Jieqiong’s momentum disappears as quickly as it appears. She’s frustrated. She knows that a sixty year period isn’t bad for placing an artwork, but this isn’t just artwork. Jieqiong knows that there is an answer somewhere. She just has to find it.
However much her sleep had suffered before, it’s gotten worse. Jieqiong is sleeping more, but feeling less and less rested. It’s because of the dreams, she guesses. She doesn't remember a lot about them, but she knows the dreams are much more vivid than normal. Two mornings ago, she woke up from one sure that she felt a lingering touch on her shoulder and the shift of her bed as someone got up, but when she turned over to see who it was, the room was empty and the other side of her bed was cold.
Jieqiong thinks she must be going a little crazy. The dreams are far too real to not be, but she knows it’s impossible. They must just be particularly vivid.
A week after the dreams start, Jieqiong buys a book on analyzing dreams. Jieqiong finds the book wholly unhelpful, but it's the only thing she has that has even a possibility of helping her, so each time she wakes up, she clings to something in her dream to look up.
In her first dream after buying the book, she feels long fingers curling around her upper arms. According to the book, "to dream that you are being touched represents your closeness and/or relationship with a particular person." Jieqiong doesn't know the identity of the person, so this means absolutely nothing to her. It's frustrating. If she at least had a face, she might feel like she was going somewhere.
Jieqiong had a sense that her dreams were connected to the box in the corner of her room, but is absolutely convinced when she wakes up from a dream in which silk was slid from her shoulders and dropped to the floor. Unfortunately, all the book had to say was "to see or feel silk in your dream represents luxury, smoothness, and softness." It's infuriatingly vague, and Jieqiong, running on long nights of restless sleep, almost throws the book out the window.
In an embarrassingly heated dream, Jieqiong feels a firm cushion under her back as lips trail down her neck, between the valley of her s, and to-Jieqiong almost screams when she wakes up. It's enough that her dreams are preventing her from feeling rested, but the fact that they're doing this now? Jieqiong huffs in frustration before throwing off the covers and making her way to the bathroom for a cold shower. When she gets out, she's cooled down enough to look up "bed" in the book. "To see a bed in your dream represents your intimate self and discovery of your uality. You are exhibiting some carelessness in y