Eyes in the door crack
“They look at you with their mouths open, like fish starving for oxygen.
But you are not the ocean, so you cannot swallow them into your throat and complete the good deed of releasing them.
Be patient with their longing eyes, just as they are patient with unnecessary disaster."
Shh, stop talking, please stop talking, mom.
--mom
The hairs on the back of his neck felt some non-existent breath. Yin Sui turned around, and the wind lifted his collar. He accidentally stepped on a dry branch, which suddenly caused a crisp sound to explode behind him, as if it had exploded in his bone marrow.
With just one sound, she was suddenly awakened from her confused sleepwalking state, not knowing where to go. Everywhere she looked, there was nothing but emptiness, and there was no one waiting there.
Looking forward, I found that I had already walked to a fork in the road.
If there was a game status bar above his head, the SAN value bar would probably be all red. Yinsui felt that this was not a good way to go. If he continued walking, he might have hallucinations and communicate with his mother face to face.
I should have known not to bring up the past during the day, which delayed catching the dog at night.
Dahuang, come out, at least let me see you from a distance.
When Da Huang was young, she was an extraneous member of the "Dog Gang" and usually went out to hang out with her good friends. With a try-it attitude, she went to the alley where stray dogs usually gathered in the village.
The growls of animals warning their enemies came from deep in the alley, where the dogs were locked in a standoff with something.
Animals other than humans were affected. Without knowing what was happening ahead, Yinsui didn't dare to go up rashly and stopped at the entrance of the alley.
Soon, the situation changed suddenly.
The low and deep warning turned into a high-pitched wail, and it spread to many dogs at an abnormal speed. A scream would stop every few seconds, and be replaced by the barking of another dog. The smell of rust almost instantly rushed from the end of the alley to the beginning, and a fishy wind blew towards them.
Everything happened as fast as lightning, the first one, the second one... Finally, a gray and white puppy that survived the disaster was about to escape from the slaughterhouse, barking, but was completely swallowed up by a black shadow that was so tall that it almost broke through the walls on both sides in the next second. There was not even a crisp sound of broken bones, and it was swallowed into the stomach without even chewing.
Yinsui pointed the gun forward. The toy gun was lent to her by Ji Xunjin after last night. It could eat at least five dogs in less than a minute. It was obvious that she couldn't run away. The most she could do was turn around and expose her back to the monster.
The flashlight was pointed at the dark shadow, but the shadow suddenly shrank as if it could not withstand the light, evaporating and condensing like a water droplet.
"Woo woof woof." The light reflected off the golden, brilliant fur without a single spot of color, making her dizzy. With a slight tremor, Da Huang tilted his head and cast a very friendly gaze with the clear eyes of his youth.
By eating them, I can become very strong. Now I can protect my home well.
She never put down the gun from beginning to end, but since Da Huang had no intention of attacking, she did not pull the trigger.
Even when it walked to his legs and the soft dog hair rubbed against his skin, Dahuang just treated the weapon as a toy, sniffing it curiously. When he didn't smell the scent of food, he immediately lowered his head in boredom.
The man and the dog returned the same way in a strange atmosphere. On the way, they seemed to have discovered a new target. Dahuang roared and rushed away.
Yinsui's mind was in a mess. He waited for a while but it didn't come back, so he walked towards home alone. His state after death was almost the same as expected. He retained his original preferences, consciousness, habits or appearance, but it would change at night.
Acceptable.
But just before that, she happened to meet Lin Pan and saw the possible true nature of the village, so she was reluctant to retreat.
The information available in the village is limited, and most of the villagers themselves are confused and don’t know what’s going on, so they have to start from other abnormal spaces outside.
Besides, it’s time for Ji Xunjin to go back. We can’t keep restricting the personal freedom of innocent people.
Headache.
I'll ask for his opinion when I get home.
…
The decades-old wooden door shook violently when it was closed, and large chunks of it were missing from the bottom due to wind and water erosion.
"call……"
Behind the dark door, the blurry black shadow, like ink dripping onto paper, slowly dissolved, taking shape and gradually revealing the shape of a person - narrow shoulders, long hair, sunken cheeks. The woman pressed against the door panel, and her pale ankles could be seen from the gap below.
I heard long breaths, but I couldn't tell whether they came from outside the door or from myself.
Yinsui had his back to the door, facing the bright living room. Separated by the fragile wooden boards, he always felt that it would appear behind him in the next second.
Physiologically, my heartbeat quickened, but at the same time, my brain forced my senses to withdraw from my emotions and shift my focus to reality. The two merged into one, transforming into: I was afraid it would break in, so I urgently needed to confirm the reliability of the protective door.
Is the door locked? She thought to herself again and again, worried.
It should be locked.
uncertain.
Finally, the person who took two steps forward turned back to check as if he couldn't bear it any longer - the door was locked.
But—it didn’t block the pair of eyes looking through the gap at the bottom.
How can a person fold his body into a half-handstand and lean inward?
Almost at the moment I asked the question, I found the answer for myself, an illusion.
