The dinner plate left a thin ring of grease on the polished oak before it was swept away.
After the last fork was set down, Ronald had quietly instructed Zhou Yuxuan to wait in the drawing room.
There was a shift in the air—a heavy, unspoken understanding that the pleasantries had officially expired and the real evaluation was about to begin.
Now, Yuxuan and Ronald waited on the single-seated sofas.
The furniture was a dull, textured brown, arranged directly across from one another like opposing pieces on a chessboard.
Overhead, a dim yellow electric bulb cast long, listless shadows against the stark white concrete of the walls.
Between them, the only active metronome was the grandfather clock; its heavy brass pendulum sliced through the silence in a rigid, unwavering rhythm of seconds.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
From the kitchen, the rhythmic splash of a running tap and the dull clink of wet porcelain signaled that Ronald’s mother was finishing the washing.
Outside, the crimson rain had finally trickled to a complete halt a few minutes prior.
Yuxuan remained perfectly still, his posture upright, his dark eyes locked onto Ronald with cold, surgical precision.
Ronald, however, avoided the gaze.
He stared fixedly out the nearby window, watching the dark, hollow street.
On the corner below, a gas-fueled streetlamp flickered in irregular, dying spasms, casting erratic patterns across his face.
Neither of them spoke.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, until the rustle of fabric broke the spell.
Ronald’s mother entered the room with a silent, measured stride.
She moved to the long, triple-seater sofa adjacent to them, settling into the cushions with a deliberate, cold grace.
She lifted her right leg, crossing it cleanly over her left, and smoothed down the edge of her purple gown.
Her eyes met Yuxuan’s.
“Let’s start,” she said.
The two men instantly shifted their focus, their gazes locking onto her.
“So, what is it?” Yuxuan asked, his voice dropping into its characteristic flat, analytical drone.
He did not ask what they wanted; he asked what they were, testing the boundaries of the information they held.
“Who you are?” Ronald’s voice cut in from the side, sharp and hooked with an intense, lingering suspicion.
He leaned forward from his brown chair.
“That’s the only question we wanted to ask.”
“It’s the only question we need to ask,” his mother corrected softly, her tone carrying the weight of someone who managed the survival of the household.
Yuxuan let out a quiet, short breath.
“Hmph.”
He shifted his weight, placing his left elbow firmly on his thigh as he bowed his torso forward, tilting his head slightly toward them.
Through the pane of the second window behind the mother’s shoulder, the massive, dark silhouette of the black hole hung over the city, its swirling rim cutting a jagged void through the starless sky.
The room felt halfway submerged in that cosmic ink.
When Yuxuan spoke, his voice carried a strange, poetic cadence—a calculated introduction meant to fully enter the minds of the two locals.
“I’m nothing.
I’m a mortal,” Yuxuan began, his eyes reflecting the pale yellow lamplight.
“I’m human.
I’m a piece, a very, very micro piece in this infinite or finite world.
My works cannot bother this world.
I’m not a Liar, but a lie.”
He paused, letting the words hang in the quiet air before he pushed his torso back against the sofa.
He uncrossed his arms, placing his right leg firmly over his left knee.
Then, with practiced, mechanical precision, he rested his right palm flat on his right leg, and his left palm flat over his right hand.
“The blind cannot see the darkness,” Yuxuan continued, his delivery smooth, cold, and entirely unbothered by the cosmic weight of the metropolis.
I’m the one who doesn’t like to stay around many peoples, but I don’t like to be alone.
I’m that much isolated so that darkness cannot scare me so much.
I’m blind.
I’m so much calculative that I cannot feel the adrenaline when it is horror.
I’m like a lie in this world.”
He leaned his head back slightly, his sharp features cutting through the dim light.
“I’m Lie…
Lie Longterm, who don’t know that why he was dragged into this unknown world who want to go back to his known world.
This is me.”
The long, deeply philosophical introduction hung in the room for a full minute.
The sheer poetic weight of it seemed to take a toll on the simple logic of the Denbergh household.
“Wow…
what an intro!” Ronald’s mom suddenly cheered, the rigid, terrifying aura she held just moments ago instantly evaporating into a display of maternal awe.
“Though we haven’t found your full identity, but by this intro, I could say that your personality is so darkful-awesome!
I heard that you came from another world by a toilet.
Will you tell me about your world?”
The sudden shift from extreme tension to domestic curiosity was dizzying.
“Uh, okay,” Yuxuan muttered, his internal calculator readjusting to her erratic mood swings.
“Oh, mom!
It’s late, I’ve to sleep,” Ronald cut in, letting out a massive, exaggerated yawn that shattered the remaining fragments of solemnity.
“Oh, yeah!” his mother realized, instantly snapping back into her commanding, domestic role.
“Go, go, in your room, boys.” She stood up, smoothing her gown once more as she ordered them toward the stairs.
“Ah, okay, mom,” Ronald mumbled.
The two young men rose from their respective single sofas.
Ronald led the way up the creaking wooden staircase, with Yuxuan following a step behind.
