This Damned Thirst for Survival

Jiang Luo now has no means of defence, and when an ordinary human being is confronted with such bizarre things, the only way seems to be to run out the door.

He turned his head to look at the door.

The person outside the door seemed to know what he was thinking and had stopped knocking and appeared to have gone. But Jiang Luo felt that the silence outside the door was more of a trap to tempt him to open it, and he cautiously went to the door and peered out through the cat's eye again.

It was still dark outside.

It's so dark that you can't see out of your hand somewhat.

With the phone ringing so loudly inside the door, it's logical that the voice-activated lights in the corridor should also be stimulated to come on, it shouldn't be so dark.

Jiang Luo leaves the door and stands between it and the bed.

There is danger outside the door, and there is danger under the bed. But the contrast between what is under the bed peeking at him just to warn Jiang Luo to open the door, and what is outside the door would be more dangerous.

Jiang Luo is not prepared to go out.

He looked at the clock on the wall and saw that it was 5.13, forty-seven minutes before his "husband" was due to return.

But is his "husband" a man or a ghost?

Jiang Luo glances into the toilet room, wondering if he can hide in the toilet for a while.

But when he looked at it that way, he saw a small black dot appear in the mirror that had broken into several pieces, and in the miserable white light, that small black dot seemed to be something that existed in the mirror.

Jiang Luo was afraid he was wrong, so he closed his eyes and concentrated on squinting into the mirror. The black dot became slightly larger, and this time Jiang Luo could make out a blur of what was clearly the shape of a man.

Jiang Luo: "......"

So there's an object hidden inside the mirror too?

Will that thing still slowly approach the mirror, and if it waits until it's big enough, will it break through and crawl out?

Well, the toilets can't go in now either.

Jiang Luo stepped forward with a quick, expressionless face and closed the toilet door hard, locking it behind him fiercely.

After doing this, the phone he was holding vibrated again. Jiang Luo opened it and saw that it was still an unread text message.

The photograph is still taken of him, and he is shown closing the toilet door, this time at a closer angle to Jiang Luo. The additional words at the bottom are the same: [Open the door! Open the door!!!]

Jiang Luo regrets calling the receptionist. He sighs, quits texting, finds his phone camera and turns on the flash mode before he carefully pokes the head of his phone under the door.

After taking a quick photo, Jiang Luo quickly retrieved his phone. He opened the album, which was a bit laggy, and it took two seconds before the photo he had just taken was refreshed.

The photograph shows a man posted on Jiang Luo's door in a bright hallway. But he has his head down, looking curiously at Jiang Luo's mobile phone. His head is eerily elongated to a frightening length, curving from his neck to stick to the phone on the floor, his face taking up two-thirds of the shot, and his eyes are staring intently into the camera, as if he can see through it and meet Jiang Luo.

This man's eyes are all black, without a single white of the eye.

Jiang Luo understood instantly that what he had just seen from his cat's eye was not the pitch blackness of the corridor, but the eyes of this man.

Goose bumps sprang up and an electric current flowed from his tailbone to his scalp, Jiang Luo's mouth picked up after an instinctive shudder, "That's exciting ......"

He looked back at the clock once more; it was half past five.

You can't go outside, and you can't stay inside for long. Looking at it this way, it seems that we are forced into a dead end.

The unnamed "husband" is not sure whether he will put Jiang Luo in greater danger or help him out of his dilemma.

It's still up to you.

Jiang Luo only had one mobile phone to work with, so he opened the class group, chose among several people and picked the best scammer, Lu Youyi, to make a video call.

I hope the fake Lu Youyi here is as good as it is in real life, Jiang Luo thought.

Lu Youyi's surprised face filled the screen of his mobile phone, he didn't know what he was doing, there was some water dripping. This dream is too real!"

There was nothing different about his looks, and his expression was unmistakable. Jiang Luo gauged his expression carefully and slowly, "What are you doing?"

"I'm poking at the drain," the phone shifted and the camera pointed at the drain in the toilet, Lu Youyi's depressed voice came from off camera, "I woke up and found myself in a hotel, and before I knew it, I found the house full of water. The water in my room was up to my feet, and the smell, let's not talk about it, stinks to high heaven."

He shone the camera into the house, where a layer of stained water had collected on the tiles and a few strands of long hair were floating on the water.

Jiang Luo asked, "How did you get long hair there?"

"When I first woke up, I found a piece of paper on my bedside table saying that if I didn't get the sewer fixed, something terrible would happen. Of course, I'm not afraid of that threat, but you know what ...... ahem, I'm afraid of the dark, and I'd be dead if the power went out in this room, so I'd better get the drain open."

He couldn't stop talking and then suddenly sighed, "Ugh, what am I doing talking to you, a dreamer, you don't understand. But never mind, it's nice to have some company. Ah, back on topic, I found out earlier that the reason my drain was blocked was because there was hair all washing up to me from upstairs, the same hair you see here."

Lu Youyi aimed at the clothes props held in his right hand, which he was holding to hook the clumps of hair in the drain, "I pulled out a lot of black hair after a long day. Before you called, I couldn't resist and ran upstairs to the room to tell them to stop flushing the dirty stuff down the drain. They were all quite nice and nodded their heads in agreement immediately after hearing that."

Lu Youyi looked so real, and mentioned that this was a 'dream', that Jiang Luo couldn't tell if he was real or not. His brow furrowed as he tried, "Lu Youyi, what are you most afraid of doing with Ye Xun?"

Lu Youyi shuddered, "I can't escape this terrible spell even in my dreams ...... I dread shopping with him!"

" Ye Xun the chooser," he says with a pained expression, "shopping with him is an ordeal."

This Lu Youyi, it seems, is a real person.

Jiang Luo hesitates a little, and it is at this point that he sees something wrong on a clump of hair inside the camera.

"Wait, look what else is inside the hair strands."

"What can I get?" Lu Youyi fiddled with his long hair a few times with his shirt prop and a nail piece peeked out from the strands. How did this get in here?"

He fiddled a little more and once again found a thin white female finger in the strands of hair.

Lu Youyi: "......"

He froze, his voice morphing, "Grass?!"

Jiang Luo felt he was in a bit of a pickle, "You said the hair washed down from upstairs and you went upstairs specifically to find them?"

"Yes," Lu Youyi was all cold and a little weak in the knees, "they were a middle-aged couple."

Jiang Luo was silent for a moment, "They were most likely shredding bodies down the road, but now, they know you found out the secret."

Lu Youyi's scalp was tingling, he didn't dare to stay in the toilet anymore, he turned around and ran out, "Crap crap crap crap crap! What are we going to do? They're not going to kill me!!!"

As soon as the words were spoken, there was a knock on Lu Youyi's door.

He almost jumped when Jiang Luo warned, "Keep your voice down and walk over to check, don't open the door."

Lu Youyi swallows and walks to the door to look out. The middle-aged couple from upstairs whom he had just visited were standing outside his door. The shadows cast a ghastly dark hue on their faces and they were both smiling, warm smiles, but with their hands behind their backs, unsure of what they were holding.

"Little brother?" The man said, "Open up, we're here to apologize."

The woman smiled kindly, "Yes, we'll clean up for you."

Lu Youyi, however, always felt that they were holding kitchen knives behind their backs, ready to cut him down.

He stiffened and backed up until he reached the edge of the bed before whispering to Jiang Luo on his phone, "It's really that couple, shit, I'm going to die, does it hurt to die in a dream? Shit, this dream is too scary too!"

Jiang Luo sidled up to the door of his room and there was another knock, "Knock, knock, knock", a deadly and regular sound. He sighs and says to Lu Youyi, "We're such difficult brothers."