The originally harmonious atmosphere was completely ruined when Daniel Carter showed up with a group of people. When Grace Collins and Edward Harris said goodbye to David Carter and left, David Carter actually felt a bit reluctant to part with them. Fortunately, John was very tactful and, on behalf of David Carter, invited Grace Collins and Edward Harris to come hang out with David Carter sometime. Both Grace Collins and Edward Harris readily agreed.

After saying goodbye to his classmates, David Carter also went home. Back at home, David Carter was a bit excited and lay in bed for a long time unable to fall asleep. The factory had only allocated three rooms to the family: one for his parents, one for his eldest sister Olivia Carter—although she also had a single dorm room, she rarely stayed there, so she occupied one room—and the remaining large room became the dormitory for the four brothers.

Luckily, David Carter had always been away at school, and after graduating and starting work, he spent most of his time living at his workplace. The fourth brother, Charles Carter, and the fifth, William Carter, both boarded at school, so they just made do like this.

Today was the weekend, and both Charles Carter and William Carter had come home. The four beds were still arranged as bunk beds, just like before: David Carter and Charles Carter shared one, and Daniel Carter and William Carter shared another. However, the lower bunk of the bed next door was still empty; no one knew when Daniel Carter would be back.

David Carter didn’t know when he fell asleep. He only felt that this sleep was especially sweet and long, as if it lasted for decades. Countless dreams flashed through his mind that night, passing by like a revolving lantern.

In a daze, David Carter heard someone talking.

“Guodong isn’t up yet?”

“Let him sleep a bit longer. It’s Sunday anyway, and he probably hasn’t had a good night’s sleep working at the criminal police squad.”

“It’s almost lunchtime. Should we let him eat first and then go back to sleep?”

“Let’s wait a bit more.”

After a burst of footsteps, the room quieted down.

David Carter turned over and sat up with a start. His underwear was damp and uncomfortable. Who were those women in his memories? Besides Eric Turner, there seemed to be many other women. It had been a long time since he’d had this kind of physiological reaction. David Carter shook his head—what was going on?

Because the curtains weren’t drawn, the room was dark and shadowy. David Carter sat on the bed, a bit confused. Had he just had a dream, or what? He carefully examined his body—strong and full of energy. His underwear was still the old-fashioned white athletic shorts he remembered. Oh, no, no, is this the dream?

In a trance, the fragmented memories seemed to slowly connect. Everything from last night’s dream surfaced in his mind bit by bit, like a long and detailed drama. David Carter was surprised to find that the dream felt so real and vivid, as if every event had actually happened to him.

David Carter tried hard to make his memories clearer, but the dreamlike memories only left him with a thread to string them together. The fragmented memories hung on that thread, while more things seemed to loom indistinctly in the mist.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm himself down so he could recall everything from the dream, but it didn’t seem so easy.

David Carter looked at the calendar painting on the wall, then at the watch on his wrist. It was a Japanese Orient automatic watch with a calendar, which had cost him two months’ salary. Yes, everything was just as it was. Did I really just have a dream?

David Carter asked himself. He didn’t know if everything in the dream was real, but it was engraved in his memory, something that had never happened in any dream before. What was going on? Was this the legendary “A Dream of Nanke”?

Chapter Thirteen: Premonition

Sitting dazedly on the bed, David Carter tried hard to recall everything, all those vivid scenes, but he didn’t know if any of it was real.

Eric Turner would break up with him in a few months and then fall into the arms of that pretty boy. But her marriage wasn’t happy. That pretty boy was transferred to the Municipal Political and Legal Affairs Committee a few years after marrying her, and later was assigned as deputy president of the Qingjiang District Court, where he apparently got involved with a young female judge. In the end, he and Eric Turner divorced. David Carter even remembered that, years later in the dream, he and Eric Turner had been intimate two or three more times, but he didn’t seem to feel the same way anymore.

What about Grace Collins? In his memory, nothing ever developed between them; they were like two parallel lines. In the end, she seemed to have married the son of a deputy party secretary at the factory. But a few years later, that deputy party secretary was caught and dismissed for improper relationships with several young female workers.

The factory’s fortunes also declined as the country opened up more and more. Eventually, during the wave of state-owned asset transfers, it became a private enterprise. Her husband, who relied entirely on his father’s influence, spent his days drinking and getting drunk. When he came home drunk, he would beat Grace Collins. David Carter remembered seeing the bruises on Grace Collins’s increasingly haggard face several times when he returned to the factory.

In the end, Grace Collins seemed to have ended up making a living by running a street stall selling sundries on Jiangmiao Street. Such a proud and aloof person—David Carter could hardly believe she would fall to such a state.

One familiar yet unfamiliar name and face after another gradually overlapped and became clear, but there were still more fragments of memory lingering in a state of chaos.