Wu Yiliu lay on the couch, listening to the faint breathing of his companions in the room, his palms slick with cold sweat. It was as if he was held down by so force, unable to move or speak.
The face looked like Cuining's, yet it was not.
He was all too familiar with that look. The original features still belonged to Cuining, but the entire face seed like soft wax heated up. He couldn't pinpoint where it had beco misshapen and distorted; it seed like if he were to reach out and touch it, the waxy face would slowly slip off the bones.
Abby had already groped her way into the room in the dark, sothing that looked like Cuining closely following behind, and she had not noticed anything out of the ordinary. He held his breath for a while after they both entered the room, but other than the rustling of the bed covers, he didn't hear a scream.
If that really wasn't Cuining, how could Abby not have noticed sothing was wrong?
By now, the posthuman's eyes had adjusted to the darkness; she had ample opportunity to face that thing as they both went into the room and climbed into bed. Abby should have realized by now that it wasn't Cuining, right?
Since she was so calm, there was only one explanation, and it was the one he least wanted to think about.
Wu Yiliu exhaled as quietly as possible, feeling heat at the corner of his eyes. He wanted to curl up, he wanted to run from this pocket dinsion, he wanted to hide in a place where nobody was around. To hell with the pocket dinsion test. He had been running for so many years; no matter how lonely and difficult it beca, he had always maintained a distance from others. Had he still not escaped after all?
Compared to other post-apocalyptic worlds, this made no sense. He had left that place, how could he still...
When Abby went into the room, he almost shouted but managed to swallow the warning. Yes, what was following Abby might be the unwelco creature warned of in the pocket dinsion, but there was a bigger, worse possibility. What was wrong might not be Cuining but himself.
Wu Yiliu lay in the deep darkness of the night, knowing that no one was asleep. The other three would never imagine that the seemingly most reliable, best-reputed mber of this mission was standing on the edge of doubt and fear, at risk of falling with no hope of rescue. The faint breathing of everyone ford a weak, muddled warmth that dissipated upon eting the cool, icy night.
Pale light from the window shone in, falling on the wall clock. The black hands moved one tick at a ti in the dimly lit face. A stretch of moonlight fell on the floor in front of the fireplace, shadows of branches gently swaying in the white glow.
He steadied his breath, forcing himself to calm down a bit. Nightmares from his birthplace had weighed on him for years; he thought he had beco accustod to them, knew how to coexist with them, but a re illusion had triggered his fear, paralyzing him on the couch for a long ti.
Now was not the ti for a panic attack; he had to focus on dealing with this pocket dinsion.
He lay on the sofa, his half-closed eyes glancing at the TV on the mantle. Along with the lights in the room, the TV had appropriately dimd, and the cartoon figure had frozen in the dark blue. Apart from the crudely drawn, stiff-smiled figure, there were no rules or text instructions. Even for those specifically trained for pocket dinsions, this type was the most feared.
Sotis, to paralyze a person, it was better not to tell them what was allowed rather than what was forbidden. For instance, now, the four pocket dinsion reconnoiters in this camping cabin hadn't spoken since they began resting because no one knew if speaking counted as resting.
It seed that, for now, he could only lie stiffly on this sowhat short two-seater sofa... perhaps nervously like this until tomorrow morning.
Wu Yiliu looked at his feet propped on the armrest of the sofa and began to ponder the possible setup and conditions of this pocket dinsion—although the rules were not stated on the television, they were not entirely untraceable. For example, they were now in a mountain cabin, so was this a survival-type pocket dinsion? What was the connection between the two parts of the term "pocket dinsion"?
He pondered so deeply that he gradually forgot he was pretending to rest, his eyes growing wider and wider. When he realized he had unconsciously shifted from lying on his back to leaning, he was taken aback—but the cartoon character on the television, although facing him, remained silent this ti, as if it didn't care about the correctness of his resting position, as long as he didn't speak.
Why?
What was the purpose in making them lie in the dark in silence?
Wu Yiliu's train of thought suddenly stopped. He stared fixedly at a patch of white moonlight cast on the floor in front of the fireplace. Now, under the shadow of the branches, there was an additional oval shadow. The round shadow remained still, seemingly pressed against the window, staring straight inside. No matter how you looked at it, it seed like a human head.
Wu Yiliu slowly turned his gaze towards the living room window.
He had ntally prepared himself to see a face, yet to his surprise, there was still nothing outside the glass window but the dark night sky and an even more somber forest. He saw nothing.
Wu Yiliu took a soft breath and glanced at the shadow on the ground with the corner of his eye. The shadow of the head was not only still there, but it seed to know it had been discovered, and it shrank back slightly before abruptly turning and disappearing. Wu Yiliu quickly twisted his head, but the outside of the window remained as quiet and empty as before, as if nothing had happened.
He could no longer pretend, and leaped up from the sofa, vaulting over it towards the cabin door—in the direction where the shadow had turned and vanished, right towards the entrance of the camping cabin.
Wu Yiliu "banged" into the door with his shoulder, using his strength to brace it—only to wait a few seconds to find the door still and quiet, without a trace of being touched. Listening closely, the outside was as silent as before. His noise alard the people inside the house. Pence, seeming afraid to speak loudly, asked in a breathless voice, "What's going on? What happened?"
"I don't know, it seems like sothing outside wants to co in," Wu Yiliu replied in a low voice. "Are the windows in your rooms closed?"
"I'm... I'm going to close them now," ca Cuining's hurried voice from another room. Wu Yiliu's heart sank. Cuining seed fine; the problem was indeed with him.
"What is it?" Abby's voice asked tensely. "Did you see it?"
"No, I only saw a shadow." Seeing that the cartoon character on the TV remained silent, Wu Yiliu's volu gradually returned to normal. He heard the rustling footsteps from the bedrooms and turned to see that several people had co out. Now that he was used to the darkness, he could clearly see by the moonlight outside that Abby, Cuining, and Pence all looked perfectly normal, with no faces like molten wax.
Wu Yiliu was about to speak when he suddenly stopped. He glanced at the feet of the three, then at his own. None of them had planned to rest, and in this pocket dinsion where no one knew what was going on, they were all ready to respond at any mont, so no one had taken off their shoes when going to bed.
So, whose shoes was Abby referring to when she reminded them, "There's a pair of shoes here. Don't trip over them."?
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