'Heh. I see.'

"Who's that?", a blurt was suddenly heard within the room of the 23-year old, graduating college student, Xu Xuyin. Naturally, one can't say it was her own as, if that's the case, this whole peculiarity won't be noticed as something that's peculiar.

Xu Xuyin continued sketching on her drawing table. She put on her headphones to calm herself down. After all, it might just had been her imagination.

After a while, she heaved a sigh. Whether it's a sigh of relief or of exhaustion, only she knew. She then went to lay down on her bed and relax. Soon after, a soft sound of snoring could be mildly heard, echoing.

Echoing...

Echoing...

Echoi-

"Huh?"

She woke up or, rather, she regained her consciousness. It was still her room. Yet, at this moment, she's aware that she's still sleeping...?

Bewildered of what's happening, a little panicked, she started running out of her room, then down the stairs. Her mind was a little hazy. She saw her family having dinner. However, that only brought more panic upon her constitution.

"Hey hey, mom, dad, Chen, hey please, please wake me up, this is a dream!", she shouted at them. Naturally, they didn't make any kind of response. Xuyin, supposedly, should be a bit more panicked after this. However, she went calmer compared to how she was a few seconds ago.

She went out of the house. Ran, and ran, and ran. It was then that she realized, she was running in circles. How she figured that out was because, the same construction site situated at her right already appeared a few minutes earlier. She proceeded to test her theory.

"Huff, huff..., Indeed here it is again...", she muttered. After running for approximately 45 minutes, the view of the construction site appeared yet again.

Xuyin approached the site. She looked towards the fence...and climbed up!

What met her eyes though, was a void. More accurately, it was just a recurring view of the construction site with no end in sight, stretching infinitely.

Just as she was about to panic again, a figure among the countless visages, caught her eyes.

'There seems to be someone there...?' she thought.

And then...

"He", a soft calling.

"Hei."

"Heyyyy!"

It called her. She finally snapped out of it.

"Huh?"

"Heh, finally snapped out of it?"

"Huh?", she made the expression yet again.

"Let's make deal."

"A, a deal? Who are you? Why are you in my dream? Are you aware that this is my dream? Hm...maybe this is an NPC of my dream? How odd...", she asked the person first then started muttering to herself midway.

The figure smiled. He then adjusted the monocle on his right eye as well as the comically pointed long hat decorating his head.

"Are you pleasantly surprised?", the figure asked. "I am your mother".

She was confused but answered anyways, "Yes, truthfully. Though you can leave the 'pleasantly' out. You're creepy".

"This is exciting. Gratitude for the compliments", the figure said. He then continued, "Hey, little girl, through your eyes, I saw the world. And it wasn't the world I belonged to. Although some octopus gave me an overview, narrate me the current time. Everything that's happening in this world".

He smiled. The smile of a charlatan. The smile...of a fool.

An hour later, the briefing ended. Xuyin's mouth was as dry as the Sahara at this point. Although she talked for an hour, there wasn't even a gratitude from her guest. In the end, all she got was, "Indeed, that guy was told me somewhat, a small truth. Heh, maybe this isn't even real".

"Who's this guy, anyways?", she asked.

"Me? Or the guy I've been talking about? Either way, little girl, mysteries are fun, aren't they?", she was answered in such a teasing and frustrating manner.

"I don't like it when people act mysterious."

The figure didn't answer her. Instead, he told her, "Good luck to us...to me."

Then, the dream ended. Xuyin woke up to the stunning view of the city, tainted by sunlight.

"I see", she muttered.

"So You are me".

***

"So this is your plan, old man octopus?", Xuyin talked to particularly no one.

'Although Amon is Xuyin and Xuyin is Amon, my body is still a female's so let's just go with Xuyin for now', she thought to herself.

For the day, everything Xuyin did, did not lead to anything productive. She laid on the bed, wrote some code for her AI art-identifier algorithm, a massive debugging, drank coffee, and sustained herself.

Xuyin is a university student majoring in Fine Arts. An expensive course with arguably little long-term return for asian parents, but she proceeded with it anyways. Now was her fourth and final year of university.

She let the time pass. Until dinner time, idling around was all she did.

Then, the clock struck at seven. Seven post-meridiem. She smiled alluringly and afterwards, closed her eyes. She already had an idea of what's going to happen at that time.

The moment she opened her eyes, the view in front of her was devoid of the room's usual ambience. However, before she could even digest the visual information in front of her, her head started hurting as if her head was repeatedly being smashed against a wall.

It was then.

The figure of a man, appeared.