Chapter 013

Chapter 13: Meeting

Ah, the familiar darkness, the familiar heavy pressure, and the familiar feeling of sinking away.

Yu Sheng’s thoughts floated in deep, chaotic black. With the pressure closing in from all sides came a wave of helplessness and tiredness.

He had guessed he might face many twists before leaving the Otherworld. He had even guessed he might have to “die” more than once. He had guessed the start and the end, but not the middle. Drifting in the dark, he remembered the last things he saw before blacking out: those golden-red eyes in a flash, those dazzling fox tails blooming in the night, and that Sonic Headbutt.

So who was the girl who knocked him dead with one headbutt? Where did she come from? Why was she inside this Otherworld?

Also… what was going on with his body when he fought the monster? The sudden strength, the speed, and that surge of Hunger.

[What happened to me?]

Thoughts spun like a whirlpool in his head. Without a body to hold them, these wild “ideas” kept turning into all kinds of strange Illusion Arts in front of his “eyes.” Mixed in were many old memories rising from deep inside. He saw the monster made of piled-up limbs. He saw the girl who suddenly rushed out, the “headbutt” with fox ears and a tail. The next second, he saw a painting: Irene lay in pieces around a row of seats. Doll limbs were tied by spiderweb-like threads. A weird shadow stood faint in the back.

Suddenly Irene vanished. New pictures floated up from the depths of memory: crimson clouds, a bright sky, sunlight flowing like water and soaking old streets and alleys.

Oh. That was where Yu Sheng was born and raised, his familiar Boundary City, a small coastal city. He had left there two months ago. But for some reason, when those pictures rose, they felt like a very long time ago, so long they seemed like someone else’s memories, cold and far away in front of his eyes.

All the images faded. Only a gentle darkness covered everything.

He felt a bit clearer and tried to call: [Irene.]

The darkness gave no answer.

It seemed that when he was “dead,” his link with Irene was cut.

He tried to “turn his gaze,” searching the dark for anything at all, and to check whether he even had a body.

He saw nothing. The place was empty. Here he was only a floating “mind,” with no body at all.

Yu Sheng kept testing more things in silence.

During his first two “deaths,” he had no experience and stumbled back to the living in a daze. This time, he began to sense the process on purpose and tried out many guesses.

He knew he had been muddled these days. A strange world. Weird events. His own mystery. Resurrection. Too many things he couldn’t figure out were piled together, leaving him clueless.

But once Irene told him about the “Otherworld,” he had a goal again. He had to go back, back to the “normal” side.

When holes to the Otherworld sometimes open, a normal person who sees the scene leaking out from that hole, in that instant, steps past the edge of reason and reaches the other side beyond normal. It might happen because you get off at the wrong stop, take one extra step down the stairs, turn one more page and misread a word, or… open the wrong The Door.

No matter the cause, the key is that this process is not irreversible.

From what Irene told him, people in this world study the Otherworld. People have summed up its rules. There are even experts who handle Otherworld problems. And even normal people, after falling in, still have a chance to return.

This night-covered Valley was an Otherworld. The place he now lived, Wutong Road 66, was an Otherworld. Yet Yu Sheng thought his very first contact came even earlier.

When he pushed open his home The Door two months ago, maybe he fell into an Otherworld centered on himself, one named “Boundary City.”

Now he had to explore as much as he could, learn everything strange about the Otherworld, and then… leave this off-kilter world.

So he opened his eyes.

Cold night wind blew through a big hole in the wall. Outside the half-collapsed roof lay a muddy sky.

He sat in a corner of the ruined temple. He didn’t stand up right away. He kept the posture of just waking, staying still and carefully sensing everything around him, while trying to catch the memories and “impressions” slipping out of his mind.

He tried to recall the feeling at the instant he woke, to find the boundary line where he rose from the dark back into the “real world.”

He felt that might be the key to understanding his “resurrection” process.

At least it would bring him a little closer to the truth of these mysteries.

Vaguely, he recalled what he had “seen” a moment before waking. He rose from the darkness, crossed a hazy boundary, then sank toward reality. But what after that? Between “sinking toward reality” and “opening his eyes,” what happened in that short instant? He thought he had seen several quick, blurry scenes. The clearer ones included a small path near his old home, the front of the The Door at Wutong Road 66, and… this corner deep in the ruined temple.

Yu Sheng lowered his eyelids. His thoughts calmed. He formed a few guesses, set them aside for now, and gently tested his hands and feet.

This body felt clean and strong. He could feel power flowing in his veins. He heard very clearly and saw very far. A moment ago he had been cut off below the neck by a Sonic Headbutt, yet now he was full of life again.

He rose from the corner, ready to call Irene.

Then he froze.

There was a rustling sound outside the wall.

At first he thought: [Did that tasty monster chase me into the temple?!] But he soon felt it was wrong. That monster always made a huge racket, not careful noises like this.

He took a light breath and, staying cautious, crept to the hole in the wall and looked out.

The night was deep, but his eyes saw clearly.

He saw a girl walking carefully among the ruins of the temple.

She wore a torn robe that might once have been a beautiful dress. Now it was only filthy rags. Her long white Rapunzel-like hair hung in a messy sheet and hid most of her face. On her head was a pair of fox ears.

Yet more than the furry ears, Yu Sheng’s gaze fell on the tails behind her.

Fox tails. Not just one. From where he stood he couldn’t count them. Because the girl looked so bedraggled, he even wondered if it was really one big tail, just matted into ropes from going too long without a wash.

By now, of course, Yu Sheng knew her.

It was the Sonic Headbutt.

But the headbutter didn’t seem to notice him nearby. She moved with care through the ruins, flaring her nostrils now and then as if sniffing for something. After a while, she seemed to find a clue. Her eyes lit up and she ran fast toward a spot.

The rustle of a plastic bag sounded in the night.

Yu Sheng’s eyes went wide.

It was the bag of kitchen garbage he had carried when he was “thrown” into the Valley, the one he had tossed into the rubble. Inside were vegetable leaves and eggshells from dinner, and leftovers he had cleaned out of the fridge.

Clinging to the wall, he watched the fox-tailed girl happily yet clumsily rip at the bag. She slipped and spilled its contents, then grabbed a lump of leftovers without a second thought and stuffed it into her mouth.

It was like she had been hungry for many, many years.

A tight ache clenched Yu Sheng’s chest.

He didn’t know why, but it hurt to see. [People shouldn’t be starved like this.]

Even if she didn’t look fully human.

Even if she had given him a headbutt. She had been trying to save him.

Right then, the girl seemed to sense the presence of a “living person” in the temple.

She crouched on the ground with a wilted leaf between her teeth and turned her head in shock and fear.

Yu Sheng stood at the collapsed corner of the temple. Across the rubble, their eyes met.