Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The Locked Room

Yu Sheng’s head felt heavy, as if a thick veil had been draped over his eyes. The traffic noise from the main road drifted in and out, unreal, like something heard underwater.

He walked in that haze for who knew how long before his mind finally regained the ability to think. He stopped and looked back along the road he’d come from.

Night had fully settled. Streetlights had been on for a while, throwing pale pools of light down narrow side streets. Low, aging apartment blocks pressed in from both sides like beasts crouched in the dark, while unauthorized ground-floor shops spilled warm light through their windows, pushing back a little of the gloom.

Cold.

The word hit him, and with it came the sensation—sudden and vivid. Blade-like freezing rain. The sharp sting of raindrops like nails. The weight of those countless eyes on him.

The frog.

Yu Sheng choked. For more than ten seconds, he forgot how to breathe. When his lungs finally remembered, he sucked in air so hard his chest hurt.

He jerked his gaze down to himself.

For an instant, he truly believed there would be a hole in his chest. That his heart would be gone. That his ribcage would feel like a furnace gone cold—silent, dead.

But then he felt it.

A heartbeat.

Strong and steady, thumping in his ears.

He was alive.

A huge, horrible frog had not stolen his heart.

Yet the memory refused to fade. It crashed over him again and again—door painted on the wall, mirror-slick ground, that tongue punching through him from behind. He tried to dismiss it as a hallucination, but the more he replayed it, the clearer it became.

He had died.

And somehow, he was still walking home—two intersections away, almost there.

Of everything twisted he’d encountered since ending up in this cursed city, this was the most twisted of all.

He noticed a few passersby watching him. Someone slowed, hesitating as if they might ask whether he needed help. Yu Sheng waved them off without speaking and hurried away.

Standing in the street and spiraling wouldn’t solve anything.

He pushed through the side roads, left the last intersection behind, and headed toward his “home” in this city. After only two blocks, the surroundings grew noticeably quieter, as if he’d stepped into a corner of the city everyone had forgotten. People vanished. The streetlights became his only company.

Then he saw it.

An old manor stood in the night, set slightly apart from the buildings around it, like it didn’t quite belong.

It was ordinary in the most unsettling way: a three-story house with peeling walls, a slanted roof, and warped doors and windows. Everything looked worn but clean, intact despite the years—a relic of some lax era, the kind of self-built “villa” that urban villages once sprouted without permission.

Yu Sheng didn’t understand this city’s planning rules. He’d only been here two months, and the first stretch of that time he’d wasted by staying inside, too wary to explore.

But he knew one thing.

This manor was his only relatively safe foothold in a dangerous, dissonant city. When he was inside, he didn’t see the cursed shadows.

Even if the manor itself had plenty of things that felt… not quite right.

He exhaled, tightened his grip on the grocery bag, and reached the front door. He fished out his keys and unlocked it, a familiar motion that should have been comforting.

The old door creaked open.

Yu Sheng stepped inside and flipped on the lights. In the instant the room brightened, something in him steadied—an illusion of solidity, of being anchored.

He shut the door behind him, cutting off the city night.

Then he tossed the groceries onto the shelf by the kitchen entrance and hurried to the bathroom. He stood before the mirror and yanked his shirt open.

The memory of that tongue was too vivid. He couldn’t help it. He had to check.

No wound.

No blood.

His chest was smooth, unbroken, as if he’d never died at all.

Yu Sheng frowned hard. He checked his clothes—no tear, no stain—then pressed the spot where his heart had been ripped out in his memory.

Only then did he accept the obvious: whatever else he was, he wasn’t currently an open-hearted person.

“This is insane,” he muttered.

He left the bathroom and returned to the living room.

Behind him, the mirror above the sink silently cracked into a web of fine fractures.

Then, just as silently, it closed again.

Yu Sheng sank onto the sofa and tried to sort his thoughts into something that made sense. He lasted who knew how long before exhaustion smothered him.

Sleep swallowed him whole.

He floated in that dull haze until a sudden thunk exploded in his mind—like someone striking stone with a shovel right above his head.

Yu Sheng bolted awake.

Darkness.

For a moment, he just stared, confused, until he realized the living room lights were off.

He clearly remembered leaving them on.

A warning bell rang in his skull. Instinctively, he reached for the baton beside him—the first thing he’d bought after arriving in this city. It hadn’t saved him yet, but as a frightened upright ape, holding a stick did wonders for the nerves.

He rose carefully, listening.

No footsteps. No breathing. No signs of someone breaking in.

In a place like this, a thief wasn’t impossible. Honestly, Yu Sheng almost hoped it was a thief. A thief could be beaten with a baton.

A meter-tall frog could not.

The living room remained silent. Using the faint streetlight filtering through the window, Yu Sheng moved low and slow, scanning corners and doorways. He found the switch and flipped it.

Light flooded the room.

His eyes swept the living room at once. Something felt off, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. Still, at least he could see.

He checked the first floor—living room, kitchen, dining area, an unused empty room. Everything appeared normal.

At the stairs, he hesitated, then climbed to the second floor.

Three rooms. His bedroom. A storage room piled with clutter.

And the last room, at the far end of the hallway.

Locked.

It had been locked from the day he arrived. He’d searched the entire house and never found a key.

Yu Sheng checked his bedroom, then the storage room, then came to the locked door again. As always, it was shut tight.

He’d tried more than just the knob. He’d tried “technical methods” too—hammer drills, even a handheld chainsaw. Sparks had flown. Metal had screeched. Bits and teeth had dulled.

The door hadn’t gained so much as a scratch.

He’d even tried calling locksmiths. Three of them. The first two got lost the moment they entered the Old Quarter and never found No. 66 on Wu Tong Road. The third got hit by a motorcycle right after crossing an intersection and only left the hospital last week.

It was as if something—some invisible, stubborn force—did not want him opening this room.

Yu Sheng wrapped his fingers around the doorknob anyway and twisted.

It didn’t move.

No surprise there.

But as he uselessly tried again, he heard it.

A faint, distant chuckle.

It came from the other side of the door.

A young woman’s voice, amused and mocking, as if laughing at how helpless he was against a simple lock.

Yu Sheng’s hair stood on end.

Inside the only safe house he had in this city—inside the home he’d lived in for two months—behind a door that had never opened…

Someone was in there.

And the thought that followed, absurd and immediate, made his stomach drop even harder.

How had she not starved to death?