The Creatures that We Are

The three of them walked through the entryway and into the living room. The place could only be described with one word: messy.

There was no room for them to make their steps at all. The floor was covered in takeouts, beer cans, cigarette butts, crumbled tissue, and other everyday trash.

“Zhong He, clean up for Mr. Gregor,” said Goldthread.

“Of course.” Zhong He seemed like a different person. With a humble smile, he went up to part the curtains and take a quick look around, quickly finding a place to start: the table. He was like a professional cleaner.

Goldthread and Lying Wood followed Gregor into a study room. It was dim, and smoke permeated the air. All around them were piles of books. Before the window covered by a heavy curtain were a computer desk and a swivel chair.

On the table was an old laptop, an ashtray filled with cigarette butts, and a few empty coffee cans.

The laptop was open to a blank document.

“Writer’s block?” Lying Wood started a conversation naturally.

“I wrote 200 words in the morning, but I read it a few times and deleted the whole thing. It’s shit.”

Gregor plopped down on the swivel chair and fished for a cigarette, but found none. He picked up a half-finished cigarette from the ashtray instead and lit it.

“Zhong He brought some nice cigarettes for you,” said Lying Wood. “I’ll have him…”

“Forget it.” Gregor scratched his foot as he smoked. “You’ve got many awakeners. You don’t need me.”

“That’s not true. You’ve comprehended the serial number 8 Talent: Pestilence.”

“Is it strong?” Gregor raised a hand, and a gust of poisonous wind appeared before them.

Goldthread and Lying Wood started, faces ashen. The wind would melt them into piles of rotten meat on contact. Then no resurrection skill would bring them back outside of Hong Xiaoxiao’s Gamer.

Gregor balled his hand into a fist, and the poisonous wind disappeared. “I usually use this to kill mosquitoes and cockroaches.”

“Your Pestilence is only level 3 at the moment, Mr. Gregor.” Lying Wood adjusted his glasses and put on a smile. “The Hundred Rivers Union has the Poisonous Rune Circuit. You can reach level 4 with it and become stronger. We need your strength to fight the coming doom…”

“I told you.” Gregor used the hand holding the cigarette to scratch his greasy hair. “I just want to write novels. I’m not interested in anything else.”

“Mr. Gregor,” Goldthread spoke up earnestly. “I don’t understand. You know already that your readers are mostly monsters. Is there a point in writing more stories?”

“Of course there is,” said Gregor. “A novel has meanings as long as there are readers. Be it humans or monsters, my novels are going to be misunderstood, and that is the fate of a storyteller.”

Goldthread became even more confused. He asked with a smile, “If you’re going to be misunderstood, why tell stories?”

“That’s the fun part.” Gregor laughed. “I feel, I think, I express, so I exist.”

“It’s through the various misunderstandings of my expression that I become great and approach immortality in a sense.”

“Nothing exists in a vacuum. Everything is interconnected. All there is originates from connections. Get it?”

Goldthread shut his mouth and decided to leave the talking to Lying Wood.

“You’re thinking on such a high level that I cannot understand fully, Mr. Gregor,” Lying Wood admitted. “May I ask how much you’ve written?”

Gregor raised a hand, indicating for them to look at the screen.

Goldthread was surprised. “None?”

“Yeah.” Gregor sighed. “The opening is crucial. It decides whether a story works or not. I’ve gone through hundreds of versions, but none satisfies me.”

Perhaps you’re not meant for this? Goldthread swallowed his comments and asked, “What have you written before?”

“Well, many. One of my previous works is quite popular and earns me enough that I no longer have to worry about my livelihood. I can focus on expressing myself.”

“May I have the honor to read your previous works?” Goldthread was curious.

Gregor clearly disapproved. “I wrote them under a different pen name. It’s all dogshit. So don’t.”

“That’s troublesome,” Lying Wood said. “There’s only one more year to the Mist World. It’ll be a real shame if you can’t finish the story.”

“Yeah.” Gregor frowned. “I got stuck on the opening for months. One year isn’t going to be enough. I think I’ll need three—no, five years. Then I’ll finish my work. After that, I’ll find a place to meet my end.”

“That’s why you should join us. We’ll find a way out of the Mist World together so that you’ll have another five years,” said Lying Wood. “Then I want to be your first reader, reading your…no, misunderstanding your work.”

Gregor wavered and lowered his head in bemusement. Lying Wood handed him a cigarette and lit it for him.

Gregor took a drag. “You’re right. But still, I’m a writer, I don’t want to do anything but write…”

Lying Wood smiled. “Mr. Gregor, I think you can give it a try…ah!”

Lying Wood screamed all of a sudden, backing away. Gregor started and fell off his chair.

“Don’t shout so suddenly! I have neurasthenia…”

“No, your laptop…laptop…”

The laptop screen behind Gregor had suddenly turned black, and a face emerged.

“Calm down.” Goldthread was unfazed. He knew the man on the screen. “It’s not a ghost.”

“Come on out.”

The man hesitated before emerging as a beam of white light. The screen turned back to normal.

He was around twenty-five, thin and short with soft, fine brown hair, a narrow face, and pea-like eyes. He looked timid and numb.

Goldthread remembered him: Chaos Reflection, with Mirror Man, serial number 40, Time-Space-type.

Mirror Man allowed one to hide in any mirror or reflective surface, even a single drop of dew. Moreover, he could jump between them to achieve a similar effect to Teleportation. Of course, there was a limit to the range of jumping surfaces and the number of uses.

“Why are you here?” Goldthread asked in a threatening voice.

“Yeah, why are you in my laptop?!” Gregor would like to ask the same thing.

Chaos Reflection didn’t dare to meet their eyes, and he spoke quietly. “Elder Yan Liang told me to secretly protect Gregor.”

“Ha, protect?” Zhong He, who had been cleaning the living room, came to the door of the study room. “Call it what it is: surveillance.”

Chaos Reflection lowered his head without a word. He looked uncomfortable.

Rat-a-tat.

Someone knocked.

Houseau3's Thoughts

It's actually kinda interesting to think of storytelling that way. It's true that readers are always going to come up with their own interpretations, which can quite often be different from the author's intention.

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