Boundless dense fog churned beyond the window, so thick it seemed as though the entire world had vanished beyond its edge. Only murky, indistinct daylight pierced the mist and shone into the room, maintaining a dim half-light in the silent apartment.
Inside the slightly messy studio apartment, Zhou Ming sat hunched over his desk. The clutter on it had been roughly shoved aside, while he, looking haggard, wrote furiously:
"Day seven. Nothing has changed. Dense fog covers everything outside the window, and the window has been sealed by some unknown force... The whole room seems to have been completely 'cast' into some abnormal space by something...
"There's no way to contact the outside, and there's no water or electricity. Yet the lights have remained on, and the computer still works—even though I unplugged its power cord..."
A faint sound like wind suddenly seemed to come from the direction of the window. Zhou Ming, who had been bent over his diary, abruptly looked up, and a glimmer of light appeared in his weary eyes. But the next second, he realized it had only been an illusion. Outside that window still lay nothing but pale, lingering fog, as a deathly silent world coldly enveloped his tiny dwelling.
His gaze swept over the windowsill, where he saw a wrench and a hammer tossed carelessly aside—traces of his attempts to escape the room over the past few days. Yet now, those hard, clumsy tools merely lay there in silence, as if mocking his predicament.
A few seconds later, Zhou Ming's expression became calm again—with an abnormal sort of calm, he lowered his head and resumed writing:
"I'm trapped. It's a complete dead end with no clues. Over the past few days, I even tried tearing apart the ceiling, walls, and floor, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't leave the slightest mark on the walls. This room has become like... like a box 'cast' together with space itself, with no way out...
"Except for that door.
"But what lies beyond that door... is even more wrong."
Zhou Ming stopped once more. He slowly examined the words he had just written, then absentmindedly flipped through the diary, looking over what he had left behind in the past few days—oppressive words, meaningless wild thoughts, irritated doodles, and bad jokes written to force himself to relax.
He did not know what meaning there was in writing these things, nor did he know who might read this nonsense in the future. In fact, he was not even someone who kept a diary—as a middle school teacher with rather limited free time, he did not have much energy to spare for such things.
But now, whether he wanted it or not, he had plenty of free time.
After waking from sleep, he had found himself trapped in his own room.
Outside the window was fog that would not disperse, so dense that he could not see anything beyond it. The world seemed to have lost its cycle of day and night. A constant, murky light filled the room twenty-four hours a day. The window was locked shut, the water and electricity were cut off, his phone had no signal, and no amount of noise he made inside could bring rescue from outside.
It was like an absurd nightmare, where everything operated in defiance of natural laws. But Zhou Ming had exhausted every possible method to confirm one thing: there was no illusion here, nor was this a dream. There was only a world that was no longer normal, and himself, who was still normal for the time being.
He took a deep breath and finally fixed his gaze on the only door at the far end of the room.
It was an ordinary, cheap white wooden door. A calendar he had forgotten to replace since last year still hung nailed to it. The doorknob had been polished bright from use, and the mat before the door sat slightly crooked.
That door could be opened.
If this sealed, altered room was a prison, then its cruelest feature was that it had retained a door that could be pushed open at any time, constantly tempting the prisoner within to leave—but what lay beyond it was not the "outside" Zhou Ming wanted.
There was no old yet familiar apartment hallway, no sunny streets and vibrant crowds, none of the things he knew.
There was only a strange, unsettling foreign land, and "over there" was also a predicament from which there was no escape.
But Zhou Ming knew he did not have much time left to hesitate. The so-called "choice" had never existed from the beginning.
His food supplies were limited, and the few barrels of bottled water had only a quarter left. He had already tried every possible means of escape and rescue in this sealed room. The only path before him now was to prepare himself and seek a sliver of survival on the other side of the Gate.
Perhaps he might even have a chance to investigate what had caused this bizarre, desperate supernatural situation.
Zhou Ming took a quiet breath and lowered his head to write the final passages in his diary: "...But no matter what, the only choice left now is to go to the other side of the Gate. At least there is food to be found on that strange ship, and the exploration and preparations I made over there in the past few days should be enough to keep me alive on that ship... though the preparations I could make over there were, in truth, extremely limited.
"Finally, to whoever comes after me: if I fail to return, and someday in the future some rescue worker or someone similar truly opens this room and finds this diary, please do not treat everything I have written as an absurd story—it really happened. As horrifying as it is, there really was a man named Zhou Ming who became trapped within a mad, bizarre temporal anomaly.
"I have done everything I could to describe the various abnormal phenomena I witnessed in this diary, and I have also recorded every effort I made to escape. If there truly is someone who comes after me, then please at least remember my name. At least remember that all of this once happened."
Zhou Ming closed the diary, tossed the pen into the penholder beside it, and slowly stood up from behind the desk.
It was time to leave, before he was completely driven into passivity and despair.
But after a brief moment of thought, he did not head straight for the only door leading to the "outside." Instead, he walked directly toward his bed.
He had to face the "foreign land" beyond the door in peak condition—and his current state, especially his mental state, was not good enough.
Zhou Ming did not know whether he could fall asleep, but even forcing himself to lie on the bed and empty his mind was better than heading "over there" in a state of extreme mental exhaustion.
Eight hours later, Zhou Ming opened his eyes.
Outside the window was still a chaos of mist, the dayless light bleak and oppressive.
Zhou Ming ignored the scene outside altogether. He took food from his dwindling supplies, ate until he was eighty percent full, then came before the full-length mirror in the corner of the room.
The man in the mirror still had messy hair and looked quite disheveled, with no particular air about him. Yet Zhou Ming continued to stare fixedly at his reflection, as if he wanted to permanently imprint that appearance into his mind.
He stared at the mirror for several minutes before speaking softly to himself, as though addressing the person in the mirror. "Your name is Zhou Ming. At least on 'this side,' your name is Zhou Ming. Never forget that."
Only then did he turn and leave.
Arriving before the all-too-familiar apartment door, Zhou Ming took a deep breath and placed his hand on the handle.
Aside from the clothes on his back, he carried nothing else. He brought neither food nor anything for self-defense. This was a lesson learned from his previous "explorations"—other than himself, he could not bring anything through this door.
In fact, he even felt that "himself" was questionable, because...
Zhou Ming turned the handle and pushed the door open. A mass of swelling, writhing gray-black fog appeared before him like some kind of curtain, and within that shifting mist, he seemed to hear the sound of waves reaching his ears.
Stepping through that layer of fog, a slightly fishy, salty sea breeze rushed toward him. The illusory sound of waves became real, and he felt a faint swaying beneath his feet. After a brief bout of dizziness, Zhou Ming opened his eyes to find a broad, empty wooden deck, towering masts standing beneath dark storm clouds, and a sea outside the railings that stretched beyond sight, gently rising and falling.
Zhou Ming lowered his head and saw a body stronger than the one he remembered, dressed in a captain's uniform that looked exquisitely made and expensive but was completely unfamiliar in style. He saw a pair of large, knobby hands, and an elegant black flintlock pistol with a classical design gripped in them.
Yes, even "himself" was questionable.
Holy crap! I'm back!