WOA 4

World Of The Aberrant: Harvesting Apparitions Within The Nightmare

Chapter 4: The Dream-Anomaly Café

"Look, I made it back in one piece!"

Baiyu walked right up to An Mu and held out his hand.

A flash of genuine surprise crossed An Mu's eyes before melting into a warm smile as he grabbed Baiyu's hand in a firm shake. "Welcome back."

After a brief exchange of greetings, the group quickly snapped back to business, resuming their deep dive into the active anomaly.

"So, we're dealing with a Rule-Distortion Demon?" Baiyu murmured, staring at the data projected across the massive screen. He instinctively grabbed a pen, spinning it effortlessly between his fingers while resting his chin in his other hand. As Lance continued his breakdown, Baiyu's mind was already racing, dissecting the latent contradictions buried within the rules.

"Yeah. The children inside the café, the red-uniformed staff, the music, and the restrooms are our primary hazard vectors," Lance nodded, looking over at Baiyu. "At the same time, we still aren't certain if the black-suited employees serve any secondary function."

"This list here is the Customer Regulations posted right on the front door, but based on past anomaly operations, there might be hidden rules lurking underneath," Lance continued. "And we have no way of knowing right now if any of these are outright traps or fake rules."

Lance suddenly cut himself short, glancing expectantly at Baiyu.

"None," Baiyu stated flatly, his spinning pen coming to a dead, balanced stop between his fingers. He possessed the ability to tap into a fraction of Heiyan's power, which usually allowed him to pierce straight through a rule's legitimacy at a glance. But this time, the cognitive fog felt unusually thick, smeared with an eerie blur.

"Looks like we'll have to pull deeper clues straight from inside the café itself," Baiyu said, pushing himself up from his chair. "Leave this to me."

"Want me to tag along?" Mo Fei asked, turning toward the doorway as Baiyu moved to exit.

"No need," Baiyu shook his head. "Rule-bound anomalies pull on a single thread and the whole web shakes. The more people inside, the easier it is to trigger a forbidden path, multiplying the difficulty exponentially. Besides, even if I can't completely crack it right away, keeping myself alive isn't an issue."

Rule-Distortion Demons were a different breed compared to stray ghouls like the one Lu Yueqi had run into, which could simply be beaten into submission. These entities hid deep within their own cognitive layers, requiring a complete deconstruction of their governing laws before their true core could even be reached.

Simply surviving a nightmare by following surface-level rules wasn't an ideal victory; it didn't count as breaking the anomaly. The entity would simply linger in reality, festering until it struck again. Only by completely dismantling the rules could the demon be dragged into the light and eradicated from the waking world.

With the bureau's transport support, Baiyu arrived at the scene in no time. Ahead of him, a modern commercial complex had been sealed off with heavy police tape, patrolled by squads of tense investigators moving in rhythmic sweeps.

The Dream-Anomaly Café.

Baiyu quickly spotted his target. The space surrounding the storefront looked as though it had been smeared with a layer of warping, translucent film. Light bent and bled around the edges, shifting sickeningly between solid and unreal. Fortunately, the spatial bleed hadn't breached the outer perimeter yet. If the nightmare had expanded to swallow the entire shopping mall, Baiyu would have had to seriously calculate his odds. Investigating a café under rule-distortion was one thing; trying to untangle an entire multi-story shopping mall wrapped in a cognitive trap was a nightmare of entirely different proportions.

The second his hand pushed the glass door open, the world around him warped and snapped into a brand-new shape.

"Welcome to the Dream-Anomaly Café."

A flat, polite female voice chimed from right beside him.

Baiyu whipped his head around. The person standing there wore a stark, black-and-white uniform. Was this considered a "black-suited employee"? Baiyu couldn't be entirely sure. While Heiyan's resonance usually granted him instant clarity, this kind of ambiguous gray area pushed even his anomalous perception to its limits. He mentally flipped back through the posted code: "2. The staff wearing black suits inside the café are trustworthy. You may purchase coffee from them."

"Hello, sir. How many in your party?" the young woman asked, maintaining a rigid, formulaic smile.

"Just one."

"Table for one!" she called out toward the interior.

A tall, painfully thin man ambled over a moment later, wearing the exact same black-and-white uniform.

"Right this way, please."

Baiyu was promptly led to a secluded corner table right beside a large glass window. Through the pane, he could clearly see the ceaseless flow of traffic crawling down the outside street. Yet, unlike the roaring chaos of the real world, the interior of the café was dead, suffocatingly quiet. Aside from Baiyu, there wasn't another living soul inside. The staff exchanged no words beyond their scripted lines, wrapping the entire room in an eerie, tomb-like stillness.

"What can I get started for you?" The waiter slid a laminated menu across the table with a soft clack.

In these types of anomalies, parameters were everything. He was permitted to buy coffee from the black-suited staff, but that meant he first had to confirm whether these workers genuinely counted as such, and whether the waiter standing before him fit the criteria.

Baiyu scanned the menu. The drink selection was massive, completely devoid of any forbidden food or stray items. Even so, a heavy hesitation lingered in his chest—did he actually dare buy anything from this thing?

After a beat of silence, Baiyu waved a hand. "Never mind for now. Just leave the menu; I want to look it over longer."

"Understood." As the waiter turned to shuffle away, Baiyu's voice suddenly cut through the quiet.

"Wait. Where's the restroom?"

The waiter froze, his expression locked into the exact same unbroken, lifeless smile he’d worn since Baiyu walked through the door. "There are no restrooms inside the café. If you need one, please look outside in the shopping mall."

