Chapter 51

Doctor Zhou's voice was neither hurried nor slow, with a soothing tone.

Yu Tu looked down at the "acceptance letter". It looked like it, but not quite like it. But if he was asked to explain what was different about it, his memory seemed to be covered with a fuzzy veil and he couldn't tell.

He held the acceptance letter in his palm—it was fake. There was no comic book or Never-ending Marquis in the diary.

"Tu Tu, you seem to be in a worse condition this time than last time." Doctor Zhou moved a stool over and sat down. "Can we talk?"

Yu Tu asked: "What do you want to talk to me about?"

"What I want to ask most is the world on the other side of the dream. He said, "But I know that whenever I bring up this topic with you, you resist it very much."

"Can you tell me why you feel this place is fake?" He turned his head to look out the window. There was a solid iron fence outside the window, dividing the sunlight into grids. "Is it because you remember nothing when you woke up, or is it because of the message you left for yourself in your diary?"

"This world is fake, and I want to go to the real world. What's wrong with that?" Yu Tu asked him, "Are you so sure that this world must be real?"

Dr. Zhou thought about it seriously for a while and gave an unexpected answer: "I'm not sure."

"But it doesn't matter whether it's true or false." He looked Yu Tu in the eye and said, "Maybe this world is fake and the world in my dream is real. Maybe the world in my dream is real and this world is fake. Maybe both are fake, or maybe both are real."

He smiled and said, "Real or fake, fake or real, nothing is better than living in the present moment."

"I know you're very resistant to me right now, so there's nothing we can talk about. Let's just forget it." He slowly stood up and invited me, "Do you want to... go to your studio?"

"My... studio?"

"It's right next door," he said. "Perhaps if you take a look, it will remind you of something."

*

After thinking for a while, Yu Tu followed Dr. Zhou to the next room. The studio next door had a large window, but thick iron bars were installed on the window. The wind and sunlight could come in, but people could not go out.

Yu Tu saw a large stack of papers on the shelf in the corner. There were some patterns on the top and the bottom was clean and tidy.

"We're here." Doctor Zhou stood at the door but didn't go in. "The studio is your private place. Although I'm your attending physician, I have no right to see it without your permission."

"Go out of the help station on this floor and turn left. If you need anything, you can come to me. My office is the third to last on the sixth floor."

After he finished speaking, he closed the door gently, and Yu Tu was the only one left in the studio.

Yu Tu stood at the door and looked around the ceiling of the studio, then checked the charging sockets one by one to confirm that there was no camera in the studio.

There was an easel lying face down on the ground, with the drawing board lying not far from him. Yu Tu picked up the drawing board and turned it over. There was a piece of drawing paper on the front.

Yu Tu felt a chill all over his body after just one glance.

There was a brilliant smiling face drawn on the drawing paper. It was a person he was very familiar with—Gu Hongying.

It's not a three-dimensional realistic portrait, but a two-dimensional one, exactly the same as in the comics.

A great terror filled my heart.

There was an easel next to the window with welded iron railings. Yu Tu walked over and saw a stack of papers on the clip. He took it down and flipped through it one by one - this was a set of settings.

The order was a bit messy. For example, the first picture Yu Tu got was of a baby spirit, and there were several different forms drawn next to it - a ferocious ghost face, a translucent soul with bared fangs and claws, a strange baby covered in blood, and finally it stopped at a black ball with thin black claws.

The second photo is of An Jiajia, with sketches of the front, side and back. It can be seen that her wedding dress has been revised several times, and her facial expression and makeup have also been changed.

The third picture is of Susu Su, a beautiful fox leaping across the paper, with two big fluffy tails taking up half of the drawing paper.

The fourth one is...

Yu Tu flipped through the pages one by one. There were people he knew and people he didn't know in this big pile of settings. It was like the information a cartoonist prepared before starting to create.

Dr. Zhou said this was his studio.

This means that these characters, these settings... are all from his hand.

But how is this possible!

First he inherited the strange legacy, and then he learned about the comic book that would record what they did.

"Ding-a-ling--"

Yu Tu suddenly heard a cell phone ringing, coming from a pile of drawing paper on the shelf.

He walked over and found a cell phone from the slightly messy pile of papers. There was an unfamiliar phone number on the phone, but the note was [Edit].

Yu Tu pressed the answer button, and on the other end of the line came an excited voice: "Yu Tu! Are you there? Your comic book "The Language of Mountains and Seas" won a prize! First prize! It's been publicized for five or six days, why didn't you contact me!"

"Are you free in the next two days? Hurry up and prepare the creative process of the comics. There will be an online reader meeting in three days. Don't worry! I know you are socially anxious, so I won't show my face during the whole meeting!" The excited voice on the other end of the phone became louder and louder. "Prepare well, and strive to make your comics more and more popular, and become this year's supernova!"

The excited voice found no response, so it called out in confusion: "Yu Tu? Yu Tu! Can you hear me? Yu--"

Yu Tu hung up the phone abruptly. He couldn't help shaking. As he was awake for longer and longer, his memory became more and more blurred. He could no longer remember many details.

He was holding a smart phone in his hand, exactly the same as the one he usually used. When he opened it, the software inside was arranged in the same way.

