Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 1195 Become what you can’t be?
Bai Ye felt like she had a very long dream, and the scenes in the dream were all bizarre. Sometimes she was a princess of an ancient kingdom, honored and loved; sometimes she was a popular actress in a well-known theater troupe, enjoying the cheers and admiration of the audience; and sometimes she was ordinary, studying, living and growing up on campus like an ordinary girl, until everything broke, countless fragments of mirrors flew past her, and in every fleeting time and space, she saw her own shadow, familiar faces and unfamiliar looks.

When she was a princess, she was pampered more than the sun and moon in the sky. When she traveled, she had to be accompanied by a hundred servants and a hundred maids. Rose petals and camellia petals were scattered on the road where the carriage passed. The crown she wore was decorated with the brightest sapphires, the most dazzling rubies and the deepest purple gems. Three hundred well-trained knights guarded her side to guard against anyone who wanted to harm her. Common people crawled on both sides of the street, not daring to look up at her majesty. The bravest people occasionally raised their heads and were proud to glimpse a corner of her shadow cast in the sunlight.

When she was an actress, she was famous throughout the continent for her beautiful voice, moving dance and pitiful figure. She was born to be a darling under the spotlight, a guest of honor for princes and nobles, and the finale of celebrity balls. The most passionate poets would fall in love with her at a glance, and the most talented playwrights would regard it as a lifetime honor to have their works recognized by her, not to mention those enthusiastic and enthusiastic audiences. The cheers during each performance could overturn the dome, like the cry of a thousand whales, just for her faint smile on the stage.

Even though she is just an ordinary girl, she has the most ordinary happy life that many people cannot hope for. She is loved by her parents, has a caring brother and sister, and also has a well-behaved and sensible younger brother and sister. Her family is not rich, but not poor either, enough to support her to spend the best years of her youth on campus, or go shopping in department stores with three or two good friends, or study quietly in the library, hoping to get into the ideal university one day. Isn't it more important than anything else to spend every period of life in such an ordinary but stable way?
But these are not what she wants.

Bai Ye just wanted to know who he was.

In a long and somewhat vague period of time, she forgot many memories and searched hard for them, but this did not mean that she had to accept every uninvited identity, just like a child picking up shells on the beach, only keeping the ones he really wanted, and no matter how precious the other shells were, even if he opened them and found pearls inside, they were not what he wanted.

So she was sure that she was not a princess, not an actress, and even less likely to be an ordinary girl. She resisted these inexplicable memories that appeared in her mind, resisted their changes to herself, and even hated them. She smashed the glittering crown with her own hands, smashed the precious gems into pieces, escaped from the protection of the knights and wandered alone in a strange land; she refused to be a vase on the social stage, and speculated on the malice and madness under another mask with a mask-like smile. She burned her costumes and accessories in a fire and disappeared; she left the boring campus life without authorization, unwilling to bring this established life track to an end, and even took the initiative to destroy it. She madly changed the name "Bai Ye" written on all her personal belongings to the name of any character she saw in the novel, just like transferring one person's fate to another.

When she did these things, she was not without a revengeful mentality. She didn't know what was trying to change her into a different person, but with her character, she would never let the other party succeed. However, she did so much, but in the end, the result was always disappointment. The king regarded the princess's various behaviors as a rebellious period. In addition to strengthening her etiquette education, he also earnestly advised her to consider the face of the royal family; the public regarded the actor's sudden departure as a personality, and even triggered a new artistic trend. Even the always picky critics praised it highly; the family regarded the girl's drastic change as a mental illness, and constantly invited doctors to treat her, and they were so worried about it that they couldn't sleep day and night...

When all this happened, Bai Ye watched coldly, feeling a great irony. No one really cared about what the girl wanted. They just shaped this personality according to their own expectations or inertia. Even if she screamed hysterically that she was not the princess/actress/girl in your eyes, it was useless. Everyone was blindly following their own memories, even if the memory was false, forged, based on confusion and deception, they did not notice it at all. The only girl who realized the truth did not want to be a puppet of memory, but she had not yet learned how to get rid of this curse, so she was caught in the gap of loneliness and suffered.

Changing identities and implanting memories again and again, struggling and resisting again and again, each time only makes her suffer more and sink deeper. The girl wanders in this endless maze, wandering repeatedly in countless seemingly true and false memory fragments, but these footprints are only outward, none of them return. During this long period of time, she gained a lot and gave up a lot. The only thing she refused to give up was her obsession to defeat the curse one day, but she forgot that she did not live in the world for this curse.

Suddenly one day, she felt a little tired. The child who picked up shells on the beach would eventually grow up, but her growth was not at the cost of innocence, but a surrender to fate. She told herself that I would never be replaced by these memories from nothingness, but perhaps there was no need to fight against them. Loneliness could not be defeated. The only thing she could do was to learn to coexist with them until she grew old and died one day, even though she could no longer predict whether it was the aging of loneliness or the death of the heart.

"Is this okay?"

Until a voice appeared in her mind: "We have worked so hard for so long, it would be a pity to give up here."

"That's easy for you to say." Bai Ye answered her, "But hard work itself is the most difficult thing in the world."

"That's true." The voice said, "How about I help you?"

"How can you help me?"

"It's very simple. I will help you play the roles that you don't want to play, and Bai Ye just needs to watch."

"But why are you helping me?"

"Because that's what you wanted. I was born from your wish."

"who are you?"

