Short story: Life is but a Dream (梦中身) by 如似我闻 Ru Si Wo Wen
------ Synopsis -----
"I thereby swear to give you my full loyalty, never betraying you for as long as I live."
Tags: loyal love, dystopia, modern fantasy, drama, angst
Trigger warnings: war, mentions of torture, major character death
First person MC (female); the pairing is her brother (Li Xi) and an unnamed 'he'. (The choice of the first person MC is crucial to the story, so I hope you don't feel deterred by the slightly atypical choice of person.)
The title is a liberal translation. A more direct alternative would have been 'body in a dream'. Explanation for the title's translation choice at the end of the story.
----- Story text -----
-01
"I thereby swear to give you my full loyalty, never betraying you for as long as I live."
That was his first encounter with Li Xi, quoted verbatim from the description he gave to me himself.
The alternatingly black and red flags fluttered in the wind. The passionate calls of patriotic songs sounded out. Tens of thousands of young men were decked in their new uniforms as they lined up in the square, placing their hands on their chests as they swore solemnly.
In that moment, their empire had just acquired five consecutive victories on the battlefield. The entire nation was elated, and the number of people who signed up to join the army increased unexpectedly. They had to undergo a strict process of screening and training before their prime minister proudly announced, at the military enlistment ceremony, that they will be the honour and pride of the country.
That year was thus nicknamed, ‘The Spring of the Empire’.
During the prime minister's speech, he secretly glanced around, meeting gazes with a pair of black eyes next to him. The other party curved his lips into a light smile, before facing the front again and raising his chin to beckon him forward as well.
Quickly facing forward again, he managed to avoid the officers' detection.
"Li Xi."
He fumbled for a while for the right words. I handed him a pen and paper. He then slowly wrote down the two words and asked, "Do you understand these two squarish characters? Don’t you think it’s very complicated? Each one of the regions in this empire has retained its original mother tongue, and this is his mother tongue."
"You've written it out very well," I sincerely praised.
He gave me a smile in response. "These two words are all I can write. This language is simply excruciating to learn."
He then continued describing him. "Major Li Xi—you should have heard of his name. He is of Asian descent, and while I’m unaware of the standards for judging one’s handsomeness back in his hometown, he is very handsome in my opinion, with eyes the colour of the night sky, and hair the colour of ink."
Although he spared nothing in praising him, his voice gradually quietened down.
"I... miss him very much."
"How long has it been since you’d last seen him?"
Looking confused, he gave me a shake of his head in response. "No, nothing of that sort. I’d clearly just seen him three days ago. I’d said goodbye to him, reassuring him that I would not fail..."
In that instant, his words dissipated into the air. The entire room fell into silence. I then caught sight of him leaning back onto the sofa, sinking into the shadows. For a long time, his blond hair looked dim due to not being caught in the sunlight.
He was not asleep, but his eyelashes covered his half-closed blue eyes. He was like a puppet, keeping silent.
Knowing that this conversation could no longer continue, I quietly stood up and left, turning around and closing the door behind me.
"Over at last. You've worked hard again today," said the prison guard, who’d come up and locked the door. "Despite being such a pretty girl, you don't go to dinner parties and dates, instead coming here to spend time with a mentally ill patient every day. Even I would feel pity for you wasting your time like this!"
"I have no choice. It’s my job." I gave him a light shrug of the shoulders.
People inside the room, which looked like a normal officer’s room, would not know how greyed and cold it looked from the outside. The prison was permeated with a solemn air, as if a covered tomb.
"Truth be told, it wouldn’t even matter if you don't lock him up. He’s not going to break free."
"That cannot do. He is a Class A war criminal after all," responded the prison guard, who gave the metal chain a shake to make sure that it was secured. "How was he today?"
"He made amazing progress. He’s finally managing to connect the dots between his memories."
"Ooh, that mustn’t have been easy."
I then quietened down and said, "Thing is, I have the sudden urge to ask you something. Before I came, were the torture methods used on him really the same as those written in the records?"
"...What are you asking this for?"
"The records state that frequency and the intensity of the electric shocks used during his torture were within the allowed limits. If that truly was the case, his mental ability should not have been so difficult to recover."
