Chapter 3 – The Locked Room

His head was heavy and dazed, everything in his vision as if shrouded beneath a thick, layered veil of gauze. The sound of traffic drifting from the direction of the main road seemed to waver and drift — now far, now near — unreal, as though he were moving through a dream.

He walked on for some unknowable length of time in that wretched, stupefied state before his mind finally recovered a shred of its ability to think. Yu Sheng hesitantly halted his steps and turned back to look at the road he had come from.

The sky had nearly gone completely dark. Street lamps along the way had lit up early. He was walking down a narrow street near his home, the low, aging residential buildings on either side like two rows of beasts crouching in the night — yet the makeshift ground-floor shops that residents had converted for themselves seeped warm light outward, dispersing a trace of the cold that had taken up residence deep in his heart.

Cold?

All at once, Yu Sheng felt as though he could sense that bone-piercing chill again — that cold that had stabbed into his lungs and marrow. He felt the blade-like frozen rain falling on his skin, and felt those two icy, slick gazes — the gaze of the frog as it had stared at him.

He gasped suddenly, as though suffocating, and only after more than ten seconds did he seem to remember how to breathe again. He gulped down great lungfuls of air while hurriedly bowing his head to look at his own chest.

In that instant, he had the briefest of illusions — that there was still a gaping hole in his chest, that he no longer had a heart, that his ribcage was as silent and cold as a furnace gone out. But in the very next second, he felt his heartbeat return, and he even seemed to hear an especially crisp “thump” beside his ear… Right. The living have heartbeats.

He was still alive. He hadn’t had his heart devoured by some uncanny, enormous frog.

But the fragments of memory surging up in a frenzy washed through his mind like a tsunami, and no matter how hard he tried to ignore them, he couldn’t drive them out. Yu Sheng recalled the rain, recalled the door painted onto the wall, and the enormous frog… He tried to tell himself it had all been a hallucination, but that thought was rapidly crumbling under the repeated crashing of memories that were growing clearer by the moment.

He had died once. Yet for some inexplicable reason, he was alive now, walking home — nearly there, just two more intersections away.

Of all the uncanny things that had happened since he came to this bizarre city, this was the most uncanny of all.

He sensed eyes on him nearby. Yu Sheng noticed that his strange behavior had apparently drawn the attention of passersby — someone nearby was hesitating about whether to approach, perhaps wanting to ask if he needed help. He quickly waved them off, exchanged no further words with the stranger, and then quickened his pace and left the area.

He didn’t know what had happened to him, but it was obvious that standing in the middle of the road lost in thought would do nothing to resolve his confusion.

He hurried through the side streets, left the last road near the aging residential area behind, and made his way toward his “home” in this city.

Though only two intersections separated them, the surroundings had grown noticeably more desolate and quiet — as though he were stepping into a forgotten corner of the city. The pedestrians on the road grew fewer and fewer, until at last the only company Yu Sheng had was the cold, pale street lamps. After walking a little further, he saw it: the old, large house standing in the night, maintaining what seemed like a faint sense of distance from every surrounding building.

It was an entirely unremarkable house — a three-story old residence, its plasterwork peeling and mottled, with a sloped roof. The old doors and old windows were worn but still reasonably clean and intact. A house like this looked as though it had been self-built and unauthorized back when regulations were still lax, somewhere in the village-in-the-city districts, and had survived the passage of years to become a historical relic wedged in the cracks of urban construction management…

Yu Sheng didn’t know much about the urban construction management system of this “Boundary City,” which differed so greatly from the one in his memories. After all, he had only been here two months. Subtract the time wasted shut indoors out of caution when he first arrived, and he had only just grown accustomed to life here and gotten a feel for the surrounding area — but one thing he knew clearly.

This large house was the only foothold he had in this dangerous, unsettling city that was even remotely safe — at least while inside, he had never seen those uncanny shadows.

Though the house itself had many aspects that struck him as strange.

Yu Sheng drew a quiet breath, picked up the supermarket shopping bag still hanging from his hand, stepped through the cold pale light spilling from the street lamp, walked to the entrance, and fished out his key to open the door.

The old door creaked open. Yu Sheng stepped inside and turned on the light — and even though this house was almost entirely unlike the “home” in his memories, the moment the light came on, he felt something real and grounded settle in his chest.

He turned and closed the door, shutting the city’s night out behind him.

He tossed what he’d bought at the supermarket onto the shelf beside the kitchen entrance to the right of the doorway, then strode quickly across the somewhat empty living room to the bathroom mirror, and yanked open the front of his shirt.

