Chapter 8

Exhausted, Xie Xishu curled up in the narrow space between the coffee table and the sofa in the living room, and before he knew it, his heavy eyelids drifted shut.

Then, he had a dream.

In this dream, the first thing he heard was a series of hurried footsteps.

The footsteps were quite heavy; the heels of high-heeled shoes thudded against the floor, piercing through the poorly soundproofed walls and landing directly in Xie Xishu’s ears.

He heard the electronic door lock beep as it unlocked. The next moment, his front door was pushed open violently from the outside, the handle striking the wall with a thunderous crash.

Startled by the noise in his dream, the dreaming Xie Xishu paused his workbooks in confusion and rushed out of his room.

"Mom?"

The figure standing at the entrance came into view—it was his mother, whom he hadn't seen in a long time.

Yet, she looked somewhat like a stranger.

In Xie Xishu’s memory, his mother had always been meticulous about her appearance. Even with a son in high school, she looked far younger than her peers.

But now, the mother standing before him looked exceptionally haggard and… extraordinarily aged.

Upon hearing his voice, the woman turned around immediately. Her eyes were wide, her pupils trembling. The living room light caught her face, causing every muscle in her cheeks to sag toward the corners of her mouth, her brow tightly furrowed. The hair she usually kept in a flawless bun had fallen loose, with damp, straggly strands sticking to her sweat-slicked forehead, making her look uncharacteristically disheveled.

Xie Xishu had never seen his mother look like this.

"Why are you back? I thought you weren't on leave until next month?" he asked, unable to help himself. "...How long can you stay home this time?"

Despite his confusion, a faint sense of joy welled up in his heart at the sight of his long-absent mother.

His mother didn't answer immediately; she merely tilted her chin toward him, as if acknowledging she had heard him.

"Oh, right, I made it to the finals for the Math Olympiad. The teacher said there’s a bonus for the college entrance exam if I win, and I think my chances are pretty good—"

Seeing her look so exhausted, Xie Xishu went to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water, placing it by her side while instinctively sharing the good news he’d been holding onto.

However, the woman didn't wait for him to finish.

Before Xie Xishu could even set the glass on the coffee table, he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder as his mother pushed him away.

"Can't you see I'm busy?!"

The woman sat on the sofa, snapping at him in a frazzled, angry tone, her expression growing increasingly ferocious and irritable.

"Go to your room, don't disturb me..." She turned her face back, focusing intently on the tablet in her lap. Her voice shifted instantly, becoming steady and cold as she addressed someone else, "Sorry, Dean Xu, I had some interference just now... Please, continue..."

Only then did Xie Xishu notice the Bluetooth earpiece in her ear, blinking with a tiny blue light, indicating she was on a call.

"...I'm sorry."

Even knowing his mother likely hadn't paid any attention to him at all, Xie Xishu muttered an apology with his head bowed.

As he prepared to retreat, he heard a heavy scraping sound from the foyer.

The door opened once again.

This time, the person appearing at the threshold was his father, who was home even less often than his mother.

Xie Xishu was shocked to the core.

"Dad? What’s going on? Why are you back too?"

Xie’s father held his head low, as if his neck could no longer support the weight of it. His complexion was even worse than his mother’s—a deathly, iron-gray.

He was dragging a heavy suitcase, stumbling as he walked, looking completely hollowed out. Hearing Xie Xishu’s call, it took him several seconds to slowly lift his head.

Seeing the anxious, bewildered boy in the living room, the man’s brows knitted tightly together.

"It’s so late, why aren't you asleep yet?" he asked sharply.

"I, I... I was doing some practice problems. I was just about to go to bed, but I heard noises outside and came to check. Why are you and Mom both back? What happened..."

Xie Xishu tried to explain, but his father cut him off abruptly.

"Enough, go to bed. Since you know your health isn't good, you should learn some self-discipline. As for us... don't concern yourself with adult matters."

He then turned toward his mother on the sofa.

"Finished communicating?" he asked. "Is there a way to solve it?"

His mother hung up the phone, pressed her temples, and whispered, "I don't know..."

Neither his father nor his mother spared a single moment of attention for their only child.

"Then I'll go to sleep. Goodnight, Dad, Mom."

Xie Xishu’s voice grew increasingly timid. He murmured the words, pursed his lips, and retreated into his room with absolute obedience.

