The Building

He had created the monster, and he had stayed by her side until the final moment arrived.

He hoped that when that final moment truly came, he would have a chance to say goodbye to her.

I'm sorry, Su Xia.

Goodbye, Su Xia.

Shao Lan opened his eyes.

The halo of light before him vanished, and everything in the room vanished with it.

The mourning hall, the mantel clock, the fish tank, the man and woman, the sirens and the rain-all of it was like a dream they had just shared.

The three of them stood in the doorway of an empty room.

Jiang Mingran looked around and suddenly exclaimed, "This isn't the hallway from before!"

Shao Lan narrowed his eyes.

Indeed, the hallway's layout had completely changed. The stairs and rooms had all disappeared, and the only path led to an elevator.

With a ding, the elevator doors opened. It sat there empty, as though waiting for the three of them to enter.

Jiang Mingran studied the eerie elevator, his face paling. "Bro, what do we do now? Get in?"

Shao Lan walked toward the elevator. "It's the only way forward. Let's get in."

The three of them entered the elevator, and all froze for a moment.

There were no buttons in this elevator, no display, nothing at all. It was like a plain iron box.

"This doesn't seem right, does it?" Jiang Mingran's eyes flickered. He hesitated, wanting to leave, but the elevator doors had already closed.

Cold white light fell across their faces, making all three look deathly pale.

The elevator rumbled, as though it had started moving.

After an indeterminate amount of time, the rumbling stopped. The elevator had reached its destination.

The two gray metal doors slid apart, revealing a young woman in business attire standing before them.

"Congratulations on passing the assessment and becoming owners in [Happiness Residential Community Building 7]."

The woman wore a dark blue work uniform, with a name badge pinned to her chest that read "Property Management."

"Mr. Shao Lan, Mr. Jiang Mingran, Mr. Zheng Bingfeng." The property manager smiled sweetly. "Your room numbers are 802, 803, and 804, respectively."

"All three owners successfully survived [Assessment Instance: Night of the Cannibal]. On behalf of Property Management, I hereby award each of you a bonus of 500 yuan."

Shao Lan asked, "How do you know our names?"

The property manager looked at Shao Lan with a smile.

Jiang Mingran grew impatient. "Shao Lan asked you a question. Who are you, why do you know our names, and what exactly is this place?"

Still smiling, the property manager spoke again. "Congratulations on passing the assessment. Mr. Shao Lan, Mr. Jiang Mingran, Mr. Zheng Bingfeng. Your room numbers are..."

She did not answer Shao Lan or Jiang Mingran's questions. She merely repeated her welcome speech.

"Don't you understand what we're saying?" Jiang Mingran was furious now. Had she been a man, he probably would have punched her already. "Stop playing dumb. I'll ask you one more time..."

As Jiang Mingran advanced on her aggressively, the property manager's smile remained unchanged. Even the curve of her lips did not shift in the slightest.

"It's no use." Shao Lan held Jiang Mingran back. "She won't answer you."

Shao Lan studied the property manager before him. She looked twenty-five or twenty-six and seemed no different from a real person, but a closer look revealed something eerie about her.

She was like a preprogrammed NPC, capable only of repeating herself.

Pancake Uncle said anxiously, "I don't live in your community. I need to go home! My granddaughter will be worried if she wakes up and doesn't see me!"

He turned to take the elevator downstairs, then remembered that it had no buttons and he couldn't make it go to the first floor. Panicking, Pancake Uncle dragged his bad leg around the hallway, looking everywhere and muttering, "Where can I get downstairs...?"

Pancake Uncle's question seemed to trigger some mechanism in the property manager, and she immediately came to his side.

"Hello, owner Zheng Bingfeng. Would you like to go to another floor?"

The property manager pointed ahead. "Ten meters in front of you is this building's [Emergency Stairwell].

"The [Emergency Stairwell] contains stairs connecting every building. Owners may walk to their desired floor."

"Please take special note: do not use the [Elevator] in this situation. Otherwise, we accept no responsibility for the consequences."

In short, they could only take the stairs to other floors, not the elevator.

The stairs it was, then. Anything would do as long as he could get out quickly. Before the property manager could say anything else, Pancake Uncle was already dragging his unsteady legs toward the stairwell.

