Chapter 12 Chapter 11

Dylan barely slept that night, thinking about the spirits, about Tristan and the other Ferrymen who must still be there, about where he was going.She felt that her body was getting used to the days without sleep, but in fact, all kinds of thoughts were running wild in her mind, and she couldn't sleep at all. She sighed, curled up on the tattered, uneven armchair, tossing and turning. "You're awake." Tristan's deep voice came from the left in the half-light. "Yeah," Dylan whispered, "it's all about things." There was a long silence. "Do you want to talk to me?"

Dylan turned his face away so he could see Tristan.He sat on a chair and looked out at the night sky.But when he felt her eyes staring at him, he also turned around to face her. "Maybe it will work for you," he said. Dylan bit his lip, thinking.She didn't want to lament her ill-fated life, his bad luck was even worse than her own.But there were countless questions in her mind, messy and noisy.At least Tristan can answer some of them. Tristan smiled at her, making her courage again. "I wondered what the wasteland is?" she began. "Ah!" Tristan's face was full of understanding.He looked at Dylan frowningly, "I really can't help you with this question."

"I understand," Dylan said softly. She tried not to look frustrated, but the question bothered her more and more.Where is she going?She had seen the demons wandering in the dark trying to drag her down at any time before, and she thought that what she was going to was not a bad place, it must be a good place.Otherwise why would they prevent her from going there?And that must be somewhere.What's the point of traversing the wasteland if the end result is a state of unconsciousness and coma? "Is that what bothers you?" No.Dylan laughed, breathlessly, and then stopped laughing.She looked down at the cracked flagstones where the shadow of the fire flickered.The way they jump and dance is both eerie and familiar.

"Those demons." "You don't have to worry about them," Tristan said firmly, "I won't let them hurt you." His voice sounded very confident.Dylan looked up and saw his eyes were wide open, with anger in his eyes, and his teeth were clenched. He felt that he should believe what he said. "Okay," she said. There was no more words between the two of them.But Dylan, who had just broken the silence, felt extremely uncomfortable with the silence, and moreover, ideas kept popping up in her head. "You know what I can't figure out the most?"

"What is it?" "It's just that you don't look like you are." Realizing that she hadn't conveyed her words, she continued, "I mean, I can see you. I can touch you." She reached out and pointed her fingers at him in the darkness. He fumbled in the direction of her, but didn't have the courage to touch him, "But what I see, what I feel, is not the real you." "I'm sorry." Dylan heard the melancholy in Tristan's voice. Dylan bit her tongue, realizing that what she just said was too thoughtless, "It's weird," she murmured.Then, she wanted to make up for the rashness of her previous sentence, "But it doesn't matter what you look like, it really doesn't matter. The one in your head and heart is the real you, you know? It's your soul. "

Tristan looked at her with an elusive expression on his face, "Do you think I have a soul?" he asked quietly. "Of course there is." Dylan immediately replied sincerely.Tristan saw her sincerity and smiled.She smiled at him too, but the smile ended in a big yawn.She covered her mouth with her hands in embarrassment. "I think my body still thinks it needs to sleep," she said sleepily. Tristan nodded. "It's going to be a bit uncomfortable at first. Tomorrow you may feel very sick, very tired. It's all psychological, though..." His voice trailed off, and finally died away.The atmosphere of silence is thicker, almost palpable.

Dylan curled up in the armchair, hugging his knees, staring past Tristan at the fire.She didn't know if she should say something, but she couldn't think of anything that didn't sound silly.And, she thought, Tristan might want to think things through.Might as well leave him alone for a while, as before. "I guess it's easier at first," she thought silently. "What do you mean?" Tristan asked, turning around, looking at her. She didn't meet his eyes, but was still staring at the fire, which calmed her and seemed to enter a half-dream state. "At first," she said, "when souls lay dormant, I'm sure they got a moment." You must be very tired from talking to them all the time." At the last sentence, her voice trembled because she suddenly remembered that she was one of "them".

