Have You Ever Experienced Something That Made You Suspect Parallel Worlds Exist?

Translator’s note: The pen name 施眠药 (shi1 mian2 yao4) is a homophone of “insomnia pills.”

My friend’s daughter mysteriously disappeared in ‘07. Afterward, he actually saw his daughter in a photo printed in a newspaper from years back, and the photo was of a mirage. My friend said he was going to find his daughter, and a few days later, he too vanished from the face of the earth! I started searching for him, and ended up entering a parallel otherworld.

“I’m going to tell you something, and you absolutely can’t tell anyone else.”

“Forget it. Even if you did tell, nobody would believe you.”

Zhang Hao drained the beer in his glass and gave a bitter smile, as if he had misgivings and was mocking himself at the same time: “I know where Yuanyuan is.”

Zhang Hao’s daughter had gone missing.

That summer night a few years ago, Zhang Hao pounded on my door like a madman, asking whether I had seen his daughter:

“Let me in to look. The kid said this afternoon she was coming to your place to play. Have you seen her or not?” Outside the door, Zhang Hao gripped my hand with all his might, like a beast gone berserk.

There were few surveillance cameras back then. The police checked several cameras on the main street, and missing-person notices were pasted all over the streets, but Zhang Hao’s daughter seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth, without a trace.

From then on, Zhang Hao was possessed.

Conventional means turned up nothing, and Zhang Hao’s home filled with so-called “masters,” but every last one of those masters was a swindler. Zhang Hao spent his entire fortune and still didn’t find the slightest clue about his daughter.

So when I heard him say he had news of his daughter, I was incredibly excited too:

“Tell me where, quick. I’ll go with you!”

“You can’t go.” Zhang Hao’s expression turned desolate. “Chen Gu, Yuanyuan’s mother died early, you’re my only friend, and you’re also Yuanyuan’s ganba. I’m only asking you for one thing. This matter is very strange, but even if there’s only a one-in-ten-thousand chance, I have to go. If I don’t come back, in the second drawer in the bedroom at my place, there’s something I’ve left for you.”

Translator’s note: Ganba (干爸) is a godfather, an honorary “dad” by sworn relationship rather than blood.

We sat at the table farthest from the lights in the restaurant. The summer night was very dark, and I couldn’t see his face clearly.

“Stop dithering, damn it. Where the hell is Yuanyuan?” I was frantic. At a time like this, he was still talking in riddles.

Zhang Hao raised his head and looked at me for a long time, but his eyes told me he wasn’t actually looking at anything; there was only a blank haze.

“A photo,” Zhang Hao said, as if he had lost his soul. “Yuanyuan is in a photo.” “A photo of where?” I hurriedly asked. As long as we knew where the place in the photo was, there was hope of finding the child.

“Chen Gu…” Zhang Hao held back tears and, trembling, took out what looked like a report clipped from a newspaper.

I took out my phone; only with its light could I see it clearly.

The paper was yellowed, evidently many years old.

The report said: “Mirage appears over our city; strange structure clearly visible.”

Rather than saying the structure was strange, it would be better to say its appearance was eerie:

It was a gigantic bronze door, hanging in the empty sky, completely out of place with the surrounding scenery.

Even more bizarre, judging by the surrounding scenery, the “door” in the photo was nearly 40 meters tall. I studied architecture as an undergrad. The biggest gate in the world is Huamen in Linfen, Shanxi, and its main gate is only 1 meter, while the bronze door in the picture was flat-out more than twice as tall.

There was absolutely no such thing on Earth.

On the ground directly in front of the “door,” a little girl’s figure faced the camera.

“Chen Gu, look at this little girl. Her build, the clothes she’s wearing, don’t they look like Yuanyuan’s?” Zhang Hao said hoarsely.

Clearly the photographer’s attention at the time had been entirely on the mirage. To capture the door clearly, the photographer had zoomed in very close, so the person in the photo became even smaller and blurrier; you could only vaguely make out that it was a little girl.

“Look at the clothes on her!” Zhang Hao pointed at the person in the photo. “Don’t they look like the ones Yuanyuan wore?”

“And the hair! I braided Yuanyuan’s braids myself. I’d never mistake them,” Zhang Hao said excitedly.

“Don’t get worked up yet.” I hurriedly soothed him. “A mirage is just refraction of light, and light can’t refract something that doesn’t exist in reality. This door looks eerie, but it’s probably a trick of the camera. As long as we scan the picture and slowly search online, we’ll definitely find the matching place.”

“Chen Gu, do you think I didn’t think of that?” Zhang Hao waved his hand painfully.

Looking at the old-looking color photo in the newspaper, an ominous feeling suddenly rose in my heart.

Zhang Hao looked at me with a strange expression and said, one word at a time:

“This newspaper is from ‘19.”

Zhang Yuan went missing in 2007 at age 11. In ‘19, she hadn’t even been born.

Zhang Hao’s words exploded beside my ear like a clap of thunder. His long-missing daughter appearing in a newspaper from more than 20 years ago. If not for this photo, I would even have suspected he’d gone crazy from long-term stress.

“I didn’t expect you to believe me.” Seeing the doubt in my eyes, Zhang Hao laughed at himself. “Chen Gu, sometimes I feel I’ve gone crazy myself. I don’t care whether this girl is Yuanyuan or not, I have to go look.”

“How are you going to look? With just this photo that might not even be real?” I got a little angry. Zhang Hao was my best friend, and I also wanted to find Zhang Yuan as soon as possible.

But how could you search with just one old newspaper? Where would you search?

“If you’re set on going, I have to go with you,” I said firmly.

“I have a few leads of my own. You just need to remember what I told you. Consider it helping me one last time.” Zhang Hao stood up and patted my shoulder, signaling me to say no more.

I slumped onto the stool. Around me was a bustling crowd, but my head was dead silent. I watched Zhang Hao’s receding back, wanting to say something, but in the end I didn’t open my mouth.

A few days later, Zhang Hao went missing too.

Back then Zhang Hao had agreed with me that he would text me at a fixed frequency to confirm he was safe.

Three days ago, that contact was cut off.

My first thought was to call the police and use the Skynet surveillance network to find Zhang Hao. But what should I tell the police, that my good friend vanished while chasing a mirage?

Would anyone believe it?

After hesitating again and again, I still called the police. With no other way out, I could only pin my hopes on them.

The one who received me was an officer in his 40s. I very craftily concealed the reason Zhang Hao had left, only saying I couldn’t contact him.

After asking in detail about some basic circumstances, the officer told me to go back for now and wait for news.

“If anything comes up we’ll contact you right away. If you know his hometown, you can go ask his parents first,” the officer said.

Zhang Hao was an only child, and his parents had passed away long ago.

I stood at the police station entrance smoking hard. The matter seemed to have hit a dead end.

Without help from the police, with just me, finding him without even knowing where Zhang Hao had gone was no different from fishing a needle out of the sea.

As I smoked, I pounded my head hard with my right fist. Getting headaches whenever I was anxious had been a problem of mine since I was little.

After pounding my head three or four times in a row, the headache eased, and I started thinking of a way out.

Maybe there was really only that one way to find him.

I remembered what Zhang Hao had said before we parted. He told me to go to his home after he disappeared.

