章節 25: Sister

Comfortable, peaceful. The tightly drawn curtains blocked out the outside world, the birds chirping in the trees in the early morning, the horns honking on the distant roads, all of it was gone. Chris curled up on his makeshift bed, like a baby in a cradle, sleeping soundly.

The still-flickering computer screen on the desk was still displaying the game screen. The game's protagonist, who had almost slaughtered the entire city, stood there nonchalantly, occasionally moving under the control of the idle animation.

Beep beep beep—

The harsh sound of the alarm clock rang, urging him to get up and get ready for work. However, Chris, who had played games until almost dawn, was at his sleepiest. He subconsciously picked up his phone, turned off the alarm, and fell back asleep.

Intense fatigue wrapped around his body, dragging Chris into a deep dream.

It was a very absurd dream. The creatures living there were all mushrooms with human expressions. Their caps were colorful, each one unique, and there were even some mushroom people who styled their mushroom heads into pompadours, it looked funny and ridiculous.

But Chris himself was out of place in this world. As the master of the dream, he wasn't a mushroom unable to move, but a human who could walk around freely.

Besides their huge caps and stems, the mushroom people didn't have any other limbs. He curiously played with the mushrooms on the side of the road, watching the mushrooms with different expressions become angry, or shy, or directly start cursing at him in their strange mushroom language because of his teasing.

Chris found it extremely interesting.

Until he accidentally stepped on a small mushroom.

A very small, very ugly mushroom. With a light step, it turned into a puddle of mud under his feet. The sticky feeling made him feel extremely disgusted. Red mucus oozed from the mushroom, emitting a foul smell, and stuck to his new sneakers.

"So disgusting." Cursing constantly, Chris vigorously wiped his new shoes. However, no matter how much he wiped, the mucus stuck to them and wouldn't come off.

"Damn it, damn it!" His emotions became more and more intense, his curses getting worse and worse, but the mucus also stuck more firmly.

Until he created a machete out of thin air in his dream, the sharp blade gleaming white. Chris raised it high, and then swung it down. The blade cut through the skin of his ankle, and white flesh rolled out, spraying dark, dirty blood. It emitted a foul smell, mixed with a strange mushroom juice, flowing down his flesh, bones, and meridians. He chopped off his own foot.

He felt much more comfortable now.

A knock on the door suddenly rang out. Chris, who was immersed in the dream, suddenly woke up. He glanced at his somewhat numb foot, thankful that it was just tangled up in the game controller's cable.

"Chris, open the door."

His sister's voice came from outside the door. Chris exhaled, and responded.

Gaming equipment was scattered all over the floor, leftover snacks were strewn all over his bed, greasy stains were on his blankets and clothes.

Click.

The door opened, and the cold wind from outside blew in, making Chris shiver involuntarily. His sister, Corina, frowned, unhappy with how long it took him to open the door. She first glanced around Chris's room, and frowned even more deeply when she saw the garbage and games everywhere.

"Chris, I don't recall you telling me that you were off today." She put one hand on her hip, wearing only thin pajamas, her hair was a little messy. Just like Chris, she had probably also slept very late.

"Sorry, Sis, something happened yesterday." He felt a little irritable, and didn't want to recall what had happened yesterday.

"What happened? Why didn't you tell me?!" Unfortunately, Corina wasn't so easily fooled. She crossed her arms and stared at Chris intently.

His sister pressing him made Chris feel more and more irritable. His voice gradually rose, "It's none of your business!"

"What do you mean none of my business? Ever since our parents died, I'm the one in charge of this family."

Like two cups of water heated in a microwave oven, although the surface was calm, once they collided with each other, they would boil violently.

Chris had only slept for three or four hours. He hadn't recovered at all, and then, due to that strange dream, he had become mentally sensitive, and didn't want to argue with his sister at all right now.

Unfortunately, Corina didn't think so. Her brother's behavior clearly meant that he was hiding something, she knew Chris very well, this wasn't how he usually behaved.

As their emotions were both unstable, Corina's voice gradually rose.

"Chris, tell me, what happened. I'm the one in charge of the house, I have the right to know!"

"That's my own business, it has nothing to do with you, nothing to do with this family, do you understand?!"

"Enough, Chris!" Corina rudely interrupted Chris's words, the disappointment in her eyes conveying her emotions as the head of the family. Her voice gradually calmed down. This was a sign of extreme anger. "Your obsession with these virtual things has made you lose your ability to make judgments in life. They are harming you, they are ruining you."

Angry and repressed, Corina walked straight to Chris's desk and slammed the still-playing computer screen to the floor.

The screen flickered, then completely lost its image. The high-performance computer, which he had spent several months saving up for, was smashed out of shape. The broken cables arced, as if burning Chris's heart.

A tyrannical emotion was constantly surging in his heart. His gaze slowly shifted to the baseball bat he had placed in the corner of the room.

"Behave yourself, Chris, you're not a child anymore."

After destroying all the messy game consoles in the room, Corina stood in front of her brother, "Now, tell me what happened."

Chaos, impatience, anger, intertwined negative emotions constantly impacted Chris's mind. He lowered his head, looking at his sister, who was much shorter than him.

The thin pajamas barely covered the woman's upper body, and large patches of skin were exposed from the collar, a charming and curvaceous body. Chris, who had been obsessed with 2D girls, had noticed for the first time that his sister had such a side to her.

He lowered his voice, full of malice.

"Does it feel good to be played with by those men? Those people you lied to me and said they were colleagues, weren't they actually just playmates you found?"

"Saying that you're the head of the family, you're just a slut. How many times have I seen the pills you threw in the kitchen? You never even bothered to hide them. Did you really take those things with those people right in front of your brother?"

"I even locked myself in a small room, giving you so much space, just so I wouldn't have to see your filthy behavior."

"But now you've ruined it! Ruined the things I cherish!"

Chris's eyes turned red, his right hand already reaching for the baseball bat by the wall.