"This is a criminal who had committed the huge crime of treason, colluding with the enemy forces in order to betray our country!" The prison guard exclaimed, looking at me meaningfully. "What was recorded must be in accordance with the regulations, but in reality...the regulations weren’t followed so closely. Do you understand?"
I nodded.
"Plus, it's obvious from why they asked you to help him regain his memories, don’t you think? Young people shouldn’t be too fussy. It's a good thing for you, since it gave you a job.
I lowered my eyes, smiling.
"Yeah, it's a good thing."
-02
He was still sitting on the sofa when I entered the room. Hearing my footsteps, he looked up in an alert manner.
Not rushing to go forward to him, I politely said, "Sir, I am a reporter from the local press. I have come here to interview you in order to jot down war memoirs. Do you remember anything about the war?"
He was silent.
I continued asking, "Will it convenient for you to commence with the interview now?"
It was only then that he gave me a soft response. I took my seat opposite him, glancing at the monitor in the corner of the room.
"Yanping," I said slowly. "Do you know that place?"
He pursed his lips into a line, and his silence was the answer.
I then changed the topic. "August 732—I think this must be a special time for you, am I right to say that?"
It took him a long while before he replied, "...Yes."
"That was the time when my hometown had fallen. ”
When it comes to war, nothing was predictable.
In August 732, the enemy launched a blitzkrieg on his homeland. It took the enemy just one week to plant their flags on the land.
It was summer then. When the news reached him, it was like a shard of cold amidst the warm temperature. His comrades went over to comfort him, and it was not until midnight that he could be alone in his room.
A sudden knock sounded out on the door.
Outside the door, Li Xi looked into his eyes, before looking at the door, which was opened just a crack. It was clear that he didn't intend to invite him in.
"Have you contacted your family?"
"There’s no need to do so."
Li Xi didn't know how to answer for a while. The other then forced a smile and said, "Just how much do you guys worry about me? Even after comforting me from day to night, is it not enough? In war, such things are but common occurrences. I'm alright." He was about to close the door, "You go back quickly, I want to sleep..."
Li Xi blocked his door from closing with his foot. "Shall we look at the stars?"
I stopped writing, and couldn't help asking, "Was he that romantic?"
On his countenance, an expression emerged—he didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or to cry.
"Of course not. He almost fell asleep."
In the dormitory, the door to the rooftop was always kept closed. Prying open the lock, the two of them entered. They then lay down on the rooftop.
In their lines of sight was a full shimmering river of stars. The night was cooling from the breeze.
Both of them had a tacit understanding to not bring up the previous topic again, instead keeping to small and casual talk. His heart gradually felt lighter, and he regained enough of his mood to start pointing out the stars one by one.
"Actually, I did not learn astrology well at all," said Li Xi, who sighed helplessly while in a half-awake and half-asleep state.
"Don’t you even know the twelve constellations?"
"I know the twelve animal signs of the zodiac." (T/N: Li Xi is Chinese, so he’s talking about the Chinese zodiac.)
"Then why did you want to see the stars? "
It seemed that Li Xi had fallen asleep, because he did not answer.
At that time, the two of them had just joined the army. They were inexperienced and low-ranking, and weren’t deployed anywhere or assigned any tasks. It was a time when he and Li Xi spent the most time together.
It was clear just how much he cherished that memory. But he hid many things in his narrations, seeming to fear that people would pry into his deepest secrets. He also seemed uncertain if each memory was merely a fantasy constructed by his brain in the long time he spent immersed in loneliness.
The truth was that after experiencing countless electric shock tortures, none of his memories may actually be considered reliable.
Using my left hand, I opened up the details recorded down regarding the Battle of Yanping. It would facilitate my one-to-one comparison between truths and falsehoods in his narration.
But matter how I guided him or how I tried to prompt his narration, he never mentioned Yanping.
-03
As time went by, I grew increasingly suspicious that he did not forget the Battle of Yanping—it was just that he was intentionally hiding it from me. It was possible that under his seeming folly hid a sharp eye. Every time I tried to test him, he would simply avoid it.
