I fell asleep as usual and woke up in a yellow room. The room was dimly lit, and my vision was blurry. I rubbed my eyes, but it didn't improve. I tried to move my body, and although I couldn't see my posture, I could feel my body curling up and moving in an unnatural way, but fortunately, it didn't have much impact. I seemed to be looking for a destination, although I knew nothing about this space and the arrangement of the walls was irregular, but my intuition pointed me in the right direction.
The room seemed to have no boundaries, and I didn't care whether there were boundaries or not. I just wandered aimlessly. Although I said aimlessly, it wasn't entirely true. My body seemed to know where I was going, but my brain, or rather my rationality, didn't. I accepted this instinctive tendency, as it had always been like this.
The environment kept changing, but in the end, nothing really changed. The walls were like scattered building blocks, randomly scattered everywhere. Each wall seemed to be different, but the quality of "difference" remained the same. The places I walked through had various forms, but they were all consistent in their chaos. I continued walking, and the walls remained the same, changed yet unchanged. There was no noticeable difference, but I knew - I had arrived.
I walked into a gap above a wall, and I saw other people. They almost turned their heads to look at me at the same time, and then turned their heads back down at the same time, maintaining their original posture of hugging their legs, surprisingly consistent. It was only here that the environment of the room had a true sense of "difference". It was actually a regular cuboid room with no lights. The light seemed to be coming in from behind me, brighter on the side near the door, and the side near the inside appeared narrow due to the darkness. The whole room seemed to be shrinking inward. Then I realized, I couldn't see my shadow on the walls.
I walked to the center of the crowd and looked at the people sitting on the ground. They were all pressed against the walls, silent in the darkest corner of the room, as if they were afraid of light.
"Are you being abused?" I asked.
One of the men, with a bony and twisted body, stood up. He was completely black, and the words "stick figure" popped into my mind. He leaned close to my ear and said in a serious tone, "Think about it, how is that possible? It's because we don't drink water."
I didn't understand the meaning of his words and left anxiously. I walked into a concrete building and found myself sitting on a plastic chair, facing a man in a suit. The light was shining on both of us, and I couldn't see his face clearly. There was a bottle on the table, and I knew it was water. He gestured for me to drink it. I was afraid, but my body didn't seem to be afraid. I drank the water in one gulp. It had a slight sweetness, and my tongue felt a bit dry after drinking it. He told me it was almond water, and it made sense. I agreed that the water did taste like almonds, even though I had never eaten almonds before.
The day was bright, and the rain kept falling. The rain hitting the walls of the buildings made them look mottled, and the difference between wet and dry was clearly visible, and this semi-wet and semi-dry state seemed to show no signs of change. The mottled walls combined with clusters of plants growing on them, which looked quite lovely.
I got up from the bed, just like the past ten days, walked to the entrance, opened the door, picked up the water delivered to the door, looked at the view outside the window, and drank the water in the bottle in one go - almond-flavored, I told myself. As I swallowed the last drop of water, the rain stopped, the plants on the walls disappeared, the water stains gradually faded, and the day became a little brighter - only then did I realize that the sky here was so unrealistically bright.
I sat in front of the computer, spending the whole morning organizing data and turning them into neatly written documents. I vaguely remembered that I used to be someone who loved the outdoors, but now I could spend so much time dealing with tedious work, and I was somewhat impressed with myself.
Just after noon, someone came to visit. He wore a hat, a black suit, and a white shirt. They all seemed to be dressed like that, but I still couldn't see his face clearly. He took off his hat and bowed to me. Perhaps sensing my confusion, he spoke before I could explain, "Your prosopagnosia hasn't improved, huh? You'll need more water every day." With that, he squeezed the stone in his hand and took out two bottles of water from somewhere and handed them to me. I took the water bottles and thanked him, and he left without looking back.
I sat back down, squinting at the window, took a small sip of water, watched the newly grown plants on the walls shrink back little by little, watched the raindrops that were about to fall float back up, and felt my curled-up body stretch a bit - before drinking this water, I hadn't realized that I had been maintaining the same posture as when I woke up. I finished the whole bottle of water, and the pale sunlight shone on me. I stared at the other bottle of water in my hand for a long time.
I tried my best to stay awake, but the thing I feared the most happened. Those well-dressed beasts found me again, pulled me out of the shadows, and tried to force-feed me water with a funnel. I was already so thin that my curled-up body couldn't resist them. Fortunately, my companions came out to help me, and we struggled to drive them away, but I knew they would come back. I decided to negotiate with them, to clarify things so that it would be good for everyone.
The familiar scene played out again. I walked into a concrete building and found myself sitting on a plastic chair. There was a man in a suit sitting across from me, and I couldn't see his face clearly.
He pushed a bottle of water towards me, gesturing for me to drink it. I looked at his blurred face and sensed a hint of cunning in his expression, or maybe it was just my imagination. I sat still, staring straight at his blurry face. After a long silence, he spoke first.
"Why don't you want to drink almond water? I'm curious to hear your answer."
"Because you're all a bunch of cowards."
I was not polite, but as soon as the words came out, I remembered the purpose of this visit. Obviously, I couldn't negotiate like this. Since it was a negotiation, I had to clarify our demands, that was certain, and then explain the reasons behind these demands. Our demand was to stop drinking water, and they already knew that, but what was the reason? I couldn't think of it no matter how hard I tried.
He took out a glass from somewhere and poured some water from the bottle into it, then enjoyed it like tasting tea. I had never drunk that water from a transparent container before, and now I saw that it was milky white, somewhat whitish. I looked at the white water, and the visual feedback formed a taste reflex on my tongue. I instinctively thought that the water was sweet but had a slightly bitter taste. I felt a desire, but my brain also produced a sense of disgust.
"You're not the first one," he said, not looking at me but staring at the water glass in his hand, his demeanor full of frivolity.
"Go back to that room where only the madman can find you and stay with them."
I quickly found my way back, walked into the room, and no one looked up. I didn't mind and walked to the deepest part of the room. I accidentally kicked a pile of papers stacked against the wall. It was too dark, and I couldn't tell if they were bound documents or just scraps of paper, let alone how long they had been there. I squatted in the darkest corner of the room, where I couldn't see my shadow no matter what.
I got up from the bed, just like usual. I poured some clear and transparent water into a glass, looked at the tall buildings outside the window, and reminisced about the remnants of my dreams.
I examined the glass of water in my hand, looking at it reflecting the white sky and human shadows. I didn't have to drink water because my body needed it to function. But what if my body wasn't a human body? What if my soul had transferred to a new body that didn't require water? Then the rule of needing to drink water to survive would no longer apply, and I could continue to drink water, but it would only be the stubbornness of my thinking struggling to survive.
I always separate "instinct" and "rationality" into two different realms, allowing each to determine my life and death in different situations. However, most of the time, rationality prevails because instinct is based on reaction and sensation, while rationality is based on facts and logic, and everyone values the latter more.
But just like whether to drink water or not, if one day I move out of this marsh-like Earth and go to a completely different place, the cognitive framework I have spent years building will collapse, leaving only my instincts to lead me through the desperate situation. At that time, I might become a madman.
I finished the glass of water in my hand, sat in front of the window, watched as the rain gradually stopped, watched as the pedestrians on the street put away their umbrellas, watched as someone pulled out all the weeds growing on the old buildings, and watched as someone painted the old houses with a fresh and bright yellow paint.