Chapter 67

But the hall behind the elevator was very bright.

Ablaze with light, people coming and going.

Liu Zhiyi saw the lobby of a cinema.

A large LCD screen played trailers for the newest films; it seemed a showing had just let out, and a big wave of people came out from inside, chatting and laughing.

Liu Zhiyi watched, lost in the fog, when she suddenly saw a new poster cut into the screen playing the trailers.

The poster showed a person and a cat.

And the cat seemed to have fine threads on it; looking closely, Liu Zhiyi found the cat was made of yarn, and the fine threads lifting off it joined to the man behind.

That familiar feeling…

It felt like the cat.

Liu Zhiyi looked the poster over carefully, top to bottom.

A pity the poster gave no film title, and the man and cat were only silhouettes.

But soon the poster vanished, and the trailer took over.

First a black human-shaped silhouette, then several red shadows closing in.

The images that followed were somewhat stream-of-consciousness: the black silhouette was torn to pieces, wrapped and scattered outward by the red shadows, and the largest of the flesh-colored pieces fell and became a black yarn cat.

The yarn cat walked a few steps toward the screen, and the yarn on its body suddenly burst apart.

A line of lettering formed of yarn surfaced.

That was the film's name.

The film's name and the stills plainly showed the content would have to do with the cat.

It might be a trap.

But Liu Zhiyi had no choice; she was still in a fog about this dungeon.

Little as she wanted to admit it, she really wasn't very good at gathering clues and then analyzing them.

So she ran to the ticket counter.

Here too it was quite normal; apart from not being able to buy tickets online, the clerk even eagerly pushed a popcorn combo and top-up deals on her.

Liu Zhiyi found she could actually pay by scanning a code — and her Alipay had over twenty thousand more in it.

So she bought an extra fries combo and walked with the crowd toward the theater.

Once inside, she sat in the middle and waited a few minutes.

The theater went dark.

Liu Zhiyi tensed at once, glanced quickly at her watch, and checked the task bar again.

Nothing happened.

Instead an ad played on the screen — not a long one.

As the screen went dark again, a cat's meow sounded in the theater.

Liu Zhiyi hesitated a few seconds, then put on the glasses.

"Meow~"

A black cat suddenly darted past before her eyes.

Liu Zhiyi startled and backed up a few steps.

Then the words A Cat's Life floated up, hanging in midair.

Had she gone into the film?

Liu Zhiyi wasn't surprised; after these several dungeons, she'd have felt strange without some upheaval.

But the light in this film was bright; at a glance, pale-yellow little flowers spread out, and looking into the distance she could see a stretch of deep-blue sea.

The scene was quite beautiful.

And of the kind Liu Zhiyi liked — she lived and worked inland, had seen plenty of hills and lakes, and always felt a longing for the sea she rarely saw, always liking to head for the coast when she traveled.

But glass-clear seas like this were rare in the country, and abroad they were crowded with people.

She hadn't thought she'd see a place this uncrowded and lovely inside a dungeon.

"A newcomer?"

A voice sounded.

Liu Zhiyi turned toward it.

She saw a little boy holding a black cat.

The boy's face was round and plump, but his eyes were solid black, and the hair on his head was thick, looking like little braids.

He looked very strange, not like a person.

The boy took a step forward.

Once he was close, Liu Zhiyi saw his body clearly.

Like the yarn cat in his arms, this boy was made of yarn too.

At a sight like this, Liu Zhiyi should have been afraid.

But somehow she found it a little familiar.

It was a feeling hard to describe — like always being able to pick out, on a busy street, which back was her mother's; like putting on freshly washed clothes and telling by a sniff that her mother had washed them; like taking one bite and knowing which dish her mother had made.

The things on her mother, the things her mother made, she could always tell at first glance.

This yarn cat and boy were both knitted by her mother, then scaled up.

The boy reached out a hand.

"What's your dream?"

The question left Liu Zhiyi at a loss.

She'd thought she might see something frightening in the dungeon, or a memory-blow, or the cat's past.

But she'd never imagined being asked about a dream.

Liu Zhiyi thought a moment.

"…I want Grandma and Mama to come back."

The boy: "I asked for a dream, not an idle fancy. The dead can't come back to life."

His words caught her short.

She didn't really want to talk much with whatever-it-was in the dungeon, but as the breeze brushed her face, it carried the scent of osmanthus and seawater, mixed with the laundry detergent her mother often used.

Her heartstrings were plucked without her meaning it.

Suddenly… she very much wanted to say something.

People's feelings are strange like that — always plucked at some inexplicable moment, suddenly low, suddenly happy.

Liu Zhiyi: "…I don't know."

She hadn't thought about a dream in far too long.

As a child she might have let her mind run wild — being an astronaut, going into space; seeing an actor shine on stage, wanting to be an actor…

In school, it was good grades, a good university, a good job.

Once she grew up and started working, with a certain amount of pressure —

it was earning money, earning lots and lots of money.