Come, Let Me Take You Home v1 c1

No. 001 A Bud That Wilted Before It Could Be Named

……

“Brother…”

……

“Brother…”

……

I don’t know when it started, but this voice appeared in my dreams.

Intermittent, faint.

A very clear and pure girl’s voice.

She called me “brother” affectionately.

But I don’t have a younger sister.

My parents passed away from illness very early on. I am an only child, and I can confidently rule out the possibility of my father having been unfaithful.

“Brother…”

That voice gradually became familiar to me, and it often interrupted my sweet dreams when I was sound asleep.

“Brother… can you hear me…”

“Brother, please say something, Xiaoyao is scared…”

……

Finally, one night, I finally mustered up the courage to speak to that voice: “Who are you?”

“I’m Yi Yao.”

“A girl with the same name as me?”

“No, I’m your younger sister.”

“I don’t have a younger sister.”

“But I really am your younger sister.”

“Then how do you know I’m your brother?”

“The dream told me, the dream told me that it was a rabbit, it was a rabbit, and now it’s my brother who’s talking to me, so you’re my brother.”

I was speechless.

Indeed, dreams have always been so unreasonable. If you relax, you can’t predict what will happen to you in the dream next. But if you realize that you are dreaming, then you are the master of the entire dreamscape.

“Why are you in my dream?”

At first, I didn’t believe that this person was my younger sister. I simply thought it was a second personality formed by my excessive exhaustion.

“Because… hehe, I don’t know either. It’s just that every night when I dream, I think about how nice it would be to have a brother, and then I met you, brother.”

“…”

Just like that, I met my “sister” in my dream.

For many nights, we spent our time in vague conversations.

My sister told me stories about “that world” of hers, but to me, those were just unbearable memories of my student days.

So, I became more and more convinced that this guy who claimed to be my sister was actually my second personality.

However, it wasn’t a bad thing to have someone to chat with every night. At least for me, who lived and earned money alone, having a close sister was really great. After all, the voice of that “sister” was really, really nice to listen to, although I also knew that it was very likely a virtual character simulated by my brain due to my excessive longing for a girlfriend.

Slowly, I got used to talking to my sister every night before going to sleep.

……

“Brother, I got first place in the whole class today!”

“That’s normal. I was also first in the whole class when I was as old as you.”

“But Dad always scolds me for being useless at home. I want to live at school. I don’t want to go home anymore.”

“Try to persuade Dad to drink less. He will leave you because of cancer in five years.”

“No way? Dad is so healthy, how could he get cancer? How much older are you than me, brother?”

“Didn’t you call me brother first? Don’t you know how old I am?”

“I don’t know…”

……

“Brother, brother, our homeroom teacher has changed. The handsome young man has been replaced by a middle-aged woman. I don’t like her very much.”

“It’s okay, she’ll be transferred away in two months, although the new homeroom teacher will make you feel even worse.”

“I’m so lost, is studying really that important?”

“Not important, grades are useless except for determining where you will play League of Legends in the future.”

“Does that mean I can stop studying?”

“My dear sister, do you want to play League of Legends in a remote university where there’s not even takeout?”

……

The content of my sister’s conversations was basically the same as my understanding of student life.

This also coincided with the law that “dreamers don’t dream of things they don’t know.”

As expected, it still won’t work… A sister or something, should I go see a psychiatrist?

……

My sister is just my imagination.

I have a mild mental illness.

That’s what I’ve always thought about this.

Until one day—

That day, after I finished my work, I fell asleep as usual.

“Brother, actually, Xiaoyao has been lying to you for the past six months.”

This time, this is what my sister said to me.

I found it funny, so I replied: “What’s wrong? Did your heart break? Shouldn’t you start your first love after you go to college?”

I always talked to this sister like this because I thought I knew everything about her. She was just a little shadow of mine.

“Oh, brother, I’m serious.” My sister used a frustrated tone for the first time, and said: “Actually, I didn’t get first place in the whole class at that time. I got seventh from the bottom. The homeroom teacher called my parents. Dad slapped me in front of all my classmates, and then I ran out of the school.”

……?

Wait, when did this happen to me when I was a kid? A temporary fantasy of another personality?

“Where did you go?”

“Go… to my boyfriend’s house.”

“You have a boyfriend?”

“Yes, I met him when I went to an internet cafe for the first time that day.”

“The first time you went to an internet cafe?”

I tried my best to recall in my dream…

The first time I went to an internet cafe was when I was in the second year of junior high school, probably around 13 years old. On the weekend, I didn’t go home on time because of a traffic jam.

My father called and yelled at me, “Do you still have this family in your heart?” At that time, I was young and energetic, so I hung up the phone and got out of the car. I went to an internet cafe with the delinquent teenagers from my class who I usually couldn’t hang out with, and was finally taken back by my father.

“Yes, I played until very, very late that day, it was probably past 2 o’clock in the morning when I was about to fall asleep, that person came over and said to me: ‘Little sister, go to sleep over there, the air conditioner is cold here, and you don’t look like you come to this kind of place often, did you have a fight with your family?’ I foolishly followed him, and then we were together.”

Wait a minute!

I asked in disbelief, “What’s your boyfriend’s name?”

Impossible, there must be something wrong, isn’t she my other personality? Shouldn’t she only know what I know? Why is she telling me something completely foreign to me now…

“My boyfriend? His name is Long Fei, he’s a third-year student from the Second Middle School next door, and his family seems to be quite wealthy.”

