When Ethan opened his eyes, he found himself lying on a dingy bed, the ceiling fan creaking above him. Outside the window came the screech of bus brakes and the curses of early workers. No nightmares, no Bureau, no void… only that suffocating stench of the mundane.
The alarm clock pointed to 7:32 a.m. The ticking hand seemed to remind him: if he didn't get up now, he'd be late.
He rolled out of bed, slipped on a yellowed white shirt and a pair of slacks, one button hanging loose. In the mirror, the man staring back had hollow eyes, an exhausted expression, and lips curved in something between a smirk and a grimace—a textbook "ordinary office worker."
For a moment, he wondered if he had finally woken up.
Downstairs, the breakfast vendor handed him a fried dough stick and soy milk. He paid mechanically, his wallet stuffed with salary slips. The dough was greasy and dry, every chew like swallowing a contract.
On the way to work, the crowd swarmed around him, glued to phones or clutching briefcases. Ethan wasn't a "key," or a "host," or a "traitor on the run." He was just another bipedal drone, marching toward the hive to punch in.
A giant banner outside the office building declared:
"Hard work is the best life!"
Ethan nearly laughed.
In the elevator, colleagues chatted about last night's dramas and the stock market. Their eyes were vacant, their smiles mechanical, their words mass-produced.
"Ethan, you're two minutes late," his supervisor said with a polite sneer. "File an attendance appeal, or your performance pay will be docked."
Ethan nodded, sat in his cubicle. The computer hummed, the inbox swelled with hundreds of nearly identical emails: Quarterly Report Revision,Urgent Data Update,Meeting Minutes Confirmation.
He stared at the words, and felt more terror than in any nightmare.
Here, he wasn't a hunted traitor or the key to a nightmare. He was a wage slave, trapped in a life sentence of mediocrity.
At lunch, he queued at the cafeteria, tray in hand, chewing a tasteless boxed meal. Rice clumped like cheap glue. A colleague groaned, "Man, so much overtime this month, my body's wrecked."
Everyone chimed in like a chorus. Ethan thought it more absurd than the "Feast of Darkness." At least there, people screamed and struggled. Here, they offered up their souls willingly—for a paycheck.
After work, sunset painted the city in blood. He trudged out of the building and saw the subway crowd queue like an endless worm burrowing underground. Faces numb, eyes dead, carrying only invisible dread of tomorrow.
Then he remembered the words of the Void's Eye:
"You will beg for death, but death will not come."
Indeed, void didn't need monsters or blood. It could disguise itself as a stable job, a monthly report, an eternal meeting.
Ethan's throat tightened. He wanted to laugh, to scream, to be torn apart again by monsters. Instead, he shuffled forward with the crowd, step by step down the subway stairs.
Above him, the billboard flashed:
"Don't stop walking—life will get better."
He stared at the words, and coldly thought:
—This is the perfect nightmare.
Cubicles, overtime, meetings, performance reviews… a fate worse than death, because it robbed you of the strength to question.
At last he understood: in another version of himself, being an "ordinary office worker" was the truest punishment.
When night fell, he squeezed into the subway car. As the doors closed, he caught his reflection: pale face, vacant eyes, lips curled in a faint smile.
A smile he remembered well.
The same expression people wore in the nightmare hell, begging for death.
There was no waking up from this.