It was not until this moment that Bai Ye remembered this most crucial question. The voice in her mind was silent for a moment, but this moment of silence seemed as long as a century to Bai Ye. She was even a little afraid that she had asked too suddenly and scared her away. However, the voice soon reappeared and said to Bai Ye, "Gloria." "Just call me that!" She decided the most important thing in her life with a happy tone. The question of "Who am I" that Bai Ye had been pursuing so hard seemed not worth mentioning to her.

Bai Ye was speechless, because she knew that this was definitely not the other person's name.

Gloria, Gloria Resbellite, is the name of her current identity. It is another nightmare that she has always resisted and refused to enter, but she has easily accepted it. Is she using this method to show that her desire to help Bai Ye is not false? But if so, the price is too high. Will she have to live with a false name for the rest of her life?
"It's no big deal." She said to Bai Ye. Although the girl never appeared in front of Bai Ye, the latter seemed to have imagined such a scene. A girl with the same face as himself was looking at him with a smile and whispered: "Since Bai Ye doesn't want to be Gloria, then let me be Gloria."

"I will help you."

"Because that's what you want."

……

The Resbelat family is a great noble family in the kingdom. They own a towering castle on a high cliff. The age of the castle is as long as the history of the reproduction of this land. Today, vines have climbed all over the large carved glass windows, and the intricate patterns behind the layers of green cannot be seen through. The garden is full of beautiful roses and camellias all year round. Mrs. Lena, who is responsible for taking care of them, holds an afternoon tea party at 3 pm every Friday to trace the past and present lives of the family bloodline through the fragrance of flowers. There is a large wheat field extending from the manor under the cliff. Two thousand tenant farmers carefully take care of the wheat, peas and grapes in the fields. In their spare time after work, they whisper to each other and discuss the trivialities of the territory surrounded by a vast forest. Among them, the most discussed are the two daughters of the Resbelat family.

Some said that they were unique twins in the world, with looks and body shapes almost identical, even the most inconspicuous eyelashes were exactly the same; some said that they were cursed by the witch in the forest and could not leave the castle at the same time, if one left, the other must stay; others said that they had a strange disease and their personalities were as changeable as fog, and the doctors in the kingdom were helpless... The Resbellite family had never responded to or clarified any rumors, and even the maids who went to the town to buy things had learned to keep their mouths shut without any instruction, and they had a strange tacit understanding of such speculation.

The rumors were rampant for a while, but they died down over time, because the careful speculation and painstaking planning of the distant and mysterious castle were obviously not as eye-catching as the tedious and trivial things around them. Only the couple who ruled this vast territory knew that the rumors were not groundless, but they were also far from the truth. They never had two daughters, but only raised a girl named Gloria and a demon hidden in her body.

Most of the time, it was Gloria who appeared in front of people, their real daughter. She was well-behaved, sensible, and very cute, always responding to and meeting the expectations of others. She carefully studied the grammar and etiquette courses of the nobility, and her impeccable performance amazed the family teacher; she respected her father and loved her mother, always remembered their birthdays and every memorable day in their lives, gave them gifts, thanked them for their upbringing, and moved the couple to tears; she was born noble but never arrogant, even to the servants, she was polite, when the clumsy maid accidentally broke the dishes, the first reaction was not to scold her, but to care if she was injured. Everyone in the Resbelite family, from the beloved couple to the gardener in charge of the garden, was proud to have such a beautiful lady, and it was natural.

That's right, Gloria Rispert is such a person. Her identity, her image, and her personality, everything about her is always vivid and profound in their memory, as it was in the past, is now, and will certainly always be so in the future.

But sometimes, very rarely, the girl who appeared before them was not Gloria, but a demon named White Night. She was extremely cold, arrogant, and superior, as if she looked down upon everything in the world. She was unwilling to admit that the couple who ruled the castle were her parents, unwilling to admit that this land was the home where she grew up, and even unwilling to admit that she had anything to do with the name Gloria Resbellite.

Initially, when the psychiatrist who came to diagnose the girl told the master and his wife that there were two souls in the girl's body, they were ready to accept the other soul and determined to influence her with family affection and love. Even the maids and servants in the castle had a faint pity and expectation for her. However, the selfishness and evil of this soul broke everyone's heart and made them realize that this was not a simple disease, but a curse. If it was not a curse, why would such an innocent and kind person like Miss Gloria have such a cold and ruthless soul in her heart?
Fortunately, this personality does not appear frequently, and it has become even less common since she was treated by a psychologist. The master of the Resbelite family is happy about this and has begun to look forward to the day when the demon disappears completely and his lovely and well-behaved daughter is returned. But one night, he had a nightmare while sleeping soundly, and suddenly woke up in a cold sweat. He left the room in a state of anxiety and walked through the gloomy corridor, but saw a thin figure standing on the edge of the balcony in the hall, with long gray hair fluttering sadly in the night wind. The girl had already stepped half a foot into the darkness, and if she took another step forward, she would lose weight and fall. I don’t know if it was a coincidence, but under the balcony, there happened to be a garden full of roses and camellias. Even at night, the fragrance of the flowers was still fragrant and somewhat fatal.

The master was frightened and broke into a cold sweat. He hurried forward to stop her, but the girl turned her head and gave him a cold look. In those eyes, which were colder than a mirror, he did not see a single human emotion.

She is not Gloria.

She is White Night.

The master turned pale with fear and fled the hall in panic, as if he was not facing his daughter but a terrible demon. Behind the embarrassed figure, there came a sneer of contempt and self-mockery.

Give me some meow