Chapter 1

The dark clouds in the midday day sky hung low like a sheet of impenetrable lead-gray plastic film covering the whole of Tokyo.

“Is anybody there…… Is anyone there!”

The street heading from North to South was completely deserted, the sound of hurried footsteps came from afar, followed by breathless trills.

A woman in a fur coat ran out of the thick fog, treading crookedly with heels. She sprained her foot quite a number of times but never stopped, as if something was chasing her from the back and she would lose her life if she so much as stopped.

The woman looked around. The door of all the shops was opened, the cars were orderly parked on both sides of the street and the huge LED screen above the shopping mall was showing advertisements for a new autumn product.

On the screen, a gorgeous celebrity grinned and was saying something but there was no sound.

Everything was the same as the usual streetscape on a weekend except there was no one and no sound.

In the whole city, even the sound of the wind could not flow in.

“Is anybody there! Please give me a response!”

In the quiet world that could cause someone to be terrified, the woman could not win against the fear in her heart and let out a wail at last, even her footsteps slowed down.

The heel of her right stiletto heel broke when she passed a wide crossroad, causing her to stumble forward and fall on the asphalt road. The rough surface grazed her palms and knees. She couldn’t prop up her body for a long time.

As she was struggling, the sound of slow and heavy footsteps came from behind her. There was even the sound of steel dragging on the ground.

The woman suddenly raised her head, her eyes covered by her messy hair were widely opened, bloodshot and full of fear.

Her eyes darted left and right but could not see the thing before her. In a moment of desperation, she clawed at the ground with both hands and dragged her powerless body forward.

“Is anyone there, save me……”

The footsteps behind her were not too hasty nor too slow and was teasing in a leisure and carefree way.

Like a dying bird, the woman dragged her broken body to crawl forward.

Suddenly, she could not move an inch anymore. The sound behind her had stopped.

She had been stepped on by someone.

She was trembling so hard that her entire body was shaking all over, the woman’s hand unwaveringly clutched at the ground and heer crystal fingernails turned upwards. She said while shivering, “Who……who will save me……”

“Who! Who will save me~”

A low feminine male voice clumsily imitating her voice came from above, carrying a perverted sense of delight.

Now, the viewpoint bypassed the woman and went to her back.

A little girl wore a sweet pastel cotton dress, holding an axe up high with both her hands.

“You got caught by me, oh you lost~”

The little girl opened her mouth but what came out was actually a mature masculine voice.

The girl raised the axe, aiming at her head for a moment before aiming at her neck like she was a birthday girl at a birthday party, looking for an angle to cut the cake with a happy posture.

“God, please save me.”

Feeling the movement behind her, the woman on the ground shivered desperately, her trembling voice said her prayers and her entire body was engulfed in fear.

The little girl paused for a second and exposed a big smile soon after, “The Gods aren’t at home, the Homo sapiens1 will play with you.”

The axe dropped in an instant, dark red blood splashed on the sweet cotton dress.

In the middle of the empty and wide crossroad, a woman laid in a pool of blood with her ash-grey eyes, like a raven lying on the black frozen ground. She became a kind of landmark as blood spread in the direction of the four streets.

The little girl let go of the handle, allowing the axe to penetrate the woman’s throat and be deeply embedded into the ground.

Clapping her small hands, she hopped off the woman’s back.

Raising her head to look at the black clouds covering the city above, the little girl’s lip curled as she smiled.

“The game has begun.”

12:13, 31 August 2022, Shanghai————

When “game start”2 sounded, Tang Zhi suddenly opened his eyes.

What he saw was a liquid crystal television in the living room, showing a throbbing pale snowflake with a slight static sound.

“You’re awake?”

A low magnetic male voice asked.

Tang Zhi inclined his head to look over, then remember he was cuddling the man beside him whilst he slept.

In the brightly lit living room, Tang Zhi wiped his face and appeared to be exhausted as he sat up. He asked in a low voice, “Bo Ye, how long was I asleep for?”

The man in front of him was called Bo Ye, his same-sex lover. This year was the fifth year of their relationship.

In those five years, they had a long-distance relationship for four years and this semester, he came to China as an exchange student. He actually thought he could end the situation of being separated in two places, but……

He leaned back against the sofa, tilting his head back and muttered, “It seemed like a pretty long dream.”

