sleeping formula

【27】

"Higakata...? Hijikata...!"

When Hijikata opened his eyes, he was on a white bed, a place he was not familiar with, but when he opened his eyes, he saw the familiar silver hair.

"silver……?"

"Silver time." The silver-haired man stood up, "I'll get you some water."

Tufang watched Yinshi walk out of the room, and walked in again, with a cup of slightly smoking boiling water in his hand, and whispered "Be careful of being hot".

"Thank you." Hijikata took the glass and asked again, "Where is this place?"

"My house." Gintoki shrugged, "To be precise, it's my room."

"It's really quiet here." Tukata looked around, "The lighting is also very good."

"If you are envious, stay here and pay the market price rent." Yinshi smiled softly, "If you wake up, let's see if you want to go around for activities first, and I'll get some food."

"Thank you." Tufang paused for a while and then said, "Add more mayonnaise for me."

He didn't see the expression on Yinshi's face clearly, and Hijikata looked at it with a bit of disgust, but he got out of bed without thinking too much.I wasn't injured in the first place, it was no different from getting up from the bed, but I accidentally knocked down a copy of Jump, and the cover of the current issue was still "Silver Fuck".Before Yinshi left, he didn't close the door, so Tufang stepped out of the room and looked around.

The current location is obviously on the second floor, and Yinshi's room is farther away from the stairs.The whole house was actually cleaned quite cleanly, and the door on the second floor was barely closed.The larger room looks like the master bedroom, and it seems that there are two people living in it; on the opposite side of the master bedroom, the beds and tables are neatly arranged, and the earthwork guesses that it should be a guest room where few people have lived.

The door of the room opposite Yinshi was not particularly closed, and it was a bit messy when Tufang peeked in.Tufang looked around and it seemed that no one else was around, so he bravely walked in to have a look.It's a pity that apart from the German periodicals that I don't understand very well, that is, some medical books that Hikata has also studied, there is nothing particularly interesting.It's just that the earthworker accidentally kicked a box before he left, and he knelt down and took out a photo frame from the box.The glass of the photo frame was broken, and the photo was so scratched that the face on it could not be seen clearly. It should be caused by accidentally dropping the photo frame when tidying things up.

Tufang walked along the direction to the first floor, and when he came down the stairs on the second floor, he would meet the living room.Hearing the sound of Yinshi busy in and out of the kitchen in the distance, Tufang decided to go around for a while.

Yinshi still has a video tube TV at home, and the cabinets on both sides are full of video tapes, movies, documentaries... everything.There was also a small red sports car next to it. After opening the top and looking at it for a while, I realized that it was a rewind machine.Then Hijikata closed the glass door of the wooden cabinet, turned his head and saw two books on the coffee table, one was called "Mathematics and Philosophy", and the author had the same surname as Yinshi, Sakata; Hirsch's Collection of Short Stories", with a rather casual bookmark on it.Hijikata chose the bookmarked book.

"'...Before I found this letter, I asked myself: Under what conditions can a book be infinite. I think there is only one condition, and that is that it goes round and round. The last page of the book must be the same as the The first page is the same, so it is possible to continue endlessly." "

Tufang casually opened a page and silently read the content on it.He was startled, and vaguely felt that he should ask some questions, but after reading the book and text, he didn't have any clue.

There was movement outside the house, and the child's laughter rang vaguely in Tukata's ears.Tufang walked close to the window with a book in his hand. Outside the window, two silver-haired children were having fun in the yard. Their screams and laughter seemed to resound through the sky.Tufang wanted to see what the two children looked like from a different angle, but someone called them from a distance, and Tufang just watched the two short backs.

"'...he doesn't know (no one can know) my infinite regret and weariness.'"

The sudden voice accidentally startled Tufang, who was looking at the two children just now, and turned around to find that Yinshi was standing beside him.

"Hikata, are you looking at Borges?"

"I couldn't help being distracted when I heard the voice of a child outside halfway through." Hijikata said, "Gintoki, do you usually live here alone?"

Yinshi nodded, thought for a while, then shook his head and said, "Strictly speaking, I don't live here, I only come to clean it at certain times."

"Then you are really clean. It's not easy to tidy up this house alone." Hijikata said, "Is there a young child in the neighbor's house?"

"Maybe you just heard the neighbor's grandson playing?" Gintoki said, "Leave that aside... Today is grilled rice balls and omelets. Is there anything you don't want to eat?"

"No, I'm not picky." Hijikata thought for a while, then said, "Yinshi, are you almost done?"

"It will take a while, why?"

"I want to go out for a walk, is there anything I can bring for you?"

"No." Gintoki said, "But the dog at the diagonally opposite house is a bit fierce, so be careful. If you get lost, just ask any nearby neighbors 'how to get to Sakata's house', and they will tell you."

