When Raven said "keep," for a split second I thought she meant "keep calm." Her explanation made me wonder whether I'd wasted twenty-plus years of life.
"Keeping means," she lowered her voice like she was doing new-hire training, "you must maintain the balance between nightmare energy and self-awareness. If you lose the balance, you either go completely mad or wake up completely."
"Sounds like a diet ad," Xiaoqi rolled his eyes. "What does maintaining balance even mean? Do we get a complimentary yoga class and low-carb meals?"
Raven didn't smile. She looked at him like a surgeon looking at a patient: "People who lose balance usually end up one of two ways: exploding, or becoming the Bureau's test subject."
I remembered an experiment photo from the dossiers, the one smeared with blood. In the picture the subject's features were mashed up on their forehead like a child's clay monster. I took a breath and asked seriously, "So what's the method for keeping? Chanting sutras? Drinking potato soup? Running five kilometers every morning?"
Raven actually thought about that for a moment, then answered: "You must keep reminding yourself that you're still human."
"…" Xiaoqi and I looked at each other.
Keep human? It sounds like a joke. This world has few reasons left to insist on "being human." Yet Raven said it like a teacher requiring us to recite the core socialist values in class.
To prove it, she put us through "keeping training." It's hilariously simple: during the day's strongest nightmare-energy spike, strap yourself to an iron chair and repeat in front of a mirror—"I am me, not it."
Xiaoqi sat in the chair first and lasted five minutes before he started swearing. "This training reads like a kid's therapy homework. What's next? Telling me to chant 'You can do it!' in the wind?"
I managed seven minutes before mirror-me started losing his eyes, like a cheap puppet. I nearly applied for my own immediate explosive decompression.
Raven praised me: "Good. At least you saw it."
"What I saw was myself turned into a rotten watermelon. How is that good?"
Her gaze was reverent, as if looking at a rare artifact: "It means you have keeping potential."
I wanted to tell her: if my "potential" is being disgusted by the me in the mirror every day, I'd rather walk into the subway tunnel and let the train help me out.
—
Aside from the keeping drills, the rebels put us through "daily tests." Every morning you must do three things: eat, write in a diary, and tell a joke.
The logic: eating reminds you that you have a body, journaling reminds you that you have memory, and jokes… remind you you're not entirely mad yet.
So every sunrise in the Sanctuary becomes a perverse ritual: a group of ragged insurgents spooning watery potato stew, writing "I am alive today," then telling groaners.
"One day, a nightmare met a human. The human asked, 'Who are you?' The nightmare said, 'Your mom.'"
"Ha—ha—ha—" the laughter is mechanical, like a broken tape.
I whispered to Xiaoqi, "I think keeping with these people is worse than just going mad."
Xiaoqi nodded. "At least if you go mad you don't have to drink this damn potato soup."
—
By the fifth day I cracked. In the mirror there were five of me: one crying, one laughing, one tearing his head off and kicking it like a ball. The weirdest one gave me a thumbs up and clearly mouthed two words: "Keep going."
I jumped out of the chair. "Screw this! I'm done!"
Raven patted my shoulder. "Good. You finally see the truth of keeping."
"The truth my ass!" I shouted. "At this rate I'm not keeping humanity — I'm keeping crazy!"
Raven remained cold. "Keeping and madness have always been separated by a single sheet of paper."
—
That night Xiaoqi and I sneaked into the control room to read the forbidden dossiers. We wanted a real way out, not another mirror and repetitive mantra.
The first line we found said it plain:
Nightmare Energy Individual Maintenance Experiment: Keeping equals self-deception; deception equals stability.
Xiaoqi blinked. "So what you're saying is our keeping is just self-lying?"
I smiled bitterly. "Exactly. We're not keeping humanity—we're keeping believing that we're human."
In that moment I understood why Raven made us tell jokes, write diaries, and drink stew. It wasn't about clarity or wakefulness; it was about preserving an illusion. As long as the illusion doesn't crack, humans still exist.
It's ridiculous to the point of being tragic. But perversely, it's the only way to survive.
—
The next morning it was my turn to tell a joke. I lifted my spoon, looked at the hollow eyes in the room, and laughed suddenly.
"Listen," I said. "One day a human asked a nightmare, 'Will you eat me?' The nightmare replied, 'No need. I only need you to keep.'"
The Sanctuary fell silent.
A few seconds later Raven applauded once, her voice low and flat: "Good. He's learned to keep."
I bowed my head and finished the soup. In my chest a single absurd thought rose:
—Keeping isn't surviving; it's learning to laugh while admitting the absurd.