Below them, the clicking sound of the wall switch echoed as Ronald’s mother turned off the drawing-room lights, plunging the ground floor into pitch darkness.
They reached the second-floor landing before the silence was broken again.
Yuxuan stopped near the door to his guest room, his analytical mind finally bringing forward the anomaly that had bothered him since his arrival.
“Hey,” Yuxuan called out, his voice low.
“What?” Ronald turned, his hand on his own doorknob.
“So, why didn’t you ask that question before, when we first met?” Yuxuan’s eyes narrowed.
“A normal person would have demanded to know my true identity the second I claimed to fall through a portal.
You didn’t.”
Ronald paused, his shoulders dropping slightly.
“Oh.
Actually, there is a reason.”
“What?”
“We’ve reached the rooms, let’s go in your room then I’ll tell you,” Ronald said, gesturing toward Yuxuan’s doorway.
Yuxuan noted the deflection but complied, pushing the door open.
They both entered the small guest room and sat down on the edge of the neatly made bed.
The yellow electric lamp casting from the corner wall illuminated the sparse space.
“So tell me,” Yuxuan pressed, his eyes fixed on Ronald’s face.
“Hmm…
it’s because of the No Names,” Ronald revealed, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper.
Yuxuan’s mind logged the new terminology instantly.
“What?
“Yes, these are the invisible figures who presents everywhere,” Ronald explained, his eyes darting toward the curtained window as if the mere mention of them could draw their attention.
“Its presence appeared since the fog barrier appeared.
Rumor tells that these figures only could be seen when you comes very near of death.
I mean, before you’re going to die.
Rumor also tells that one man, before he die, revealed these ‘No Name’ creatures’ look.”
Ronald leaned closer, the shadows under his jaw deepening.
“It’s dark like shadow, but still like non-living thing, and its eyes are like two white dots which stares at the person without blinking till the person die.
But that’s all.
Oh!
And because of that, I didn’t ask you about your true identity out there.”
“Why?”
“Because rumor tells that these No Names reacts on unnatural talks—like ‘coming from another world’ or whatever like that, even if it’s in a novel or acting dialogue.
They pushes them to a slow death, maybe they feeds of another world’s people’s fears or something.
Whatever, it’s 11:59 PM, I’m going to my room.
Good night, Lie.”
“Hmph,” Yuxuan responded, his mind spinning through the terrifying tactical implications of this curse.An apex predator that hunts conceptual anomalies and extra-dimensional information.
Ronald left the room with a final, heavy yawn.
Yuxuan stood up, closed the wooden door firmly, and walked back to the bed with a long, silent sigh.
He lay down, placing his right arm over his forehead, his dark eyes staring up at the bare concrete ceiling.
Above him, the old European-style ceiling fan spun with a slow, rhythmic groan, its metallic shadow rotating lazily across the white walls.
There is many thing I don’t know about this world, Yuxuan thought, his hyper-rationality dismantling the fear before it could manifest as adrenaline.I’m in now in a stranger’s house, it’s the first time of me.
Tomorrow I’ve to visit a part of this city, though it’s very big city.
But for going home, I’ve to do something.
I’ve remember that I’m now Lie Longterm, not Zhou Yuxuan.
His thoughts drifted back to Ronald’s warning.Wait!
If the No Names exist everywhere, then why it is not attacking me or Ronald in his house?
Oh, Ronald always left us in suspense.
I’ll ask his tomorrow.
With his mental defenses firmly set against the lingering dread of the Crimson Rain, he closed his eyes.
Then, he slept.
The transition to morning was marked not by a sun, but by the shifting color of the heavy fog outside.
According to the iron-framed calendar hanging on the concrete wall of the drawing room, it was 20th Dabury, 29685.
The next day found the two young men sitting once again on the two single-seated brown sofas.
The air was thick with the rich, bitter aroma of black coffee.
Ronald sat with his mug, though he hadn’t touched it yet.
He had offered the same strong brew to Yuxuan, but Yuxuan had chosen a cup of hot black coffee without a single grain of sugar or milk.
He drank it with an unblinking, stoic expression, his face entirely unmoved by the intense bitterness.
Ronald, watching him, hadn’t taken a single sip of his own.
The silence was broken by the click of heels.
Ronald’s mother arrived from the kitchen, carrying a polished silver tray loaded with a plate of golden, flaky croissants.
She stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes darting from Yuxuan’s empty cup to the deep, dark liquid in Ronald’s mug.
“Yuck!” Ronald protested, his face contorting into an expression of theatrical disgust.
“What the hell is this?!
How can you drink this kind of strong coffee,Lie?”
“Oh, boy,” Ronald’s mother muttered, looking up at her son with a dry, helpless expression.
“Lie is a smart, gentle man, and it is his sign of being smart.
If you were a girl, then I would have given marry you with him.”
“Oh, mom!” Ronald groaned, burying his face in his hands as Yuxuan calmly set his empty cup back onto the saucer without a single word.