Chapter Two: Words of the Departed Under the Moon

“There’s no avoiding it now...” Chen Qing muttered twice, the expression on his face returning to calm in an instant.

“Where is this place, who are they, and what exactly are these so-called tales of terror...?”

Standing at the entrance to the stairwell, Chen Qing mulled over every possibility in his mind.

“Many people have gone missing nearby... Was that because of our exploration?” He asked himself again, “And that so-called team... Why is it that only he retained his memory?”

He descended step by step, his fingertips brushing slowly along the handrail.

“I’ve been here before...” he murmured, though he clearly remembered nothing.

“If I have been here...”

Feeling his way, he found a mark at the end of the handrail—carved with a small knife. It looked like a triangle, but the edge extended slightly.

“I would have left this mark...” His face changed a little; he truly had been here, and lost all memory of this place.

He kept moving down the stairs. The end of the corridor, shrouded in darkness, seemed impossibly far away.

“If I’ve been here before, then I must have left something... I would surely have left enough information for myself to get out of here a second time.”

The corridor resembled a dormitory building, and yet it wasn’t quite like the ones at school. On the left, the wall was painted a faint blue up to about one meter sixty. To the right, where there should have been a semi-open balcony overlooking the classroom building, there was now an iron grille. But this was only the second floor—there was no reason for such a thing.

Chen Qing reached past the safety net to feel outside; as he expected, there was resistance beyond the window as well.

“These iron bars must have always been here...”

Frowning, he tried the nearest door, grasped the handle, twisted it both ways, and finally managed to open it.

The door squeaked loudly, but for some reason he could see the room’s interior clearly, even in the dark.

“If I’ve been here before...” He paused and frowned. “No... Why bother guessing what I did? I just need to follow my usual habits to deduce what happened...”

He looked at the door. Inside was a very simple girls’ dorm: four beds, four chairs facing each other.

He walked to a bed and noticed traces that it had been searched before. “Has everything been taken away?” He followed the signs and found a slip of paper pressed beneath the bed.

“Everything here will remain as it was last time... That makes sense.

But anything taken away seems to return to its place.”

He stared at the unfamiliar handwriting on the note, a little curious. It wasn’t his, but the way things were described matched his own style almost exactly.

“Someone else remembered for me...”

He frowned. Since everyone in the group had entered together, why had only two of them made it out in the end?

He then checked the desk drawers, pulling out the chairs and moving aside clothes draped over the desk. Even in the darkness, he could see a few black drawers.

The desk had a metal handle, long unused, and when he touched it, he felt strange flecks of iron. He hesitated, then brought his fingertips to his nose for a cautious sniff.

“Is this... blood?” His face went pale—the scent was shockingly fresh.

“What have I left behind? What else did I leave?”

His gaze searched the room. If something had happened here, he must have left a trace.

“If I were standing in front of this desk... and didn’t know there was danger, I’d use my left hand...”

He bent down to look beneath the desk.

“Nothing?”

---

Puzzled, Chen Qing reached for a metal rod beside him. This didn’t make sense.

“If it were me...”

He stepped back two paces, tore a towel from the bed, tied it around the handle, and opened the drawer in the dark.

With a clatter, the wooden drawer slid open, and then there was only silence.

He stepped forward cautiously, but nothing happened as he had expected.

Inside the desk, he found a flashlight.

“No... Something’s definitely wrong...”

He muttered, switching on the flashlight.

In that instant, just as the beam of light flared—

That human face—or rather, something that could no longer be called a human face.

A twisted mass of protein hung before him, stretched tightly across a bed frame, pinned up on a hanger.

It was just like the way students in the dorms liked to air out their sheets.

Chen Qing’s heart lurched. The eyelashes on that face still trembled ever so slightly.

So did his own hands.

He clenched his jaw; the fear rising from the blood scent peaked.

So it hadn’t been the desk that smelled.

The wavering beam swept down the face; drops of fresh blood fell onto the desk, pooling into a small stream that trickled to the floor, passing over the handle.

Just moments ago, his own face had been only twenty centimeters from that mass of flesh.

“Shit, shit—”

He fought to keep his teeth from chattering, suppressing the urge to scream.

“Why...” He clutched the flashlight; his fingertips were white. “All I feel is fear.”

Step by step, he approached the desk, returning to where he had stood before.

Someone must have left something there.

He examined the flashlight—there were dings and scratches, but nothing to tell when they’d been made.

If a group had been frightened...

Maybe they hadn’t seen this thing at all.

He looked behind him; someone must have fallen back, maybe even cried out...

A whole group would never have made so little noise.

He forced his stiffened legs to move, stopping at the bedside where he’d stood before.

“The handrail... it’s bent.”

Chen Qing quickly concluded that this was a mark left by them crashing into it.

He moved closer and saw, beside the rail, a note wedged in:

“They’re coming. Loud enough noise will make them go away.”

“They... Who are they...?”

---

Chen Qing frowned, yet something about the note struck him as off.

Staring at the human skin only a few feet away, he clenched his jaw.

Suppressing his revulsion, he approached the face, unclasped the hanger holding the skin.

Under the flashlight’s beam, the skin swayed gently, the creased face regaining its roundness for a moment.

His heart skipped a beat as the hanger pinched his hand.

His fingertips ached from the pressure.

At that moment, watching the face sway, he felt sure something was moving under its lashes.

Reluctant and uneasy, he gathered the human skin in his hands.

The revulsion was overwhelming, but some nameless emotion kept him from letting go.

Gritting his teeth, Chen Qing looked under the bed at the desks.

Several were locked.

He tried shaking them—though the locks were rusted through, they were still strong.

Unable to open any, Chen Qing turned his attention to the only unlocked drawer.

He pulled it open gently. Inside lay a faded photograph.

That sort of photo...

A sense of dread rose within him.

“This photo...” He ran his fingers over it.

His fingertips came away clean, not a speck of dust.

“The people in this photo.”

He clenched his teeth, his face pale.

Printed clearly on the photo was his own face.

He was smiling, arm draped warmly around someone beside him.

But he couldn’t remember it—the clothes, the setting, even the era the picture was taken...

Face white as a sheet, Chen Qing looked at the others in the photo.

Aside from himself, three faces had been burned out by cigarette butts or something similar, leaving empty holes.

Two more faces had been blacked out with marker.

“Who am I, really...” he muttered through clenched teeth, a deeper terror spreading within.

“What happened to me?”

Staring at the photo in his hand, Chen Qing felt the world grow increasingly absurd.

“Who... changed my memories?”