The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 304: The Immortal

"...Twenty-three years passed in my dream," the man muttered, his head lowered as he became lost in his memories.

That dream had been nearly as long as his entire life.

Lu Li didn't interrupt the man's reflections.

He wasn't recalling the events of the dream, but what had happened twenty-three years ago when he had first come to the detective agency.

They were very distant memories.

In a way, the dream had become another life for him. Only the occasional, disjointed fragments of chaotic dreams reminded him, "This is all just your dream."

On the surface, it didn't seem so terrible—time in the man's dreams was simply stretching, not accelerating by a factor of several times.

But it was horrifying enough.

It meant that next time, the time in his dream could reach a hundred years—all within just a few hours of normal sleep.

The man pulled himself from his memories. He didn't describe what had happened in his dream, but like any ordinary person in such a situation, he asked, "Am I still me...?"Sleep takes up a third of a person's life, but most dreams are chaotic and difficult to remember. Even if one manages to recall something, those memories fade over time.

It was different for this man. He remembered his dream as clearly as events in the real world. What was even more terrifying was that, compared to the sprawling expanse of dream-time, real time felt like a mere grain of sand.

"Of course, you are you," Lu Li replied, noticing the bewilderment common to middle-aged men on his face. "You've just gained twenty-three years of psychological age and the experience that comes with it."

The man lowered his head, his body trembling slightly—not just from the chill of his damp clothes, but from his inner turmoil. "But none of it was real..."

"Perhaps not."

Lu Li didn't think so.

Or, more accurately, Lu Li was open to other possibilities.

It seemed as though the man's time froze when he fell asleep, and his consciousness was transported to another world where he would spend long years before returning to his body.

Who could say with certainty that his dreams were just dreams?

Lu Li's words seemed to calm the man a little.

At least he knew that those long decades might not have been a figment of his imagination.

He wasn't trapped inside his own mind.

He wasn't alone.

"I'd like to believe that..." The man forced a faint smile, which quickly turned to bitterness as he recalled an even more desperate fact. "But my dreams are getting longer... days... months... years... decades... centuries... longer still... until I stop waking up altogether..."

"No, they will just keep getting longer, stretching toward an unreachable figure, but they will never end." Lu Li's words were so blunt that even the gentle Anna wanted to remind him how tactless he was being...

However, the man showed no strong emotion; perhaps twenty-three years of sleep had indeed gifted him the composure of a middle-aged man.

But Lu Li wasn't finished.

"You could consider it a gift," Lu Li said, as if plunging another dagger into the man's heart.

"A gift?" The man raised his head doubtfully. The bloodshot veins in his eyes were just as prominent as they had been that morning, and his mood grew volatile once more.

"A gift," Lu Li confirmed. "It has become your second life, and your resistance is only tormenting you."

The man remained silent, and Lu Li continued, "Don't see it as a burden. Don't fight it. You can think of it as entering another world in your sleep, living there under a new name. After all, you said that aside from the chaotic fragments, the rest of the time you live in that other world as if it were real—so real that you can't tell it apart from this one."

The man was still silent, perhaps pondering Lu Li's words.

Everyone thinks differently, and Lu Li understood this well. If an old man in his twilight years were to face the same situation, he probably wouldn't see it as a bad thing, at least not at first.

"Do you have any family?" Lu Li asked.

With his head bowed, the man shook it. "No..."

"A lover?"

"None of those, either..."

"No time."

"So is there anything in this world that keeps you here?"

This time, the man was silent for a long while before his hoarse voice echoed in the detective agency. "I understand... Thank you."

There was sincerity in his eyes. Perhaps he truly understood what Lu Li meant: if something is happening in your life that you cannot change, try to accept it. Resistance and anger will only deepen your suffering.

One could only hope he wouldn't forget this in a few days.

By then, the duration of a single one of his dreams might be measured in millennia.

"Death is useless, right?" the man asked.

He had asked this question before, and now he asked it again.

Perhaps he had forgotten, or perhaps...

"Perhaps. But death is a last resort. Maybe you'll find peace after death. Maybe you'll be able to sleep forever."

Eternal sleep—for this man, the phrase sounded ironic.

"You don't have a solution either?"

Recalling how he had sensed a presence accompanying the man into his dream after he fell asleep, Lu Li shook his head slightly.

A solution might have existed, but it would have been too costly for Lu Li.

For now, talk therapy was relatively "cheap."

"Perhaps some news will lift your spirits," Lu Li said after a moment's thought. "This world is about to end."

The man stared at Lu Li in confusion, thinking he must have misheard, that he wasn't fully awake yet.

Lu Li continued, "It might not be destroyed, but it will get much worse."

"But how is that possible..." the man muttered in astonishment.

"You've just experienced something equally unbelievable," said Lu Li.

The man fell silent.

After pondering the imminent end of the world, he informed Lu Li that the case was closed. Lu Li handed him a note with the addresses of the Investigators and the Night's Watch. The man took it, but it seemed he no longer intended to seek a solution to his problem—Lu Li's "talk therapy" had taken effect.

At least, until his next dream.

When his dreams began to last for millennia, he might want to solve his problem again.

Before leaving, he promised to give Lu Li everything he owned as payment.

Of course, he would send the payment before he went to sleep again.

"So you do know how to comfort people, after all..."

After the man left, Anna looked at Lu Li as if seeing him for the first time.

"I just helped him solve the problem from a different angle," Lu Li said, putting away the pen and the leftover sheets of paper. "When a glass is half empty, a pessimist will say there’s only half left, while an optimist will say it’s still half full."

"And which one are you?" Anna asked curiously.

Lu Li didn't answer. He simply picked up the kettle, poured water into a glass until it was half full, and said to Anna, "Here is a glass, half full of water."