Lately, I've been having the same dream.
In it, I'm not part of the Bureau.
There's no soul-chain on my wrist.
I'm just a normal history teacher at a quiet middle school.
There's the morning bell at 8 a.m., the sound of pages turning, and the cafeteria downstairs serving the same braised chicken wings every day.
Everything is so painfully ordinary… it almost feels gentle.
I live on the third floor of the teacher's dormitory. My balcony overlooks an old pagoda tree.
When the evening wind blows in, the pages of my book flip on their own, and I get the strange feeling that someone's reading the unfinished diary I never dared write.
There are no missions in this world.
No Gray Domain.
No sacrifices.
Only a cup of warm milk after work, a quiet desk, and a lamp I never seem to turn off.
I don't feel lonely.
But something is… missing.
One day in the dream, I was walking home from school when I heard footsteps behind me.
"Teacher, you dropped this."
I turned.
A boy—maybe twenty, with a huge backpack and sunlight in his smile.
I thanked him. "We've met before?"
He hesitated. "Have we?"
I shook my head. "I don't think so."
But something inside me stirred.
As if he'd said that same line—
a hundred times before,
in a place I couldn't quite remember.
After that, he started appearing more often.
Waiting outside my classroom, offering to carry my books.
Bringing me ginger tea when I had a cold, saying he was "just passing by."
Walking me home after work, stopping always at the same tree outside my building.
I asked, "Are you my student?"
He smiled.
"No. I'm just… here to keep a promise."
"What promise?" I asked.
He looked at me gently.
"One you forgot… a long time ago."
The last time I dreamed of him, the rain was coming down in sheets.
I found myself not in school, but walking through the Bureau's old corridors. Wearing my spiritual uniform—but no one recognized me.
The world felt like a cracked mirror.
I kept searching, calling his name, but he was nowhere.
At last, I found a dusty file in the deepest archive room:
Case ID: E-L
Soul-Link Trial Record – Failed
Subjects: Kaelin (Expired) · Lu Feng (Erased)
I fell to my knees, clutching the file, and wept like a child.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard his voice—soft, like wind through a window:
"Tell me… if we'd never met, would your life have been easier?"
I didn't answer him.
Because deep down, I already knew.
It wasn't meeting you that made life hard.
It was—
Not loving you well enough.
When I woke, my pillow was soaked with tears.
Outside, the morning sun poured in.
I whispered into the quiet:
"Thank you… for visiting my dreams."