Chapter 1

Boundless, dense fog churned outside the window, so thick it seemed the entire world had vanished beyond it. Only a dim, uncertain light penetrated the mist, illuminating the quiet room with a half-light.

In the slightly messy bachelor apartment, Zhou Ming hunched over his desk. The clutter had been shoved aside, and looking haggard, he was writing furiously:

"Day seven, no change. Dense fog shrouds everything outside. The windows are sealed by an unknown force… the entire room feels as if it's been 'cast' into some kind of abnormal space…

"No way to contact the outside world. No water or electricity, but the lights are still on, and the computer turns on—even though I've unplugged it…"

A faint whistling sound seemed to come from the window. Zhou Ming, engrossed in writing in his diary, suddenly looked up, a flicker of light in his weary eyes. But the next moment, he realized it was just his imagination. Outside the window, only the persistent, pale fog remained, a silent world coldly surrounding his small abode.

His gaze swept over the windowsill, landing on the discarded wrench and hammer—remnants of his attempts to escape the room in the past few days. Now, these hard, clumsy tools lay there silently, as if mocking his predicament.

After a few seconds, Zhou Ming's expression returned to calm—an unnatural calm. He lowered his head again, resuming his writing:

"I'm trapped, a completely clueless predicament. In the past few days, I've even tried to tear down the roof, walls, and floor, but I couldn't leave a single mark on the walls, even with all my strength. This room has become like… like a box 'cast' together with space, with no way out…

"Except for that door.

"But the situation outside that door… is even stranger."

Zhou Ming stopped again, scrutinizing the words he had just written. He flipped through the diary somewhat absentmindedly, looking at the things he had written in the past few days—repressed words, meaningless ramblings, frustrated doodles, and cold jokes written when trying to relax.

He didn't know what purpose writing these things served, didn't know who would ever see these rambling words. In fact, he wasn't even a person who was in the habit of keeping a diary—as a middle school teacher with limited free time, he didn't have much energy to spend on it.

But now, whether he liked it or not, he had plenty of free time.

He had woken up to find himself trapped in his room.

Outside the window was a fog that would not dissipate, so thick that he couldn't see anything other than fog. The entire world seemed to have lost the cycle of day and night; a constant, dim light filled the room twenty-four hours a day. The windows were locked, the water and electricity were cut off, his phone had no signal, and no matter how much noise he made in the room, he couldn't attract help from the outside world.

It was like an absurd nightmare, where everything in the dream operated against the laws of nature. But Zhou Ming had exhausted all means to confirm one thing: there were no illusions here, no dreams, only a world that was no longer normal, and a self that was, for the time being, still somewhat normal.

….

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

An ordinary, cheap white wooden door, with a calendar pinned to it that he had forgotten to replace since last year. The doorknob was worn shiny, and the doormat was placed a little crooked.

That door could be opened.

If this closed-off, alienated room was like a prison, then the most vicious part of this prison was that it actually retained a door that could be pushed open at any time, constantly enticing the prisoner inside to leave—but what lay on the other side of that door was not the "outside" that Zhou Ming wanted.

There was no old but familiar hallway, no sunny streets and vibrant crowds, none of what he was familiar with.

There was only a strange and unsettling foreign land, and "over there" was also an inescapable predicament.

But Zhou Ming knew that the time he had to hesitate was running out, and that the so-called "choice" never existed to begin with.

His food reserves were limited, and the few barrels of mineral water were only a quarter full. He had tried all means of escape and rescue in this closed room. Now there was only one path before him, and that was to prepare himself and seek a glimmer of hope on the other side of the "door."