Tristan was momentarily speechless.Dylan cringed, trying to read the worst possible implications of the silence.Of course, to him, she was just another soul.Dylan was terribly annoyed and squirmed in his chair. "I must shut up." She vowed to herself. Tristan pursed his lips, "You can talk." He comforted her. However, what she just said was true.He really liked the first half of the journey better, when the spirits just followed along sleepily and he was almost alone.Sleep was like a curtain over their selfishness and ignorance, and he was happy to be out of sight and out of mind (even if only for a few hours).But this... this girl was surprised at how compassionate she was, how selflessly she considered his feelings and his needs.He looked at Dylan curled up in the chair, looking like she was trying to find a way to slip through the ancient cushion.He was a little moved in his heart, and wanted to do something to dissipate the embarrassing blush on her face.

"Would you like to hear another story?" he asked. "If you want..." she replied shyly. He had an idea in his head. "Earlier you asked who was the worst soul I ever ferried," he began, "but I lied. It wasn't you." He paused and glanced quickly at Dylan. "Wasn't it me?" Dylan rested his head on his knees, looking at Tristan playfully. "No." He swore.Then his voice lost the funny tone, "That's a little boy." "A boy?" Dylan asked. Tristan nodded. "How did he die?" "Cancer," Tristan murmured, only willing to tell the story in a whisper, "you should have seen him. He was lying there, and it was heartbreaking. He was small and frail and pale. , due to chemotherapy, there is no hair on my head."

"What do you look like in front of him?" Dylan asked softly. "A doctor, I told him..." Tristan paused, not sure if he had the courage to admit it, "I told him I could make his pain go away, I could make him feel better again. His little His face glowed like he got a Christmas present from me. He jumped out of bed and told me he was feeling better now." In his heart, Tristan did not want to guide the child.Although they are the most willing to follow him and trust him the most, they are also the hardest to lead. They don't complain, although he thinks they should complain most.How unfair it is to die before you have had the chance to grow up and experience life!

