True Darkness

When Huang Si woke up, his vision was pitch black; he could see nothing at all.

He felt around his body and realized he was lying on the floor.

He reached out to his left and touched a rod-like object. Feeling further up, he realized it was his own wooden chair.

Huang Si used the chair to pull himself up; since he truly couldn't see a thing, he felt like he might easily trip.

Did the power go out at home? Huang Si wondered.

Even if the power were out, it shouldn't be this dark; not even a sliver of light was coming in from outside the window.

Huang Si looked toward where the window should be in his memory, but he still saw nothing. This didn't match the light pollution common in the city.

Could it already be night? Was there a massive power outage across the entire city?

Forget it, he should find his phone to get some light.

Huang Si remembered that before he lost consciousness, his phone had been on the table charging.

He walked a few steps, following his memory of the layout.

Fortunately, it was his own home, and he was familiar with everything. It didn't take long for Huang Si to reach the bedroom and find his phone on the table.

Huang Si placed his finger on the fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone. The device clicked, and the screen lit up.

A faint glow illuminated Huang Si's face and the small space around him. He held the phone up and swept it around the room; the bedroom looked the same as always, with nothing out of the ordinary.

He shone the phone toward the window, but even though the window was closed, there was still no light outside.

"What bad luck, a power outage in the middle of the night, and I'm not even the least bit sleepy."

Huang Si checked his battery level: 97%.

He hadn't bought the phone long ago, so the battery was still quite reliable. This charge should last him a few more hours.

However, it seemed there was no network signal at all.

Huang Si toggled airplane mode on and off, but there was still no signal.

Did the telecom base stations lose power too? Huang Si thought, unable to come to any other conclusion.

Could it really be a city-wide blackout? That was rare. Huang Si was already 25, and he had only seen a city-wide outage once when he was very young. He hadn't seen one since growing up.

"Why couldn't it have happened during work hours?" Huang Si muttered as he lay down on the bed. "If it really is a city-wide outage, I hope it's still out tomorrow so I don't have to go to the office."

Huang Si had graduated with a degree in computer science, and after graduation, his parents helped him secure a permanent position at a public institution, where he worked in technical maintenance for the network department. If the power were truly out for the whole day, he could certainly enjoy some leisure time.

Without the internet, his phone became boring. The games Huang Si played all required a connection; now that the net was gone, he couldn't clear his stamina or collect his daily rewards, and the phone lost its appeal.

Lying on the bed, Huang Si thought for a moment and decided to go for a stroll.

"Mom is always nagging me about not getting enough exercise. Maybe I should take a walk while the power is out."

He followed the light of his phone to the front door, found his casual shoes, and put them on. Huang Si stuffed his keys into his pocket, opened the door, and stepped out.

However, just as Huang Si took half a step outside, the faint light from his phone screen revealed a terrifying phenomenon.

"Ah!!!!!"

With a scream, Huang Si recoiled violently. Because his movement was too abrupt, he lost his balance and fell onto the floor.

Sitting on the ground, Huang Si gasped for air. The first thing he did when he regained his composure was look at his left foot.

His left foot was still perfectly fine inside his shoe, showing no abnormalities.

Huang Si looked back at the pitch-black doorway. There was still no light outside.

Did I see wrong?

Was it an illusion caused by the dim light of the phone?

He had clearly seen his left foot vanish right at the edge of the door!

It was as if it had been swallowed by the darkness outside...

Yet, after his frantic retreat, his foot looked perfectly fine, and he hadn't felt a shred of pain during the entire ordeal.

Was it really just an illusion?

Huang Si climbed up from the floor and tested his left foot; it felt solid, with no issues.

He walked slowly toward the doorway, then, suddenly remembering something, he picked up an umbrella from the shoe rack.

Huang Si was still afraid and didn't dare to test it with his own body again. He extended the handle of the folding umbrella and, holding it out, pushed it toward the dark doorway.

In Huang Si's horrified sight, the tip of the umbrella vanished as if sliced off by a blade.

No, rather than vanishing, it was as if it had completely submerged into the darkness outside, as if being devoured.

Huang Si quickly pulled the umbrella back.

Just like emerging from underwater, the tip of the umbrella that had disappeared reappeared.

Finally, a perfectly intact umbrella stood before Huang Si.

Clatter. The umbrella fell from his hand onto the floor.

"What is outside the door..." Huang Si looked toward the main entrance, his heart pounding. He felt fear, but also a strange, inexplicable sense of anticipation.

Growing up as a science student, Huang Si had always been intimately familiar with the reality of this world.

Science could explain everything; if it couldn't, then science simply wasn't perfect yet and required a revision of its theorems.

Yet, everything before his eyes was something he had no way of explaining through conventional science.

Huang Si closed the door and returned to his room.

Guided by the faint glow of his phone, he quickly felt his way to the balcony. His apartment featured an enclosed balcony—a standard for almost all modern residential complexes. However, outside the balcony windows, there was only darkness.

On the balcony, Huang Si found a laundry pole.

He took the pole to the front door, opened it once more, and carefully poked the pole out into the void.

Huang Si thrust the laundry pole diagonally downward.

There was no sensation of contact. Even when only the base of the pole remained in his hand, he felt as though he hadn't touched a single thing.

