Chapter 1

Chapter 1 “A Thick Fog That Day”

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. It’s 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:

“Nothing’s 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 ‘cast’ into an isolated space by something....”

“I can’t contact the outside world either. The electricity got cut off since the beginning, along with the water tap that didn’t flow. Strangely, the lights worked, and the computer kept running – I ripped the cord out of the wall to see....”

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 – 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 Ming’s expression became calm again—with this unusual calmness, he lowered his head again and returned to his writing:

“I 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 couldn’t make so much as a dent in these walls. It’s as if the walls were a box, and I’m the mouse trapped inside this box with no way out....”

“The exception being that door.”

“But the situation outside that door... it’s even more wrong.”

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 didn’t know the point of writing down these thoughts. In fact, he’s never been a habitual diary keeper – as a middle school teacher, he’s 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.

But after a short thought, instead of going straight to the only door that led to the “outside world,” he went straight to his bed.

Confronting that strange world behind the door required the best of him – and the current mental state he was in was in no way good enough.

Zhou Ming didn’t 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 “opposite side” 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 didn’t 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: “Your name is Zhou Ming, at least on this ‘side,’ your name is Zhou Ming. Always keep this in mind and never forget this.”

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 didn’t carry anything extra on him, neither food nor self-defense gear aside from the experience he gained from the previous “explorations” — the reason being he couldn’t bring anything even if he wanted to. The door wouldn’t allow it.

With a twist and audible click, he pushed open the door and revealed the black squirming mist behind the wooden barrier. It’s 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. He’s currently standing on an expansive wooden deck devoid of company and a towering sailing mast looming under those dark stormy clouds. It’s the open ocean, but the water was dark and undulating with no end in sight.

Looking down to examine his new body on this “side,” Zhou Ming found it to be buffer than what he last recalled. Though bony like a skeleton, it’s a suitable match for the exquisite captain’s uniform that he had on, as well as the black flintlock pistol of classical design hanging from his waist. But what he wore didn’t matter, the main concern was himself. Was this really the “him” that he knew?