything now?”

“It hurts.”

“Stop pretending. We should be honest with each other.”

“I want to go back to that dream.”

The rabbit looked at her with affection, as though the confrontation from before had never happened.

“Just like you, I sincerely wish that this were a dream. Ci’an, you have to believe me—no one in this world loves you more than I do.”

“You love yourself.”

“I am your mother.”

A voice urged her from somewhere inside her heart:

Smash it! Smash it and you can wake up!

No—

You’re already awake. Smash it and you can return to the nightmare!

Ci’an reached out toward the music box.

It already looked terribly worn. Its paint had peeled away, its surface yellowed and aged, as though it had been dredged up from the shadows of the past. The meaning it once represented and the emotions invested in it had long since vanished into the river of time, leaving no one who knew what they had been.

Just before she touched it, a white, furry foreleg pressed down on her arm.

The rabbit opened its crimson eyes.

Through those rabbit eyes, Mother’s soul gazed at her.

The urging voice vanished.

A comforting warmth enveloped Ci’an.

“Mom,” she called.

The rabbit stared deeply into her eyes.

After a long moment, its lips parted, revealing a set of terrifying carnivorous fangs, and it slowly moved closer to Ci’an.

There was nothing inside Ci’an’s heart.

Soft fur brushed against her cheek.

“You don’t love her.”

The rabbit looked toward the sleeping female ghost and repeated with a smile, “You’re right. I don’t love her.”

“I want to go back.”

“You’re a clever child. You’ve been clever since you were little. The mistakes of adults made you lose yourself. I always believed that one day, you would find your way back here.”

“I want to go back.”

“Ci’an, you can’t return to the dream. But I will always love you. I am your mother. I swear I will never hurt you.”

“I want to go back.”

“Ah... there’s really no talking you out of it.”

The rabbit sighed softly. Its crimson eyes were filled with tenderness and acceptance.

“If you want to wake up, then treat this place as a dream. Ci’an, the next time we meet, it will be in reality.”

“Next time we meet, it will be in a dream.”

She nestled into the rabbit’s embrace and, accompanied by the requiem, crossed the boundary between reality and dreams, falling asleep within the dream.

When the day of awakening came, Ci’an was placed upon a bed.

Mother’s lullaby was nearing its end.

Ci’an had slept for far too long.

She opened her eyes.

A cool, sweet fragrance drifted over her, like crystal-clear frost in the morning, like plants teeming with hidden vitality in midsummer.

It seemed to cradle Ci’an within its own amniotic fluid.

Her heart still seemed trapped inside that sweet dream.

“Mom, is this a dream?” she asked.

“This is reality, Ci’an,” Mother replied.

And so Ci’an was able to confirm it.

“This is the dream.”

“How pitiful. If you don’t treat reality as a dream, you have no way to survive. Am I right, Ci’an?”

Mother’s voice remained gentle, but the image that surfaced in Ci’an’s mind was of that seemingly docile rabbit.

It only looked docile.

Ci’an asked, “Do you regret it, Mom?”

“Ci’an, I don’t regret it. Whether it was waking you up or anything else, I will never regret the things I have already done.”

“What else?”

“Some things that cannot be undone. You must understand: if you remain immersed in sorrow forever, you will accomplish nothing.”

“Can you accomplish things if you’re driven by hatred?”

“Perhaps hatred is what drives us at first. But as time passes, it will make you lose a part of yourself.”

Mother patiently guided her:

“Do you know? Physiologically speaking, it only takes seven years for a person to completely become another person. In other words, I am no longer the person I was seven years ago, and you are no longer the person you were seven years ago. We have experienced the ‘death of seven years’ and gathered here again. And in terms of physics, the versions of us who died have already returned to seven years ago and reunited.”

Ci’an knew this was sophistry, but she still asked:

“Mom, then are the people we are now newly born versions of ourselves, or the versions who died?”

“If this is a dream, I hope this place represents rebirth.”

“Can the newly born look back?”

“Rebirth represents freedom.”

“Mom, tell me.”

Ci’an looked at her mother and asked,

“With the way you are now, exactly where is your freedom?”

The gentle mother. The loving mother. The elegant mother. Which one was real?

She peeled away the hypocritical mask she had worn all this time, revealing a bloody yet beautiful smile, like someone imprisoned within a dream.

Her gaze was still so gentle that Ci’an felt as though she were drowning in water.

Her fingertips were still so tender that Ci’an felt her cheeks melting piece by piece beneath their touch.

Ci’an melted in the water.

Even her heart was refined and dissolved, as though it had truly become a piece of candy that melted the moment it touched her tongue.

She could not resist her mother’s tenderness, just as she could not resist the new life her mother bestowed upon her.

“Ci’an, as long as that heart belongs to you, you are a free person.”

“As long as that heart has not been taken away by someone else, you will always possess freedom.”

“Anyone who tries to take that heart away from you is your enemy. You may always remain yourself, but you must never become the enemy.”

“Go and love. Love a flower, a tree—even the cruelest nightmare in the world has someone who loves it. But do not fall in love with your enemy.”

“Anyone who takes away your freedom deserves to die.”