Ashes Of Deep Sea

The dense fog outside the window churned relentlessly, as if the entire world had vanished beyond its limits, with only the vague light of day penetrating the mist to illuminate the room, maintaining a sort of semi-dimness.

In the moderately disheveled bachelor apartment, Zhou Ming was hunched over the desk, with the clutter pushed roughly to one side, and he, looking worn and haggard, was writing furiously:

“Day seven, the situation remains unchanged, the thick fog envelops everything outside the window, the windows have been sealed by an unknown force… The entire room seems to have been ‘cast’ into some abnormal space…

“There’s no way to make contact with the outside world, no water or electricity, yet the lights stay on, and the computer can be powered up—even though I’ve unplugged it…”

It was as if a soft whisper of wind suddenly came from the direction of the window. Zhou Ming, who had been buried in his journal, suddenly looked up, a faint light flickering in his weary eyes. However, the next second, he realized it was just an illusion; the pallid dense fog still clung stubbornly outside the window, a silent world indifferently enveloping his tiny sanctuary.

His gaze swept over the windowsill, where he saw the wrench and hammer tossed there in disarray—traces of his attempts to leave the room over the past few days. Yet now, these tough and coarse tools lay there quietly, as if mocking his predicament.

Seconds later, Zhou Ming’s expression calmed again—with this abnormal calm, he lowered his head once more and went back to his writing:

“I am trapped, in a predicament without a clue. In the past few days, I’ve even tried dismantling the ceiling, walls, and floor, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make even the tiniest mark on the wall. This room has become like… like a box ‘cast’ with the space, with no way out…

“Except for that door.

“But the situation beyond that door… is even more bizarre.”

Zhou Ming stopped once more, slowly examining the words he had just written, then casually flipping through the journal, perusing his entries from the past few days—oppressive words, meaningless meditations, irritated scribbles, and the cold jokes written in an attempt to relax his mind.

He didn’t know what the point was in writing these, didn’t know who might see these nonsensical entries one day. In fact, he wasn’t even someone accustomed to keeping a journal—being a middle school teacher with very limited free time, he didn’t have much energy to devote to it.

But now, willing or not, he had plenty of free time.

He woke up to find himself trapped in his own room.

Outside the window was the never-dissipating fog, so thick that nothing could be seen beyond it, and the world seemed to have lost its cycle of day and night. The room was filled with a constant dull light, the windows were locked, utilities cut off, and no amount of noise made within the room could summon rescue from the outside world.

It was like an absurd nightmare, everything operating contrary to natural laws, but Zhou Ming had exhausted all means to confirm one thing: there are no illusions here, nor are there dreams, only a world that has ceased to be normal and a self that, for the moment, is still sane.

He took a deep breath, his gaze finally resting on the only door at the far end of the room.

A plain and inexpensive white wooden door, with a calendar he had forgotten to replace since last year still nailed to it, remaining until today. The doorknob shone from wear, and the doormat was placed a bit askew.

That door could be opened.

If this sealed and altered room was like a cage, then the most malicious part of the cage was that it actually preserved a door that could be opened at any time, constantly luring the prisoner to push the door and leave—but what lay beyond that door was not the “outside” that Zhou Ming desired.

There were no familiar yet comforting corridors, no sunny streets bustling with lively crowds, none of the everything he knew.

There was only an unfamiliar and unsettling foreign land, and “over there” was just as much an inescapable predicament.

But Zhou Ming knew that the time left for him to hesitate was running out, and the so-called “choice” had never been there from the start.

His food supply was limited, and only a quarter remained of the few jugs of mineral water. He had tried every method to escape and call for help in this enclosed room. Now, the only path left before him was to prepare himself to seek a chance of survival “on the other side” of the door.

Perhaps there will still be an opportunity to investigate and clarify what has caused this bizarre and supernatural predicament.

Zhou Ming took a light breath, bowed his head, and left the final few paragraphs in his diary: “… But regardless, the only choice left now is to head to the opposite side of the door, at least on that strange ship I can still find some food. The explorations and preparations I made there over the past few days should be enough to allow myself to survive on that ship… although the preparations I was able to make were truly limited.”

“To whoever comes after, if I fail to return and someday someone, maybe a rescue worker, opens this room and sees this diary, please don’t dismiss everything I’ve written as a ludicrous tale—it really happened. Despite the terror, there truly was a person named Zhou Ming trapped in a crazed and eerie temporal-spatial anomaly.”

“I did my utmost to describe in this diary all the abnormal phenomena I saw and recorded every effort I made to escape. If there really is a ‘someone who comes after,’ please, at the very least, remember my name, at least remember that all this ever happened.”

Zhou Ming closed the diary and tossed the pen into the pen holder next to him, slowly rising from behind the desk.

It was time to leave, before finding himself completely trapped and out of options.

But after a brief contemplation, he didn’t head straight for the only door leading to the “outside world.” Instead, he walked over to his bed.

He must face the “foreign land” opposite the door in perfect form—and right now, especially his mental state, was not nearly good enough.

Zhou Ming didn’t know if he could fall asleep, but even forcing himself to lie on the bed and empty his mind would be better than going to the “other side” in an overly fatigued mental state.

Eight hours later, Zhou Ming opened his eyes.

Outside the window, there was still only chaotic mist. The indistinguishable daylight of Sky Light carried a gloomy oppressiveness.

Zhou Ming directly ignored the view outside the window. He took out some food from his limited stores, ate till he was mostly full, and then stood in front of the dressing mirror in the corner of the room.

The man in the mirror still had messy hair and looked fairly disheveled, with no particular air of sophistication, but Zhou Ming still stared intently at his reflection as if to burn the image permanently into his memory.

He did this for several minutes, then spoke to himself in a low voice, as if to the person in the mirror, “Your name is Zhou Ming—at least on ‘this side,’ your name is Zhou Ming, and you must always remember that.”

Only after that did he turn around and leave.

Standing in front of the all too familiar door, Zhou Ming took a deep breath and placed his hand on the handle.

Except for his clothes, he didn’t carry anything extra with him, neither food nor defensive equipment. This was the experience gained from several previous “explorations”—besides himself, he couldn’t bring anything else through the door.

Actually, he even felt that perhaps this “self” was questionable, because…

Zhou Ming turned the handle, pushed the door open, and was met with a mass of swelling, writhing grey-black mist, like some curtain, and amidst the unpredictably shifting fog, he seemed to already hear the sound of the waves in his ears.

Stepping through that layer of mist, the somewhat fishy sea breeze hit him full on, the phantom sound of waves beside him became real, and a slight rocking sensation came from underneath his feet. After a momentary dizziness, Zhou Ming opened his eyes, and what entered his sight was an expanse of spacious wooden deck, towering masts standing beneath dark, gloomy clouds, and a borderless sea that was gently undulating beyond the ship’s railings.

Zhou Ming looked down and saw a body stronger than he remembered, a set of exquisitely crafted and expensive-looking but completely unfamiliar captain’s uniform, a pair of hands with thick joints, and the classically designed, beautiful black flintlock pistol he was holding in his own hand.

Yes, even the “self” was questionable…