Zhang Hao’s home wasn’t far, but I hadn’t gone there once since he disappeared. I subconsciously resisted going there, even though there might be something important Zhang Hao had left me.

Because I had a feeling that digging too deep into this matter might lead to things that couldn’t be controlled. I didn’t consider myself someone who could give everything for others, though I did hope to find Zhang Hao and his daughter, and if needed, I would definitely do everything I could without hesitation.

But now what drove me forward was more curiosity about that photo.

The little girl in that photo really looked too much like Zhang Hao’s daughter. I’d heard there were people in the world who looked exactly alike despite no blood relation, but could such a coincidence really happen? A little girl resembling Zhang Hao’s daughter happening to appear in the phantom of a mirage?

Was that possible?

The bigger doubt was still the newspaper from ‘19 that Zhang Hao mentioned. Knowing Zhang Hao, he didn’t have a habit of collecting old newspapers, so where had he found it?

I decided to call Monkey.

Monkey’s real name was Xu Pei; he was a childhood friend of mine and Zhang Hao’s.

When we were little we all lived in the same building. Because of his scrawny build, Zhang Hao gave Xu Pei the nickname “Monkey.” Later, at some point, the two of them got into a big fight for some reason and stopped speaking from then on, but my relationship with Monkey wasn’t affected. I tried to repair their relationship, but both were stubborn types, and neither was willing to be first to bow his head.

Now that Zhang Hao was in trouble, the first helper I thought of was still Monkey. No matter what, it was a bond from playing with pee and mud together as kids. Even if there had been conflict later, he wouldn’t go so far as to watch someone die without helping.

The call went through quickly. I told Monkey the whole story, and after a long silence, a sigh came from the other end of the line.

“Where are you?” he said.

Monkey quickly arrived at my place. Because of where our jobs were, he and I hadn’t gotten together in several years either; usually we talked by phone. Seeing him again after so many years, I just felt he’d grown even thinner.

No time for pleasantries, I told Monkey what I was thinking.

“You’re really not joking?” Monkey looked at me gravely.

I shook my head helplessly.

“The two of us haven’t spoken in years. I only learned about Yuanyuan going missing from you.” Monkey sighed. “Could it be that the blow left him a little mentally unbalanced?”

“I’ve seen the photo in that newspaper. It really does look like her,” I said. “Zhang Hao doesn’t seem mentally unbalanced either.”

“We’ll just have to go look,” Monkey said. “See what he left you.”

At dusk the two of us arrived at the neighborhood where Zhang Hao lived.

The building was an old-style corridor apartment block. The lights were broken, so we could only grope forward in the dark from memory by the light of our phones. The building was filled with a smell that was hard to describe, like the smell of burnt straw that filled my childhood hometown. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it couldn’t be called pleasant either. For a moment I was dazed, as if I’d gone back to childhood.

Zhang Hao’s home was on the 4th floor. I took out the key Zhang Hao had given me and opened the door.

Monkey let out an exclamation first, startling me. I looked up, and what met my eyes was a wall full of photos.

“They all seem to be photos of Yuanyuan,” Monkey said after a silence.

Zhang Hao had inherited his father’s hobby of photography, but after his wife passed away he stopped going out to shoot scenery; he transferred all his love to his daughter.

A pang of sadness suddenly welled up in me.

The power had been cut off for nonpayment, so we had to use our phones to search the bedroom.

The thing was easy to find; you could see it as soon as you pulled open the drawer:

Two brass keys and a slip of paper.

I felt an inexplicable disappointment. I’d thought it would be some supernatural object, but it turned out to be just two perfectly ordinary brass keys, one slightly bigger and one a size smaller, the kind that cost 50 cents apiece at a hardware store.

I unfolded the slip and, by the phone’s light, barely made out the words on it:

“Storage shed.” The handwriting was scrawled. It looked somewhat familiar to me.

“Does Zhang Hao mean the storage shed at the old place?” Monkey reacted quickly.

I nodded. There were two keys; the big one should fit the door of the storage shed at our old home.

Old-style buildings like ours would have a row of low little huts across from the building for residents to park bicycles and store junk. My family and Zhang Hao’s family jointly owned one storage shed. It was our childhood secret base, and also the place where we had the most memories.

The storage shed Zhang Hao meant was the storage shed at our old home. Only there was one thing I didn’t understand:

Why couldn’t he just tell me the whole story directly in the note? Why did he have to guide me there in such an obscure way?

I thought of another possibility: Zhang Hao was on guard against something.

I looked at Monkey, and he happened to be looking at me too.

I knew what he was thinking. Although our old home was in the west of this very city, because of demolition, the houses there had been torn down many years ago.

Giving us a key to a place that didn’t exist. That didn’t make sense.

Just as the two of us were staring at each other, the bedroom door was shut by someone.

It was slammed hard from the outside.

The sudden huge bang in the darkness nearly stopped my heart.

“Fuck!” Monkey cursed, at the same time turning and almost reflexively kicking the door. The door was very thick; he kicked with all his strength and couldn’t kick it open.

“Who’s there!” I roared. Rustling sounds came from outside the door; the person seemed to be looking for something.

“A thief!” Monkey reacted first.

I began to regret not closing the front door when we came in, which let a thief walk right in.

“Damn it, I’m calling the police!” I threatened while kicking the door hard again.

The door still didn’t budge, and the rummaging in the living room got louder.

“Move!” Monkey pulled me aside.

He took two steps back, hunched over, and charged into the door as if sprinting. With a loud bang, he finally broke the lock, leaving a small gap.

The gap was very small, not enough to see what was outside. In a flash of inspiration, I turned on my phone camera, stuck the phone out through the gap and took a few photos first, thinking I’d need evidence when calling the police.

“You’re taking pictures at a time like this!” Monkey didn’t wait for me to finish. He pulled me away and kicked the door again, finally kicking it open. Monkey rushed out first, and I followed right behind. The person outside seemed to have anticipated it; the instant we broke the door open, he had already run out. It was too dark to see the way ahead. Monkey and I followed the faint sound of running, holding the railing as we raced down the stairs. My head was a bit dizzy, and I vaguely felt we shouldn’t chase him. At first there was still the sound of someone running ahead, but just when we felt we were getting closer and closer, the sound suddenly vanished all at once. Monkey and I stopped. All around was pitch-black night, and we couldn’t find any direction at all.

“Damn, he can really run,” Monkey said, panting heavily.

Afraid the other guy had accomplices luring the tiger away from the mountain, we didn’t dare linger and could only head back.

Breathing hard, back in the apartment, I only then remembered to open my phone.

I had used burst mode. Between the lighting and the low resolution of phones in those years, the images were blurry beyond belief. In the photos you could only see a figure in the living room rummaging for something by phone light. Evidently he hadn’t expected us to break the door open so fast, or maybe he saw my camera’s flash. The figure clearly hesitated a moment, then ran for the door without looking back.

Judging by the build it was a man. He’d probably seen we hadn’t closed the door and gotten bad ideas on the spur of the moment.

The living room had been turned into a mess by the shadowy figure. Books and ornaments piled in the living room were scattered all over the floor, so we had to pick them up one by one with flashlights.

Cursing the thief, Monkey and I looked around the room to see if anything else had been stolen.

When my gaze swept over the wall, my movements froze.

