Chapter 4

Chapter 4: No One in the Room

The idea lodged in Yu Sheng’s mind like a splinter: someone was hiding in the locked room he’d never been able to open.

His scalp prickled, and then his thoughts ran wild.

Who was it?

When had she gotten in?

Had she slipped in while he slept? Or had she been there from the very beginning—already inside when he arrived two months ago?

If it was the second, then he knew the room had never opened. Not once. So how could anyone have survived in there?

Unless there was another passage.

Unless—

Unless she wasn’t a “person” at all.

The questions churned, chaotic and endless. Yet as they stormed through him, Yu Sheng’s expression gradually went still.

Maybe it was the frog. Maybe it was dying and waking up again. Either way, something about his fear had shifted. After that first jolt of shock, the panic drained away, leaving something sharp in its place.

Curiosity.

He stepped closer and pressed an ear to the door.

For a second, he thought he heard the chuckle again, faint and distant.

Or maybe it was only the hollow wind in his own ear.

He lifted a hand and knocked.

“Open up. I heard you.”

The door didn’t open. But the chuckle—real or imagined—stopped.

Yu Sheng stared at the door for a heartbeat, then turned away without another word.

He went to the storage room, grabbed an axe, and walked straight back.

He raised the axe and swung down with all his strength.

Clang.

Metal struck wood and threw sparks, like his blade had hit steel. The door—thin and old, the kind that looked like it could be kicked in—didn’t even dent.

The chuckle sounded again, faint and ugly, and Yu Sheng’s face remained calm.

He lifted the axe.

Swung again.

And again.

Each strike rang out with the same useless, brutal clang. Each strike threw sparks. Each strike left the door perfectly untouched.

He knew it wouldn’t break. He’d learned that the hard way. But for the past two months, he’d still tried in one way or another, almost every day. Drills. Blades. Brute force. Stubbornness.

Now that the door had laughed at him, he wanted it open more than ever.

With every failed strike, his determination didn’t weaken—it sharpened. His mind began to empty, narrowing down to the simple motion of raising, aiming, and bringing the blade down.

Somewhere in that steady rhythm, strange thoughts floated up uninvited. He felt like Wu Gang chopping at the tree on the moon. Cut it down and the onlookers—Chang’e, the Jade Rabbit, Bald Qiang, and somehow Sisyphus—would form a circle and applaud.

He had no idea why Sisyphus was there.

The laughter behind the door grew clearer, closer, more distinct, as if the owner had walked up step by step and pressed her face against the other side. As if she knew perfectly well the door was unbreakable and enjoyed mocking him through it.

Then a second voice snapped through the laughter, tense with panic and irritation.

“Can you stop laughing?! If he actually gets in here, the first one he’ll chop is me!”

The laughter cut off so abruptly it almost sounded wounded.

Yu Sheng froze mid-swing.

His body protested—hard. A sharp crack of pain shot through his waist, and his grip slipped. The axe dropped out of control, its blade striking nowhere near where he’d intended.

Yu Sheng hissed and grabbed his lower back with one hand, teeth clenched. The pain was sharp enough to make his vision blur.

When he could breathe again, he shuffled closer, still holding his waist, and stared at the spot where the last swing had landed.

A spark hovered in the air two or three centimeters from the door, near the hinges—an ember frozen in the instant of its birth. It didn’t fall. It didn’t fade. It simply hung there, tiny and bright, suspended like a pinned insect.

By that unnatural light, Yu Sheng could see something else too.

Something on the door.

He reached toward it.

From behind the door came a strangled, high-pitched yelp. “Yah—!”

Yu Sheng snapped his eyes open.

Bright light flooded his vision. The living room ceiling lamp was on, and the glare made his eyes water. His body ached from sleeping on the sofa. Nearby, the wall clock ticked steadily.

Less than forty minutes had passed.

Yu Sheng lay there, stunned, trying to clear the fog from his head.

A dream?

He’d fallen asleep… so was all of that just a dream?

It had felt too real. The axe handle in his palm. The frozen spark. The voices. The laughter—

He sat up sharply.

Pain lanced through his waist.

Yu Sheng froze, then slowly reached down, palm pressing his lower back.

It hurt. Not a dull soreness. A sharp, twitching pain, like a pulled muscle.

“H—… damn,” he hissed, half-swallowing the sound as he tried not to move too fast. Between the fresh injury, the cramped ache of sleeping wrong, and the sudden jolt of sitting up, he almost wished the frog had just taken his heart again. At least that had only hurt for two seconds.

He gritted his teeth and forced himself upright.

A pulled waist in a dream shouldn’t hurt in real life.

Something had happened.

Something had invaded his “safe house.”

Yu Sheng adjusted his posture so the pain wouldn’t cripple his movement. After a moment’s thought, he limped upstairs.

Baton in one hand, he went to the storage room and found the axe from the dream. The wooden grip felt exactly the same. It even seemed to remember the warmth of his palm.

He returned to the locked door.

It looked spotless and intact, with no sign of the marks he’d made in the dream. No scorch. No crack. Nothing.

The hallway was quiet.

As if none of it had happened.

But Yu Sheng remembered the exact spot where the spark had hovered.

He hooked the baton at his waist, shifted the axe to his left hand, and reached out with his right. Slowly, carefully, he felt along the door near the hinges.

His fingers brushed something.

A handle.

Invisible to the eye, but solid under his hand.

Yu Sheng’s breath caught.

There had never been a handle here. He was sure of it. On the first day he found this locked door, he’d checked every inch. He’d felt every part of its surface.

So why was it here now?

Because he’d seen it in the dream?

Because his axe had struck through some disguise?

Because once he’d confirmed it existed… it began to exist?

His mind threw up every explanation he’d ever seen in movies, games, and novels. None of them mattered.

His hand didn’t hesitate.

He turned the invisible handle.

The lock yielded as if it had never been locked at all. The door swung open smoothly from the hinge side.

Yu Sheng raised the axe, heart pounding, and peered in.

An empty room.

Bare floor, bare walls, no furniture at all. Light spilled in from the hallway and slowly pushed back the dimness, but even when he opened the door fully, he saw no one inside.

No bed. No chair. No hiding place.

Only moonlight seeped through gaps in old curtains, laying a mottled band across the floor.

He stepped in a fraction, scanning with the caution of someone who’d learned better than to trust appearances.

Then, on the wall directly opposite the door, he saw it.

A painting.

The frame was beautiful—classical, decorated with intricate vine patterns. In the center, as if staged for someone important, was a chair draped in soft red fabric.

No figure sat in it. No ghost stared back. Nothing moved.

Yu Sheng stared for a long time, frowning. Without taking his eyes off the painting, he groped for the light switch by the doorframe and flicked it on.

The overhead lights buzzed softly.

Under the bright light, the painting’s details sharpened. The chair. The folds of red cloth. The ornate frame.

And then Yu Sheng noticed something so subtle it was almost invisible: a small corner of fabric at the edge of the frame.

The hem of a skirt.

He stayed still for a beat, then spoke carefully.

“Are you there?”

“Not here!” a guilty voice snapped from inside the painting.