Fifteen years...
Standing in the attic of the Gothic spire, Li Donggui had finally learned to remain calm.
What else could he do?
He had been trapped in the spire's attic for fifteen years, without joy or sorrow. Every day, he struggled to recall fragments of his previous life, determined not to lose all memory of who he had once been. The light gradually faded from his eyes as his thoughts drifted away.
Thinking back, he had once been an ordinary office worker on Blue Star. His memories of that life had gradually blurred until only fragments of emotion remained, rather than the details of what had happened.
One day, after working late, he had gone home and lain down. He'd complained to a friend for a while about how deranged his boss was, then slowly fallen asleep. He could still remember the sensation of his mind growing heavier and heavier, as if he were sinking into a hazy dream.
In that dream, he had inexplicably appeared inside this spire. Once he realized he wasn't going to wake up, he understood one fact: he was probably dead.
No dream could last fifteen years. He did not need to eat or drink, and he never felt hungry or tired.
Fortunately, there was also good news: he was dead, but not completely dead. He could still think and remember. He simply could not leave the attic.
It was clear that he was not the centerpiece of this place. Hanging in the very center of the attic was a massive bronze evening bell two meters tall. A short sentence had been engraved on it:
Death tolls the evening bell that brings calamity.
Li Donggui called it the Calamity Bell.
The bronze bell had always been silent. In fifteen years, it had not rung once.
When Li Donggui first arrived, loneliness had driven him mad countless times. He had hammered the Calamity Bell with his fists in a frenzy, but it never budged in the slightest.
He did not know whether his fists or the Calamity Bell were insubstantial. No matter how fast he swung his arms, his fists passed straight through it without resistance. He had also tried ramming it with his head, only for his head to pass through the side of the bell as well.
Inside the bell lay absolute darkness.
After his study of the Calamity Bell yielded nothing, Li Donggui began investigating the spire itself.
Eight gray-white marble columns supported the attic. Li Donggui had pressed every inch of them but found no mechanisms. Pointed arches spanned the spaces between the columns, and the gaps where the arches met the columns were filled with elaborate sculptures.
Each sculpture depicted a human face howling in agony. Every mouth gaped as wide as it could, as though it were about to tear at the corners. The mouths were pitch-black and impossibly deep.
The attic floor was bare. Li Donggui had once lain on it for hours, staring at every stone slab and every seam between them. The seams were spotless, without so much as a speck of dust. The stone floor held neither a stairwell nor a hidden compartment.
Marble balustrades ran along the edge of the attic between each pair of columns. Standing beside them, he had tried countless times to jump down, only to be stopped by an invisible barrier.
All he could do was stand at the edge of the attic with his back to the Calamity Bell and look out from the spire.
Li Donggui knew only that the spire was very tall. He had no idea how many floors it contained. Every line of it thrust defiantly upward.
Above the spire, however, there was no sky, but a multicolored firmament. Scene after scene played across it. Whatever a boy named Leo East saw appeared on the firmament.
Li Donggui tried to look at it as little as possible because every image up there triggered his megalophobia. Anyone would be horrified by a human face half the size of the sky.
To Li Donggui, every smiling mouth that opened across the firmament became a monstrous maw. Like the mouths of the sculptures, each was pitch-black and impossibly deep.
Below the spire was not earth, either, but dense, murky yellow fog that roiled and shuddered without end. Sounds constantly emerged from the trembling fog. Every sound Leo East heard issued from the yellow fog.
If Li Donggui's guess was correct, neither he nor the spire existed in the real world. They seemed to be somewhere inside Leo East's Soul Sea.
Over the years, as Leo East learned to speak, Li Donggui had learned to understand this world's language and read its writing.
Yet the most striking things in this Soul Sea were neither the firmament of images nor the yellow fog of sound.
One immense string spanned the space from top to bottom. It plunged deep into the yellow fog and propped up the firmament like a colossal pillar.
When Leo East was happy, the string swayed a little more cheerfully. When Leo East was sad, it swayed a little more heavily.
Leo's Soul String was so magnificent that the spire looked like a tiny gnat floating beside a colossal pillar.
Li Donggui had also tried to communicate with Leo, but neither waving nor shouting at the top of his lungs had any effect. He could not influence Leo in the slightest.
He had been fully prepared to become the boy's “old grandpa” mentor, but even that modest hope was beyond his reach.
At that point, Li Donggui gave up. He lay flat. He accepted his helplessness. All he wanted was for this world to end as soon as possible and take his loneliness with it.
Now he was only a lonely prisoner... until, at last, he grew completely accustomed to being alone.
For fifteen years, Li Donggui watched everything Leo East saw and listened to everything Leo East heard. It was like a movie that never stopped, playing continuously for fifteen years to an audience of one: Li Donggui.
Year 48 of the Order Calendar; Audrian Continent; the Kingdom of Manchel; the Duchy of Cavendish; Blackport City. This was where Leo East lived.
The beach glittered in the sunset, flecked with gold. Seagulls cried from time to time, their clear calls echoing in the air.
Every day in the outside world brimmed with sunlight and vitality, offering glimpses of customs reminiscent of medieval Europe. Li Donggui, however, felt only loneliness, a loneliness that had seeped into his bones.
No one had ever seen him. No one had ever heard him. No one knew how Li Donggui had endured those fifteen years.
He and the spire were like specks of dust in a corner of Leo East's Soul Sea.
He existed, but that did not necessarily mean he was alive.
Sometimes, in the spire's attic, Li Donggui indulged in an extravagant hope:
If I ever get the chance, I want to be human...