"You don't need to worry about this, I have a good sense of direction."

Before going out, Hijikata waved to Yinshi and closed the door behind him.For some unknown reason, Tufang looked vigilantly at the house diagonally across the door. It seemed that only a loyal and responsible dog was left, barking and barking at Tufang, and there was no other sound nearby.

After turning right and exiting the gate, the dark green Rolls-Royce parked quietly on the side of the road, as if waiting for the earth to pass by.The farther away from Sakata's house, the closer to the alley in theory.After walking two or three steps, Dojikata would stop and look back. He could no longer see the house of Sakata's family, but he always felt that he was always stopping at a similar intersection.

The earthworker picked up a small stone on the ground and drew a mark on the concrete wall vigorously, trying to prove that he had walked here before the next time he encountered a similar intersection.Sure enough, after walking forward for a minute, the earthman saw the mark he had carved, which really made the earthman realize that there was something wrong with this place.

"Infinite Corridor?"

There shouldn't be such a place in the real world, especially not on the everyday streets.Apart from the fact that the wizarding world was nonsense, this situation meant only one thing to Hijikata.

──Is the world in front of me real?

Once there was a voice of doubt, trying to recall why I appeared here, many unstoppable memory fragments kept pouring out, those fragments from the previous dream.Earthwork looked around, all the buildings so real, but something from a previous memory session kept reminding him of the one he remembered.

"Your world is not real, you are only dreaming."

Hijikata turned his head, and there was a silver-haired man standing there, his temperament was similar to that of Silver Toki.

"Silver, how could you...?"

"Looking at the blank expression on your face, I'm sure you're not someone's projection." Gintoki said, "The infinite corridor was designed by me temporarily. I want to try to prove whether the place I'm in is a dream or reality."

"Then what is it about you that I saw just now...?"

"I guess it's a subconscious projection, Hijikata." Gintoki said, "I also saw another 'you', but he didn't remember anything about the previous dream."

"So are you sure I know?" Hijikata asked disapprovingly, "Besides, what does knowing and not knowing really prove?"

"You can't prove who I am either, you can only tell yourself 'he is Gintoki', can't you?" Gintoki stretched out a hand, "Come on, there is a gap in this infinite corridor, we can leave there .”

"Leave the dream?"

"Leave the corridor." Gintoki corrected, "I think we were drugged in the middle of the mission, and the effect of the sedative will last for a while."

Hijikata looked around for a while, and said, "But Shinpachi, Sogo, and Kagura don't seem to be in this space, so it's hard to make sense, right?"

"I don't know, but this place doesn't belong to my dream or your dream."

Yinshi took Hijikata's hand, counted the steps carefully, walked about thirty steps, and came to an intersection and chose to turn right.

"But there is no one else here except you and me." Gintoki said firmly.

"Because once you confirm that you are in a dream, you won't be confused by the projected figures?" Hijikata narrowed his eyes, as if he didn't believe it, and then continued: "Once the direction is set, the goal will not be lost? We don't know How long will we be stuck here, when the concept of an hour becomes a year, do you know that we will be like duckweeds that have lost their roots, forgetting who we really are?"

"Hijikata, when I was young and had a good relationship with Ginpachi, the word dream technology was just a vaguely put together concept in novels." Gintoki said, "Even if we each have a room, we still stay together. two children in the same bed, and even caught a cold together.”

"Since then, Ginpachi and I have often had exactly the same dreams, dreaming of the same people, dreaming that we will gradually grow up and become what we will be in the future." Gintoki said, "It was very novel at the beginning, and I never felt that there was something wrong with it. Strange. It wasn’t until one day that my father gave us a question, that everything suddenly changed.”

"Atlantis?" Hijikata asked.

"That's my father's pet name for mathematics. And that question is just a mathematical proof question, proving that 'one plus one equals two' is true." Gintoki said, "It is easy for a child, but it is also difficult Yes. Before proving this equation, all the previously prescribed theorems and assumptions must be re-examined.”

"Seeing is not trustworthy." Hijikata carefully grasped the meaning of Gintoki's words.

"Yes. Maybe Ginpachi understood this very early on, right? He spent three hours solving that problem, and even forgot to eat the snack cake next to him." Gintoki continued, "Now that I think about it, it's A small thing, but for me as a kid, you can imagine it had a big impact on me."

"Ordinary children don't care about such things for so long."

"Actually, I didn't care about it at first. After the memory slowly recovered, I felt very paradoxical when I remembered the past. In my dream that night, Ginpachi asked me suddenly, "If we exchanged identities, do you think someone will know?" 』? I said I didn’t know, and asked him how he wanted to experiment. The next day I took his glasses, and the adult recognized him at a glance.”