By then, his parents had their heads together, peering at the complex data and documents on the tablet, occasionally whispering in low, forced tones. They were clearly not discussing anything pleasant, as their expressions were terrifying.

This left Xie Xishu feeling even more panicked.

Deep down, a voice seemed to be screaming, warning him that something was terribly wrong.

After closing his bedroom door, he stood there blankly for a few seconds before finally succumbing to the urge to quietly crack the door open.

The boy hunched his back and peered through the gap toward the living room.

His parents were shrouded in the shadows of the living room, looking as if they had merged into a single entity. Xie Xishu saw his mother trembling as she rolled up her sleeves for his father, as if showing him something.

Xie Xishu couldn't help but pull the door open a little further, wanting to see more clearly.

At that exact moment, the woman’s head on the sofa snapped one hundred and eighty degrees, facing him directly.

Her voice turned sharp and piercing.

"What are you looking at?!"

Xie Xishu let out a low cry, stumbling backward until he collapsed onto the floor.

The mother who had turned around was no longer a mother.

That face he knew so well was suddenly twisted and deformed in the dream, transformed into something impossible to accept.

Deep red fissures appeared across the woman's face, the edges rimmed with pitch-black eyelashes.

The moment they met Xie Xishu's gaze, those fissures all opened at once.

Every single one became an eye.

But they were not the eyes of a normal human being.

Xie Xishu had never seen eyes like these before. They were frantic and desperate, the bulging pupils seemingly ready to pop out of their sockets—huge, pitch-black, and lusterless—while the whites were filled with a dense, scarlet web of blood vessels.

Dense.

So dense.

His mother’s face was covered in those deformed eyeballs, packed together like grapes.

And every single one of them was staring at Xie Xishu without blinking.

"Didn't I tell you? You should be in your room sleeping."

He heard his mother's voice emerging from the depths of the entity that was slowly crawling toward him.

...

Waking up from the nightmare, Xie Xishu was not surprised to find his clothes soaked through with cold sweat.

He lay limp on the floor, his hands and feet icy and nearly numb. Yet, when he raised a hand to touch his cheek and forehead, the numb skin felt a heat so intense it seemed capable of burning him.

Xie Xishu knew he had a high fever again.

He had thought he was used to them, but the discomfort this time was unusually severe. With every breath, it felt as though magma was surging out of his nasal passages. When he tried to climb up from the floor, his body felt impossibly weak, as if someone had snuck in while he slept and stolen the bones from beneath his skin and muscle.

The simple act of moving from the floor to the sofa left him gasping for air, his vision flickering with darkness.

While gathering the strength for his next movement, he lay on the sofa, staring blankly ahead.

The living room was exceptionally dim.

Having slept until the middle of the night, the house was silent and dark, like a grave waiting to be filled with a corpse.

It was precisely because of this darkness that Xie Xishu noticed a faint glimmer on the front door.

It was light coming through the peephole.

Xie Xishu stared blankly at that point of light... and his heart suddenly constricted.

*

Like all modern apartments, the hallway outside Xie Xishu’s door was equipped with a motion-sensor light installed by the developer.

It only turned on when someone was present.

Furthermore, Xie Xishu lived in a corner unit, and the area outside his door was enclosed and used exclusively by his household.

Unless a neighbor or staff member was specifically looking for him, no one would ever pass by his door.

But now, the sensor light outside was on.

This meant only one thing—someone was standing at his door right now. If it were a neighbor or building staff, they would have pressed the doorbell to announce their business.

Yet, several minutes passed; the light from the peephole remained, and the doorbell stayed silent.

Xie Xishu’s heart raced, his breathing growing more rapid.

After the series of recent incidents, he was a bird startled by the mere twang of a bowstring. Everything felt so strange, so wrong. He didn't even know if this was just a paranoid delusion brought on by a mental breakdown.

"Who... is it?"

Xie Xishu tried to call out to the door, but when the sound left his lips, he realized his "shout" was nothing more than a whisper.

Driven by fear, he struggled to his feet and, leaning against the wall, shuffled step by step toward the door.

*It’s probably just a wrong food delivery.*

*Maybe it’s building management patrolling the hallway.*

*There’s nothing to be afraid of.*

*I’m just too on edge.*

*Don’t be afraid.*

*Don’t be afraid.*

*Don’t be afraid.*

...