“Where are the photos?” Monkey noticed the problem too. Several photos were missing.

At first I thought they’d fallen on the floor, but everything that had fallen on the floor had been gathered at my side, and there were no photos among them.

“Damn, he even stole photos,” Monkey cursed. Clearly he didn’t realize what was strange about it.

A thief who sneaks into an empty house wouldn’t be interested in photos. I quickly realized this, and what followed was cold sweat running uncontrollably down my back.

That figure might not be a thief, but someone with the same goal as me.

I told Monkey what I thought.

“Someone else is looking into Zhang Hao’s whereabouts?” Monkey frowned.

“Not sure. Zhang Hao seems to have hidden things from me too,” I answered truthfully.

Things were getting complicated. My head hurt again, so I began pounding it uncontrollably.

“You still haven’t cured this old problem?” Monkey looked at me.

I shook my head, recalling the scene in the photos: when the figure saw me kick the door open, his movements paused for a moment, clearly hesitating over something, and only then did he decide to run straight for the door.

I tried to put myself in his place. If I were him, after seeing the other side kick the door open, why not flee immediately? Unless he was looking for more than just photos. Otherwise, there weren’t many photos on the wall; even if he didn’t find the one he wanted, he could take all of them first and sort them out later.

In this living room, besides the photos, there must be something else he wanted to take.

I began re-examining the whole living room, and finally my gaze landed on the coffee table beside my hand, which I had given Zhang Hao when he moved house.

The drawer handle under the coffee table had obvious signs of deliberate damage.

The coffee table’s drawer was strangely designed. There was no keyhole on the front, which was why that person had fiddled with it so long without opening it.

Memories all rushed up at once. Almost trembling, I reached under the coffee table.

There, there was a round keyhole.

And matching it was a small brass key.

I tried several times without managing to fit the key into the hole. At first I thought I’d gotten it wrong, and only after several tries did I realize my hands were covered in sweat.

Monkey patted me. I took a few deep breaths, forcing myself to calm down. The moment the key went in, my heart was strung tight too, and with a crisp turning sound, the drawer opened.

Inside was a Nokia slider phone. The phone was Zhang Hao’s. After Zhang Yuan disappeared, I hadn’t seen him use it again.

To save battery, the phone had been turned off. Without hesitating, I pressed the power button. In the darkness the phone gave off a ghastly white light. Luckily there was still a third of the battery left.

The phone’s contents had been wiped. All call logs and texts were deleted, leaving only one video lying quietly in the album.

I immediately realized this might be what Zhang Hao wanted me to see.

Shot on a 0.5-megapixel camera, the video was somewhat blurry. The picture kept shaking; clearly the person filming had been very agitated.

In the video it was near dusk. The person filming was probably in some kind of park, surrounded by trees and flowers. The camera was focused on the sky, swaying back and forth, with occasional white noise flashing across the picture.

This went on for half a minute. The person filming was clearly looking for something. Just as I couldn’t help wanting to fast-forward, another large patch of white noise flashed across the picture, and a man’s voice came from the video, the deliberately lowered voice of someone facing enormous excitement:

“Found it.”

The man’s voice was deliberately somewhat distorted, but after so many years of familiarity I still recognized it at once.

The video stayed on the same shot. After several deep breaths, Zhang Hao spoke again: “I found it, Chen Gu.”

Then the picture slowly moved. He seemed to be carefully adjusting the camera’s position. After a series of tiny movements, I finally saw what he wanted to film:

A gigantic bronze door.

6

A gigantic bronze door abruptly appeared in the video.

It was extremely similar to the door I’d seen in the photo. Because it was a video, I saw its color for the first time: the pale cyan door existed quietly in the void, as if it had always been there.

Zhang Hao was probably too excited. The picture began trembling slightly again, and as it shook, the door blurred again.

“See it?” Zhang Hao tried hard to keep his tone calm. “This is that mirage from the newspaper.”

The camera flipped around. Zhang Hao’s expression was somewhat ferocious:

“Can you see it, Chen Gu?” He stared at me. “I’m going there.”

The video ended abruptly there. I quietly watched the whole thing, and my mind was still a mess.

Monkey looked at me blankly; clearly he couldn’t understand what had happened in the video either. I collapsed limply on the sofa, slapping my head hard, trying to forget this whole series of unbelievable things, but as soon as I closed my eyes, my head was full of Zhang Hao’s twisted expression at the end of the video.

“Is the door in the photo the same as the one in the video?” Monkey stammered.

I took a deep breath and nodded.

“How is that possible?” Monkey’s expression was complicated. “How could exactly the same mirage exist at different times?”

My heart tightened. I opened the phone again and brought up the video’s details.

The video had been filmed 3 days before Zhang Hao and I last met.

That is, this video was recorded before we met. Zhang Hao hadn’t gone back afterward to film it deliberately so that I’d understand the truth.

That was very strange. After filming the video, why didn’t he find me right away? Why wait 3 days? What exactly had he gone through in those 3 days?

He’d clearly had many chances to tell me directly. What made him choose silence when he saw me?

The summer night was a bit cool. Without a word, the two of us both looked toward the pitch-black doorway, and a wave of fear suddenly welled up inside.

That night I had several strange dreams on and off. In one of them, Zhang Hao stood in front of the old storage shed door. He pointed at my hand, and I looked down and saw the Nokia phone in it.

“Is this what you want?” I raised the phone and asked him.

He didn’t speak, just stared at me and smiled.

When I woke again it was noon. Monkey was asleep on the sofa beside me like a dead pig. I rubbed my stiff neck, got up, and sat on the bed in a daze.

Since our old home was demolished, I hadn’t been back in many years.

How mirages form has been thoroughly explained by science. But could there really be a mirage visible only through a camera at a specific angle? And taking ten thousand steps back, even if it was a mirage, it should correspond to a building that actually existed in this world. The door’s awkward position and its color in the video obviously didn’t fit any real-world structure.

But if that thing wasn’t a mirage, what could it be?

I was full of enormous curiosity about it. That cat-killing curiosity covered up my fear, making me ignore the danger signals sent by Zhang Hao’s and his daughter’s disappearances, and forget that the strangeness of the matter might be beyond anything I could control.

I woke Monkey and decided to go with him to have a look around our old home.

At that time I didn’t expect that this seemingly ordinary decision would become the first domino to fall. Everything that rapidly collapsed afterward started from it.

Or perhaps, the moment I decided to explore the truth, the gears of fate had already quietly started turning. If I could have one chance to choose again, I wouldn’t take the risk. I would use every means that night to keep Zhang Hao, who had already made up his mind to go.

Unfortunately, there are no ifs.

We didn’t drive. We took the subway to the old place of our memories.

After demolition, the old neighborhood had been turned into People’s Park. Standing at the park entrance, I inexplicably thought of the joke about Puyi buying a ticket to get back into the Forbidden City. Fortunately People’s Park is open to the people for free, so on that point at least we were a bit better off than Puyi.

Translator’s note: Puyi, the last emperor, returned to the Forbidden City as an ordinary citizen after it became the Palace Museum, and had to buy a ticket to get into his own former home.

“You sure this is the place he meant?” Monkey asked.