“Not even a quarter of an hour.” Putting down his book, the man got up and poured a glass of water for him, “What kind of dream was it? An erotic dream?”

“……”

Tang Zhi tilted his head and stared towards the direction he left.

The feeling of suffocation pressing had dissipated a lot. Tang Zhi sat cross-legged on the sofa, relaxed his body and turned his face over to look out of the french window.

The sky was abnormally bright like a hole had been torn so all the sunlight had leaked out. Apart from the bright halo, nothing else could be seen.

Their house was on the eighteenth floor but the seawater was already up to the edge of the floor and the waves brought floating objects from time to time.

The surface of the deep blue sea reflected the tall building opposite which had black smoke coming from the raging inferno. That floor had been burning for three days and three nights, leaving charred reinforced concrete frames.

The scene of half sea and half flame stimulated the visual nerves, reminding people where they were over and over again.

“This is hell……”

Tang Zhi said.

Bo Ye came out of the kitchen, holding a cup of water. He followed Tang Zhi’s line of sight to look towards the window and knew what he was thinking about some nonsensical stuff. He walked towards the french window and pulled the curtains down.

“Look on the bright side, the Earth is going to explode and humanity can take a vacation.” He passed the cup of water to Tang Zhi, “Tomorrow is Monday but I don’t have to go to work and you don’t have to go to school. We can even laze around at home, how great. ”

“I’d rather go to school……” Bulging one side of his cheek, Tang Zhi took the cup of water he passed over, the warm milk inside emitted a warmth that made him at ease. He raised his head and said, “Aren’t you a tiny bit anxious at all? This is already the seventh day.”

This abnormal situation started seven days ago.

That morning, Bo Ye went to work but could not open the front door of the house. It was not only the door, even the windows could not be opened. Apart from this, all signals were cut off and he was unable to contact the world outside.

It was like they were confined in a different dimension.

After the two of them tried all means but to no avail, they could only accept reality and wait quietly at home, only with the digital clock reminding them of the passage of time.

Through that glass window in the kitchen, they watched the world outside undergo dramatic changes, from the first day the world turned dim to the third day the seawater poured into the city from the East and then the fifth day when the birds disappeared; everything was in the manner it was stated in Genesis.3

Just like how God used seven days to create the world, the unknown and mysterious force used its powers, in the same way, to destroy the world in seven days.

Today was the seventh day, the Sabbath.4

Bo Ye sat back on the sofa and naturally took the boy into his arms, “What’s there to be anxious about? From the third day, I suspected that what we see really isn’t real. The outside is already like this, how can the house still have a supply of water and electricity?”

Tang Zhi took a sip of milk and muttered in a low voice, “It is as you’ve said……but my mind is always in a mess.”

Bo Ye raised his left hand and placed it in front of him to play with. Tilting his head slightly, he snuggled close to kiss his ear and said, “I should do something so that you won’t have the energy to think about these matters.”

Tang Zhi naturally knew what “doing something” meant, his face reddened and he drank his milk silently.

The two hands intertwined were slender, similar platinum rings were worn on both of their left ring fingers, simple but generous.

Bo Ye furrowed his brows, turning the ring on Tang Zhi’s ring finger, “It’s a shame that we can’t hold a wedding.”

The two of them originally planned to hold their wedding in Norway on the 7th of September but it wasn’t possible with this sort of situation.

A suggestion: “How about we have our wedding tonight?”

“What do you have in mind?” Tang Zhi set the cup down and looked at him.

Bo Ye: “Let’s just keep it simple, it’s meaningful enough to just enter the bridal chambers at night.”

“Bo Ye!”

Tang Zhi slapped his face.

The two of them were nestled on the sofa and fighting when they caught a glimpse of the light in the study flickering.

“Is the light broken?”

Tang Zhi stopped his movements, turned his head over to look and said in surprise.

Bo Ye extracted his hand from under the hem of his shirt and got up to head over to the study, “I’ll take a look.”

Tang Zhi tidied his oversized T-shirt, looking at the television in front, the screen was full of snow just like before.

After a while, he felt something was out of place.