Although Huang Si lived on the fifth floor, where had the "hallway floor" outside the door gone?

Below the threshold, there was nothing.

He pulled the pole back and extended it forward again.

If his memory served him correctly, he should have been able to strike the stairwell railing by now.

He waved the pole around a few times, but Huang Si still didn't touch anything.

The space outside the door was empty.

Huang Si retracted the pole and shut the door.

The interior of his home remained normal, save for the lack of light and electricity. But the exterior seemed to have been completely isolated, left only with endless, infinite darkness.

The reason Huang Si had tested the door instead of the window was that he knew if there were anything outside, even if it were invisible, he would at least be able to touch it.

But now, it seemed as if the stairwell and the ground outside had vanished entirely.

Could it be that the laundry pole dissolved the moment it entered the darkness, making it impossible to touch objects?

But he had accidentally stuck his left foot into the darkness earlier; although the part of his foot that entered the dark was invisible, he hadn't felt anything unusual.

Normally, if a part of one's foot disappeared, it should at least be agonizingly painful, right?

After a moment of thought, Huang Si opened the door again. He tested the air with the pole first, then carefully reached out, tracing his fingers along the length of the pole.

His fingers gradually moved into the darkness along the pole. A portion of his fingertips vanished into the void, becoming invisible.

However, there was sensation.

Huang Si's index finger touched the invisible laundry pole within the invisible darkness. Both his finger and the pole must have existed together in the darkness outside; they were simply unseen.

Huang Si pulled his hand back and closed the door.

So, had everything outside the door simply ceased to exist?

Or was it that he, along with his house, had vanished from the original world?

This terrifying, sci-fi-esque scenario was unfolding vividly before Huang Si's eyes.

It felt surreal.

Huang Si pinched himself. It hurt; he wasn't dreaming.

He turned off his phone screen and sat down on the sofa by the door.

Huang Si rubbed his temples, trying to calm himself down and think through what was actually happening.

Everything before him was permeated with a sense of the surreal.

However, the fact that there was nothing outside the door actually made Huang Si feel slightly less endangered.

Since there was nothing out there, there couldn't be anything dangerous, either. At the very least, as long as he kept the door closed, he was safe inside his home.

He sat on the sofa and reminisced. Right, before he fell into this darkness, what had happened?

Only then did Huang Si recall that something truly abnormal had occurred, and it was that very event that had caused him to lose consciousness. When he woke up, he found his home plunged into darkness.

Today was July 17th. Because Huang Si worked for a public institution, he had finished his shift at 5:00 PM. Since he lived nearby, he usually walked home.

After eating dinner at the office cafeteria, he was a man who lived alone—once he was full, his whole family was satisfied.

Huang Si walked with a leisurely pace, thinking about the game he had been playing recently as he headed home.

Huang Si was the type of person who didn't usually interact with others. Every day, he thought only of getting off work early to go home, and once home, he would play games, read books, or watch videos. To put it nicely, he was a homebody; to put it bluntly, he was disconnected from society.

He didn't usually pay attention to whether there were acquaintances around when he walked. For one, his personality wasn't one to greet people, and for another, his mind was usually occupied with other things, leaving him no time to notice others.

But today, halfway home, Huang Si suddenly heard someone call his name.

The voice was unfamiliar, and even quite faint.

Huang Si turned his head to look, then scanned his surroundings, but he didn't see anyone looking at him.

Did he mishear? Huang Si continued walking.

However, that voice calling him grew stronger with every repetition, clinging to him relentlessly as if it were trying to summon his soul.

Huang Si looked around but still couldn't find anyone; however, by tracking the sound, he quickly walked toward the riverbank at the side of the road.

The voice seemed to be coming from here. Was someone hiding in the bushes by this small ditch, playing a prank on him?

Huang Si pushed aside the bushes and looked toward the source of the sound, but there was no one there.

It was strange, but Huang Si did notice a book lying on the ground.

Huang Si was a person who loved to read and couldn't stand to see books being mistreated. He glanced at the cover, which appeared to be made of leather and wasn't dirty, so he reached out and picked it up.

Next, Huang Si opened the book.

"Is this a notebook?"

Huang Si flipped through the pages, only to find they were all blank.

There was no writing on the cover and the inside was all blank paper; was this one of those popular planners?

The paper quality of this notebook was excellent, feeling smooth and white to the touch, and the leather cover looked quite high-end, even possessing the feel of genuine leather.

Lucky, a free notebook, Huang Si thought.

And so, he took it home.

Huang Si was not short on money, nor was he the type to pick up random things off the street, but when he saw that notebook, he felt an inexplicable sense of joy, as if it were something familiar, so he had unconsciously brought it home.

After arriving home, Huang Si placed the notebook on the living room table and prepared to go to the kitchen to brew a cup of hot tea, intending to take it to his bedroom later and play games for the rest of the night.

However, the moment he turned around, a sharp pain suddenly pierced his head, as if he had been stabbed hard by something.

Following that, he passed out from the pain.

When he woke up, he was already in this completely dark house.

Huang Si had been so shocked by the abnormal situation in his home upon waking that it was only now that he recalled his previous encounter.