I nodded. Actually the moment I saw the video I understood what Zhang Hao meant: the place in the video was where the storage shed of our old home used to be. Only things had changed and people had moved on, and what was there back then had long been erased by time. The two of us stood in the bustling park at a loss.

Fortunately there was still the video. Comparing against the landmarks that flashed by in it, plus the boost of more than ten years of living there, we finally found the approximate spot.

Where the storage shed used to be had become a patch of lawn. Like lunatics, the two of us stepped onto the grass and fiddled with the camera’s position. Maybe my expression was too grave; that was probably why the dama with the red armband beside us didn’t kick me flying right away.

Translator’s note: Dama (大妈) means “auntie,” a term for a middle-aged or older woman; the red armband marks her as a neighborhood volunteer patrol.

I adjusted my posture to copy Zhang Hao in the video, but no mirage appeared in the camera. In fact, never mind a mirage, there wasn’t even the white noise from Zhang Hao’s video.

The dama beside us gradually lost patience while waiting. “Young men, did you two see the keep-off-the-grass sign?” the dama finally couldn’t help saying. “What’s wrong with young people these days? Every few days someone walks on the grass instead of the path.”

I was a bit embarrassed and smiled at her apologetically.

“Someone stood here filming with a phone before, too. What are you filming?” the dama asked.

“There was? What did he look like?” Xu Pei immediately asked.

“A young fellow about your build. Really don’t know what’s worth filming here,” the dama grumbled.

Monkey gave me a look, and I immediately realized the person she meant might be Zhang Hao.

That door hadn’t moved in decades. If Zhang Hao could film it, there was no reason we couldn’t. The only explanation was that we’d overlooked something. I looked at the sky across from us again.

“It’s the time.” Monkey reacted quickly. “Zhang Hao’s video was filmed at dusk.”

I opened the video. The timestamp showed it was filmed at 7:10 in the evening.

“What do we do?” I asked him. It was noon now, and dusk was still some time away.

“Wait. What else can we do?” Monkey said, leaning back on a lounge chair nearby.

I was somewhat restless and couldn’t lean back quietly like him, so I started making conversation.

“What did you and Zhang Hao stop talking over?” I asked. “That summer vacation I went back to the countryside with my parents, and by the time I came back you two weren’t speaking.”

“Some trivial little thing.” Monkey smiled. “Kids, you know, always fight over trifles. It’s just that the two of us were too stubborn, so we drifted further and further apart.”

I nodded. Two people as stubborn as mules really weren’t easy to get along.

“Funny thing is, I’ve pretty much forgotten what we fought about in the first place.” Monkey scratched his head. “I only remember it had to do with his dad.”

“Zhang Hao’s dad?” I asked.

Monkey nodded: “I think we argued over some thing of his dad’s, and then we started fighting.”

“That’s really boring,” I complained.

“Kids are just that boring,” Monkey laughed, then suddenly looked at me as if something had occurred to him. “How do you think Yuanyuan disappeared?”

“She just went missing.” I didn’t quite understand.

“No, I mean how did she go missing,” Monkey asked. “Was there anything unusual the day Yuanyuan disappeared?”

“Zhang Hao said the kid went out to play…” I recalled what Zhang Hao had told me.

“How old was Yuanyuan when she got lost?” Monkey gestured. “Eleven or twelve, right?” “Twelve,” I added.

“A kid that age isn’t easy to traffic,” Monkey mused. “She told Zhang Hao she was going out to play. Did she say where?”

“She said she was coming to my place to play,” I recalled.

“To play what at your place?” Monkey asked back.

I was momentarily speechless. Right, what would she play at my place?

“Why would Yuanyuan go to your place to play? You’re a grown man with no kids and no toys at home. What’s fun there?” Monkey looked at me.

“You mean Zhang Hao is lying?” I said, puzzled.

Monkey nodded: “He knew where the kid went that afternoon but didn’t want to tell anyone.”

“Why?” I was confused. “Doesn’t he want to find his daughter?”

“I’m afraid there’s something fishy here,” Monkey said.

I recalled the way Zhang Hao had gone berserk outside my door that day. That heart-rending pain didn’t look faked.

“What if he knew about the mirage from the start?” Monkey frowned.

I thought carefully about his words and couldn’t help feeling a chill down my back. “You said after the police couldn’t find her, he started going to fortune-tellers,” Monkey said. “Knowing him, Zhang Hao isn’t someone who’d believe in that stuff.”

“Maybe he was so desperate he’d try any doctor?” I said.

“We’re both engineering guys as straight as they come,” Monkey said. “If it were once or twice, you could explain it as grasping at straws, but he wouldn’t go so far as to spend his whole fortune on that stuff. For you and me, using that money to put up more missing-person notices would be more reliable than pinning our hopes on fortune-telling and other illusory things.”

“But if you saw what’s in that video, wouldn’t your materialist worldview waver?” I looked at Monkey.

“That’s exactly why I’m starting to suspect,” Monkey frowned. “He must have come into contact with this kind of supernatural thing before.”

“Which is why Zhang Hao’s materialist worldview wavered and he turned to believing in this occult stuff?” I asked.

“I’m very curious.” Monkey looked up at me. “What exactly did he see in that mirage?”

10

We lay on the benches looking at each other wordlessly. Zhang Hao naturally had his reasons for not telling me all this. What was certain was that this matter was very dangerous. He didn’t want me to take risks, but at the same time he wanted me to save him. People are contradictory creatures. Zhang Hao couldn’t bear for his childhood friend to fall into danger, but his craving for life still made him unconsciously come to me, leaving himself a thread of hope.

The sky gradually darkened.

“It’s about time,” Monkey said, glancing at his watch.

“Monkey,” I said after hesitating again and again, “I’ll go alone.”

“Why?” Monkey asked back.

“Zhang Hao went and didn’t come back. I don’t want you to end up the same,” I said. “You’re not like me. You have a wife.”

“Divorced long ago.”

Seeing my surprised look, Monkey laughed: “Tell me, how many years has it been since we sat together and had a proper chat like this?”

“You know my dad died of high blood pressure a few years back.” Monkey smiled bitterly. “After I started working, I always felt there wasn’t enough time. Not enough to visit family, not enough to catch up with friends. In my free time I just wanted to stay home alone and sleep. And then I turned around, and my family was gone, and my old friends had drifted further and further away.”

Before us was the afterglow of the setting sun. Monkey opened his phone and switched to camera mode.

“It’s about time.” He got up and grabbed my arm. “If we can bring that brat back, I’m definitely going to punch him, and while I’m at it ask him why he never came to find me all these years.”

11

The bronze door floated quietly in the air, giving off pressure like a mountain.

Monkey and I swallowed at the same time.

“How do we get up there?” I asked.

“How would I know?” Monkey said nervously. “It’s so high, and I can’t fly.”

“It seems a bit lower than in the video.” I opened Zhang Hao’s phone and handed it to Monkey.

“Look at the landmarks nearby.” I pointed at the trees in the video. “In the video the door is above the treetops, and we’re now about half an hour later than when the video was shot. It’s already sunk below the treetops.”

“It goes down as time passes?” Monkey said. “Is this damn thing an elevator?”

“Zhang Hao knew the mirage would sink, so he said he’d go inside to look,” I said.

“Then how did he get in?” Monkey asked. “He can’t have just walked in?”