The images in his memory were far too vivid and clear — he couldn’t help but want to confirm it over and over.

There was not a single scar on his chest, not a trace of blood. It was as though “death” had never happened at all.

Yu Sheng furrowed his brow, checked his clothing for any damage, pressed at the spot where, in his memory, the frog had reached in and ripped out his heart, and only then truly confirmed that he was not, in fact, a man with a wide-open chest.

“What in the world…”

He murmured quietly, left the bathroom, and turned to walk back to the living room.

Behind him, the surface of the mirror above the washbasin silently cracked into a web of fractures — and then, just as swiftly and soundlessly, closed back together.

Yu Sheng sat down on the living room sofa and sorted through the tangled mess of his thoughts. He didn’t know how much time passed before his utterly exhausted mind finally quieted into a drowsy stillness. Sleep drew its shroud around him.

That heavy, drifting sensation lasted a long, long time — until an abrupt “thud” exploded in his mind like someone hammering stone above his head with a shovel, jolting Yu Sheng awake in an instant.

He opened his eyes in the darkness and stared blankly for a moment before it registered — the living room light had gone off at some point.

He was certain he had left it on before falling asleep!

A warning spike of alarm shot through him. Yu Sheng nearly instinctively reached for the telescoping baton beside him — the first thing he had done after arriving in this strange and eerie city was prepare that self-defense tool. It hadn’t been of much use so far, but as a terrified bipedal ape, having a stick in hand at least offered some psychological comfort. He then carefully and slowly rose, all the while monitoring every sound in the darkness.

In such a desolate and remote place, a burglar breaking in wasn’t exactly beyond imagination — though in truth, at this moment Yu Sheng would have much preferred it to be a burglar. At least a burglar could be knocked out with a baton. A frog over a meter tall was another matter entirely.

But the living room was completely silent. No sign of forced entry, no sound of an intruder moving about.

The good news was that there was no sound of a frog either.

By the faint glow of the street lamp filtering through the window, Yu Sheng crouched low and moved through the space, scanning his surroundings, slowly feeling his way toward the light switch on the wall. He reached up and pressed it on.

His eyes immediately swept the living room in a sharp, bright gaze, cutting through the darkness.

Yu Sheng blinked. Something about what he saw felt slightly off, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was wrong — regardless, at least the area around him had brightened, and he could now clearly see the state of the living room.

Bent slightly at the waist, baton in hand, he began to check every corner of the house.

The ground floor had only the living room, the kitchen and dining area, and one empty room not currently in use. Everything appeared normal.

He paused at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor, then stepped upward.

The second floor had three rooms. One was his current bedroom, one was used for storing miscellaneous items, and the last — at the very end of the hall — was locked.

That room had been locked since the moment Yu Sheng arrived. He had searched every corner of the large house and had never once found the key.

He checked his own bedroom first, then the storage room across the hall, and finally came to stand before the locked room.

As always, the door was firmly shut.

In truth, Yu Sheng had not gone without attempting technical solutions to deal with the lock. These technical solutions included, but were not limited to, an impact drill and a handheld electric saw — yet all attempts had ended in failure. At the time, both the drill and the saw had thrown off sparks in front of that seemingly frail wooden door, the drill bit and saw blade grinding themselves to ruin without leaving so much as a single mark.

Of course, he had also tried seeking more advanced technical assistance — specifically, locksmiths. He’d contacted three of them one after another. The first two got lost as soon as they entered the Old City District, wandering around for ages without ever finding where No. 66 Wutong Road was. The third made it past the intersection before getting hit by a motorcycle and had only been discharged from the hospital last week…

It was as though some mysterious force was preventing Yu Sheng from opening this locked room in his own home.

Indeed, even though this large house was his only remotely safe foothold in this city, even this house itself had many… “wrongnesses” about it.

Yu Sheng reached out and gripped the door handle before him, gave it a turn — and of course, it didn’t budge.

Nothing in the way of the expected “accident” occurred. It was still locked.

But he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination — as he futilely twisted that handle… he thought he heard the faintest, most distant sound of soft laughter.

The laughter came from the other side of the door. It sounded like a young woman’s voice, as though it were mocking him for his helplessness before a single door.

Yu Sheng’s every hair stood on end in an instant!

His only safe refuge in this city. The house he had been living in for two months. Right here in his own home. In this room that had been locked all along… there was someone hiding inside!

…How had she not starved to death?

(End of Chapter)