I could not find a way to prompt the information out from him, even after a long time.
And his patience seemed to be running out like sand from an hourglass. It was uncertain when changes would take place, But the limit of what he could endure had surged forth without warning.
He mentioned Li Xi frequently, either intentionally or unintentionally.
He had already managed to remember many things, including the fact that he and Li Xi were both promoted to majors by virtue of their achievements, scars and excellence.
They could barely free up any time time during the war, so, they had little time to meet. They mostly met up during combat meetings, and could only say things in private quickly.
After a war, they ran into each other in the field hospital. It was only then that they realised, in shock, that it was a rare reunion after so many years.
The wounded soldiers who had been on the front line were still being transported into the hospital continuously. Spare empty beds and medical supplies were running short in terms of supply.
This was why, outside the ward, he and Li Xi had refused help from other people, supporting each other as they limped, before they managed to find a long bench to sit on outside.
It had also been nightfall. The difference, though, was that the stars were not shining as brightly. Even the moonlight was barely visible.
He was the one who burst out in laughter first. After Li Xi asked, he responded, "I had been awake for some time before being pushed in. When I opened my eyes, I saw you also being pushed into the hospital, also full of blood and wounds."
"Did I look very funny?" Li Xi raised his hand to prod gently at the gauze on his forehead.
"No," he responded with a shake of his head. "I just didn't expect to be able to come out alive. I also didn't expect to see you again."
"It’s been a long time."
In the grass, the insects were calling out softly. It was only after a long time that he caught sight of Li Xi speaking. However, he could not hear what he said.
"I forgot to tell you something—please speak louder. A bomb had gone off next to me, and I still have tinnitus at the moment." As he caressed his ears, he was suddenly pulled downwards by Li Xi, who had turned his head and looked at him, saying, "I thereby swear to give you my full loyalty..."
"What?"
"Don't you remember?" His eyes met with Li Xi's, surprised, before continuing the oath in a daze. "…never betraying you for as long as I live."
Li Xi grabbed onto his hand and smiled. All of a sudden, starlight could be seen falling into his black eyes, just it had during like that night, that year.
My pen went click as I placed it down on the table. I turned off the recording and looked straight at him.
He hadn’t detected anything. He was still trapped in his memories.
And I was awash with surprise—my intuition pointed me towards certain inexplicable types of feelings.
But had he really been as unaware as he seemed now?
"What happened afterwards?" I asked, trying to keep my own emotions in control.
That was the oath they swore when they first joined the army. No one in the military was unaware of it.
"Are you nostalgic about the past?" He said. "I often think about that time, you know."
"Do you think about me, too?"
"I thought about that time when you’d forced me to search for your name amidst a pile of black squares."
Before he could even finish speaking, they shared a laugh. He then continued to complain in jest, "Of all letters you had to forbid me to read, it had to be your sister’s. As if I would understand it anyway."
"Right, right, right," Li Xi shook his head. "I lose out to you when it comes to astrology, but you are terrible at language. "
His smile faded a little in that instant. He then gazed at the bright lights of the operating room in the distance; at the people hurrying in and out. "I’m not that terrible. I even spent some time on learning a song from your hometown, just as a gift for you."
It was noisy in the distance before them. The smells of blood and disinfectant floated to where they were. His singing slowly sounded out, reverberating across the quiet place.
Li Xi’s smile had also gone from his face. When he finished singing, Li Xi stayed silent for a while, before saying: "You learned it well. But this is a farewell song—it doesn’t have a good meaning."
"But it's very appropriate for the situation," he said. "War has ravaged the world today. On this day, we are still able to sit together and have a chat. Tomorrow, we might be transferred somewhere else, and we don't know whether we will live or die. Now that I’ve sung this song to you, I can consider myself as having bade a good farewell to you. "
"Union and reunion are rare in life. All that is abundant is separation."
I jolted upwards into a standing position. He pried open his eyelids, looking over towards me quietly.
In that instant, my heart was suddenly hit by a wave of grief and anger that was practically surging upwards to choke me at the throat, and drown me.
"According to what you’ve described, you and Major Li Xi are extremely close friends, right?"