“Maybe that’s really how,” I said. “Let’s use our phone cameras to lock onto its position and see if we can touch it.”

“This is way too magical.” Monkey rubbed his temples. “It’s beyond my understanding.”

“A bronze door that only appears on video and never changes position is supernatural in itself.” I was actually less tense than at the start. In the end, the worst case was just death, and if I could come into contact with this kind of strange thing, my life wouldn’t have been for nothing.

The sky gradually went fully dark. For a while we couldn’t even see the door in the video; we could only sense roughly that it was there.

Not long after, the streetlights came on, and by their dim yellow light, the two of us discovered the door was only a little over 1 meter off the ground.

The shock of a behemoth abruptly appearing before your eyes is indescribable. Although in reality it still looked like empty space, the towering pale cyan “monster” in the camera reminded us that it was all real.

“Let’s go.” I pulled Monkey forward, but found my legs shaking badly. I looked at Monkey and found he was trembling too.

“Let me catch my breath.” Monkey gritted his teeth.

I nodded, using the chance to calm myself.

Because of fear, the phone in my hand kept trembling, and the structure on the screen twisted with the shaking.

“Let’s go.” Monkey let out a long breath and steadied the picture by holding the arm I was holding the phone with. The pose was hilarious; it made us look like two grown men doing a ballroom dance, but at this point we couldn’t care about that. Taking the first step was hard; after that it got much easier. We walked straight ahead for about two or three minutes while watching the video. The bronze door was right before our eyes yet as far away as the edge of the sky; we never could close the distance.

Just when we wanted to give up, everything around us suddenly went pitch dark, and the phone screen dimmed too.

Then the door vanished.

“Holy shit!” Monkey yelled.

“Don’t panic. The phone has no night mode. It’s probably too dark for the camera to pick anything up.” I looked around. It was pitch black. We must have been too nervous to notice the streetlights on this stretch were broken.

“Flashlight, flashlight!” Monkey urged in a low voice.

“Look how chicken you are.” I turned on the flashlight, and Monkey’s old face reappeared in the dark.

“This damn thing is way too scary,” Monkey muttered.

I looked at the phone. The screen was all black, and the bronze door was long gone. The light was too poor; the camera couldn’t capture anything at all.

“Forget it, let’s go home.” I patted Monkey.

Monkey nodded. After that scare, both of us had lost our nerve.

After walking back maybe a few dozen meters, I suddenly stopped and looked at Monkey. He looked at me at the same moment.

“What do you want to say?” Monkey said. In the dark I couldn’t see his expression clearly.

“You first.” My heart sank.

“Chen Gu…” Monkey paused, then said what I’d long had a premonition of but didn’t want to hear at all, “Something’s fucking wrong here!”

12

Noisy human voices came from around us now and then.

But we’d walked so far, and hadn’t seen a single person.

“Can you hear it?” Monkey let out a heavy breath.

I nodded.

“Then who the fuck is talking?” Even though he’d expected it, Monkey’s expression twisted at once.

People’s judgment declines when they panic. Although my heart was in turmoil, I still forced myself to calm down.

Clamor kept coming from all around, but listening closely there was something odd about it.

I couldn’t understand what those voices were saying. It was like the blurred background chatter games use to immerse players in the story: the rhythm and cadence are very much like human voices, but listening closely you’d find you couldn’t understand a word.

I glanced at Monkey. He was looking at me too; clearly he’d also heard how strange the voices were.

“Can you understand what they’re saying?” He pointed at the air around us.

I shook my head.

“Don’t tell me we’ve really run into something evil?” Monkey said.

“Don’t scare yourself,” I said. “I don’t think this sound is made by living things.”

“Ghosts are living things?” Monkey asked back.

“Even if there are ghosts, they won’t eat you,” I said, feigning ease. “With your skinny arms and legs, eating you wouldn’t put any meat on them.”

“Get lost.” Monkey’s mood eased a lot. “Then what do you say this damn thing is?”

“Doesn’t it sound like electrical current?” I said.

“It kind of does…” Monkey pondered. “Do you have a compass on you?”

I said no. Monkey said any small iron thing would do. Only then did I remember I still had a watch, so I hurriedly raised my hand to show him.

That look did it. Monkey sucked in a sharp hiss of cold air on the spot.

I looked at the watch face in surprise and only then discovered that at some point the iron hands had started spinning madly like propellers, and it looked like they wouldn’t stop anytime soon.

“The magnetic field here is wrong,” Monkey stammered out after a long while.

Looking at the hands spinning like propellers, there were only two possibilities that could make them spin like this: one was that we were near the Earth’s north or south pole; the other was that the magnetic field here was constantly shifting.

Given that the two of us were wearing short sleeves and hadn’t frozen to death, I thought the second was more likely.

I told Monkey what I thought.

“Is this kind of magnetic field harmful to the body?” Monkey asked.

I shook my head and said I didn’t know either, but no matter what, this wasn’t Disneyland.

Just as I was about to leave with Monkey, he suddenly grabbed the hem of my shirt.

“Chen Gu,” he said, standing opposite me, looking somewhat tense, “what is that?”

He pointed behind me.

13

He made me tense too. For a moment I didn’t dare look back.

“Don’t move.” Monkey took a deep breath and held my shoulder. “Don’t move yet.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m not sure either,” Monkey hesitated. “Under the streetlight across from us there’s a patch of black fog. A very, very black… fog.”

“Black fog?” I was somewhat surprised.

“Don’t know how to put it…” Monkey slowly twisted his neck. “It feels so wonderful.”

“What’s wrong with you?” I realized something was off with him.

“Chen Gu, I’m going home,” Monkey said dazedly.

He suddenly let go and rushed past me.

“Monkey!” I hurriedly turned around and finally saw the “thing” behind me.

Monkey hadn’t lied to me. It really was a patch of black fog, as if it had swallowed the darkness itself, floating quietly in midair.

Although I’d only glanced at the black fog once, I still felt dizzy. I hugged Monkey’s waist to keep him from going forward, but Monkey, as if possessed, kept walking regardless. “Monkey,” I shouted, “wake the fuck up!”

Monkey didn’t seem to hear. Even though I was holding him, his feet kept scraping along the ground.

His eyes stayed on the black fog, as if something there was drawing him in.

14

Holding Monkey, I leaned my body backward, dragging him with all my strength. Monkey was much smaller than me and couldn’t move forward for the moment.

I didn’t dare look straight at the black fog. Judging by Monkey’s state, he was hallucinating. After confirming from the corner of my eye that the fog wasn’t moving any closer, I used my body to restrain Monkey’s arms and legs bit by bit.

Monkey seemed completely entranced by the fog. No matter how I called him, he just kept muttering “go home.”

Seeing no other way, I forcibly turned his face toward me and slapped him with all my strength.

I hit hard. The sound of the slap echoed for a long time in the empty night.

Monkey was finally slapped awake. He looked at me blankly for a moment and couldn’t help wanting to look back again.

“Don’t look back.” I forcefully turned his head toward me. “Was I bewitched by that thing just now?” Monkey said groggily, rubbing his face.

I nodded. This guy’s brain was pretty quick.

“This damn thing can make people hallucinate,” Monkey said. “Just now all I could see was my home.”

