The Gods Are Fighting Over Me - Chapter 1

Crimson numbers pulsed and jumped, making his eyes ache.

Kenji Hagiwara was squatting at the end of a hallway, a pair of pliers in his hand. He blinked twice before it hit him that he was in a dream.

He was back here again, in a dream about the bombing from seven years ago.

Kenji frowned in annoyance, cleanly snipped the last wire, and sat on the floor to light a cigarette.

He hated this place, even if it was just a dream.

The silence around him was absolute, and the air was thick and heavy, like the oppressive humidity of the rainy season.

With an impatient puff of smoke, Kenji suddenly heard the crisp sound of footsteps, followed by a woman’s voice. “You’re here, Kenji.”

The voice felt like a jolt of electricity shooting through his head. He froze for a few seconds before turning around. A few steps away stood a woman with waist-length hair and a simple, light-colored dress.

She smiled sweetly, a hint of playful complaint in her tone. “You haven’t come to see me in ages.”

Kenji put out his cigarette and waved his hand, pushing the lingering smoke away. He quickly walked over to her. “You…”

His throat tightened, and the words came out distorted.

He stared at the woman’s face, swallowed hard, and felt a strange mix of nervousness and a sense of injustice. “I think about you every day. It’s you who hasn’t come to see me.”

The woman naturally wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest. She looked up, her apricot-shaped eyes like cheap trinkets, dull and reflecting nothing. “I’ve missed you so much, Kenji.”

Kenji’s smile froze, his initial flash of joy vanishing like a firework, leaving only silence.

Seven years ago, right after he joined the police academy, Kenji dreamed of a woman he’d never met.

The dream took place in an unfamiliar woman’s bedroom. She was curled up barefoot on a small sofa in the corner, silently crying.

As Kenji looked around the room, she noticed him.

The woman, her eyes red from crying, stared at him, her expression a mix of bewilderment and shock, as if she were seeing an alien.

She blinked, pointed at him, and pronounced his name one syllable at a time: “Hagiwara Kenji?”

Kenji gave her a polite smile, walked a few steps away, and squatted down to meet her gaze. “You know me?”

A final tear rolled down her cheek. The woman sniffled loudly, and a starlight glimmered in her eyes, reflecting his image. “Yes.”

Her gaze was warm and intense, falling on him without reservation, like the sun on his face, seeping through his skin and into his bones.

Kenji clearly saw the entire shift in her emotions. He quickly furrowed his brow, pushed down his confusion, and asked with a smile, “Seeing me makes you this happy?”

She nodded. “You’re my favorite. Of course, I’m happy.”

Then she mumbled to herself, “This is the first time I’ve ever dreamed of you.”

Did you dream of him?

Before Kenji could ask more, there was a sudden, jarring knock on a door, and the world in front of him collapsed.

Kenji’s eyes snapped open to the stark white ceiling of the police dorm. The knocking that had startled him awake was still coming from the door.

Kenji pulled the door open to find Jinpei Matsuda standing there, his face covered in bruises.

“Seriously, Jinpei, it’s only been three days since the semester started, and you’re already getting into fights,” Kenji said, feigning disgust as he meticulously cleaned and dressed all of Jinpei’s wounds.

“It’s all because a certain annoying blond jerk was looking for trouble everywhere,” Jinpei yawned, glancing sideways at Kenji. “What’s wrong with you? Not adjusting to academy life? You look weird.”

“Guess I can’t hide anything from you, huh, Jinpei? I just had a dream about a woman I’ve never met, and she confessed to me.”

“…Wow.” Jinpei’s look of disdain was sharp as a knife.

Kenji laughed and protested, his brows furrowed, “Jinpei, can you please stop looking at me like I’m an idiot?”

Jinpei gave a nonchalant “oh,” clearly not taking it seriously.

Kenji put on the last bit of ointment and slapped Jinpei’s back, signaling for him to get dressed. He rested his chin on his hand and started thinking. “In that dream, I could see my reflection in her eyes. When I got close, I could even smell her shower gel.”

Jinpei frowned, understanding what Kenji was getting at.

The brain is unreliable. To keep from overloading, it takes shortcuts in many places.

“But sometimes there are exceptions,” Jinpei speculated. “Maybe something happened to you during the day where you focused on eyes and smells, so your brain specifically filled in those details in the dream.”