He nodded slowly.
"From what you recall, you must view him in very high regard?"
He nodded again.
"Then why did you betray him?! "
I heard my own voice suddenly increase sharply in pitch—it had already grown sharp, even starting to shake, but I was unable to control myself.
He raised his head to look up at me, his face looking exceedingly confused, as if he couldn't understand what I said.
I couldn't control myself anymore in that instant. Rolling up the documents, I turned to leave, slamming the door behind me.
A loud noise sounded out.
The prison guard, who was taking a nap, jolted awake, running behind me and questioning me; I did not turn back at all and continued running. The palms holding my eyes shut were already wet with warm tears.
Enough.
I'd had enough.
I no longer wished to hear him call out the name Li Xi over and over again; I no longer wished to hear him recall the past, I don't want to see him pretend to be sincere and heartfelt to blaspheme the dead!
Major Li Xi, who had been the pride and joy of the empire, was pushed to the guillotine after the empire was defeated during the Yanping Campaign.
It had already been two years.
-04
The next day, I showed up at the prison at the usual time.
The prison guard was still questioning me, concerned, “What happened yesterday? You really scared me like that! "
I smiled my usual smile. "I’d also gotten scared by him, so my emotions spiraled a little. Sorry about that."
"That's alright, that's alright," the prison guard reassured me magnanimously, waving his hand. He retrieved the key and unlocked the door. "We can’t blame you either—after all, who would be able to withstand coming face to face with that person every day? Sigh, who knows when these days will come to an end."
Being familiar with me, the prison guards no longer searched my body. Holding onto the gun in my windbreaker pocket, I replied:
"It won't be long."
Once I walked into the room, he looked over as if he’d been waiting for me for a long time.
He looked me over seriously, as if he was meeting me for the first time. After many moments, he finally asked, "Are you also Asian?"
"Yes, sir."
"Your last name is Li?"
"It used to be, before I found a way to get in here."
"...Do you know Major Li Xi?"
"Yes, he is seven years older than me."
He nodded, before his gaze moved towards the monitor in the corner.
"You can speak freely, sir," I told him. "I hacked the surveillance camera before entering here today."
"Please take a seat," he told me in a gentle, careful voice. "I don't understand what you said yesterday. Li Xi...did your brother ask you about anything before you snuck into here? For instance, what the battle situation in Yanping was like, especially for the reinforcement soldiers."
I was taken aback to hear that. However, his expression was serious and solemn. It didn’t seem fake.
All of a sudden, the unbelievable realization dawned on me that he was still trapped in that war. The battle of Yanping had not ended for him. This was why he’d always kept silent about the questions regarding it—he’d feared that he would leak even the slightest news to the enemy.
"...It's over," I painstakingly choked out.
He closed his eyes slowly.
"I see. So it’s over."
"Then Yanping...was it our victory?"
It was a major loss.
The battle plan was leaked out completely to the enemy. Tens of thousands of soldiers died. The entire empire collapsed.
"...Has he returned? ”
He would never be able to return.
Major Li Xi was pushed to the guillotine because you betrayed him.
He couldn’t understand why I didn’t respond at all. After thinking for a few moments, I asked, “Please tell me—what happened to the two of you in Yanping?”
He hesitated for a long time and nodded slowly.
“You know, Li Xi served as the commander-in-chief on the battlefield of Yanping. But not long after, I received a secret order from the parliament,” he said, seeming rather sad. “The parliament suspected that Li Xi had committed severe treason and asked me to monitor and report all his action plans.”
My brows furrowed. “Are you sure it was the parliament who sent the order?”
“I’d confirmed it repeatedly. There was the parliament’s seal on the order, and there was also no mistake about the person who sent the letter.”
He could never believe that Li Xi would commit treason. Yet, he was not qualified to refuse the orders of the empire, whose power was supreme.
Everyone in the empire had to treat the orders of the parliament as absolutely supreme. In the first place, all soldiers were required to swear absolute allegiance in the first place.
And it wasn’t necessarily the case that he hadn’t thought about telling Li Xi.
