Jiang Mingran trembled, cold sweat soaking his back.
He'd never seen a corpse before, let alone watched a living person become one in an instant!
The old man's body was dragged into the kitchen. The red embroidered shoes returned to the living room and took a radio back inside.
After a burst of static, music began to play. A medley of eighties hits echoed through the old apartment, sounding deeply out of place.
Jiang Mingran shook, his face bloodless. "Uncle... Uncle Pancake..."
Shao Lan glanced at him, silently asking, You knew him?
His lips quivering, Jiang Mingran whispered, "He sells egg-stuffed pancakes on the food street behind our school. We all call him Uncle Pancake..."
His eyes reddened.
Uncle Pancake had a bad leg, but he was a great cook and a kind man. Jiang Mingran had bought a pancake from him just last week.
Now, in the blink of an eye, he was a corpse.
Shao Lan glanced toward the kitchen. The radio was loud, mingling with the sound of a knife chopping through bone.
"Now." He pointed toward the security door, signaling Jiang Mingran. "We get out first."
Jiang Mingran rubbed his face hard.
Uncle Pancake was already dead. All they could do now was escape and bring the police back as soon as possible.
They took off their shoes and hurried quietly toward the security door.
Music played behind them. On the old radio, a woman sang a heartbroken lament about love.
Jiang Mingran pushed open the security door. Its worn metal fittings gave a teeth-grating clack. He rushed outside, only to trip over something.
Garbage bags. A heap of trash lay outside the door, full of food that had rotted to slop. Leaking liquid made the whole floor slick and wet.
Just before he fell, Jiang Mingran planted a hand against the wall and barely managed to steady himself.
But his foot had also sent the bag into the wall. Several glass jars of rotten canned mandarin oranges clinked loudly inside.
Clatter! Clatter!
The chopping in the kitchen stopped abruptly. Then the radio switched off.
The woman had heard!
Shao Lan and Jiang Mingran exchanged a look. Without pausing, they ran for their lives.
They raced down the hallway and reached the stairs almost immediately.
Jiang Mingran charged downstairs ahead of Shao Lan, running single file. Looking back as he ran, he said quietly, relieved, "Man, she didn't fol—"
Those were the last words Shao Lan heard Jiang Mingran say in the stairwell.
Or rather, the last half of a sentence.
He'd probably meant to say, "She didn't follow us." He never finished.
Because halfway through, Jiang Mingran suddenly vanished.
Only Shao Lan remained in the pitch-black stairwell.
It happened so quickly that by the time his mind formed the question Why did Jiang Mingran disappear?, his momentum had already carried his body to the spot where Jiang Mingran had vanished.
In that instant, everything seemed to disappear.
The stairs beneath his feet vanished.
The walls around him vanished.
Even the air seemed to vanish.
It was as though he'd drifted into pure darkness. There was nothing here. He couldn't move forward, move back, or breathe.
Was he going to die here?
Or...
Was he already dead?
...
Drip. Drip.
Shao Lan opened his eyes on the couch, his head aching.
He seemed to have just had a dream. In it, he'd woken in a serial killer's home and experienced a series of profoundly bizarre events.
He shut his eyes briefly and reached down to touch the couch.
The next instant, his body went rigid.
Smooth leather. A faint, indescribable odor.
He looked around the living room.
The unmistakably old apartment. Clutter piled everywhere. The old landline phone. The enamel cup.
It hadn't been a dream.
Everything had really happened!
Shao Lan closed his eyes and bit down hard on the tip of his tongue. The taste of blood filled his mouth, and pain sent a shudder through him.
As much as he hated to accept it, he had entered a loop. He was back in the serial killer's living room.
The small funeral altar still stood directly across from the couch. An oval fish tank occupied the place meant for a memorial portrait.
In the weak light, he could see three small red goldfish swimming inside.
Wait...
Three?
Shao Lan closed his eyes. His headache worsened.
He clearly remembered four goldfish in that tank the last time he'd seen it.
A click suddenly came from his left.
He whipped his head around.
It was still exactly four in the morning. The owl sprang from the old clock and called mechanically:
"The game begins! The game begins!"
At the same moment, the nearby security door clicked.
He had no other choice.
Once more, Shao Lan rolled off the couch and hid beneath it.
He'd barely flattened himself when he noticed that there were more carvings in the floor.
Before, there had only been the word "Rules." Now there was an entire line.
[Rule: Those who have not ventured deep into the mist cannot leave it.]
Footsteps sounded, neither light nor heavy. Shao Lan withdrew his hand and held his breath.
Through the gap beneath the couch, he watched the same old-fashioned red embroidered shoes cross the living room.
Then the kitchen light came on. Pots and bowls clattered. The refrigerator opened.
Once again, he saw the blackened human head encrusted with frost.
The kitchen door shut, and the heavy thud of chopping began.
With only the rain in the living room, Shao Lan could hear his own rapid breathing.
He hesitated for the briefest moment, then got up and rushed toward the nearest bedroom.
He pulled the door open. Jiang Mingran stood just behind it, staring wide-eyed at his sudden appearance.
This time, though, Jiang Mingran didn't hold up his student ID to prove who he was. His mouth hung open, his lips trembling. He seemed desperate to say something but too afraid, staring at Shao Lan in terror.
Their eyes met. A few seconds later, Shao Lan confirmed something.
"Jiang Mingran?" he mouthed.
As though the boulder of fear inside him had finally crumbled, Jiang Mingran sagged and nodded hard.
Neither needed another word. They both understood: the other remembered everything, just as he did.
Shao Lan closed his eyes. The last of his wishful thinking shattered.
Before, he'd refused to believe the impossible suspicions forming in his mind.
Now he knew he could no longer deny them.
"This really is a game." He looked at Jiang Mingran. "Either we figure out how to beat it..."
"Or we die here."