An invitation from a stranger
The length of his hospital stay was shortened thanks to Du Pianjian's meticulous care. Yu Zou returned home after a few days' absence, and a slight sense of unfamiliarity welled up in his heart, making him unable to help but look around at everything in the room.
The documents on the desk in the workspace were neatly stacked, the reason there were so few was entirely due to Du Pianjian's handling. Just as Yu Zou sat down, the door clicked shut. As Yu Zou wondered what was happening, Yi Song appeared: "Hello, Administrator Z. During your absence, there were several encrypted emails. Would you like to check them immediately?"
After Yu Zou confirmed, he opened the drawer. Inside were two letters: one was a greeting from his mother abroad, and the other was an invitation to a yacht.
The handwriting was bold and concise, yet it struck Yu Zou's mind like a thunderbolt—it was unmistakably Ji Huisheng's handwriting. The content, however, was merely formal, the language intimate and appropriate, inviting Yu Zou to a yacht party in twenty days.
Du Pianjian pushed the door open and came in. Yu Zou casually stuffed the invitation into the pile of documents on the table. Du Pianjian walked behind the desk and sat down, took out the invitation, frowned when she saw Ji Huisheng's signature, and waved the letter in her hand, asking, "Are you going?"
Yu Zou nodded, looking at Du Pianjian, his hair hanging down softly like flower threads.
"Don't go. This looks like a trap." Du Pianjian pulled Yu Zou's arm, leaned forward, and touched Yu Zou's leg with her own.
"I haven't heard from the teacher yet, I must go." Yu Zou took the invitation and put it in his inner pocket.
"Then I'll go too."
"I want to go by myself."
"No." Over the past three years, Yu Zou had been able to somewhat guess Du Pianjian's feelings. He pursed his lips, his tone leaving no room for refusal, and he was clearly unhappy.
"What are you going to do?" Yu Zou was very calm, just like the weather that had been raining for a long time; once you got used to the dampness, you couldn't feel the creeping chill.
Du Pianjian's phone rang, the echo reverberating through the space. Yu Zou couldn't help but say, "You have a phone call."
Du hung up the phone without even looking at it, replying, "Can't I go?"
"Sure, but why? Just think of it as me going on a business trip, it'll only last a few days."
Du Pianjian couldn't explain why, but he had a vague feeling that everything around him was about to end, like the final movement of a piece of music that had been played too many times and was too familiar, which made him uneasy.
The phone rang again, interrupting Yu Zou's business. Du Pianjian immediately turned it off, suppressing the urge to smash things, and said softly with a frown, "I was worried about you. You were just discharged from the hospital."
Yu Zou paused slightly, the smile on his lips fading as he stiffened: "Alright."
Just as Du Pianjian had predicted, Chi Hengxun seemed to have vanished from their world in just over two weeks, and life returned to its usual ordinary days.
Until the day I was invited arrived.
The yacht, like a delicate paper cutter, silently glided across the azure sea. Yu Zou embraced Du Pianjian and leaned against the railing. Sunlight, like molten gold, shone on the two of them, giving the pair of jade pendants a golden edge.
Du Pianjian's champagne glass collided with Yu Zou's, drawing his searching gaze back. She pressed her lips against his chest and asked in a voice only the two of them could hear, "Is there?"
Yu Zou shook his head. The yacht had already sailed twenty nautical miles away, and he still hadn't seen Ji Huisheng appear. He could only hope that Ji Huisheng would board the yacht when it docked at Mirror Bay at nine o'clock in the evening.
There were few acquaintances on the yacht, and no one came to socialize with them. Everything followed a kind of secretive and perfect order. The pointers on the dashboard jumped steadily in the safe zone, and the white sails swayed loosely in the breeze. Only the steadily rotating pointers proved that time had not stopped.
At night, only the lights are awake.
"Clang! Clang! Clang!"
The cold, sharp, and penetrating sound of metal clanging jolted Yu Zou awake from his deep sleep. He complained inwardly about how such an old-fashioned hand-cranked school bell could be ringing.