“Luckily it doesn’t seem able to move, otherwise it would have come over by now,” I comforted him.

“Not necessarily.” Monkey lowered his head, thinking about something. “When did it appear there?”

“When we walked over from there just now we didn’t see this thing. It appeared suddenly,” Monkey said.

“You mean this thing can teleport?” I asked. “What the hell is it?”

“How would I know?” Monkey said. “But it’s definitely nothing good.”

I stole another glance at the black fog. It was still in place, as if not interested in us.

“What do we do now?” Monkey asked. “Ignore it and keep going?”

I nodded. The best way to avoid danger is not to come into contact with it.

Monkey and I faced each other and slowly moved away from the black fog. Monkey watched the road ahead, and I watched the fog behind. Even though the fog was as still as a pool of dead water, I kept my nerves taut. Because I didn’t dare look straight at it, I could only check on it now and then out of the corner of my eye. If it moved forward even 1 centimeter, I’d immediately drag Monkey and run.

This didn’t last long. Just as I glanced at it out of the corner of my eye for the 4th time, the black fog disappeared.

At the same moment, Monkey stopped walking.

“Chen Gu,” Monkey said in a low voice, “that thing is right in front of me now.”

15

My brain buzzed. The pressure the black fog gave off came from the deepest part of the soul, like seeing a huge, muscular Siberian tiger at the zoo for the first time, a sense of danger from deep in the genes. Worse, there was no safety glass between us and the black fog.

“What do we do?” Monkey asked me. His voice was clearly trembling.

“Where is it now?” I asked.

“About 2 meters in front of me,” Monkey said.

“Don’t look straight at it,” I said.

“I fucking know!” Monkey got anxious. “Hurry up and say what we do, fight it or run?” I looked up at the streetlight. The black fog on my side had disappeared. Sure enough, this thing could teleport.

We couldn’t outrun it. I steeled myself: might as well fight it.

Once a person makes up their mind they become inexplicably brave. I turned around.

The black fog was about two steps away from us. I don’t know if it was psychological, but I felt the temperature around us had dropped several degrees.

“I’ll count three, two, one, and we charge together and see what the hell this thing is,” I told Monkey.

“Will that work?” Monkey said.

“We can’t outrun it anyway. Two grown men aren’t going to be scared to death by a lump of fog,” I said.

Monkey nodded and let out a long breath: “Let’s do it.”

Just as I was about to count down, the black fog suddenly lit up.

It’s hard to describe the scene. The black mist gave off a dazzling light. Even though Monkey and I had deliberately not looked straight at it, we were still somewhat dazzled.

“There’s a sound,” Monkey suddenly said.

At first I hadn’t noticed, but when Monkey said it, I couldn’t help concentrating, and sure enough, a sound was coming from the black fog.

Human voices mixed with crackling static, only the sound was so badly distorted I couldn’t make out what it was saying at all.

Immediately after, the fog’s light dimmed. Monkey and I subconsciously looked at it at the same time, and that look did it.

A ghastly pale human hand was sticking out of the black fog!

When had we ever seen anything like this? We both panicked at once, and the courage we’d finally mustered was instantly knocked out of us.

Monkey yelped and fled toward the side of the black fog, and I hurried after him. From the fog behind us came terrifying roars now and then, striking my nerves one after another like a pendulum.

I didn’t care about anything. I only knew to follow Monkey and run wildly in the dark. I didn’t know how far we ran. At some point heavy rain started falling from the sky, and there wasn’t a single person on the road.

Only then did we gradually come back to our senses. I looked at Monkey, and he looked back at me blankly.

“What was that just now?” Monkey muttered to himself.

My heart was pounding hard. I turned back and shone the flashlight. Thankfully the black fog hadn’t followed.

I don’t know if it was because the rain was too loud, but the crowd sounds in my ears had disappeared too.

Monkey wiped the rain off his forehead: “Have we been tricked by something?” I started to regret getting involved in this mess. I was soaked all over, and I missed the comfort of soaking in the tub at home.

“Chen Gu, what is that?” Monkey said out of the blue.

16

As Monkey said, I pointed the flashlight back the way we came.

The rain was heavy. Through the dense rain, not far from where the flashlight shone, a row of low tile-roofed houses appeared, with old-style residential buildings scattered among them.

“Were these houses here when we came?” Monkey said in a low voice. “Do I have amnesia?”

I shook my head. The park was built in the city center. Old houses like these should have been demolished long ago.

Just as I was racking my brain over where I’d seen buildings like these before, Monkey exclaimed again.

I looked back. The park from just now had disappeared too, turned into residential buildings of the same kind.

“Where the hell is this?” Monkey was somewhat panicked.

From seeing that huge door until now, I’d gone a bit numb to strange things like this, so I wasn’t too flustered. The rain was too heavy and there was nowhere around to shelter. I was more afraid we’d get sick from the rain.

“Want to go take a look?” I steeled myself and pointed at the buildings in front of us. “This rain won’t stop anytime soon.”

The two of us jogged toward the buildings. Maybe because of the heavy rain, there wasn’t a single person on the road. Looking at the buildings growing clearer and clearer, an even worse thought rose in my heart.

Clearly this was no longer our original world, but only when I actually stood in front of that building did I confirm the feeling in my heart.

I’d seen buildings like this before, in my memory of our old home decades ago.

This was the home where we lived as children.

Monkey realized it too, his mouth hanging wide open.

“I’m not dreaming, am I?” Monkey slapped his own face hard.

“Even if it’s a dream, it’s way too real.” I rubbed the scratches on the wall with my hand; I’d carved them myself as a kid.

The texture of the building was so real. I stared at those brand-new scratches. On them were the initials of our three names, carved by my own hand.

The first floor was Monkey’s home. For carving words on his family’s wall, I’d been scolded by his old lady.

If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d really have had a hard time believing such a thing. The fourth floor had its lights on. That was Zhang Hao’s home.

Monkey and I exchanged a knowing look.

“You’ve got guts. You decide, do we go in or not?” Monkey said.

I thought, having guts doesn’t mean not being afraid to die. Who knows what’s waiting for us in this building.

As we hesitated, a flashlight beam shone over through the rain. We were already like birds startled by a bowstring, and this flustered us even more.

“What do we do?” I asked Monkey.

“Quick, the storage shed!” Monkey reacted extremely fast.

I hurriedly took out the key I’d gotten from Zhang Hao’s place and dragged Monkey in to hide.

The light swayed closer and closer. Luckily the rain was really heavy, and the other person probably didn’t see us.

We hid in the dark storage shed, not daring to breathe. The first-floor stairwell light came on, and through the gap in the door, I saw a short, skinny man holding an umbrella, humming a song as he hurried into the building.

“Dad.” Monkey staggered back. “My god, it’s my dad.”

17

Through the first-floor window, we saw the man enter his home and turn on the light; under the dim yellow light, his silhouette showed. Not long after, a little boy’s silhouette appeared in the window. The man stroked the little boy’s head, and the two sat down together and started eating.

Monkey slumped onto the ground. “This is impossible.”

“My dad’s already dead. I packed his ashes with my own hands,” Monkey said, and then laughed to himself. “This is impossible.”

Afraid he’d lose his mind, I hurriedly helped him up: “Calm down. This obviously isn’t our world anymore.”