Long Fei?

I felt a chill run down my spine.

It was indeed a name I was unfamiliar with, a name I had never even heard of.

“Brother?”

“Brother, don’t go yet… Xiaoyao hasn’t finished…”

“Brother… Woooo… I have to wait until tomorrow again…”

My sister was still saying something, but I couldn’t hear it anymore.

Because I was already awakened by my own fear.

Looking up, the house that I had worked hard for ten years to buy was as deserted as ever.

The first light of dawn appeared on the horizon.

I sat on the bed in a daze for three whole minutes before jumping out of bed and turning on the computer as if suddenly waking up.

As soon as the desktop system loaded, an email reminder popped up in the lower right corner: “Your bank card ending in 1856 has received a transfer of RMB 500,000.00, the balance is 3,500,189.00.” Attached message: Information received, happy cooperation.

Yes, I am a network security engineer. I am responsible for the information security of a large company in Upper Capital City. My salary is decent. With my part-time job, I can at least make ends meet.

Secretly, I am a hacker.

As long as I know a person’s name and city, I can find out all of that person’s information on the Internet within ten minutes.

Long Fei, Long Fei…

My fingers flew across the keyboard.

Since there are very few people with the surname Long in this city, it took me less than five minutes to find the information of this man who was the same age as me.

Chairman of the largest

network technology company in the city? Such a big shot?

That’s not right, I remember that the chairman of that company doesn’t seem to be called by this name… Never mind him, let’s look at his education first.

When I turned to the school that the person once attended, I was completely stunned.

I saw that the junior high school attended by the only man in Upper Capital City named “Long Fei” clearly stated “Upper Capital City Second Middle School.”

Is this a coincidence? Or have I seen this person somewhere before?

The brain does sometimes replay things you’ve long forgotten into your dreams. However, during junior high school, I was so focused on my studies that the probability of me meeting this person was basically zero. At that time, I only slept less than 5 hours a day, and after two years, I couldn’t even recognize all 60 of my classmates. How could I have the energy to care about the students in the Second Middle School, which was more than 10 kilometers away?

I started to panic.

The next evening, I asked for leave from work and went to sleep early after taking sleeping pills.

“Brother, it’s rare that it came early today.”

My sister’s voice was as soft as ever.

Trying to suppress the excitement in my heart, I asked, “Are you really my sister?”

“What are you talking about, brother? Haven’t we known each other for almost a year?”

My sister’s tone sounded very dissatisfied: “Brother, I feel like I’m losing you… Oh no, it’s you who are losing me.”

“Why?”

“No reason, the dream told me.”

“…”

“Brother, do you know? This past six months, Xiaoyao has been very, very tired. Dad always scolds me at home. The less I talk, the harder they scold me. I feel that if this continues, one day Xiaoyao won’t be able to hold on anymore.”

“Life is like that.”

“Mom’s illness is getting worse and worse, and the family owes a lot of money. Dad said that if I don’t study hard, he will sell me.”

“He won’t.”

“He will! You don’t know how much Dad hates me…”

“Be good, don’t think too much, Dad has always loved you…”

……

I became my sister’s confidant.

I didn’t know how to comfort this sister who I didn’t even know where she lived.

From my sister’s description, I could tell that the change between us started from that afternoon when we were stuck in traffic. Before that, our experiences were almost exactly the same.

We were both scolded by our father, and both ran to an internet cafe we had never been to out of spite. The difference is that my father personally took me back from the internet cafe in the end, while my sister was left to fend for herself.

As a result, my sister became a delinquent girl, and I became a top student.

Many times, I had prepared questions before going to bed, but after seeing my sister, I couldn’t remember what to ask.

I felt like my body was getting worse.

……

“Brother… Brother, are you there?”

……

“Brother, why have you been so quiet lately?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You have. You’re my only spiritual support now, so don’t ignore me.”

“Brother is tired, let him sleep for a while.”

“We’re all dreaming, and you still want to sleep?”

……

Finally, I went to the hospital.

“Judging from your thinking and consciousness, there is nothing wrong with your spirit, and your brain examination is also normal.”

The doctor who received me wore reading glasses, and the sunlight outside the window refracted a little rainbow on his lenses.

“But this… look at this.”

“Although it was discovered accidentally, it is already in the late stage. There is no precedent for curing this disease in China, so we can only treat it conservatively.”

……

“Brother, I don’t want you to just listen, you should also talk about yourself. What is the world like in 15 years? Is Mom’s illness cured?”

“…”

“Does brother have a girlfriend now? Or Xiaoyao can be your girlfriend? I don’t like that Long Fei anymore.”

“…”

“If you don’t talk anymore, brother, I will ignore you.”

“I’m sick.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s incurable. The doctor said I have three months left.”

……

“Brother, I want to die too…”

“Don’t give up hope.”

“I can’t do anything well, neither my studies nor my relationships. My classmates don’t like me, my dad always scolds me, and my mom has been hospitalized for so long, and I don’t even dare to visit her.”

“Brother, if you disappear too, Xiaoyao won’t want to live anymore.”

……

……

“Doctor! The patient in Room 29 has no heartbeat…”

……

“Brother, I’m ready.”

……

“We can’t do anything, we tried our best. Yi Yao… Does he have any relatives?”

“It seems like he has an uncle.”

“Have Xiao Liu issue the death notice.”

……

“Brother, anyway, Xiaoyao has no friends in this world, so live on in my place.”

……

“Good night, brother, and… goodbye.”