His consciousness slowly returned. Qi Zhi shifted his body slightly, feeling the cold, hard wooden planks beneath him. The air was thick with the distinct, metallic scent of damp earth.
For a moment, he was dazed, unsure of where he was.
As a dull throb pulsed at the back of his head, the memory rushed back: he had been at the school playground watching his roommate play basketball when someone lured him off-campus. The moment he stepped into a car, he was struck from behind and knocked unconscious.
Kidnapped? But by whom?
Qi Zhi fluttered his eyes open, expecting to see his captors or his surroundings, but he was met with nothing but absolute darkness.
Unlike the darkness of night, this was a void so deep he couldn’t even see his own hand in front of his face.
Relieved that there were no voices nearby and that his hands and feet weren’t bound, Qi Zhi sat up to feel his way around.
Thud—!
He slammed his head directly into the ceiling.
Whose ceiling is this low?
He began to feel around. Above him were cold, hard wooden planks. Suddenly, the realization hit him. He frantically felt to his sides the narrow width, the length just slightly longer than his body, the height that wouldn’t allow him to sit upright this was a coffin.
What did his kidnappers intend to do?
Were they burying him alive?
He fumbled through his pockets. His phone, wallet, and keys were all gone. He tried to push against the lid, but it was nailed shut and felt as heavy as a thousand pounds. No matter how much strength he mustered, it wouldn’t budge an inch.
“Is anyone there? Help me, please help me!” Qi Zhi hammered desperately against the wood, his voice trembling.
The only response was the endless silence of the dark.
“I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, sob…” Qi Zhi began to cry in terror. “Lan An… Lan An, where are you? Save me, please save me.”
He screamed the name of the man he loved with everything he had, praying for him to appear out of nowhere as he had so many times before.
But Lan An was gone. He would never show up again. He would never again feed him a sweet fruit candy when he cried. Lan An didn’t want him anymore.
“Lan An… Lan An…”
As the minutes ticked by, the oxygen in the coffin grew thin. Qi Zhi’s consciousness began to flicker. He didn’t dare scream or pound on the wood anymore; that would only hasten his death.
Cr-crack
In his fading state, Qi Zhi thought he heard the sound of wood splintering through the silent dark.
Is this a hallucination before death?
At that moment, countless tree branches, as thick as fingers, pierced through the coffin. As if they possessed a consciousness of their own, they first crawled over Qi Zhi’s bloody hands torn from clawing at the wood then brushed against his heaving chest. Finally, they reached the corner of his mouth, using tender green leaves to softly touch his lips, like a lover’s kiss.
“Lan… Lan An?”
Qi Zhi tried to grab a branch, but he no longer had the strength to move.
BOOM—!
In the next instant, the coffin buried deep underground, along with the fresh earth above it, violently exploded. The wood shattered into pieces and the soil scattered in every direction—yet every bit of it avoided the curled-up figure of Qi Zhi.
“Ngh—”
A massive rush of fresh air hit him. Qi Zhi gasped painfully for breath; his eyes fixed on the side. In the dim, storm-lashed forest, a slender man stood with a lazy posture. His heterochromatic eyes one blue, one black shone like gemstones in a clear spring. He watched silently, his gaze so deep it felt as though it could pull one’s soul inside.
“Lan An…”
Qi Zhi struggled to lift his hand, desperate to hold onto him and never let go.