“You’re going to lure away the new Gao Ming?!” Luo Dong was a bit worried since the man had handed the important raincoat to him.
“Don’t worry. The monster won’t hurt me. It still needs my wife and me to complete itself to replace our child.” The middle-aged man knew the risk. He showed no fear or trepidation for his child.
“Okay.” Luo Dong put the coat on. It felt sticky and stuffy. When he breathed, he’d get whiffs of blood. Luo Dong looked at the insides of the coat, and he shivered. Hair was stuck between his body and the inner lining of the raincoat. With a rustling sound, the faces of the dead appeared inside the raincoat. They stared at Luo Dong coolly. It was a frightening sight.
“They are all the victims of the taxi driver. As long as you don’t harm them, they will not hurt you. In fact, they will help you.” The man consoled Luo Dong. “After all, I’ve been wearing it, and I’m fine.”
After everything was done, the two opened the front door. The corridor was the same as before. It was dark with the occasional wind, causing the laundry to sway. This was just the beginning. It would be a lie to say that Luo Dong was not scared. Luo Dong tightened his fingers. He hesitates at the door. He turned back to say, “Gao Ming’s Dad, I’m also looking for my family. If I fail to return, I hope…”
“We’ll treat your children as our own. If we can get out of here, I will go and save you.” The two fathers resonated with each other. The man entered the dark to guide the way for Luo Dong.
The ubiquitous ticking of clocks was absent. This place felt like a prison forgotten by time. Luo Dong forgot the path he took, and he followed the man obediently.
“Normally, after the previous has been exposed, the next Gao Ming will immediately appear. This time, we’ll try our best to buy more time for you.” They hurried down the stairs. When they reached the first floor, the middle-aged man handed a school bag to Luo Dong, “We’ve compared all the Gao Ming’s diaries. These Gao Mings’ memories are stuck on the day their class went on the field trip. Follow this trail, and you should be able to find that tunnel.”
In real life, Gao Ming’s parents could never find the tunnel that changed Gao Ming’s fate. However, in this cage weaved by the future, Luo Dong’s appearance was a thread that linked the past, present and future together.
“What is in this?” Just as this question surfaced in Luo Dong’s mind, the man shoved him into the shadows. He gestured at Luo Dong to get him to hide. The familiar footsteps appeared. A figure with a school bag appeared on the staircase.
“Why are you out here?” Gao Ming carried a present box. His hair was wet from the rain. His expression became more natural.
“Your mother was worried about you, so she asked me to come out to wait for you.” The middle-aged man hugged Gao Ming’s shoulders. “It’s great that you’re home. We have prepared so many dishes for you.”
“We can continue this conversation at home. Look at your clothes. You’re going to make your mom mad again.”
The pair went up the stairs. Luo Dong climbed out of his hiding spot. He opened Gao Ming’s diary to find the address recorded inside. “Isn’t this the tunnel between Han Hai and Xin Lu? Hasn’t it been abandoned due to unknown reasons many years ago?”
Luo Dong looked out the window. The black fog enveloped everything. Visibility was very low. Most buildings only retained a blurry silhouette. The city was like an Alzheimer’s patient. Many things had been forgotten. Only the most important buildings remained.
“This is the strangest and most difficult anomaly I’ve been in.”
Most anomalies were bridges between the shadow world and the real world. However, this anomaly covered time and memory. What was real and fake couldn’t be defined easily.
To complete the man’s mission, Luo Dong rushed into the fog. He grabbed an unoccupied cab and headed to the edge of the city. Along the way, many strange things happened to him. He personally experienced what Gao Ming’s parents did. “Even with this raincoat and Gao Ming’s blessing, I barely survive all these. How did Gao Ming’s parents manage to survive until now if they’re normal citizens?”
Perhaps they were ghosts? Perhaps they had been replaced by the shadow world?
Luo Dong cleared his mind of these useless thoughts. He drove towards the destination in his memory. With his bravery and intellect, he cleverly avoided the monsters in the fog. He used the rules of multiple anomalies to escape from the city successfully.
Luo Dong sat in the taxi, covered in blood. He didn’t know why Gao Ming chose to save him. Gao Ming seemed to have a lot of confidence in him.
“I wonder how the situation is at Everlasting Apartments. I shouldn’t be Gao Ming’s only arrangement.”
Luo Dong’s constitution was firm as he drove down the road. No horror could stop him. Saving Gao Ming meant saving his family. Despair and pain tortured Luo Dong, but he looked straight ahead until a dark tunnel appeared at the end of the fog. ɽἈＮỗᛒ̧
“I entered this place through a clock in a room. This memory world should belong to Gao Ming or his parents.” The car slowed down. Luo Dong was worried that he’d run into ‘Gao Ming’. “If this place is destroyed, maybe the people trapped in this world can be saved.”
The car entered the tunnel. Luo Dong sensed the temperature drop. This place was so creepy. His nerve was pulled taut. In the silence, Luo Dong suddenly heard someone tapping on his car window!
He whipped his head around. There was nothing around his car. Only darkness…