“Take another look. If I have the same dream again next time, I’ll have to think of a solution...” William Clark decided in his heart. If even something like awakening memories from a past life can happen, then what else is impossible?

Chapter 4

Just as William Clark suspected.

On the third day, the nightmare came again.

This time, it happened on the night of the third day.

He had just finished a late-night snack with his dad and gone back to his room to sleep. He had barely been asleep for ten minutes when the dream came again.

The footsteps outside the door approached even faster this time.

But perhaps because he was on guard, this time William Clark woke up almost as if shocked by electricity. He forced himself to wake up before the owner of the footsteps could open the door.

But precisely because of this, he finally confirmed that this was not a coincidence.

That nightmare must be hiding something he didn’t know.

Just like the inexplicable awakening of his past life memories.

In the days that followed, the nightmare continued to arrive as expected—every time he fell asleep, it would appear.

William Clark tried every time to control his body in the dream, but it was useless.

Each time, he was surrounded by the same feeling of fear. In the dream, the girl in a white dress sitting at his desk always maintained the same posture, the same silence, the same strange, twitching sobs.

And the footsteps would repeat the same process, coming closer and closer down the hallway.

Fortunately, to prevent any accidents, William Clark set his alarm clock in advance, just in case.

Every time, the alarm would go off just as the footsteps were about to enter the room.

The shrill alarm would wake him up just in time.

This was a precaution he had calculated in advance.

And this kind of life continued for two weeks.

“According to my previous calculations, starting from the third time I had the dream, the overall duration is about thirty-five minutes.”

“From the fourth to the seventh time, the average fluctuation is within five minutes, so the time span of this dream isn’t very large.”

At night, sitting at his desk under the lamp, William Clark carefully reviewed the dream data he had recorded before.

“Just take an average, and the dream time is calculated. Next is the time from entering the dream to when the footsteps come in. According to previous summaries, this has already been determined in the first two dreams.”

He twirled a pencil in his hand, his expression calm. If not for the beads of sweat still on his forehead, it would be hard to believe he had just experienced a nightmare that had repeated so many times.

“So next, what I need to do is to freely control my body before the footsteps enter the room.”

William Clark knew himself well.

He wasn’t a top student, nor was he some high-IQ genius. His only advantage was being calm enough.

So, only by holding on to this advantage did he have any chance of winning this tug-of-war with the nightmare.

Even though he didn’t know what good winning would do.

But his instincts kept warning him that he absolutely must not be caught by the owner of those footsteps.

Absolutely!

William Clark raised his pencil and quickly jotted down a few data points in his notebook. Then he snapped it shut.

Standing up from his desk, he gazed into the distance through the glass window.

The midnight moonlight was gentle and serene, but he felt a chill in his body.

Turning around, William Clark was about to take a nap, but as soon as he sat on the bed, he hesitated.

“Forget it... better not sleep.”

He was silent for a moment, then stood up again.

As soon as he fell asleep, he would have the nightmare—and always the same one.

This experience had left him with a faint sense of dread toward his bed.

But hesitation aside, no matter what, not sleeping wasn’t an option. His body definitely couldn’t take it.

William Clark was silent for a while, but in the end, he picked up the wind-up alarm clock, carefully set the time, and then lay down on the bed fully clothed.

But what would seem a warm and comfortable bed to most people felt like a bed of needles to him.

Fortunately, nothing went wrong this time. Although the nightmare still appeared, the seven alarms throughout the night barely got him through until dawn.

……

……

“What have you been up to these days?!” Grace Sullivan looked at William Clark in shock.

This friend, who used to be calm and healthy, now looked pale, with dark, sunken circles under his eyes—a clear sign of severe sleep deprivation.

“Why do you look so terrible? Young people need to know moderation.” Grace Sullivan blurted out in consolation.

William Clark helplessly yawned.

Even sitting in the noisy, bustling classroom, he desperately wanted to just lay down and sleep.

The so-called noise around him felt, to him, as if muffled by a thick soundproof blanket—not irritating at all.

“I just haven’t slept well these past few days,” William Clark replied listlessly.

“Getting frisky at night?” Grace Sullivan leaned in with a lewd look.

“Get lost,” William Clark said, speechless. “Just having nightmares, that’s all.”

“You can look like this just from nightmares?” Grace Sullivan was speechless too.

“It’s just the same nightmare, over and over,” William Clark said in a low voice. There was nothing to hide—many people had experienced this, just not as severely as he had.