"and after?"

"After we returned to the room, we looked at each other and laughed, and we couldn't tell where the tacit understanding came from. Ginpachi and I both slept in our respective rooms." Gintoki said, "There was no quarrel, no dispute, but from now on I seldom talk about a non-essential word, and I don’t have the same dream anymore—or do I share dreams?”

Yinshi stopped walking, stared at Tufang for a long time, and then said: "Things changed later."

"Ginpachi left home very early. When everyone was still worrying about the love of high school students, he had already gone to university to study, and the knowledge in high school was no longer enough for him. Life is like catching a train. If you go far, you will be Even further, the more you know, the more you want more...Desire is always like this, after you become addicted, you can't stop even if you want to brake."

"At that time, I started dreaming about Ginpachi again, but his image was blurry. The image of another person beside me is very clear, but so far I only remember it as a black-haired man, feeling cold and gloomy, but later found out He's a straightforward guy, but he likes to be more cynical." Yinshi paused, "It's cold on the outside and hot on the inside, so it really looks like you, Hijikata."

"Later, I didn't dream again, because the man in the dream slapped Ginba hard. The force was so strong that it even came to me with pain, but I didn't know what happened at all." Yinshi caressed his cheek and felt a little pain in retrospect, "Not long after Yinba went home for the holidays, I asked about it, but he didn't answer me directly, he just said, 'be careful that a man can be aggressive sometimes, no more than a woman Be tame'."

"After that, the car accident happened."

"Do you know that man?" Hijikata asked.

"Does it matter whether you recognize it or not? Or, I think it's important that I know it?" Yinshi said with a wry smile, "It's like in the previous dream, did Ginpachi really appear, or do you think he really appeared, which one? Is it more important than that?"

After hearing what Yinshi said, Tufang suddenly stopped, and he remembered Yinba's words.

"The park." Hijikata murmured, "──Yes, Ginpachi mentioned the park in the previous dream... Later..."

The gunshots, the explosions, the free fall of the collapsed building, all the chaos is not as profound and vivid as those cold and gentle red eyes.Tufang gasped, and turned around to call Yinshi's name.

"Silver hour?"

The person is still there one second, and disappears without a trace the next moment.Tufang looked around, only to realize that the place where he stopped happened to be at the entrance of a park.The last time Hijikata also came here in Gintoki's dream, and crossed this forest park. At that time, he went back to his past and saw Ginpachi in his memory.

"Silver hour?"

Tufang called his name again in an uncertain tone, but there was still no response.Hijikata thought of the paths that forked one after another in the novel "Forked Road Garden" just now. Every choice in front of him was equally gloomy, and it was fair to make it difficult to make a choice--and "choice" has always happened all the time, but it is so frustrating. Difficult decision.

"Are you going alone?"

When Tufang realized that there was only one question he was hesitating about, and he had no intention of continuing to look for Yinshi, he suddenly burst out laughing uncontrollably, tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.Is it because you are too worried about Yinshi?Or do you think that the way of disappearing like teleportation magic is as normal in dreams as eating and drinking, so there is no need to make a fuss?He knew neither.Of course, this kind of feeling may only be understood by myself, but in the world where I am alone, there is actually no need to ask others to understand.

──Let's go, just go.Isn't there something Hijikata you want to know hidden in the depths of the forest?

Hijikata laughed again, the same unnatural laughter, laughing at how his inner voice sounded particularly evil to him.Pushing aside the first tree branch that blocked his sight, he seemed to see Yinshi's expression of both pain and comfort when he kissed himself in the rain for the first time, and finally realized that there was only one person who cared about him from beginning to end.

But human nature is always cheap, right?The only one is always not the one I cherish in my heart.

【? 】

"So we exist in your dream."

When he saw me, his eyes were unexpectedly calm, and they were no longer as tit-for-tat as they were when they first met again.Even though I could see in his red eyes, which were the same as mine, the hostility remained undiminished.

He watched my finger lightly tap the table and said nothing more.After a while, I pushed a large cowhide envelope bag in front of his eyes, and slowly propped up my chin.

"The list of researchers in Hashida Laboratory and Tachikawa Brain Science Research Center. If you investigate these people, you can know that Hashida used Hidehiro Securities' insider trading to cover up Hashida Biotechnology's dream science."

"You actually betrayed your own family, is that okay?" He frowned, and the corner of his mouth contemptuously curled up, showing a smile that didn't suit him, "Or you have become a habit of doing such things, and you haven't been loyal to anything Is it necessary?"

"Speaking of betrayal. Isn't the cruelest betrayal in the world just to protect someone, and to bear the humiliation and turn away?" I laughed lightly, "I'm talking about you."

