Chapter 2
Jiang Mingran shook all over, cold sweat soaking his back.
He’d never seen a corpse before, let alone watched a living, breathing person become one in an instant, right before his eyes!
The old man’s body was dragged into the kitchen. The red embroidered shoes returned to the living room, and their owner carried a radio back to the kitchen.
After a burst of crackling static, music came from the radio. A medley of eighties hits echoed through the old apartment, sounding horribly out of place.
Trembling, his face white, Jiang Mingran murmured, “Uncle… Uncle Bing…”
Shao Lan looked at him, his eyes asking, You knew him?
Jiang Mingran’s lips quivered. “He sells egg-filled flatbreads on the food street behind our university. We all call him Uncle Bing…”
His eyes reddened a little.
Uncle Bing had a bad leg, but he was a good cook and a kind man. Jiang Mingran had bought an egg-filled flatbread from him just last week.
And in the blink of an eye, he’d become a corpse.
Shao Lan glanced toward the kitchen. The radio was loud, mixed with the sound of a blade chopping through bone.
“Now.” Shao Lan pointed toward the security door and signaled to Jiang Mingran. “Let’s get out first.”
Jiang Mingran rubbed his face hard.
Uncle Bing was dead. All they could do now was leave as quickly as possible and bring the police back here.
Shao Lan and Jiang Mingran took off their shoes and hurried as quietly as they could toward the security door.
Music played behind them. On the old radio, a woman was singing a plaintive lament about the pain of love.
Jiang Mingran shoved open the security door. Its aging metal parts gave a teeth-grating crack. He rushed out, only to trip hard over something.
A garbage bag. A heap of rubbish was piled outside the door, full of food that had rotted into slop. The leaking liquid had left the entire floor wet and slippery.
About to fall, Jiang Mingran quickly braced a hand against the wall and just managed to steady himself.
But his foot had also sent the bag into the wall. Inside it, several glass jars of rotten canned mandarin oranges knocked together with a distinct clatter.
Clank! Clank!
The chopping in the kitchen stopped abruptly. Then the radio switched off.
The woman had heard!
Shao Lan and Jiang Mingran exchanged a look. Neither dared linger. They ran for their lives.
They tore down the corridor and reached the stairs in moments.
Jiang Mingran was ahead of Shao Lan as they rushed down, one after the other. Looking back as he ran, he whispered with a trace of relief, “Hey, she’s not com…”
That was the last thing Shao Lan heard Jiang Mingran say in the stairwell.
Or rather, the last half of a sentence.
He’d probably meant to say, “She’s not coming after us.” He never finished.
Because halfway through the sentence, Jiang Mingran suddenly vanished.
Shao Lan was alone in the pitch-black stairwell.
It happened so fast that by the time the question Why did Jiang Mingran suddenly disappear? formed in his mind, his sprinting momentum had already carried him to the very spot where Jiang Mingran had vanished.
In that instant, everything seemed to disappear.
The stairs beneath his feet disappeared.
The walls around him disappeared.
Even the air seemed to disappear.
It was like floating into pure darkness. There was nothing here. He couldn’t move forward, couldn’t move back, couldn’t breathe.
Am I going to die here?
Or…
Am I already dead?
…
Drip. Drip.
Shao Lan opened his eyes on the sofa, his head aching.
He seemed to have had a dream. In it, he’d woken in a serial killer’s home and experienced a series of deeply bizarre events.
He closed his eyes for a moment, then felt the sofa beneath him.
His body went rigid.
Smooth leather. A faint, indescribable smell.
He looked around the living room.
An apartment that had clearly seen better days. Clutter heaped everywhere. An old landline. An enamel mug.
It hadn’t been a dream.
Everything that had just happened had been real!
Shao Lan closed his eyes and bit down hard on the tip of his tongue. The taste of blood instantly filled his mouth, and pain jolted through his body.
He didn’t want to accept it, but he’d entered a loop. He was back in the serial killer’s living room.
The small funeral altar still stood directly opposite the sofa. In place of a memorial portrait sat an oval fish tank.
In the dim light, he could see three small red goldfish swimming inside.
Wait…
Three?
Shao Lan closed his eyes. His headache grew worse.
He distinctly remembered four small red goldfish in the tank the last time he’d seen it.
Suddenly, a click came from his left.
Shao Lan whipped his head around.
It was still exactly four in the morning. The owl popped out of the old mantel clock and called mechanically:
“The game begins! The game begins!”
At the same moment, the security door clicked nearby.
There was nothing else he could do.
Shao Lan rolled off the sofa again and hid in the gap beneath it.
He’d barely lain down when he noticed more carvings in the floor.
Before, there had been only the word Rules. Now there was a whole line.
“Rules: Those who have not ventured deep into the fog cannot leave it.”
Footsteps sounded, neither light nor heavy. Shao Lan drew back and held his breath.
Through the gap beneath the sofa, he watched a pair of old-fashioned red embroidered shoes slowly cross the living room, just as before.
Then the kitchen light came on, pots and bowls clattered, and the refrigerator door opened.
Shao Lan saw the black, frost-encrusted head again.
The kitchen door closed. The heavy thudding of meat being chopped began.
In the living room, with nothing but the sound of rain around him, Shao Lan could hear his own rapid breathing.
He hesitated for only a fraction of a second, then got up and rushed to the nearest bedroom.
He pulled the door open. Jiang Mingran stood behind it, staring wide-eyed at Shao Lan’s sudden appearance.
This time, though, Jiang Mingran didn’t hold up his campus card to prove who he was. His mouth hung open, his lips trembling slightly. He seemed to want to say something but didn’t dare, looking at Shao Lan in utter terror.
Their eyes met. A few seconds later, Shao Lan was sure of one thing.
“Jiang Mingran?” he mouthed.
As though the great boulder of fear inside him had crumbled, Jiang Mingran’s shoulders sagged. He nodded hard.
Neither needed to say another word. They both understood: the other remembered everything that had just happened, too.
Shao Lan closed his eyes briefly. His last shred of hope was gone.
Before, he’d refused to believe the far-fetched suspicions forming in his mind.
Now he knew he had no choice.
“This really is a game.” Shao Lan looked at Jiang Mingran. “Either we figure out how to beat it…”
“Or we die here.”