Jiang Luo had no means of defending himself. As an ordinary human faced with this kind of supernatural strangeness, the only apparent option was to bolt out the door.
He turned to look at the door.
The person outside must’ve known what he was thinking. The knocking had stopped, and it seemed like they had left. But Jiang Luo thought the quiet outside felt more like a trap—baiting him to open the door. He cautiously walked over and looked through the peephole again.
Still pitch black outside.
So dark that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
With the motel phone ringing so loudly inside, the hallway’s sound-activated lights should’ve been triggered. It shouldn’t be this dark.
Jiang Luo stepped away from the door and stood in the space between the door and the bed.
There was danger outside the door—and danger under the bed. But the thing under the bed had only taken a photo to warn him to open the door. Comparatively, the thing outside seemed more dangerous.
Jiang Luo decided not to go out.
He glanced at the wall clock. It was 5:13 PM. Forty-seven minutes left until his “husband” returned.
But… was this “husband” even human?
Jiang Luo looked toward the bathroom, wondering if he could hide in there to buy some time.
But just as he looked, he saw that one of the mirror fragments—shattered into multiple pieces—contained a small black dot. Under the ghastly white bathroom light, that black dot seemed to exist inside the mirror.
Afraid he’d misseen it, Jiang Luo blinked and focused, narrowing his eyes.
The black dot had grown slightly larger. This time, Jiang Luo could vaguely make out a human shape.
Jiang Luo: “…”
So there was something inside the mirror too?
That thing was slowly moving toward the surface. If it got large enough, would it crawl out through the mirror?
Well then. The bathroom was no longer a safe option.
Expressionless, Jiang Luo walked briskly over and slammed the bathroom door shut, locking it tightly.
Just as he did, his cellphone vibrated again. Another new message.
It was another photo—another candid shot of him. This time, he was captured shutting the bathroom door. The angle of the shot was even closer.
And again, the message read: 【Open the door!!! Open the door!!!】
Jiang Luo was starting to regret ever calling the front desk. With a sigh, he exited the message and opened his camera app. Switching on the flashlight, he carefully slid the phone under the door.
He quickly took a photo and just as quickly pulled the phone back.
He opened the gallery. The phone was slow to update; it took two seconds before the newly taken photo appeared.
In the picture, someone was leaning against the door in the brightly lit hallway. But he had lowered his head and was curiously staring at Jiang Luo’s phone. His neck stretched out at a bizarre angle, so far that his face was nearly pressed against the floor to peer into the camera.
His face took up two-thirds of the frame, and his eyes were locked onto the lens—almost as if he could see Jiang Luo through it.
His eyes were entirely black—no whites at all.
In an instant, Jiang Luo realized—the “darkness” he had seen through the peephole earlier wasn’t the hallway.
It was this person’s eyes.
Goosebumps instantly rose all over his body. A current-like sensation shot from his tailbone to his scalp. After the instinctive shiver, Jiang Luo’s lips curled up slightly. “Well, this is really thrilling…”
He glanced back at the clock again. It was 5:30.
He couldn’t go outside, and he couldn’t stay in the room much longer either. Looking at it this way, it really felt like he was being forced into a dead end.
And this nameless “husband”… no one could say for sure whether he would bring Jiang Luo more danger or help him escape this dilemma.
In the end, he could only rely on himself.
Jiang Luo only had his phone at hand. He opened the class group chat, scrolled through a few contacts, and picked the most gullible one—Lu Youyi. He dialed a video call.
Hopefully this fake Lu Youyi is as easy to fool as the real one, Jiang Luo thought.
The video connected quickly. Lu Youyi’s excited face filled the whole screen. There were the sounds of dripping water in the background; whatever he was doing over there, it sounded messy. When he saw Jiang Luo, he looked like he was seeing family. “Waaah, Jiang Luo, am I really dreaming about you? This dream feels too real!”
His appearance seemed normal, and his expression showed nothing strange. Jiang Luo slowly and carefully studied his face. “What are you doing?”
