Chapter 42

Boom—, boom—.

At dawn, a loud but unhurried knocking sounded at the door.

"Hello, may I ask if Mr. Brad is at home?"

"Just a moment, I'll come!" The young woman, wearing a soot-stained apron, set down the half-cut loaf, wiped her hands on the apron, and walked to the door. "You are...?"

"My lord! What is this?!"

The sight outside terrified her.

In the dim morning light, two bird-headed figures in black robes stood at her doorstep, their metallic beaks and red lensed eyes reflecting a chilling glow.

She instinctively tried to shut the door, but a gloved black hand shot out, pressing against the doorframe. "Please don't do that, madam—we are doctors. Don't close the door."

It was rather bizarre: at the hour of dawn's transition, two creatures resembling demons from legend arrived at her door, speaking human language, claiming to be physicians making a house call.

Realizing he had been misunderstood, Kraft quickly explained his purpose. "We're here to see Mr. Brad, the baker. He came to our clinic saying he'd been sleeping too long—we've come to follow up."

Seeing the woman's expression shift from terror to cautious suspicion, Kraft withdrew his hand from the door and pointed to the badge on his collar.

"I'm Kraft, a lecturer at the Venden Harbor Academy. Ignore this ridiculous headpiece—I don't like it either." He forced a polite smile, though the mask concealed it, nullifying the advantage of his youthful, handsome face.

"Huh?" The woman remained wary. This bird-headed man had named her husband and knew his profession, wore an unfamiliar badge—none of this justified letting them in.

Especially since her husband was still asleep.

This was a difficult situation. Kraft scratched his head, knocking against the red lens. He reorganized his words, trying to persuade the woman.

"Are you Mr. Brad's wife? The thing is—we believe his inability to wake in the morning is seriously disrupting his work. You wouldn't want your husband to suffer like this, would you?"

The woman's expression wavered. Kraft stepped back to advance. "Our schedule is extremely tight. If we miss today, we won't be able to return for another half-month. Could you tell Mr. Brad to schedule an appointment in half a month?"

"Oh, I didn't mean that—please come in. My husband is still asleep; you'll need to wait a bit. Waking him up has become harder and harder."

She opened the door, letting Kraft and Lu Xiusi enter.

"Thank you, kind and understanding Lady—Mr. Brad is truly fortunate." Kraft offered a polite compliment; this friendly tone eased Lady Brad's tension slightly.

Progress was going well, yet this entire conversation and scene gave Kraft a strange sense of déjà vu—as if he'd seen it somewhere before.

Carrying that feeling, he and Lu Xiusi stepped into the Brad home, where Lady Brad led them to sit by the table.

"I'm truly sorry—my husband hasn't woken yet. Lately, he's been rising later and later. You'll need to wait a while before seeing him."

"No problem—we can take this time to check if the house itself is the issue." Kraft observed the room. Under the faint red filter, everything felt uncomfortable; even the air filtered through the beaks carried no discernible scent.

"You rise so early—haven't you been affected by your husband?"

"Why do you say that?" She sliced two thin pieces from the loaf and placed them on a wooden tray. "Sleepiness isn't contagious. We always woke early—only recently has Brad been sleeping later."

Kraft and Lu Xiusi exchanged a glance and shook their heads. Their initial hypothesis had already been disproven.

If this were an infectious disease, his wife—having been in constant contact with Brad for so long—should have been infected multiple times by now. There was no reason she showed no signs.

The environmental cause theory was also undermined. They shared the same living space, diet, clothing, and habits—this made no sense.

"Do you know of anyone nearby who's recently shown similar symptoms?" Kraft pressed on.

Lady Brad paused her knife, thinking. "No—at least not on this street. You could ask Brad—he knows more people than I do."

"Thank you. I hate to be forward, but could we try waking him?"

Kraft was curious about "difficult to wake"—what exactly did that mean?

"You'd be doing me a huge favor. Waking him every day isn't easy. His room is over there." She pointed the knife toward a door.

Kraft and Lu Xiusi pushed open the door. A slightly overweight man lay sound asleep in bed.

Kraft grasped the fat hand protruding from under the blanket and squeezed gently. "Mr. Brad, wake up."

"You won't wake him that way," Lady Brad's voice came from the doorway. "You need to shout louder, squeeze harder—but don't bruise him."

Kraft increased the pressure, gripping Brad's hand firmly and squeezing hard.

The force would have caused noticeable pain in most people, but Brad remained fast asleep, his chest rising and falling rhythmically, utterly unchanged.

Kraft pressed his fingers to Brad's neck. Without a timer, he could only roughly estimate the carotid pulse at about fifty beats per minute—within normal range.

The bird-beak mask prevented Kraft from shouting directly into Brad's ear; he could only shake his body violently. Even under such violent shaking, Brad merely paused his snoring—still no sign of waking.