"Tristan," Dylan's voice made Tristan, who was still hanging his head just now, suddenly look up, "if you don't want to, you don't have to tell me this story." But he wanted to tell the story, and he didn't even know why.The story wasn't happy at all, and it didn't have a happy ending.But he just wanted to tell her something about himself, something meaningful. "We walked out of the hospital together. Once he saw the sun, he refused to take his eyes away and stared at it for a long time." "The first day was a great one. We got to the sanctuary without a hitch, I did magic tricks for him, made a fire out of thin air, and carried things through the air, which kept him entertained. I did everything I could to attract him The next day he was tired and still felt sick, but he was willing to walk. He couldn’t walk for months because of a serious illness. I didn’t say no to him, I should have said no.” Tristan He lowered his head in shame. "We were walking too slowly. I carried him on my back as the sun was going down, but still couldn't make it. I ran and ran as fast as I could. The poor boy was jolted and cried, he I can feel my anxiety and hear the roar of the devil. He trusted me so much, but I failed his trust." Dylan was too nervous to ask, but she couldn't let go of the story. "What happened?" "I tripped..." Tristan said hoarsely, with a gleam of fire in his eyes, "I tripped and he fell. He slowed my fall. Just a second In a split second, they caught him and dragged him down." His voice stopped, but the rising and falling breathing continued in the silence.The sound came and went, as if he were sobbing, although there were no tears on his cheeks.Dylan looked at him with a pained expression, and she couldn't help but grab his hand.It was warm in the room, but his skin was cold to the touch.Dylan's fingertips slid gently across the back of his hand, and he looked at her sadly, and a moment later, his hand turned over, fingers entwined with hers.He held her hand like this, slowly drawing a circle on her palm with a thumb.Dylan felt the itch, but she would rather lose that hand than let him go. Tristan looked up at her, the shadows of the firelight dancing on his face. "Tomorrow will be a bad day," he whispered. "The demons have gathered outside." "I thought you said they couldn't get in." Dylan's voice sounded choked with sudden panic.His warning showed that he was worried, and if Tristan was worried too, it meant that danger was indeed imminent. Her heart tightened. "They won't come in," he assured her, his face very serious, "but they'll be waiting for us, and they know we're going to get out sooner or later." "Are we going to be safe?" Her voice rose a few notches to an embarrassingly squeaky voice. "We'll be all right in the morning," he said, "but in the afternoon we're going through a valley, and it's always dark down there. That's where they attack us." "I remember you said that the landform here is formed by me, it is the projection of my mental image, right?" "Yes, but the wasteland in your mind is built on top of an underground structure, which is why the shelters are all in the same place. The valley is there, it's always been there." Dylan bit his lip, feeling both curious and cautious, and finally decided to ask him, "Have you...have you ever lost anyone in the valley?" He looked up at her, "I won't lose you." Although he didn't explicitly answer her question, Dylan could already hear the undertones.She pursed her lips tightly, trying not to show her anxiety. "Don't be afraid." He sensed that the atmosphere was not right, so he added another sentence. Dylan blushed as his fingers pressed gently against her hand. "I'm fine." She replied quickly. Tristan could see that she was faking calm.He got up from his chair and crouched in front of Dylan, still holding her hand tightly.He looked directly at Dylan when he spoke, and Dylan wanted to look away, but he seemed to have been hypnotized by his eyes and remained motionless. "I won't lose you!" Tristan repeated, "Trust me." "I do," Dylan replied, this time speaking from the bottom of her heart. He nodded in satisfaction, stood up, let go of her hand, and stopped looking at her.Dylan held her hands between her jeans-clad knees, her heart beating wildly, the skin on her palms tingling, and she tried to hide it all.She watched Tristan walk toward a window, looking out at the night sky.Dylan struggled to breathe evenly, calling to him, trying to pull him back from the window, away from the demons lurking outside.But he knew these guys better than himself, and he must know that he was safe now, but she would never go near those things.She curled up on the chair again, shivering slightly. "It's always like this," Tristan said suddenly, without turning around, and Dylan suspected he was talking to himself.He raised a hand to the glass, and the noise around the house doubled in volume. "What's always like this?" Dylan asked, hoping to draw his attention and take his hand away from the window, startled by the howling outside. To reassure her, he really turned around and put his hands down. "Those demons," he told her, "are always going to get hungrier and more greedy, and if they come across a..." He paused, "a soul like you." Dylan frowned, and he spoke as if it was her fault. "What do you mean? What is a soul like me?" He looked at her and thought for a moment, "These evil spirits accept all kinds of souls. But pure souls are like a big meal for them." pure soul?Dylan turned the phrase over and over in his head for a while, trying to figure out what it meant. "Pure" was not a word she used to describe herself at all, at least her mother would never think so. "I'm not pure," she said. "No, you are," he said with absolute certainty. "I'm not," she argued. "Ask my mother, she always tells me I'm..." "I'm not saying you're perfect," Tristan interrupted, "a pure soul...is innocent..." Dylan shook his head, ready to deny it again.But the next word he uttered made the whole room full of gunpowder, "Virgin..." Her mouth opened and closed, closed and opened again, back and forth several times, but she couldn't make a sound.Tristan observed her carefully, she seemed to be unable to control the muscles and blood on her face, the blood rushed to her cheeks, and her face flushed immediately. "What?" Finally she stammered out a word. "Virgin..." he repeated.Dylan tried to keep his eyes still to hide his embarrassment.She felt that the repetition was really redundant. "Any time a soul enters the wasteland with a flawless body, the demons grow more aggressive and more menacing." He looked at her, sure that she was focused on him. "They want you, Want you especially. Your soul is a feast to them. Those who have lived too long taste bitter, and you are more attractive and more delicious than them." Dylan stared at him dumbfounded, she was still confused by what he said.She was just thinking about the word—virgin.How on earth did he know this?Is this word written on her forehead?But then she remembered that he had told her that he knew every soul, inside and out.She felt so embarrassed, so ashamed!Also, the twitching of his lips as he watched her squirm, he was laughing at himself.Were these things going through his mind as he clutched his hand?She is pure and simple?Is a virgin? ! She felt terribly humiliated and fidgeted in her chair, but it wasn't enough.She was still trapped under his gaze, like an ant under a magnifying glass.She jumped up from the chair with a burst of strength, leading her a few steps forward, until she walked to the window.Tristan had been watching her until then.When she approached, she deliberately didn't look at him.The embarrassment in her heart was hot and hot, dyeing her cheeks crimson.Dylan pressed his forehead against the cold glass, trying to cool them down.