Yu Zou's drowsy eyes immediately cleared upon seeing Du Pianjian. He turned on the bedside lamp and saw Du Pianjian's chest heaving, her eyes glazed over, and her hands gripping the blanket tightly.
"Pianjian? Pianjian! What's wrong?"
Yu Zou tried to turn Du Pianjian around, but found his body extremely stiff, his clothes soaked with cold sweat, and he seemed completely unable to hear his own voice. He struggled to hold him in front of him, let him sit on his lap, stroked his back from top to bottom, and gently sang in his ear. Du Pianjian's unfocused eyes gradually focused, and he looked up slightly to see Yu Zou's Adam's apple bobbing up and down with the singing.
The powerful singing voice overwhelmed everything, and the ringing stopped at some point.
Only when Du Pianjian gently nudged Yu Zou did Yu Zou release him and get out of bed, joking with him, "Do you have such a big trauma from going to school?"
Yu Zou turned his back to the person and took off his pajamas, revealing a deep groove in his spine. The muscles on both sides of his body tensed slightly as he hung up his clothes. Du Pianjian looked at his back and asked, "Where are you going?"
"I'm going out to take a look."
Du Pianjian let out a breath and slowly unbuttoned his pajamas, which were no longer wearable. He said, "Wait for me."
"Go back to sleep."
Just as Yu Zou grasped the handle to push the door open, he suddenly felt his other hand being held. Du Pianjian, head bowed and hair slightly disheveled, was fastening the buttons he had just undone with one hand. Yu Zou didn't say anything, but gripped the handle even tighter and pulled him a couple of steps to the side. He took out a tissue to wipe the sweat from Du Pianjian's forehead and draped his coat over him.
In the corridor, staff members hurried about, reassuring other passengers who had been awakened by the ringing bell and had come out to demand answers. Yu Zou didn't go any further, but leaned against the door frame and listened for a moment. No one knew why there was such a strange ringing bell; even the crew members were baffled, claiming it wasn't intentionally set up by staff, and the surveillance footage they were asked to release showed nothing unusual.
There was no need to listen to the back-and-forth of the conversation anymore. Yu Zou closed the door to shut out the noise, and the room went dark again. A sliver of moonlight peeked through the gap in the curtains, like a wide ribbon spread across the undulating blankets.
Yu Zou slowly opened his closed eyes again, meeting Du Pianjian's gaze as he lay on his side. He asked, "Can't you sleep?"
Du Pianjian nodded slowly.
Yu Zou stretched out his arms and opened his embrace. His gentle gaze, like the moonlight falling on Du Pianjian's face, fell softly. Du Pianjian curled up slightly and leaned closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder.
She gently brushed Du Pianjian's hair aside with her hand, pulled out her necklace and placed it in his palm, then patted his back lightly and asked, "I guess this means 'I like you the most'."
Du Pianjian shook her head, her soft hair making the moonlight seem tangible, stirring a slight itch. Yu Zou guessed this answer, but it wasn't right. Gradually, he could feel the person in his arms slowly relaxing. He murmured, "I can't guess anymore, tell me."
Du Pianjian smiled slightly: "Not good."
Please.
"I won't tell you even if you beg me." Du Pianjian said with her eyes closed and a slightly mischievous tone, "Sing another song."
Yu hummed a tune that Du Pianjian had once played for him: "On my birthday that year, you played the pipa for me, and that was the moment I fell in love with you."
"It's so late," Du Pianjian replied groggily.
"Really? Isn't that much earlier than you?"
"wrong."
Du Pianjian had already closed his eyes, and Yu Zou doubted whether he had heard him clearly. Then he heard him mumble a request: "Sing another song."
Ji Huisheng still did not appear the next day.
Du Pianjian said with certainty, "We've been deceived."
"What's the purpose?" Yu Zou pointed his fork at the smoked cod. "Why did you use the teacher to trick me into coming here?" He neither stated his demands nor showed himself.
"Couldn't it be that Ji Huisheng is lying to you?"