Out of the corner of his eye, the light was still flickering but there were no movements from Bo Ye after he went in.

“Bo Ye.”

He shouted while facing the study.

There was no response.

Tang Zhi stood up hesitantly as uneasiness assailed his heart. He slowly approached the study and asked, “Bo Ye, are you ok?”

When he walked up to the entrance of the study, he stopped all of a sudden.

The curtains in the room were drawn, the light flickered in at any extremely fast frequency and the man stood motionless in the middle.

Amidst the flickering, he could see Tang Zhi clearly saw his pale complexion.

“Bo Ye?”

He wanted to step forward but Bo Ye called him to stop, “Candi5, don’t come over.”

The lights flickered once before it went out and the man disappeared.

Tang Zhi’s heart was in shock. He was about to enter the study when the room door slammed shut all of a sudden and he pounced on the closed door for a while.

“Bo Ye!”

Tang Zhi was so anxious the rim of his eyes turned red and his hand kept banging on the door.

When right on cue, the lights in the house flashed and at the same time, Tang Zhi felt a subtle change in the texture of the door under his hand.

When the lights dimmed, he felt an ice-cold sensation under his hand. When the lights lit up, the door before him changed into a solid wooden door.

He didn’t care much about it and desperately pulled the doorknob, “Bo Ye! Are you in there?”

The moment his voice fell, all the lights went out, or in other words, the lights in the whole world went out.

In the next second, the light reappeared and Tang Zhi realised he was already mysteriously in a cuboid space. The space was so small that he could only stand and even turning around was very difficult.

He looked around in a flushed manner. This was like a white cuboid coffin, with the lid sealed seamlessly to tightly lock people inside.

Tang Zhi patted the wall in front of him and it felt ice-cold.

A light sound was heard, startling him into sticking to the wall behind and then the four white walls gradually melted, turning into transparent glass.

At last, Tang Zhi saw the surrounding scenario. His mouth opened, shocked into speechlessness.

As far as he could see, there were glass rooms one after another and these glass rooms were arranged neatly in succession, permeating in an unknown space.6

A person was locked in each glass room and everyone was uniform in wearing white clothes. Some people were angrily pounding on the glass and their mouths rebuking something; Some people had crumbled and were crying, their faces dripping with tears; Then there were many more, but were like Tang Zhi, their expression full of uneasiness and at a loss.

At this moment, humanity was like stored toys on shelves, being stuffed in transparent boxes.

If the perspective was zoomed out endlessly, each glass room would become a series of scrolling codes, circulating in loops in a boundless space.

If a person takes out a segment of the code to enlarge it and enlarge it even more, then zoom in onto one of those glass rooms, into the person’s eyes in the room; you can see the lasting mark etched into depth in their eyes, unfathomable darkness——

Fear.

The author has something to say:

ゲームスタート：The game begins.

It’s the first snow today, let’s start writing.

Some say their heart feels empty after licking a little milk bag7, just start writing.

Footnotes

智人 zhì rén : The scientific term for humans.

ゲームスタート gēmusutāto : Katakana is used here as Japanese uses quite a number of borrowed words. The literal translation means Game Start. The game has begun!

创世纪 chuàng shì jì : From what I’ve search up, Genesis is the first volume of the Christian classic, Holy Bible, belonging to the five books of Moses in the Old Testament.

The first day: Light was created.

The second day: The sky was created.

The third day: Dry land, seas, plants and trees were created.

The fourth day: The Sun, Moon and stars were created.

The fifth day: Creature that live in the and that fly in the sky were created.

The sixth day: Animals and humans were created

The seven day: God finished his work of creation.

In this case, it’s a rewind, so the world is ending.

安息日 ān xī rì : The term, the Sabbath, means “to rest” or “to stop working” which originated from Hebrew. It is one of the main holidays for the Jewish.

In the original text, ‘Candi’ is in English and seems to be the nickname Bo Ye had for Tang Zhi.

充满了未知的空间 chōng mǎn le wèi zhī de kōng jiān : I changed it from “full of unknown space” to “permeating in an unknown space” as it really doesn’t smoothly link to the context.

小奶包 xiǎo nǎi bāo : Refers to Oh Se Hun in EXO.