Chapter 5
Shao Lan tried to spin around, but it was too late.
Red flooded his vision. Blood burst from his chest and splashed over the living room’s old, yellowed walls. The massive blood loss drained the life from him in an instant.
His head drooped helplessly.
His vision blurred. He couldn’t even make out what had pierced his chest, only a length of vivid red.
It had come through his chest from behind, running straight through his body.
While he was making the call, the killer had circled the sofa and come up behind him without a sound.
But… why?
He hadn’t heard anything.
Even if the killer had taken off her shoes as they had and moved silently, what about Jiang Mingran, who was watching the kitchen door?
At the very least, Jiang Mingran should have signaled to warn him!
Shao Lan tried to turn his head, but an icy hand clamped around his neck and held him firmly in place.
Then the thing through his chest was pulled out. More blood gushed from him.
He had no strength left to think. He fell to the floor, all thought and awareness draining out of his body with his blood.
He felt someone dragging him toward the kitchen.
His lifeless eyes stared ahead. The living room furniture slowly slid past him, until the pile of junk came into view.
Shao Lan saw Jiang Mingran.
At last, he understood why Jiang Mingran hadn’t warned him when the person in the kitchen came out.
Blood wound across the floor. The dark yellow paper bags were soaked through with it.
Jiang Mingran’s bloodless face lay in the gap between the clutter. His lifeless eyes were open, meeting those of Shao Lan, who lay on the floor as well.
Jiang Mingran was dead.
He’d died before he could signal to Shao Lan.
There hadn’t been a sound. With all Jiang Mingran’s skill and strength, he’d had no chance even to resist or put up a fight. He’d been killed instantly.
That shouldn’t have happened.
That should never have happened…
Shao Lan couldn’t think any longer. He was dragged into the kitchen. After a burst of crackling static, the lilting strains of an eighties hit came from the radio.
A heavy, ice-cold bone cleaver came down on the back of his neck. Blood sprayed into a bubbling clay pot.
That was Shao Lan’s last memory.
…
Drip. Drip.
Shao Lan jerked awake.
Cold sweat had soaked his clothes as though he’d just stepped out of a shower. His face was deathly pale, his mouth wide open as he gasped like a fish out of water.
Everything that followed was familiar.
The living room. The sofa. The funeral altar.
And, of course, only two small red goldfish remained in the tank.
At four on the dot, the owl popped out again. Then came a sound from the door, and someone came in.
Driven by a will to survive that had already become muscle memory, Shao Lan rolled off the sofa and hid beneath it.
This time, the carving was more complicated. He spent a long time feeling it out before he could read it.
“Rules: Owls are birds skilled at disguise. Do not trust the owl.”
The owl? The only thing in this apartment related to an owl was the mantel clock in the corner.
It had just two functions: announcing the start of the game and telling the time.
Could the time be false?
His headache seemed worse again. Cold sweat seeped across his back. Lying under the sofa, he watched mechanically as the red embroidered shoes slowly crossed the living room and entered the kitchen.
He took a deep breath and pushed himself upright against the sofa.
The bedroom door opened again. Again, a dark figure darted out.
In the weak light, Jiang Mingran looked frighteningly ill, as though he’d just woken from a nightmare of unimaginable horror.
He looked at Shao Lan, trembling all over.
After a moment’s thought, Shao Lan abruptly rushed toward the other bedroom.
He pushed the door open and yanked back the quilt, exposing the old man curled up beneath it.
Before the old man could scream, Shao Lan clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Hey…” Jiang Mingran followed him in and started in alarm. Not daring to speak, he hurriedly shut the bedroom door and stood beside Shao Lan, gesturing frantically. What are you doing?
Shao Lan mouthed a question to the old man. “Which time is this?”
The old man couldn’t make it out. He shook his head wildly and struggled.
Seeing this, Jiang Mingran quickly found a pen and paper and wrote down Shao Lan’s question.
He made the letters large and held the page in front of the old man.
“Which time is this?”
This time, the old man could read it.
Trembling all over, tears in his eyes, he shakily held up three fingers.
Shao Lan quickly scanned the bedroom from the corner of his eye.
It was a little larger than Jiang Mingran’s room, probably the main bedroom.
Just as in Shao Lan’s and Jiang Mingran’s starting places, there was a funeral altar, a fish tank, and an owl clock.
Shao Lan signaled to Jiang Mingran. Tell him not to make a sound.
After two loops, Jiang Mingran had developed an understanding with him.
He quickly wrote, “Uncle Bing, it’s Xiao Jiang. I’ve bought flatbreads at your stall. We were kidnapped and brought here with you. If we make a noise, the killer will find us. We’re going to let you go now. Don’t make any sound, okay?”
Uncle Bing nodded frantically.
Shao Lan cautiously let go. Sure enough, Uncle Bing made no sound.
He only shrank into himself and trembled, clearly terrified out of his wits.
Shao Lan rubbed his temples.
His body was whole and unharmed now, but the sensation of being killed still lingered in his mind like a nightmare he couldn’t shake.
“Write down what happened to you last time and the time before.” Shao Lan put the pen in Uncle Bing’s hand. “Everything you saw, heard, and did. Write it all down.”
“Hey, you…” Jiang Mingran tried to say something. A look from Shao Lan stopped him.
Uncle Bing picked up the pen with a trembling hand.
“Got killed,” he wrote in a shaky scrawl.
“Which time?” Shao Lan’s expression was cold and stern.
Uncle Bing stared at him blankly.
“How many times were you killed?” Shao Lan rephrased the question.
Uncle Bing wrote a 2.
“Then one at a time,” Shao Lan said. “How were you killed the first time? Write it out in detail.”
Uncle Bing was on the verge of tears. Remembering his death had clearly plunged him into terror all over again.
“Was minding the shop. Dozed off. Woke up here.”
His account came in fragments. His handwriting was so untidy that it took concentration to decipher.
He ran a little shop selling egg-filled flatbreads. He’d fallen asleep behind the counter in the early evening and, like them, had been brought into this room while unconscious.
“Heard someone talking outside. A man. Went out and saw a woman. Wanted to ask her. She killed me all of a sudden.”
That was the first loop. The old man had been the first to die. Shao Lan and Jiang Mingran had witnessed it from their hiding place in the bedroom.
His account essentially matched what they’d seen. He wasn’t lying.
The “man talking” had been Jiang Mingran, apologizing to Shao Lan with his student ID held up. The old man had heard his voice and gone into the living room, only to run into the woman, who had also come from the kitchen to investigate. She’d killed him on the spot.
Shao Lan tapped the word woman with a finger. “What did she look like?”
The old man’s hand shook.
“Black padded jacket. Red shoes. Hair over her face. Tall.”
He put down the pen and gestured, raising a hand beside Jiang Mingran, then lifting it a little higher.
Shao Lan understood. His pupils contracted. “Taller than him?”
Jiang Mingran was at least 1.85 meters tall. Was the woman in the kitchen over 1.9 meters?
Seeing that Shao Lan understood, the old man nodded hastily. Then he remembered something else and wrote two more words.
“Big belly.”
Shao Lan’s and Jiang Mingran’s eyes widened again.
Pregnant?