She didn't know when the flashlight went out. Maybe it was broken, or more likely she pressed the switch when she was not in a clear mind and didn't realize it. It was dark, and the shadows of the trees were swaying outside the back door. The wide rain shelter blocked the weak natural light from the dome.
From the current position, one cannot see the wall or any nearby objects, but the door and the eyes under the door stand out clearly in the void, making the darkness around them seem to extend endlessly.
As long as it can get in, it will not stop at breaking the door. As long as there is a physical entity that can move, it can easily break in.
It doesn’t matter, Yinsui tried hard to divert her gaze away from the original position. It doesn’t matter, she faced the lighted living room again. It doesn’t matter, the refuge as bright as daylight was getting closer and closer.
The living room door with the word "Fu" on it was pushed wider, the light engulfed her whole body, and the reef island in the dark night drifted farther and farther away.
Qiong Qing, who was curled up on the sofa watching TV, stood up happily and patted her pants: "I'm back." It seemed that she was busy going to the kitchen to cook.
She cleared her mind and said, "I'll just cook the noodles, no need to bother."
"We left some food here. It only takes a few minutes to heat it up. It's not a big deal. It's cold outside. You should have worn a hat or a scarf."
"It's not cold."
When Qiong Qing entered the living room, she noticed the boy sitting in the corner of the room.
Ji Xunjin didn't even go upstairs. He lowered the hand that had been supporting his head, and his elegant watch gently tapped against the edge of the table. He turned sideways, the sleepiness still lingering in his eyes, and his gaze remained sharp, fixed firmly on the visitor.
"Are you not hurt?"
"without."
Before they could say anything more, a loud reminder came from outside the door, "Close the door." To prevent the cold wind from blowing in.
Yinsui only had time to show an apologetic smile for leaving him alone for the second time before he went to close the door. When the two doors closed, he glanced into the distance, even though he knew very well that he could not see anything clearly from standing in the living room.
She dragged a stool over and sat next to him, and the two of them were speechless for a moment.
The one who broke the silence was Qiong Qing, who was far away in the kitchen. Seeing the lights on, she couldn't help but feel distressed about the electricity bill that no one would ask her to pay: "Sui Sui, turn off the lights if you have nothing to do!"
"Oh, okay."
The only light source in the spacious room was an old TV. The colorful light changed like a marquee. Ji Xunjin's shiny black jacket was only bright and dark without any other colors. He seemed to be asleep with his eyes slightly closed, but the sound of his fingertips tapping on the armrest of the wooden bench never stopped.
She knew the plot of the anti-Japanese drama that had been played every night for decades by heart, and the entire living room, from the arrangement of furniture to the orientation of miscellaneous items, was the same. She could only observe the only moving and relatively unfamiliar guest present over and over again.
Wow, alive! Wow, alive!
I just kept sighing over and over again in such a boring way that a new person appeared in my unchanging home. Although it was troublesome, it also had some benefits.
The boy's profile was blurry under the dim light. In a trance, she felt that as the girl in the river said, the surroundings were just a bizarre dream, weird and cold in the last second and warm and gentle in the next, and perhaps it would disappear in the blink of an eye.
——Ji Xun is alive now, and I should be alive too.
This is when I regained my sense of reality.
"...I think there's something wrong with my brain. Be careful."
He thought the person next to him was not in the mood for conversation but suddenly blurted out something incoherent. He sat up slightly, raised his eyelids and did not respond.
"Hallucinations may make it difficult to distinguish between friend and foe." After much thought, she felt that she had to give a warning to those who might need to travel with her in the future.
"It doesn't matter. My colleagues all have it more or less."
"That's good."
As soon as she finished speaking, she realized that her words were ambiguous and tried to cover up the truth by saying, "Not too good either."
Ji Xunjin smiled inexplicably.
After a quick meal and washing up, she went straight upstairs to sleep, still worried about the dog. The next day, she rushed downstairs almost immediately when she heard the dog barking.
At daybreak, Da Huang crawled to the gate and scratched and shouted.
When Yinsui walked down the stairs, Jianlin had already opened the door for it, cursing.
"Where have you been going crazy? You were yelling and screaming outside so early in the morning, disturbing the whole family." He had no memory of what happened yesterday.
A playful smile could be seen on Mao's face, and Dahuang's tail was wagging like a propeller. He was used to ignoring Jianlin's reproaches.
It has been old and weak for so long that people have forgotten its great achievements as a bad dog.
Well, now she was the only one who remembered death, and she was the only one left who was different. Yin Sui, however, felt an inexplicable surge of joy at having found something he had lost. He stepped forward to touch its head, and when he withdrew his hand, it wanted to jump three feet high to reach the rising hand.
"It's very naughty. It runs outside every day and you can't catch it. But when it's hungry, it comes back to look for food." Jianlin grabbed the dog's neck and put a collar on it, but it kept slipping away like a big yellow snake, which made Jianlin so angry that he continued to complain.
Ji Xunjin watched calmly for a moment, then waited for Yin Sui to approach and asked, "Do you want to leave?"
"when?"
He hadn't expected it to be so satisfying. He was stunned: "Now?"
"Can."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com