Yu Zou paused, looked up at Du Pianjian, and said seriously, "Impossible, the teacher wouldn't harm me."
Du Pianjian was testing the sharpness of the knife with his fingers, the gleaming blade reflecting Yu Zou's face across from him. His dark gaze swept back at Yu Zou: "You trust her that much?" Seeing Yu Zou nod, he asked again: "How many people like that are there?"
“Five in total.” Yu Zou held out a hand, breaking off a finger for each name he said. “Mom, teacher, doctor, partner.” He paused suspiciously at this point, with only his little finger sticking up. Yu Zou rested his chin on his hand, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Du Pianjian. Just before the other’s patience with his suspense reached its limit, he broke off his little finger and said, “Wife.”
Du Pianjian put down the knife, mimicked his gesture, raised her right hand, said a name, and then broke off a finger, leaving her little finger pointing at Yu Zou: "Mom, Ji Huisheng, He Honghan, Shi Nao, and me. Am I last?"
Yu Zou nodded repeatedly, explaining his twisted logic with self-assurance: "The chief should always be the last to appear."
Du Pianjian chuckled speechlessly, "You pass." He lowered his clasped hands, reached over the plate to take Yu Zou's knife to cut the meat, and casually remarked, "There are far fewer people now."
"Perhaps they disembarked in the middle of the night?"
"Do you even believe it yourself?" Du Pianjian's knife made a sharp sound against the plate. He threw the knife and fork into the plate, crossed his arms, leaned back in his chair, and looked extremely pale.
Seeing this, Yu Zou took his plate and carefully cut it open piece by piece, saying, "We've really gotten on a pirate ship."
"Not funny."
"Don't be so nervous." Yu Zou placed the sliced liver back in front of him. "You didn't sleep well last night. If you don't eat anything, you won't even have the strength to run away if something really happens."
"Neither alive nor dead, neither alive nor dead." Du Pianjian looked at the boundless sea; if something happened, there would be nowhere to escape.
“Then you should eat it even more. This is your favorite liver. You should die eating your fill.” Yu Zou pushed the plate towards him again, then laughed happily as he thought of what he wanted to say. “I’ll die before you, and when I become a ghost, I’ll still be singing in your ear: ‘Du Pianjian, little friend, eat your food.’”
This was a genuine wail of ghosts and wolves. Du Pianjian's lips twitched, finally settling into a half-smile. He straightened up from the back of his chair, picked up his fork, and stabbed a piece of liver into his mouth: "What makes you think that?"
"I'm six years older than you. If nothing unexpected happens, I'll die first, since I was born before you."
"Who told you that the first to arrive will be the first to leave?" Du Pianjian forked a piece of red liver, put it in his mouth, and bit it hard. "I will show you that sometimes the length of life is determined by another person."
“…As expected of the chief.” Yu Zouqiang maintained his smile and raised his glass to clink glasses with him.
That night, the eerie ringing sound reappeared, showing no sign of stopping.
Du Pianjian, who had been holding back for so long, finally snapped. He pulled out a knife from under his pillow and was about to rush out. Yu Zou barely managed to stop Du Pianjian and told him to calm down, while he went out to deal with the situation with the staff.
To his surprise, the yacht behind the door was completely different from what he had imagined. There was no staff or tourists on board, and it seemed as if only the two of them remained.
The once spacious and bright corridor had become oppressive and dilapidated. The walls were covered with peeling, dirty, dark green paint, stained with unidentified dirt and scratches, casting distorted shadows under the pale light. The smell of disinfectant was so strong it was pungent, yet it couldn't mask the stench of decay that lingered deeper within, as if the walls were made of disinfectant and that corpses lay within them.
Opposite the guest room door, where the original European-style wooden door was, now stood a heavy, rusty iron door with only a small, iron-barred observation window, as if eyes might suddenly glare out from inside at any moment. Below the window was a plaque engraved with a number: A11101
Yu Zou's heart skipped a beat. He turned to look at his own door; it was exactly the same structure, and the door number was the same: O11108.
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