Monkey clearly couldn’t accept what was in front of him. The two of us stood in the dim storage shed, quietly peeking at the world across the way.

The lights in the room went off.

“They’re asleep,” Monkey said, turning around.

“What do we do now?” My brain was a mess; for the moment I was at a loss.

“Want to go take a look?” Monkey pointed at the fourth floor. “There might be clues at Zhang Hao’s place.”

I rejected his suggestion. Rashly charging into Zhang Hao’s home now wasn’t a rational thing to do.

“Then what do we do? It’s the ‘0s now, our clothes don’t match theirs at all. If we stay outside we’ll be noticed as soon as it’s light,” Monkey said. “If they’re even people.”

I looked at him silently and suddenly seemed to think of something: “Do you have a way to know what time it is now?”

“Summer vacation,” Monkey said with certainty. “Only during summer vacation would my dad wake me up at this hour to eat. Other times he was afraid of affecting my studies and would make me eat early and go to bed.”

“Let’s go to my place,” I said, turning to feel along the storage shed’s door lintel.

“There’s nobody at your place?” Monkey asked. “What are you looking for?”

“The key,” I answered while feeling around, and finally touched something metallic.

“The words on the wall were newly carved,” I said. “The summer I carved them, my parents and I went back to our hometown in the countryside.”

18

We didn’t dare turn on the stairwell light. We groped our way up to the third floor in the dark. To be safe, I knocked on the door, and only after confirming no one was there did I take out the key and open it.

“What’s that smell? It’s been there since earlier,” Monkey frowned as soon as he came in.

“Burning straw,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten even the straw we used to burn for cooking as kids?”

The furniture in the house was still in the familiar old arrangement; for a moment I was dazed. I took a few slices of dry steamed bun from the kitchen. Monkey hesitated at first, but in the end he was probably really hungry. The two of us made do with them, plus pickled vegetables and plain water, for dinner. The fullness the food brought reminded us that everything was real.

“So what now?” Monkey said, gnawing on the bun. “How do we get back?”

I said I didn’t know either. The park had disappeared; even if we wanted to go back the way we came, we wouldn’t know how.

“Maybe we can find Zhang Hao first. He might know how to get back.” Monkey swallowed the last bite of bun. “What do you think?”

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Seeing me lower my head in silence, Monkey asked.

“The hand that came out of the black fog just now had a watch on it.” I raised my head and looked at Monkey. “It looked the same as Zhang Hao’s.”

“Fuck!” Monkey closed his eyes and collapsed onto the sofa.

“So what the hell do we do?” Monkey said. “We don’t belong to this world.”

“If not for that damn photo,” I muttered to myself.

“Photo…” Monkey murmured, then suddenly sat bolt upright like a carp flipping. “That photo, did Zhang Hao cut it out of a newspaper?”

I nodded subconsciously.

“I think I remember why we fought,” Monkey said. “One summer vacation when you went back to the countryside, Zhang Hao and I were playing downstairs. When Zhang Hao went home to use the toilet, a strange man walked over, borrowed Zhang-bo’s camera and snapped away at the sky. A few days later Zhang-bo got in the newspaper for photographing a mirage right outside our door, but I always felt that photo didn’t look like Zhang-bo took it. Zhang Hao wouldn’t accept that. We argued more and more fiercely, and in the end we just had a fight.”

Translator’s note: Zhang-bo (张伯) is “Uncle Zhang”; bo is a respectful term for a man of one’s father’s generation.

“The photo was taken by Zhang Hao’s dad?” I said, surprised.

“I think the strange man took it,” Monkey said. “After all, who would waste film shooting the sky outside their own door for no reason?”

“Do you remember anything about that man?” I asked.

“Can’t remember clearly.” Monkey rubbed his temples.

“I’ve been wondering what exactly that black fog is.” Monkey turned to face me. “If it really swallowed Zhang Hao like you say, why didn’t it attack us?”

“I have an idea,” Monkey said slowly. “What if we think of the black fog as a kind of rule?”

“A rule?” I was somewhat puzzled.

“The rule of this world,” Monkey said. “Let’s call our original world the ‘surface world,’ and this past space-time the ‘inner world.’ We who exist in the surface world can’t coexist with the us of the inner world.”

“But we really do exist here,” I said. “That’s the contradiction. Two identical atoms can’t exist in the same space-time, even if one comes from the past and the other from the future,” Monkey said. “The universe must have some way to correct this.”

“You mean?” A terrible idea gradually formed in my mind.

Monkey nodded: “I’m afraid the black fog is this world’s rule. If we break the rule, it will definitely take action.”

“What’s the rule?” I asked.

“Very simple: don’t meet ‘yourself,’” Monkey said. “Remember Old Liu from the back street?”

“The professor who studied theoretical physics?” I didn’t understand what Monkey was getting at. “Why bring him up?”

“I can tell you never listened properly to people.” Monkey rolled his eyes at me. “Old Liu told us a similar story once. In short, a positron and an electron annihilate into electromagnetic waves the instant they meet. I don’t want to end up like that.”

“Actually we don’t need to rush that much,” Monkey continued. “That door is always there. As long as we approach it the way we came, maybe we can go back.”

“But our phones are dead,” I said helplessly.

“There’s always a way.” Monkey looked at the wall; I didn’t know what he was thinking.

I rubbed my temples and lay back on the sofa. The green Bat-brand fan on the ceiling creaked as it turned.

19

That sleep was long. Groggily, I heard the hawking of vendors downstairs. I opened my eyes and found Monkey gone.

I startled so hard I nearly bounced off the sofa. Looking around, I found Monkey standing in the kitchen smoking, his eyes fixed on the street below through the window.

“Where’d you get cigarettes?” I asked. I remembered Monkey had quit smoking long ago.

“Your dad’s.” Monkey pointed under the coffee table.

I was stunned. My mother didn’t let my father smoke, so my father always secretly hid cigarettes under the coffee table. Monkey even remembered that.

“Got any clothes?” Monkey said. “Let’s change and go take a look downstairs.”

We changed into my dad’s checked shirts. I stood at the door hesitating over whether to open it; Monkey decisively twisted it open and walked out.

It was nearly dusk. Downstairs Luo Dayou’s “Zhi Hu Zhe Ye” was playing. Our three families were all fairly well-off, and Zhang Hao’s father had always been quite trendy, which you could tell from his photography hobby.

Translator’s note: Luo Dayou is a Taiwanese singer-songwriter; “Zhi Hu Zhe Ye” was one of his 1980s hits.

The two of us scurried downstairs like thieves, afraid of being seen. The rain had stopped and the sky had cleared. Monkey and I rubbed our eyes; everything was like a dream.

The street was full of people coming and going, most plainly dressed, but a very few wore bell-bottoms and flowery shirts with big sunglasses. At a glance, not respectable young men.

“Where to?” Monkey asked me.

“Nowhere to go,” I answered.

Taking out the money we had on us would cause unnecessary trouble. Two penniless people could do nothing but wander the streets like drifters.

“We have to find a way back fast,” I told Monkey. “Otherwise, without money, even eating will be a problem.”

“Monkey?” When he didn’t react, I looked up and found him staring fixedly behind us.

The man behind us smiled and nodded at us, then hurried away.

