Too Introverted to Talk to Mom and Dad

Mud from his soles lingered on the floor. Qi Yan shut the security door and locked it.

His hands hidden beneath his raincoat, Qi Yan dug hard at his nails. His breathing grew heavy. The media called him the Rainy Night Killer, and he was very pleased with that title: cruel, deranged, and full of terror.

How should I thank him for taking me in?

His eyes almost completely bloodshot, Qi Yan stared at Gao Ming's back. He loved hunting kind people. He loved crushing beautiful things, then stomping on them a few more times.

For him to be so kind, he must have a very happy family. His mom and dad must have protected him well. A flower raised in a greenhouse like him has no idea how vile people can be.

Without taking down his raincoat's hood, Qi Yan twisted his face as he considered how to torture Gao Ming.

"You must be starving." Gao Ming brought out the food he had laced, then poured a glass of water. "It's my birthday today, so I happened to make extra food. Would you like a slice of cake?"

The cake on the table had been brought by Ghost Dad and Ghost Mom. Gao Ming felt good things should be shared.

"No, thanks." Qi Yan did not touch anything on the table, perhaps afraid of leaving traces. "It sounds like someone's calling you from the bedroom?"

"My parents are home too." A bitter smile appeared on Gao Ming's face. "They aren't in good health. They've been staying in the bedroom and can't move."

"They keep calling you. Don't you need to check on them?" In Qi Yan's mind, Gao Ming was already a dead man. "Why don't we go say hello to your mom and dad?"

"I'm pretty introverted. I don't really dare talk to them." Gao Ming sighed softly and limped toward the bedroom. "They're sick. Their symptoms are a little strange, and they need quiet rest."

Qi Yan had also heard the voices coming from the bedroom. He followed Gao Ming to the bedroom door, where the light began to distort and the temperature was much lower than in the living room.

Taking hold of the handle, Gao Ming opened the bedroom door and stepped back at the same time.

With a hint of curiosity, Qi Yan looked into the bedroom.

The shadows in the bedroom were receding. Half the room held a hazy light; the other half was thick darkness.

Where light and darkness intertwined, there were terrifying, chilling faces and twisted bodies tangled together! At the sight of Gao Ming, the monsters masquerading as moms and dads went berserk again, dragging one another as they charged toward the bedroom door!

The scene was so horrifying that it defied comprehension, leaving Qi Yan feeling suffocated. He had thought there would be two bedridden elderly people inside!

He instinctively dodged backward, but when he turned his head, he saw Gao Ming raising a heavy vase. He vaguely remembered the man saying just a moment ago that he was very introverted.

Crash!

Porcelain shards flew everywhere, and blood stained Qi Yan's cheeks. He felt the world spin. As his body collapsed, that "kind" man even very "considerately" forced a glass of "water" down his throat.

The entire sequence flowed without a pause, as though he had rehearsed it countless times.

"You could have had painless chemical incapacitation, but you insisted on choosing physical incapacitation." Gao Ming crouched beside Qi Yan. "Don't be scared. You'll lose consciousness in a moment, and you won't feel any pain."

After hearing Gao Ming's words, Qi Yan's eyes grew even more terrified. He had no idea what Gao Ming would do to him.

His gaze drifted across the room full of bound and restrained "parents," then returned to the calm Gao Ming. In that instant, his terror reached its limit.

Just what kind of madman was this?

Deception, control, conquest, gratification, revenge, greed—he possessed every trait shared by psychopathic killers. Cold and complex, cunning and dangerous, even his methods and the process of his crimes bore intensely twisted characteristics!

"Why do I feel like you're cursing me with your eyes?"

Gao Ming pressed down on Qi Yan's back, grabbed his hair, and lifted his head so he could look straight into the bedroom. "Before the drugs kick in, I want to ask you something. Can you see the people in the bedroom?"

Qi Yan's eyes were full of terror. He could no longer answer. Excruciating pain radiated from his head, his mind had suffered an enormous shock, and the drugs were slowly starting to take effect.

He was like someone who had just crossed the Bridge of Helplessness and drunk half of Granny Meng's soup, only to suddenly take a vicious blow to the head—caught between dying and not yet dead, forgetting and not yet having forgotten.

"Judging by your reaction, you probably can." Gao Ming bound Qi Yan's hands and feet. "There's nothing wrong with my mind. The game really has become reality in some unusual form."

The shadows inside the bedroom were dissipating faster. The Ghost Dads and Ghost Moms howled as they merged into the darkness. They seemed not to belong to the real world at all, having only escaped for some reason when the two worlds overlapped.

Gao Ming could clearly feel the temperature rising, and breathing became easier. "My game seems to have become a medium, connecting reality to wherever Ghost Mom is. Once the game is cleared, everything should return to normal. But if I just leave it alone, will those urban legends keep spreading? Until they become completely intertwined with reality and can never be separated again?"

Normal light had already filled four-fifths of the bedroom. After the Ghost Moms and Ghost Dads had been compressed and merged to a certain point, one Ghost Mom suddenly broke free of her restraints!

The doting affection in her eyes was almost pathological. Dragging all the shadows with her, she lunged at Gao Ming!

Caught off guard, Gao Ming turned and ran, but Qi Yan behind him was not so lucky.

In the final moment before she dissipated, Ghost Mom dragged Qi Yan into those shadows. An agonized scream rang out. It seemed that Ghost Mom had taken something from him.

At 4:44 a.m., the bedroom returned completely to normal. Gao Ming entered with a mop. It was as though the Ghost Dads and Ghost Moms had never appeared. The cake and candles they had brought were gone too. Only Qi Yan remained, lying rigidly on the floor.

His eyes were vacant, as though his soul had been drained away, leaving him in a vegetative state.

Where Ghost Mom had finally disappeared, Gao Ming also found two deeply frightening black-and-white photographs. "Could these be the rewards for clearing the game?"

The photographs were very worn, made from some unknown material. They looked as though they had been taken many years ago.

One showed Gao Ming sitting at the dining table eating cake, with Ghost Dads and Ghost Moms packed densely around him. A photo of one person had somehow turned into a group portrait.

Notably, the cake, furniture, and numerous parents in the photograph were all black and white. Only Gao Ming himself was in color.

He turned the photograph over. Some very strange words were scrawled crookedly on the back.

"To my dear child: at eighteen, you are now an adult. From today onward, you are the new parent, and you will possess the key that opens the door to our home."

"Our home lies between existence and nonexistence, hidden in the deepest recesses of nightmares, close to reality's most absurd edge. It is far away from you, yet connected to the darkest part of every heart."

"As the parent, you may choose to help every family member and give them equal love. You may also treat them as tools, or even choose to torment them in more depraved ways."

"You have complete freedom, and what we need you to do is simple: get more people to play the games after nightfall. The various energies that seep from them can feed certain things spoken of in rumors."

The writing on the back of the photograph looked like a child's careless scrawl. It was a jumble, stained with blood, and uncomfortable to look at.

"A parent?"

Picking up the second black-and-white photograph, Gao Ming frowned slightly. Its front showed Qi Yan's face, scared witless. It looked like his memorial portrait, and the back likewise bore some strange words.

"A family member's photograph: only those with a deep fixation on reality, those on the verge of death, those desperately seeking death, those trapped in nightmares, those with deranged minds, and those burdened with grave sins can find and enter our home to become our family. We are the stop closest to death. Our existence gives them a second choice besides dying."

"However, the vast majority of those who come here deeply regret not choosing death outright."

(End of chapter)