"He's truly hard to wake," Lu Xiusi observed as Kraft struggled. He took Brad's other hand. "I have an idea—but I'm not sure if it'll work."

"What?"

"I figure someone with thick body hair won't mind losing one hair, right?" He pinched a single arm hair and yanked it hard.

"Don't!" Kraft tried to stop him—but it was too late.

"Hss!" The effect was immediate. The pain was sharper than a needle prick. Brad let out a faint inhale in his sleep—signs of waking.

Kraft seized the opportunity and shook him even more violently. Under this brutal awakening regimen, Brad finally opened his eyes.

"Who are you?!" He sat up, scrambling backward until his back hit the wall.

"Calm down—we're doctors," Kraft spread his hands to show he meant no harm. "Dr. Li Si said you have trouble waking, so we came to check on you."

Waking to find two bird-headed figures in his home delivered such a shock that Brad was instantly wide awake. He clutched his chest, trying to calm his racing heart, then dressed and sat at the table.

"Thank you—but next time, let my wife wake me."

"We apologize. This was necessary to truly understand what 'difficult to wake' means. Honestly, I find this quite abnormal." Kraft took the wooden tray of bread and placed it before Brad. "Please, eat while we talk."

"Would you like some?" Eating breakfast while talking to bird-headed men clearly had no positive effect on appetite.

"No, it doesn't have that function yet." He tapped his mask with his knuckles—clack, clack.

Behind the red lenses, his eyes studied Brad closely. After waking, Brad's mental state was perfectly normal—better, even, than Kraft's own recent condition. He didn't even yawn.

Setting aside the fact that it might worsen, this quality of sleep was still enviable.

"Have you been sleeping well lately? Have you had any dreams?"

"I've been sleeping very well—too well, actually. I can't wake up." Brad tore off a piece of bread and shoved it into his mouth. "Dreams? I don't remember any. Maybe I've forgotten them—I only recall the moment I wake up."

He rubbed his arm, still feeling a faint sting. "It's strange—sleeping this well, yet never having a single dream."

"Like the entire sleep period was erased—you have no idea what happened during it?" Lu Xiusi interjected.

"Ah, yes, that's exactly the feeling." Brian agreed with the analogy. "It's different from sleeping before."

Kraft wrote this down on the paper, glanced at Lu Xiusi. "I have absolutely no idea what happened during that time" was Lu Xiusi's exact words describing the feeling after drinking the diluted solution.

He only needed to make a slight effort to recall, and he could remember the excited expression on Lu Xiusi's face and his agitated tone at that moment.

With the mask covering his face, Lu Xiusi's expression was hidden; his complexion must not have been good.

"Then have you heard of anyone nearby with a similar situation? Waking up later and later, unable to be woken, having both or either one of these?"

"No, I know half the street here, and they have never mentioned such a thing." Brad stuffed the last piece of bread into his mouth, swallowed it, and continued, "It's not a big deal, right? After getting used to it, I even think being able to sleep a bit longer is quite nice."

"It makes no sense, it makes absolutely no sense."

Kraft and Lu Xiusi walked out the door and back onto the street.

"I still believe it has something to do with Clarity, even if it doesn't make logical sense, I will keep my own view." Lu Xiusi was somewhat annoyed by the contradiction between his intuition and reality.

He felt this was a problem caused by the diluted solution, but among the current feedback, only this one patient who had taken the Clarity potion exhibited these symptoms, while Kraft had at least two cases on hand who had not been exposed to the diluted solution.

"Actually, I feel the same way, Lu Xiusi." Kraft stopped, touched the metal beak. He had no beard to stroke, so when thinking, he could only use the beak as a substitute.

"If there is a conflict between hypothesis and reality, then reality is certainly not wrong. One possibility is that we have overlooked something in our observation of the phenomenon; the other is that our theory is imperfect."

"What do you mean?" Lu Xiusi did not understand.

"I think it is the latter. This hypothesis is too simple; there may be more than one risk factor for the onset of the disease. The Clarity potion is only one of them."

Kraft recalled yesterday's map and compared it with his own walking sensation on Elm Street today. "If my sense of distance is not too off, and Li Si's drawing scale is also correct, then the dotted line I drew yesterday..."

He roughly calculated, "If walking in a straight line, it would only take five to ten minutes."

"I must return to my initial guess: there is a factor that can exert influence within a certain range. It may not be an infectious disease, but the scope is far larger than the few houses I first thought of."

Kraft spread his arms, sketching out a large circle.

"Its center is not here; the influence reaching here is already very weak, so it only manifests under the dual effect of another risk factor, namely Clarity."

"If that's the case, to find it..." Lu Xiusi fell into thought.

"The Salt Tide District." Kraft picked up the wooden box. "We must go to the Salt Tide District to take a look."