“I’m unclogging the drain,” the camera wobbled as he turned it toward a bathroom drain. Lu Youyi’s muffled voice came from off-screen. “I woke up and found myself in a hotel. Before I could even figure things out, I realized the whole room was flooded. The water’s up to my ankles—it stinks so bad, I could die.”
He turned the camera around to show the room. A layer of dirty water covered the tile floor, and a few strands of long hair floated on the surface.
Jiang Luo asked, “Why would there be long hair in your room?”
“That pisses me off just thinking about it,” Lu Youyi’s face appeared back on screen, his expression grim as he held his breath. “The drain in my room was completely clogged. When I woke up, there was a note on the nightstand saying something really horrible would happen if I didn’t clear it. This dream even had the nerve to threaten me! Of course, I’m not scared of some threat—but, well, you know… cough cough… I’m afraid of the dark. If this place cuts the power, I’m screwed. So I figured I better do as it says and unclog the drain.”
He kept rambling, then suddenly sighed. “Sigh, why am I telling a figment of my dream all this anyway? You wouldn’t understand even if I told you. But still, it’s kinda nice having someone to talk to. Right, back to the point—I found out the reason the drain was clogged was because someone upstairs flushed all this hair down here. That’s what you’re seeing now.”
Lu Youyi pointed the camera at the clothes hanger he was using to fish out the hair from the drain. “I’ve been at this a while. Pulled out a ton of black hair. Right before you called, I couldn’t stand it anymore and went upstairs to ask them to stop flushing their junk. They were really polite about it, agreed right away.”
He seemed so real, even mentioning that this was a “dream.” Jiang Luo actually couldn’t tell if he was real or not. Frowning, he probed: “Lu Youyi, what’s the thing you fear most doing with Ye Xun?”
Lu Youyi shuddered, “Even in my dreams, I can’t escape this nightmare… I hate going shopping with him!”
“Ye Xun and his indecisiveness,” he added with a pained look, “Going shopping with him is pure torture.”
This Lu Youyi… really did seem real.
Jiang Luo hesitated. Just then, he noticed something strange in the bundle of hair shown on the screen.
“Wait, take a closer look—what else is in that hair?”
“What could be in there?” Lu Youyi poked around with the hanger. A fake nail tip popped out from the hair, and he let out a surprised “Huh? Is this a girl’s fake nail? Why would something like this be in there?”
He gave it another poke—and this time, a small, pale finger emerged from the tangle of hair.
Lu Youyi: “……”
He froze. His voice distorted from shock. “What the h*ll?!”
Jiang Luo suddenly felt like Lu Youyi’s situation was really bad. “You said the hair was flushed down from upstairs, and you even went up there to talk to them?”
“Yeah,” Lu Youyi went cold all over, his legs weak, “It was a middle-aged couple.”
Jiang Luo was silent for a moment. “It’s very likely they’re trying to dispose of a body. And now, they know you discovered their secret.”
Lu Youyi’s scalp went numb. He couldn’t even stay in the bathroom anymore and bolted out in a panic. “Oh sh*t oh sh*t oh sh*t! What do I do?! They’re not gonna try to kill me, are they?!”
Just as he said that, someone knocked on his door.
He nearly jumped out of his skin. Jiang Luo warned him, “Walk over quietly and check, but don’t open it.”
Lu Youyi swallowed nervously and tiptoed to the door to peek out.
Standing there were the same middle-aged couple from upstairs. Shadows cast eerie darkness over their faces. They were smiling—warmly, even—but both had their hands behind their backs, hiding who knows what.
“Young man?” the man said, “Open the door. We came to apologize.”
The woman smiled sweetly. “Yes, we want to help you clean up a bit.”
Lu Youyi swore those hidden hands were holding the knives meant to chop him up.
He backed away stiffly, retreating all the way to the bed, and whispered into the phone, “It’s really them. I’m screwed. I’m gonna die. Does dying in a dream hurt?! D*mn it, this dream is way too scary!”
Jiang Luo turned his head—his own door was being knocked on again. Knock knock knock. The sound was dull and rhythmic.
He sighed and said to Lu Youyi, “We really are a pair of ill-fated brothers.”