Yu Tu clicked on the comic website X, and the first screen was a close-up of the cover of "Shan Hai Zhi Yu". After jumping over it, he found that it had an author background, and the author column clearly read—

【Tian Yan】.

Yu Tu suddenly felt something extremely absurd.

How could he possibly be... Tian Yan?

Yu Tu opened the door and rushed out. At the end of the right was the bathroom. He rushed into the toilet and looked up at the mirror on the sink. His own face was reflected in the mirror.

Yu Tu closed his eyes. He wanted to change into the identity of Buyehou, but when he opened his eyes, he found out——

Nothing has changed.

He could still only see his own face in the mirror.

He tried several times, but the energy seemed to disappear from him and he never succeeded in becoming the Lord of the Night.

He stood in front of the sink for a long time, so long that he seemed to hear a noisy dragging sound outside the door, both male and female voices.

Some sounds are sharp and piercing—

"You are all monsters in human skin, let me go! Let me go!!!"

Some voices are arrogant and disdainful——

"I am the reincarnation of the Jade Emperor. Why don't you mortals kneel before me?"

Some voices are puzzled——

"I am a sunflower planted here. Why do you want to pull me out by the roots? Don't pull my sunflower seeds. Let go! Let go!"

…

These noises obviously sounded abnormal. Yu Tu looked at his hospital gown and found a line of words embroidered with light-colored silk thread on the chest pocket. He picked it up and took a look. The thread read "Live Road Mental Hospital".

He suddenly felt dizzy.

He rested his hands on the marble of the sink for a moment before the dizziness wore off.

Yu Tu pushed open the toilet door and walked out, but found a person standing in front of the studio door. It was the woman he had seen when he just woke up. Doctor Zhou said that this was his mother.

She stood at the door of the studio, her hands raised in the air, wanting to knock on the door, but a look of hesitation appeared on her face, so she raised her hands and put them down, and raised them again and again.

Perhaps she heard Yu Tu's footsteps, she suddenly turned around with a look of surprise on her face: "Tu Tu? Aren't you in the studio?"

Yu Tu looked at the patients being restrained by doctors in the corridor and the nurses coming and going, and suddenly he felt like he couldn't breathe.

He looked at the woman in front of him who looked like him: "...I want to go home."

…

I don’t know how the woman who claimed to be his mother negotiated with the hospital, but in the afternoon, Yu Tu completed the discharge procedures and left the mental hospital.

As he stepped out of the hospital gate, the sunlight stung his eyes and they hurt a little. Suddenly, an umbrella appeared on his head, blocking the light.

Yu Tu turned his head and found that it was the woman who took out an umbrella from her bag and held it over his head.

She looked tired, but she still tried to smile when Yu Tu looked over: "Tu Tu, you must not be as comfortable as at home after staying in the hospital for so long. Is there anything you want to eat?"

Yu Tu shook his head.

"Then let's go home?" she asked cautiously. "When we get home, tell your dad if you want to eat or drink anything and ask him to buy it for you."

She didn't dare to touch Yu Tu rashly, for fear of provoking the child's resistance and being pushed away, and even more afraid of causing unexpected consequences.

They arrived home in silence. Yu Tu followed her into the house and saw a cozy small three-bedroom apartment.

The floor was covered with light-colored wooden floors. The light of the setting sun shone through the French windows onto the wobbly rocking chair. In front of the rocking chair was a low wooden tea table filled with drinks and snacks. A cute cat was poking its head out from the side. With a "woof", a puppy with its tail wagging like a propeller rushed out from behind the rocking chair...

———This was exactly the home he had imagined when he was too cold to sleep in the orphanage in the middle of the night.

"TuTu is back!" A man wearing an apron came out of the kitchen, holding a plate of delicious food in his hands, "Wash your hands and get ready for dinner!"

"To celebrate our Tutu's comic winning an award—" He put the dish in his hand on the table, "I'm going to show off my skills today!"

"Of course..." He smiled at Yu Tu, as if his child had not just come out of a mental hospital, but had just gone out for a walk. "I also prepared a gift for you, on the sofa."

There was an exquisite gift box on the sofa. Under their expectant gaze, Yu Tu opened the box. Inside the box lay an ink-black gown with dark green vine-like patterns. In the middle of the gown was a monocle with a leaf-like decoration hanging from the chain.

"This is a COS costume of your favorite comic character, Buyehou!" Yu Tu heard the man who looked like his "father" say, "It's selling very well, and the pre-sale time is so long! It just arrived today!"

He smiled and said, "Let's have dinner after watching it, and then try it after dinner."

…

Yu Tu didn't know how he sat down at the table in a daze.

The rocking chair swaying slightly in the sunset, the steaming food, his parents eating with him, the cat acting cute at his feet, the puppy clinging to his legs and wagging its tail... everything is so real.

It was as if a valve had been opened, the blank memories gradually came back, and the details in the dream gradually became blurred.

He is Yu Tu, who has a loving and caring father and mother. He has a strange experience that he has been dreaming about for several years. He drew the story in his dream, uploaded it to the website, and won the first prize.

This is reality.

He is Yu Tu, an orphan in an orphanage, without a father or a mother. After the college entrance examination, he inherited a strange inheritance, and received an admission letter from Miller College. He became friends with the male protagonist of the comic, Gu Hongying, and had many partners.

This is a dream.

Which one... is true?