“But the bookshelf in her room was full of Chinese books. And in the few seconds I had to look around, I flipped through a magazine on the table.”

“My Chinese vocabulary barely goes beyond ‘hello,’ ‘goodbye,’ and ‘I love you.’ No matter how much of a genius I am, there’s no way my brain would spontaneously learn a new language in a dream. That magazine was packed with enough Chinese characters to make me dizzy.”

Kenji paused, then joked, “It felt like I was time-traveling.”

Jinpei shot him a skeptical look. “Then you should go to a shrine this weekend. You might be possessed by a female ghost.”

Kenji laughed and nudged Jinpei’s uninjured side with his elbow. “Go to sleep. You’ll need the energy for our morning run tomorrow.”

He didn’t think much of the woman in his dream, but from that day on, it became an unstoppable routine.

Every night, Kenji would dream of this woman.

The woman, who called herself Lin Jianyue, would always, the moment she saw him, have eyes that lit up like stars. She would sit there, waiting with both anticipation and restraint for him to approach her.

Kenji had so many questions. Who was she? Why did she know him? Why did she like him?

But sometimes, Lin Jianyue would look at him with a complex and profound gaze, her affection shattered into pieces. Kenji couldn’t understand the pain in her eyes, but he was good at getting her to open up and talk, including telling him they were characters in a manga and about how he was supposed to die.

The manga story was too absurd, so Kenji didn’t take it seriously. But when he was squatting on the 20th floor of the Asai Villa Plaza, looking at the exact scene she’d described, his fingers trembled.

A teammate on the radio said, “Captain Hagiwara, the commander wants us to stand by. We’ll start the defusing after a one-kilometer radius is evacuated.”

Kenji hesitated for only a second before cutting the blue wire in front of him.

“Captain!”

The clicking sound of wires being cut was relentless. Kenji ignored his teammates’ surprised shouts. Just as he was about to cut the last and most crucial red wire, a number appeared on the black screen without warning.

Kenji’s pupils constricted. He finished defusing the bomb at the exact moment the countdown hit one.

When he saw her again in his dream, the overwhelming relief and gratitude of surviving flooded him. For the first time, Kenji crossed a line, fulfilling a long-held wish of hers. He kissed her forehead, a kiss devoid of any lust. “Thank you.”

Kenji no longer doubted Lin Jianyue’s reality.

The human brain can’t meticulously set up every detail in a dream, breathing, heartbeats, body temperature, or scent. Besides, people can only dream about what’s within their realm of knowledge, yet Lin Jianyue could easily tell him things he didn’t know.

A year and three months into their meetings, Lin Jianyue held the corner of his sleeve, her eyes shining with a moonlight-like softness. “Can you marry me?”

Kenji frowned, a bit troubled.

Girls are in a vulnerable position in marriage, and saying something about entrusting your life so casually could lead to getting hurt or taken advantage of.

But when he earnestly shared his concerns with her, she only froze for a moment before her eyes lit up with a fiery passion.

“You’re amazing, Kenji. I knew I hadn’t liked the wrong person.”

Kenji lowered his gaze, realizing clearly that she had always treated him like a dream, her affection both unrestrained and cautious.

Fine, it’s just a dream, there’s no need to take it so seriously.

Because it was a dream, he didn’t need to build up a high wall of emotional defenses or get too invested.

So, when he heard her bold confession again, Kenji just rested his chin on his hand and said dismissively, “Yeah, yeah, when I wake up, I’ll go marry you.”

It’s just a dream, after all.

But Kenji never imagined this routine would go on for a full four years. In those four years, he spent more time with Lin Jianyue than he did with Jinpei.

He and Jinpei sometimes had conflicting shifts and wouldn’t see each other much, but he and Lin Jianyue met for at least six hours every night, rain or shine.

That was enough to smooth out Kenji’s personality, and it was enough for him to get to know her intimately, to get used to her, and even… to do intimate things as lovers.

The next time she asked if he would marry her, Kenji rested his chin on his hand. His purple eyes, droopy like a calm spring reflecting the moon, showed her gentle reflection. “Okay, we’ll get married.”

Kenji stared at Lin Jianyue’s face, his mood suddenly darkening.

Why is it just a dream?

Why can’t she really be with me?