“What are you thinking about? "
Patting his shoulder with one hand, Li Xi used the other hand to switch off the projector used for the conference.
The combat meeting had ended, so everyone else had already rushed back to make their preparations, leaving the two of them alone in the conference room except for a few technicians.
"Don’t forget what I’d told you earlier. Also, rest up well. We have to launch a surprise attack before dawn breaks."
Hearing this, he came back to his senses. But he didn't say anything.
Where should he start?
Tell Li Xi, that as he fought battles, bloodied and bruised, the people behind him did not hold him in sturdied support, but instead, eyed him with knife-cold gazes of suspicion?
Where should he start?
How should he start, in order to prevent this fearless warrior from being shaken by the news? On top of that, things were urgent in times of war.
Where should he start?
"Li Xi," he eventually opened his mouth. "I believe you."
Li Xi was stunned for a while. He then let out a laugh. "Why are you saying silly things all of a sudden."
He’d been ordered to monitor Li Xi. As the war intensified, he was then assigned to take charge of the defenses on the western battlefield, and had to temporarily leave the headquarters.
Before leaving, he sent his report to the parliament for the last time. At the end of his report, it was written:
Please believe me—I am willing to guarantee with my life that Major Li Xi has not defected to the enemy!
As he said this, he also told me earnestly, "Please believe, me, too—your brother is absolutely loyal, and he would never commit treason!"
"...I do believe you."
I knew the contents of his report—or rather, there wasn’t anyone who didn’t.
It could be said that the tragic loss in the main battlefield of Yanping caused pain to the whole country.
Everyone had noticed how strange the battle was. Major Li Xi, the commander-in-chief, was brought to the military court. And the person who accused of treason in the court was none other than this man in front of me.
The key evidence presented to the court was a series of leaked reports.
He was the only one who wasn't aware of the accusations against himself, because he was trapped in the western battlefield at that time.
They failed to protect all of their positions, and in the end he could only lead thousands of remnant troops to defend one last city. The enemy had been quite patient—they’d opened their mouths and bared their fangs as they waited for them to run out of supplies and fall into their stomachs.
"The communication equipment is all intact, and there are no abnormalities with the signals sent. However, but it seems that the connection with the headquarters had been cut off, including the messages I sent asking for reinforcements, to which there was no response at all."
"The reinforcements never arrived."
It wasn't surprising that no response came.
At the time, the military court was putting him on trial. He had already been branded as a traitor, and the continuous requests he made asking for support were suspected to be traps. Out of all reasons they gave for holding him under suspicion, their most convincing reason was:
Stranded in an isolated city, facing a shortage of supplies, it was simply impossible that he could have held on for so long so far.
[TN: This probably means, they suspect that 'he' only got that far because he had colluded with the enemy and received the enemy’s help in terms of supplies. The implication in 'their most convincing reason' is that from the first-person MC's point of view, their reasons were not at all convincing.]
Despite the evidence, Li Xi insisted on believing him. He opposed the court’s decision to refuse sending him the reinforcements, despite being held under the muzzles of countless guns, and even reprimanded everyone present. His attitude was so strong as to be almost contemptuous.
The parliament and the jury had all been enraged by Li Xi's attitude. The radicals shouted for him to be dealt the death penalty as a punishment for having lost the war, sheltering traitors or even being a traitor himself. He was to be used as a warning to others.
Eventually, Li Xi was stripped of his military uniform, and pushed to the guillotine. He left a few last words, which sounded just like a sigh:
The enemy is sitting among us.
"Eventually, I was captured and kept here in prison until now, as you can tell. Before you came, they even electrocuted me in their efforts to pry my mouth open," he said, laughing softly. "Don’t underestimate the soldiers of our empire."
The war pulled to a halt in 739. It was such a long stretch of bleakness and pain that it no longer mattered whether they’d won or lost.
The two sides exchanged their prisoners-of-war, and he was brought back to the country for interrogation.
It was at this moment that I finally understood why this man was not executed despite the shocking amounts of solid evidence against him.
It was just as Li Xi had said—the higher-ups began to realize that the real traitors were sitting amongst the seats of the parliament seats with a righteous face, and that the top leaders of the empire were in an urgent need of a purge.
