Endless thick fog rolled outside the window, so thick that it seemed as if the whole world had disappeared on the other side of the fog. Only the chaotic light from the sky penetrated the fog and shone into the house, maintaining a dim light in this quiet room.
In the slightly messy bachelor apartment, Zhou Ming was bent over his desk. The sundries on the table were roughly pushed aside, and he was writing furiously with a haggard look:
"On the seventh day, the situation remained unchanged. Thick fog enveloped everything outside the window, and the window was blocked by an unknown force... The entire room seemed to be 'cast' into some kind of abnormal space...
“There was no way to communicate with the outside world, no water or electricity, but the lights were still on and the computer was still on - even though I had unplugged its power cord…”
As if there was a slight sound of wind suddenly coming from the direction of the window, Zhou Ming, who was concentrating on writing in his diary, suddenly raised his head, and a faint light appeared in his haggard eyes. However, the next second he found that it was just his illusion. There was still only the lingering pale fog outside the window. A dead and silent world indifferently enveloped his small dwelling.
His eyes swept across the windowsill and saw the wrenches and hammers thrown away carelessly - those were the signs that he had tried to leave the room in the past few days. However, now these hard and rough tools just lay there quietly, as if mocking his predicament.
After a few seconds, Zhou Ming's expression became calm again. With this unusual calmness, he lowered his head again and returned to his writing:
"I'm trapped. I have no idea what to do. In the past few days, I've even tried to tear down the roof, walls, and floors, but I couldn't leave even a trace on the wall no matter how hard I tried. This room has become like... like a box 'cast' into space, with no way out...
“Except for that door.
"But what's outside that door is... even more wrong."
Zhou Ming stopped again. He slowly examined the handwriting he had just left, and flipped through the diary somewhat carelessly, looking at what he had left in the past few days - repressed words, meaningless fantasies, irritable doodles, and jokes written when he was forced to relax his mind.
He didn't know what the point of writing all this was, nor did he know who would see this nonsense in the future. In fact, he was not even in the habit of keeping a diary - as a middle school teacher with very limited free time, he didn't have much energy to spend on it.
But now, whether he likes it or not, he has a lot of free time.
After waking up, he was trapped in his room.
Outside the window there is thick fog that won't dissipate. It is so thick that you can't even see anything else except the fog. The whole world seems to have lost the alternation of day and night. The room is filled with constant, dim light twenty-four hours a day. The windows are locked, the water and electricity are cut off, and there is no cell phone signal. No matter how loud a noise you make in the room, it will not attract rescue from the outside world.
It was like an absurd nightmare, and everything in the dream was operating against the laws of nature, but Zhou Ming had tried every possible means to confirm one thing: there was no hallucination or dream here, only a world that was no longer normal, and a self that was still normal for the time being.
He took a deep breath, his eyes finally falling on the only door at the end of the room.
An ordinary, cheap white wooden door with a calendar nailed on it that I had forgotten to replace last year and had left until today. The door handle was polished to a shine and the door mat was placed a little crookedly.
That door can be opened.
If this closed and alienated room is like a cage, then the most vicious thing about this cage is that it actually retains a door that can be opened at any time, tempting the prisoners in the cage to push the door and leave at any time - but the other side of the door is not the "outside" that Zhou Ming wants.
There are no old yet familiar corridors, no sunny streets and vibrant crowds, and nothing that is familiar to him.
There is only a strange and unsettling foreign land, and “over there” is also an inescapable dilemma.
But Zhou Ming knew that he had little time left to hesitate, and the so-called "choice" had never existed from the beginning.
His food supplies were limited, and only a quarter of the barrels of mineral water were left. He had tried all means of escaping and seeking help in this closed room. Now there was only one way before him, which was to prepare himself and go to the other side of the "door" to seek a glimmer of life.
Perhaps, there will be a chance to investigate what exactly caused this strange and embarrassing supernatural situation.
Zhou Ming took a deep breath and lowered his head to write the last few paragraphs in his diary: "... But no matter what, the only option now is to go to the other side of the door. At least I can find some food on that strange ship, and my exploration and preparation over the past few days should be enough for me to survive on that ship... Although the preparations I can make there are actually limited.
“Finally, to those who come after me, if I fail to come back, and some rescuer or someone like that really opens this room and sees this diary one day in the future, please do not regard everything I wrote as an absurd story—it really happened. Although it is creepy, there really is a person named Zhou Ming who is trapped in a crazy and weird space-time anomaly.
"I have tried my best to describe in this diary all the abnormal phenomena I have seen, and also recorded all the efforts I have made to escape. If there are really any 'latecomers', please at least remember my name, at least remember that all this has happened."
Zhou Ming closed his diary, threw the pen into the pen holder next to him, and slowly stood up from behind the table.
It's time to leave, before we become completely passive and desperate.
But after a brief thought, he did not go directly to the door that was the only way to the "outside world", but went straight to his bed.
He had to face the "foreign land" on the other side of the door with a perfect attitude - but his current state, especially his mental state, was not good enough.
Zhou Ming didn’t know if he could fall asleep, but even if he forced himself to lie on the bed and empty his mind, it was better than going to the “opposite side” in a state of mental exhaustion.
Eight hours later, Zhou Ming opened his eyes.
There was still a chaotic fog outside the window, and the sky was dark and oppressive regardless of day or night.
Zhou Ming simply ignored the situation outside the window. He took out food from his limited reserves, ate until he was 80% full, and then went to the dressing mirror in the corner of the room.
The man in the mirror still had messy hair and looked quite dishevelled, with no temperament at all, but Zhou Ming still stared at himself in the mirror, as if he wanted to imprint this look in his mind permanently.
He stared at the mirror for several minutes, then whispered to himself, as if speaking to the person in the mirror: "Your name is Zhou Ming. At least here, your name is Zhou Ming. You must always remember this."
Only after that did he turn and leave.
Coming to the all-too-familiar door, Zhou Ming took a deep breath and placed his hand on the handle.
Apart from the clothes he wore, he didn't carry anything extra, neither food nor self-defense equipment. This was the experience he gained from several previous "explorations" - he couldn't bring anything through the door except himself.
In fact, he even felt that even this "self" should be questioned, because...
Zhou Ming turned the handle and pushed open the door. A mass of expanding and shrinking gray-black mist appeared before his eyes like some kind of curtain. In the expanding and shrinking mist, he seemed to hear the sound of waves coming into his ears.
Stepping through the layer of fog, a slightly fishy and salty sea breeze blew towards him. The illusory sound of waves in his ears became real, and he felt a slight shaking under his feet. Zhou Ming opened his eyes after a brief dizziness, and what he saw was a wide and empty wooden deck, tall masts standing under dark clouds, and the slightly undulating sea surface with no visible edge outside the ship's side.
Zhou Ming lowered his head and saw a body that was stronger than he remembered, a captain's uniform that looked exquisitely made and expensive but of a completely unfamiliar style, a pair of bony hands, and a black flintlock pistol that looked classic and exquisite in his hand.
Yes, even “itself” needs to be questioned.
(Oh my god! I’m back!)