He was frantic, nearly tripping himself several times.

Being a helpful college student, Jiang Mingran hurried after him. "Pancake Uncle, let me help you."

According to the property manager, they were currently on the eighth floor. Walking down shouldn't take too long.

Pancake Uncle was short and walked slowly, so Jiang Mingran simply hoisted him onto his back.

"Bro, aren't you coming with us?"

Jiang Mingran glanced back and found Shao Lan still standing where he had been.

After a moment's thought, Shao Lan turned to the property manager. "Can I check in later?"

This question seemed to fall within the property manager's range of responses. She immediately nodded politely. "Of course. I'll wait here, ready to assist you at any time."

Hearing this, Shao Lan turned and followed Jiang Mingran.

Jiang Mingran was puzzled. "Bro, why did you ask her that? You don't actually want to live in this bizarre place, do you?"

Shao Lan shook his head. "No. I'm just in the habit of leaving myself a fallback."

The three of them entered the emergency stairwell together. It resembled an old tenement building, with a faint musty smell. Perhaps the bulb was about to die; it gave off only a pitiful amount of dim yellow light, barely enough to illuminate the steps beneath their feet.

With Pancake Uncle on Jiang Mingran's back, he and Shao Lan quickly descended to the first floor.

When they saw what lay before them, all three froze.

The first floor was spacious and empty, with some trash scattered across the ground.

There were no doors and no windows. Only walls on all four sides.

The walls were white underneath, but covered in dark brown stains, filthy beyond recognition.

At regular intervals along the walls were black squares, each about the size of a small child's palm.

"No doors..." Pancake Uncle muttered, his face deathly pale. "How can the first floor have no doors...?"

Every building ought to have an entrance on the first floor, shouldn't it?

Yet this building had none at all.

No doors meant they had no way to leave.

"Could we have gone the wrong way?" Pancake Uncle muttered. "Is this really the first floor?"

They retreated into the emergency stairwell. The red sign above them was indeed a large Arabic numeral: "1."

"Maybe this is the first basement level..." Pancake Uncle muttered, unwilling to give up.

But he, too, knew that was impossible. They had counted the floors on their way down. This was indeed the first floor.

"Maybe the exit is on the second floor?" Jiang Mingran tried to give himself a sliver of hope. "Either way, let's go up and look."

Jiang Mingran hoisted Pancake Uncle onto his back and was about to head upstairs when he noticed Shao Lan standing close to the black squares, examining something.

His expression looked grim.

"What's wrong, bro...?"

"These are windows," Shao Lan said quietly. "These squares are tiny windows."

Startled, Jiang Mingran and Pancake Uncle hurried over to look.

The light was so dim that they had initially assumed the squares were patterns on the walls.

Only up close could they see that these were indeed individual holes leading outside.

But through the holes, all they could see was pure, unbroken blackness.

It was like a dark night without a single source of light.

Jiang Mingran reached out, but the "window" was only the size of a young child's palm. His arm clearly wouldn't fit through.

"If we break this window open, could we get out?"

Jiang Mingran knew this was wishful thinking, but after a sleepless night and the torment of a monster, he was already beginning to feel as if he might go mad.

He searched through the trash on the floor and actually found a screwdriver.

Although breaking through such a thick wall with a screwdriver was clearly unrealistic, Jiang Mingran still pushed it into the tiny window and jabbed hard at the edges.

The wall did not budge, but Jiang Mingran's expression suddenly changed.

He felt the screwdriver in his hand... suddenly become a little lighter.

Jiang Mingran yanked the screwdriver back. In an instant, all three faces turned deathly pale.

Every part of the screwdriver that had extended beyond the window had disappeared. Only the handle remained in Jiang Mingran's hand.

"How... how could this happen...?" Jiang Mingran muttered.

His expression cold, Shao Lan picked up a small stone from the floor and tossed it outside through the window.

All three held their breath. Their surroundings were frighteningly silent.

They never heard it land.

Shao Lan's expression grew grimmer and grimmer.

He had expected this place to be eerie, but what he was seeing still far exceeded his expectations.

"Even if we find a door, I don't think we can get out anymore..." Shao Lan said gravely. "Anything that leaves this building ceases to exist."