The cruel torture he had experienced previously, and the psychological treatment I was giving him—this could not even begin to show the full extent of the game being played between the two parties.
"Can you tell me what you know now?"
I didn't even dare to look him in the eye.
This made him feel even more puzzled. Many moments later, he extended a hand to pick up the battle record before me. My fingers twitched, but I didn't stop him.
Silence surged like a rising tidal wave, flooding the room.
"...Is this true?"
His voice was calmer than expected. Gazing upwards, I saw his blue eyes ripple up like a lake. He looked as if he’d suddenly been roused from a long dream.
What day was it?
In that moment, I’d thought he was going to cry. He opened his mouth, but not a single sound emerged. The paper fell all over the floor as he tightly clutched his chest, gasping, as if something had exploded in his chest. He looked to be in extreme pain, but even till the end, he could not do anything except to look at me sadly.
"...I can't even manage to cry?"
"Why..."
The damages dealt onto him by the constant high-intensity electric shocks had been far greater than expected.
[T/N: The electricity took his ability to physiologically shed tears away.]
-05
When I walked out of the prison, the sky was the colour of a gentle dusk in autumn.
Before I walked away, he took a look at the pocket of my windbreaker and asked, "Could you do something for me?"
Inhaling deeply, I gripped the recorder in my hand.
A gunshot suddenly sounded out behind me.
The alarm sounded, so sharp as to be piercing; in that instant, the whole prison was suddenly thrown into chaos.
I didn't look back. The red maple trees on both sides of the road were the colour of blood. The white doves in the park opposite me had flown away in shock, heading towards the setting sun in the sky.
I was at home when Li Xi was brought to the guillotine, and happened to receive a letter.
He’d reported, as usual, that all was well. But at the end of the letter, there were a few more sentences than usual. Li Xi was talking about someone who had sung a song to bid him farewell.
Union and reunion are rare in life. All that is abundant is separation.
Even if it’s wishful thinking to want to reunite, I really want to bring that person back for you to see him."
I carefully kept the letter. Just then, I witnessed the scene of the execution projected on screens all over the empire’s streets.
Li Xi, who was thousands of miles away, stood upright. He was young and dashing.
That was a day in summer, when sunlight poured down as if torrents of rain in a storm.
---End---
The author has something to say:
Thank you for reading.
I'm back! Love you all.
----- Translation notes -----
Regarding the novel title and its translation:
The raw title is 梦中身 (meng zhong shen) - literally meaning 'body in a dream'. This quote might date back to the Song Dynasty, from a poem by Su Shi entitled Reflections: Song of Pilgrimage 《行香子·述怀》. The relevant line is:
叹隙中驹，石中火，梦中身。 I lament (that life is like) the foal within a crack, a spark within two stones, a body within a dream.
The quote is an expression that life is as short as the horse speeding through a gap, the little spark caused by striking two stones together, and one's body in a dreamscape. I didn't translate the novel title as 'a body within a dream' because the connotations are different in English. Instead, I chose to extrapolate the direct meaning by linking it to the author's possible intention to quote the poem, because of the conversation between Li Xi and 'him' --
"But it's very appropriate for the situation," he said. "War has ravaged the world today. On this day, we are still able to sit together and have a chat. Tomorrow, we might be transferred somewhere else, and we don't know whether we will live or die. Now that I’ve sung this song to you, I can consider myself as having bade a good farewell to you. "
"Union and reunion are rare in life. All that is abundant is separation."
Moreover, 'he' sang a song to Li Xi. This is why I chose to use a quote from a song (Row Row Row Your Boat), life is but a dream, as the story title. As the poem and the story seems to be centred upon the theme of the short-lived nature of spending time with one's love, which is similarly reflected in the line life is but a dream, I'd personally found it a little more meaningful to localise the translation of the title rather than to use the literal translation.
If you liked the story and have the means to support the author, please consider doing so. It's a free novel, but there's a way to support them.
This is one of the ways: please click here, then click on [空投月石] / [I think it might appear as Airdrop Moonstone if you're using Translate]:
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