Appreciating his distorted expression for a brief moment, he regained his composure.

"So what are you protecting?" he asked, even though he knew I wouldn't answer him.

"Because people are curious about themselves, and the fear of the unknown induces people to interpret themselves in various ways. Dream analysis, through Freud's theory, is packaged as science, selling the secrets of the subconscious to ignorant people, just asking Solve the fear." I said, "The paradox is that the more we know, the deeper the fear, and even we are curious about other people's fears, so we find ways to sneak into the inner world of others to obtain information, just like you and me."

"But at the end of the day, this is the world you've built to push fear to the edge of consciousness." He gritted his teeth and said, "Isn't this what you want?"

"My mission is over. Thanks to your investigation into Yinghong Securities, Hashida accelerated the development of Dream Science technology." I said, "They are trying to push it to the extreme in a short period of time, so that these technologies can be mass-produced in the future. military use."

"So you've succeeded. Get the scientific achievements you want and get the money. You are ready to return to your daily life, find a group of people who believe in you again, and repeat the old tricks again?"

"I'm leaving, to a place far away," I said, "a place where there will be no people, so no one will be deceived again."

He looked at me incredulously, and couldn't find the right words to say something.

"About my purpose and what I want to achieve, after you have completed Yinghong's mission, it is no longer important. The past you want to know is just a history of regret that is not worth mentioning, but it is all clearly written. Record it. That's what you deserve in the end."

"Wait, what are you doing?"

Before the conversation, he almost didn't intend to take a second look at the document, and only now hastily took out the information in the paper bag and quickly flipped through it.I observed his increasingly bruised and ugly side face, and everything was as expected.

"I've already sent the dozen or so diaries to you."

He understood what I said, and his frightened expression gradually revealed anger from the bottom of his heart.Meaning, it dawned on him that this was just a plan to drive dream science into a dead end from beginning to end, and he became a pawn unknowingly, and even dragged fourteen into the water without even noticing, making them The two fell into an emotional deadlock, and it was difficult to get out.

"Could it be that you've been planning the whole incident since ten years ago? Is everything within your plan, including the chaos that dragged Hijikata and me into the dreamland today?"

"Please tell Hijikata for me that knowing him was a lucky accident for me," I said, "but the accident should be regarded as a beautiful and short past, not an obstacle to his future."

"You want to finish being a hero and leave?"

"I just finished my mission, tired, and wanted to go back to where I needed to rest."

"I won't let you succeed!" He slapped the table heavily, "Neither will the earthwork!"

Maybe it's just a bluff warning, I thought, because nothing could change what I did, or what happened.

"You guy should say that you are old and have no creativity. You still like to add a little artistic conception to everything. That park...that forest park does not really exist in any of our memories. The spatial structure is completely in accordance with the law. Come to build, the way the colors are arranged and stacked, the space, if you haven’t seen it or thought about it, you will really be fooled by you.”

"I thought you were going to tell me something, Great Architect." I said, "Isn't this a three-dimensional dream constructed entirely according to the principle of optical illusion?"

"When the earthwork first broke into our dreams, there was a forest park behind the boulevard of Tachikawa Medical University. What does this imply?" He smiled, his face was twisted, and his brows were all wrinkled together, " Is Hashida Biotech's experimental center like Lichuan's experimental flower garden? Or has Lichuan always been your back garden where you wandered in lies and betrayals and took a breather?"

"You're not serious, are you?"

"Maybe I'm not serious, or maybe even if you disappear from my life, it's just a part of the past for me. But," he paused, "I can't bear that you don't give Hijikata an explanation, and you still intend to Pretend to be cool and leave."

He stood up.

"The appearance of the park was built according to the prototype of the Babei Bay warehouse seven years ago, right? Hashida rebuilt Babei Bay after the incident seven years ago, so he decided to secretly set up the Hashida Biotechnology Experiment Center there. ,Right?"

I stared at him with wide eyes.

"I don't regret what I did unintentionally, but I said that I can't help you any bit."

His eyes were angry, but the fire in his eyes was quite determined.

"By the way, just now I guided Hijikata into that forest park for you, but I don't intend to leave the exit the same as last time, leaving you in the fake Tachikawa Xinglin Road in your dream."

When Tufang slowly walked out from behind him, raised the gun in his hand and aimed it at his forehead with a kind of disappointment that was close to indifference, I finally knew what happened.

"If you want to tell Hijikata, please tell him yourself in the real world."

Before I had time to call out to the earthworker, the sound of the gunshot and the impact sounded very synchronously, and the dream began to collapse.As I thought about it later, that was the first time I really lost to a miscalculation.

The reason is that when I counted all this, I gave up on the world very early.