A dark thought began to take root, his desire swelling faster than he expected.

*******

But three years ago, Lin Jianyue’s appearances began to decrease. From every night, it became once a week, then once a month. For the past six months, she had vanished from Kenji’s world like a bubble.

It wasn’t until today that he dreamed of her again.

“I’ve missed you so much, Kenji.”

Reunited in his dream, Lin Jianyue smiled and wrapped her arms around Kenji’s waist, pouting affectionately.

The smile on Kenji’s face slowly faded, his brows furrowed with unspoken thoughts.

The woman in front of him had no breath, no heartbeat, and none of the floral scent from the body lotion Lin Jianyue always used. Even with his chin resting on her shoulder and his cheek close to her silky hair, he couldn’t sense a living, breathing person.

This was a dream, a true dream.

The person in his arms was just a projection of his longing, not the Lin Jianyue he yearned for. Her every movement, every smile, was just his subconscious’s reflection of the dream itself.

For the first four years, the “dream” was their platform for meeting across time and space. But now, he was simply having a dream, one that happened to be about Lin Jianyue.

His emotions, which had soared to the heavens, crashed back to rock bottom and were shattered. Kenji lowered his eyes, suddenly losing the desire to speak.

After a few seconds of silence, he slowly wrapped his arms around the lifeless person, his voice heavy like a moldy sponge in a damp corner. “Yeah, I missed you too.”

“Lin Jianyue” looked at him expectantly. “Kenji, can I kiss you?”

The hands around her waist slowly tightened. Kenji buried his head in her neck and said in a muffled voice, “…No.”

“But you let me last time.”

“Last time was last time.”

“Lin Jianyue” puffed out her cheeks, clearly unhappy. “Then what will it take for you to let me kiss you?”

“You… don’t you want to marry me?” Kenji paused, his voice suddenly taut. “Come and find me, okay?”

Even though it was fake, he couldn’t help but feel nervous. Before Lin Jianyue vanished, he had asked her this same question.

What was her answer back then?

“Lin Jianyue” smiled and gave the same answer. “Okay! I’m going to Japan to study next week, so I was planning on bringing your plush toy to the police station to take some pictures!”

Why go to the police station?

Why not come to see me?

Kenji opened his mouth to say something, then stopped multiple times. Finally, he muffled out, “Jianyue-chan, you… like me?”

He stared into “Lin Jianyue’s” eyes, his long eyelashes trembling slightly, wanting to scold her but feeling ridiculous. The real Lin Jianyue wasn’t willing to see him anymore; what was the point of hearing a stand-in say she liked him?

But even so, he couldn’t stop himself from hoping.

Just as Kenji expected, “Lin Jianyue” stood on her tiptoes and kissed his left cheek.

Kenji’s lips curved upward. His shattered eyes reflected her delicate face. He knew she would say the words of confession and then kiss his other cheek, just as she had done countless times before.

“Lin Jianyue” laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning into his chest. “Of course! You’re my favorite.”

Ring-a-ling!

His phone alarm blared. Kenji’s eyes shot open.

The unfinished words from “Lin Jianyue” turned into a ringing in his ears, fading until they were gone. Kenji stared at the white ceiling in disbelief. After two seconds of silence, he cursed under his breath, filled with disappointment.

He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to block out the birdsong outside the window that signaled morning. Quickly, he thought. Maybe I can still go back and hear her finish her confession.

His fingers, resting at his sides, instinctively tensed. He frowned, tossing and turning in bed, constantly adjusting his position. His brain kept sending signals to “go to sleep,” but his body was wide awake. The more he feared he couldn’t sleep, the more anxious and alert he became.

About ten minutes later, just as he managed to muster a sliver of drowsiness, there was a knock on his door.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Not too soft, not too hard, but each knock rattled his head.

Kenji threw his eyes open, a storm brewing in his weary gaze. He sat up, gritted his teeth, and pulled the door open, coming face-to-face with a man he had known for nearly twenty years.

Standing outside, Jinpei Matsuda was in a suit, one hand in his pocket, the other still in the knocking position. He looked down, his dark sunglasses sliding down his nose to reveal a pair of playful, clear blue eyes. “What’s wrong, Hagi? You’re still in your pajamas. Did you oversleep?”

Kenji gave Jinpei a long, complicated look and walked back into his room to get dressed.