This Translation is hosted on https://bcatranslation.com/
The boundless fog rolled thickly outside the window to the point where the outside world seemed to disappear from the other side, leaving only the chaotic, unclear light that somehow managed to penetrate into this house. Itās through this dimness that light got maintained in this eerie silence.
In the slightly messy single apartment, Zhou Ming was lying at his desk with a long pile of debris sprawled across the surface. His condition could only be described as haggard while he wrote in his diary book:
āNothingās changed on the seventh day, and a thick fog had enveloped the outside. I do not know how, but an unknown force locked the window and deprived me of prying it open. The whole room seemed to have been ācastā into an isolated space by somethingā¦.ā
āI canāt contact the outside world either. The electricity got cut off since the beginning, along with the water tap that didnāt flow. Strangely, the lights worked, and the computer kept running ā I ripped the cord out of the wall to seeā¦.ā
As if a slight breeze suddenly blew in from the window, Zhou Ming jerked up from his act of burying into the diary and looked up with those haggard eyes. Unfortunately, the noise was nothing more than his own illusion. There was no change, only the never-ending movement of the lingering fog outside the window and the eerie silence of his isolated dwelling in the apartment.
Then his sight fell upon the windowsill where he had left the wrenches and hammers ā there are still traces of his attempts in the last seven days to pry open the glass. But now, these tools are nothing more than mocking evidence of failure.
After a few seconds, Zhou Mingās expression became calm againāwith this unusual calmness, he lowered his head again and returned to his writing:
āI am trapped with no clue how to escape. I even thought of tearing apart the roof and walls in the past few days. But after expending all my strength and ideas, I couldnāt make so much as a dent in these walls. Itās as if the walls were a box, and Iām the mouse trapped inside this box with no way outā¦.ā
āThe exception being that door.ā
āBut the situation outside that doorā¦ itās even more wrong.ā
Zhou Ming stopped again, slowly examining the handwriting he had left behind on the page before flipping back to the content he had written days ago. These were heavy and suppressed words, meaningless thoughts, irritable graffiti, and awkward jokes written when he forcibly relaxed his mind to avoid going insane.
He didnāt know the point of writing down these thoughts. In fact, heās never been a habitual diary keeper ā as a middle school teacher, heās limited in leisure time, so he would rather spend his energy elsewhere when possible.
But now, whether he liked it or not, he had a lot of leisure time after finding himself trapped inside the apartment room.
It was like an absurd nightmare. Everything in the dream was operating against the laws of nature. Still, one thingās certain after Zhou Ming exhausted all his means: these were no hallucinations nor dreams, but a world thatās no longer normal with him being the only normal thing here.
After taking a deep breath, his eyes finally landed on the only door at the end of the room.
Made of a ordinary cheap softwood coated with a thin layer of white pain, the door handles were polished from years of use and slightly crooked from age. This was the only thing that could be opened, the only way out of here.
If this enclosed alienated room was like a cage, then the most vicious thing about this cage was that it retained a door that could be pushed open at any time, luring the prisoner towards a particular predetermined path. But this āoutsideā wasnāt somewhere Zhou Ming wanted to be.
There are no old but intimate corridors, no sunny streets and vibrant crowds, and nothing familiar to oneself. Instead, thereās only a strange and disturbing exotic land mixed in with an inescapable dilemma awaiting him āover there.ā
But Zhou Ming knew that time was running out for himself, and the so-called āchoiceā never existed from the very beginning.
Simply said, heās running out of food rations with the last of the bottled water mostly drained. If he doesnāt head over to the other side of that ādoor,ā then even the last glimmer of hope would be gone.
Perhaps itās not so bad. The answer to this supernatural phenomenon might be over there as well if he looked hard enough.
Zhou Ming took a light breath before lowering his head again to write the last few paragraphs in the diary:
āā¦ But regardless, the only option now is to go across the door. At least there is some food to eat on that weird ship, and my exploration and preparations in the last few days are enough to let me survive on that shipā¦. Though limited, itās still better than nothing.ā
āFinally, to the latecomers, if I donāt come back, and someone like a rescue worker in the future really opens this room and sees this diary, please donāt take all that I have written here as an absurd storyāit really happened. Although it sounds all too spooky and surreal, there really was a man named Zhou Ming that got trapped inside this crazy and isolated space in time.ā
āI did my best in this diary to describe the anomalies I saw, and I recorded all the efforts I made to get out of here. If there are any ālatecomersā, please at least remember my name, at least remember all this that has happened.ā
Zhou Ming closed the diary, threw away the pen into the holder, and slowly stood up from the messy desk.
Itās time to leave, before he falls into utter desperation and passivity.
But after a short thought, instead of going straight to the only door that led to the āoutside world,ā he went straight to his bed.
Confronting that strange world behind the door required the best of him ā and the current mental state he was in was in no way good enough.
Zhou Ming didnāt know if he could fall asleep, but even if he forced himself to lie in bed and emptied his brain, it was better than going to the āopposite sideā in a state of mental exhaustion.
Eight hours later, Zhou Ming opened his eyes again.
Outside the window, there was still that chaotic fog, and the day and night skylight carried a spooky air of oppressiveness.
Zhou Ming directly ignored the situation outside the window. Taking out the last of his remaining rations, he ate everything within eight minutes and then came before a dressing mirror in the corner of the room.
The man in the mirror still had messy hair, a haggard face, and no temperament to speak of. Nevertheless, Zhou Ming didnāt look away because he wanted to imprint this image into his own head.
After a long and eternal few minutes, he murmurs to the self-reflection: āYour name is Zhou Ming, at least on this āside,ā your name is Zhou Ming. Always keep this in mind and never forget this.ā
After that, he turned and left.
Coming to the door that was all too familiar, Zhou Ming took in a deep breath and placed his hand on the door handle.
He didnāt carry anything extra on him, neither food nor self-defense gear aside from the experience he gained from the previous āexplorationsā ā the reason being he couldnāt bring anything even if he wanted to. The door wouldnāt allow it.
With a twist and audible click, he pushed open the door and revealed the black squirming mist behind the wooden barrier. Itās a curtain of blackish-gray, contracting and retracting like a living creature. Regardless of how he thought of the fog, battering waves could already be heard in his ears, followed closely by the salty scent of the ocean as he walked past the safety threshold of his room.
Whatever brief momentary dizziness he had dissipated under the shaking from his feet. Heās currently standing on an expansive wooden deck devoid of company and a towering sailing mast looming under those dark stormy clouds. Itās the open ocean, but the water was dark and undulating with no end in sight.
Looking down to examine his new body on this āside,ā Zhou Ming found it to be buffer than what he last recalled. Though bony like a skeleton, itās a suitable match for the exquisite captainās uniform that he had on, as well as the black flintlock pistol of classical design hanging from his waist. But what he wore didnāt matter, the main concern was himself. Was this really the āhimā that he knew?