The response lined up cleanly with rule number eight: "8. There are no restrooms inside the café." At the same time, this exact type of rigid, literal reply was a classic hallmark of a localized nightmare that hadn't finished expanding its conceptual roots. In reality, if you asked a waiter where the restroom was, they wouldn't tell you to go wander a mall out of nowhere; they'd give you precise directions to the nearest stall.

The waiter answered that way not because his logic was glitching, but because he genuinely had no concept of the mall beyond a vague background label. His entire existence was hardcoded by the anomaly. Since the nightmare hadn't leaked past the café walls, his cognitive boundary stopped right at the front door. Any question extending into the outside world hit a brick wall because, within this pocket reality, stepping out of the café meant stepping out of the anomaly's render distance—not back into the real world, but into a recursive loop that would snatch you back and force you to replay the scenario until you exited strictly by the rules.

Baiyu's goal wasn't just to slip back into reality, though; he was here to dismantle the anomaly at its root, which meant hunting down deeper hidden rules. The customer guidelines pasted outside gave precious little to work with—they didn't even outline how a person was supposed to safely leave.

What happens if I refuse to order coffee?

He mentally retraced the text. The rules explicitly mentioned buying coffee from black-suited staff, but they never stated what penalty befell a customer who ordered nothing at all. Was this a loophole worth poking?

He had already swept the room with his eyes. The prohibited elements flagged by the warnings were genuinely absent. The only two deeply unsettling things in the entire establishment were these puppet-like staff members and the fact that he was completely, utterly alone.

He settled back into his chair, letting the seconds crawl by in agonizing silence.

Minutes bled into a quarter-hour. Even without ordering a single drop, no sudden horror descended upon him. It seemed the anomaly didn't mind playing the waiting game. The staff members stood frozen like cheap department store mannequins at their respective posts. The waiter who had seated him had drifted back to his starting spot, locking into a permanent, smiling pose—doing no work, speaking no words, and not even bothering to take a second order. It felt like a video game script that had completely crashed and frozen. Or rather, because Baiyu refused to play his assigned part, the entire cognitive loop had jammed.

In the end, Baiyu's legendary patience broke before the anomaly's did.

"Waiter!" He raised a hand, snapping his fingers. "Order up!"

He pointed blindly at a random coffee listing on the menu and shoved it back across the table. Only then did the stiff employee behind the counter spring back to life, shuffling over to the espresso machine to begin brewing.

"Your coffee, sir."

Barely a minute later, the waiter reappeared, setting a steaming mug down before gliding away. The aroma actually smelled surprisingly decent. Baiyu lifted the cup and took a cautious, tiny sip. It was clear the Demon had put some genuine effort into simulating the beverage rather than churning out pure slop—though the secondary hallucinogenic kick packed a massive punch.

A violent wave of vertigo crashed into his skull.

The room twisted, warping and stretching like molten glass as a blinding dizziness seized his brain. When the spinning finally slowed and his vision cleared, Baiyu blinked—and found himself standing right back outside the front entrance of the café.

"Welcome to the Dream-Anomaly Café."

The exact same female voice rang out. "How many—"

"One."

This time, Baiyu cut her off mid-sentence, stealing her line with practiced ease. He gave her uniform a thorough, approving once-over and patted her shoulder with an easy grin. The moment he had stepped back through the threshold, he noticed the subtle shift in the environment's texture. If the first run had been a half-rendered ghost town, this iteration felt like the world had finally loaded in full.

The staff no longer moved with jerky, pre-programmed stiffness. Their motions flowed with natural, human fluidity, and their eyes held a sharp, living gleam. The café was packed. Patrons sat scattered across the tables, sipping coffee, slicing pastries, and murmuring quietly among themselves. A soft, gentle jazz track played over hidden speakers, weaving through the ambient chatter and bringing the dead storefront roaring to life. Some customers even sat back with crossed legs, tapping their shoes to the rhythm of the music.

"Right this way, sir."

The same male waiter led him to a table, but his face was completely free of that dead, frozen rictus—he looked entirely human now. The menu he handed over wasn't a flimsy single sheet anymore, but a heavy, leather-bound booklet packed with an exhaustive spread of steaks, noodles, and desserts. Baiyu flipped past the clutter without a second glance, turned straight to the back coffee page, re-ordered his previous drink, and jammed the menu back into the waiter's chest.

He swept his gaze across the room. Several elements from the customer warnings had finally manifested: red-suited staff, black-suited staff, background music, and unauthorized food. The only pieces still missing from the puzzle were the children and the restroom.

The kitchen's brewing efficiency was noticeably slower this time. Baiyu waited a considerable stretch before the waiter finally returned, balancing a heavy tray.

"Enjoy your coffee."

"Hold on a second," Baiyu said, stopping the waiter before he could turn away. "Pardon me, where is the restroom?"

The waiter's lips curved into that familiar, signature smile. "There are no restrooms inside the café. If you need one, please look outside in the shopping mall."

"Got it, thanks." Baiyu nodded, dismissing him with a wave.

"Big brother... are you looking for the washroom?"

A small, high-pitched voice piped up from behind him, laced with an unnatural, jarring rasp.

"Sure am," Baiyu answered smoothly, turning around.

"Big brother, I think I dropped my eyeballs inside the restroom just now. Can you go help me pick them up?"

Baiyu lowered his gaze, staring straight into a pair of child-sized features. Where eyes should have been, there were only two bottomless, weeping voids—pitch-black, dry, and dead.

"You bet," Baiyu smiled.

It was a slow, deliberate expression that stretched across his face in the dim lighting of the café—deeply layered, dripping with a quiet, icy playfulness, and utterly, chillingly cold.

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