“My dad’s going to his night shift,” Monkey muttered.

“We can use Zhang Hao’s dad’s camera,” I said.

Earlier, from upstairs, I’d seen Zhang Hao’s father not far from the building, head down, fiddling with a camera, with the young Monkey standing beside him.

I told Monkey to hide off to the side first, because no one knew what would happen if two identical individuals from different times met.

I steadied myself, put on a smile and walked toward Zhang Hao’s father.

“That’s a nice camera you’ve got!” I walked up to him.

The little Monkey beside him looked up at me; I didn’t quite dare meet his eyes. “It’s not a serious camera, just a Fuji instant,” Zhang Hao’s father said with a bashful smile, and generously handed it to me.

“I love photography too. Can I take one shot with it?” I said. “Not for free. I’ll leave my watch with you as collateral.”

As I spoke, I unfastened my watch and handed it to him.

“Go ahead. How can a roll of film be worth a watch?” Zhang Hao’s father handed the watch back.

Holding the instant camera, I stood at the door of the storage shed, aimed at the sky and pressed the shutter.

“You’re Xu Pei, right?” I said to the child Xu Pei.

The kid nodded.

“Your dad’s waiting for you at that street corner,” I told him.

The kid was very polite. He thanked me and ran toward the street.

Monkey hurried over.

The instant camera produced the photo quickly. I handed it to Zhang Hao’s father, and amid his surprised expression, Monkey and I walked forward while watching the camera, adjusting our direction.

“Chen Gu, I keep feeling something’s weird,” Monkey said quietly.

“Don’t think about it. Right now we just need to get back fast.” I didn’t look at him. In fact I already had a vague guess in my heart. “Could the man I saw back then have been you?” Monkey said blankly.

“Maybe,” I said casually, looking at the bronze door in the sky. My brain was a mess.

By the time the “door” in the sky had almost sunk to the ground, we had almost reached it. Monkey and I exchanged a knowing look.

“Shushu—” Just as we were about to step through the door, a voice interrupted me.

Translator’s note: Shushu (叔叔) means “uncle,” what children call any man around their parents’ age.

I turned around. The young Monkey was tugging at the hem of my shirt.

“Why couldn’t I find my dad?” he said.

My heart clenched. I hurriedly looked at Monkey; Monkey was looking at his young self with a complicated expression.

Maybe sensing Monkey’s gaze, the child looked up at him.

“No,” I cried out.

It seemed to take only an instant. That familiar black fog appeared behind Monkey, then expanded at a terrifying speed. There was no time to react; Monkey was swallowed by the black fog.

“Monkey!” I shouted.

“Shushu, what’s wrong?” The child looked at me as if he hadn’t seen anything happen right before his eyes. And judging by his reaction, it was more like he had forgotten ever seeing Monkey.

Monkey had been “corrected” by the world just like that, vanishing from the memories of the people of this world.

After swallowing Monkey, the black fog didn’t seem satisfied and slowly drifted toward me.

Every nerve in my body exploded. I couldn’t care about anything. I could only grab the instant camera and step toward the door floating in the air.

Hazily, noisy human voices came from all around. I carefully opened my eyes. My clothes were soaked as if I’d been dunked in water.

The old houses had turned back into the park.

I looked at the instant camera in my hand, dazed. I paid no attention to the crowd around me. I only knew to keep walking, until I walked out of the park and got into a taxi.

The driver asked where to. Without thinking, I gave him Zhang Hao’s address.

The newspaper must still be in some corner of Zhang Hao’s home. As long as I checked the date, I could know whether all this was what I thought it was.

My body still carried the smell of the old houses. The driver looked at me a bit oddly, but right now I didn’t care.

It was getting late. I opened the door of Zhang Hao’s home. It was almost the same as when we’d left. Just as I was about to start looking for the newspaper, I looked up at the wall: densely packed with photos of Zhang Hao’s daughter. Among them, I saw two special ones. One was Zhang Hao’s daughter standing in front of the storage shed at our old home, with the blurry door floating in the sky behind her. The other was a photo of Zhang Hao with his father. Surprisingly, his father in the photo seemed much younger.

It seemed Zhang Hao had used that door more than once to travel between past and present, and had even taken his daughter.

At the same time, it proved one thing: Zhang Hao had deceived me.

A terrible idea gradually formed in my mind. If Zhang Hao had gone back and forth through that door many times, then the video on the phone could only have been filmed specially for me, a “performance.”

In other words, so that I’d have a chance of going into the otherworld to save him without being scared off by all this weirdness, Zhang Hao had been guiding me step by step. He didn’t necessarily want to harm me, but he was definitely, without realizing it, leaving himself a way out. I thought I had long since seen through human nature; it was just that for the moment I couldn’t separate Monkey’s death from Zhang Hao’s selfishness. I kept asking myself: if I had run into all this, what would I have done?

Only I wasn’t sure. After decades of friendship, was Zhang Hao really unwilling to give Monkey and me even this little bit of trust? Zhang Hao wasn’t a suspicious type. He should know that if he told the truth, we couldn’t possibly ignore him, and telling us the truth would obviously have been more useful than having us go save him knowing nothing.

But before I could think further, the sound of a key turning in the lock suddenly came from the door. I panicked and could only hide in the bathroom.

In the dark I couldn’t see the newcomers’ faces. They were saying something, and one of them seemed to be in a lot of discomfort, pounding his own head again and again. After staying in the living room for a while they walked into the bedroom, as if looking for something. Perhaps finding the bedroom too dim, one of them turned on a flashlight. When I saw his face, my body went rigid as if electrocuted.

I saw myself.

Those few seconds felt like a century. I quickly came to my senses; the truth of the whole thing was this:

After Zhang Hao accidentally discovered the door floating in the air, he chose not to tell anyone else, and instead used it to go back and forth between past and present again and again. Maybe he just wanted to see his family; sometimes he took his daughter with him too. But in the end there was an accident. Maybe Zhang Hao, maybe his daughter, or maybe something else triggered the black fog’s mechanism. Zhang Hao’s daughter was swallowed, and Zhang Hao, just like me now, was randomly thrown to some point in time of his last trip to the otherworld.

The real Zhang Hao may have already gone with his daughter along the timeline into the otherworld, and the one who called the police and filmed the video had always been another Zhang Hao. This also explained why he never told the truth and used this deception to lead us into saving him. Because the one who appeared in front of me was never the Zhang Hao I knew.

That Zhang Hao who knocked on my door crying, that Zhang Hao who handed me the old photo in the restaurant, was perhaps just like me now: someone from another parallel world.

I took a deep breath and looked toward the room. The “me” inside was still talking with Monkey. If I appeared in front of them now, maybe I could prevent the coming tragedy, and maybe Monkey wouldn’t die.

But just as I was about to push the door open and step out, my brain suddenly replayed the past few days like a movie, and Monkey’s scream before he was swallowed replayed again and again in my head.

I lowered the hand pressed against the door. Every universe has its own rules. This world already had a me. If I went out now, I was afraid this world’s me and the current me would, like a positron meeting an electron, both be annihilated from this world.

Maybe I could just walk away, but where else could I go? This was already the real world.

That one second was as long as a century.

Then, almost without further hesitation, I walked quickly to the bedroom door and slammed it shut.