Two people to a room, and only one can survive.
Would you choose to kill the other person?
This was the question Chi Qing had pondered over and over again on countless nights.
Seven days.
It was enough to change a person.
Chi Qing clearly remembered that the bespectacled boy sharing his room—”Glasses”—could only tremble on the very first day. Just like when he had first arrived, he huddled in the corner, his voice shaking as he asked, “What do we do…”
He was on the verge of crying out loud, as if he had already foreseen his ultimate end: “I want to go home. My mom is still waiting for me at home. She made my favorite sweet and sour spare ribs and is waiting for me. When can I go home? I can’t stay here anymore… I’m going to die. I’m going to die.”
By the second day, Glasses spoke less.
Most of the time, he just stared blankly at a single spot in silence. Sometimes he stared at the wall, sometimes at the uneven floor, and sometimes at the door left slightly ajar. Outside the door was pitch black, yet the door itself offered absolutely no hope.
Chi Qing was a light sleeper, waking up periodically.
He slowly opened his eyes in the middle of the night and realized that this time, Glasses wasn’t looking anywhere else.
This time, Glasses was staring directly at him.
In the pitch-black environment, Glasses was facing Chi Qing. He wasn’t asleep; his eyes were wide open, unblinking as he fixated on Chi Qing.
…
Chi Qing couldn’t be sure if he was just spacing out.
Because that gaze closely resembled the look of a wild beast quietly lying in wait, biding its time.
The soundproofing here was far from good. While normal conversations and speaking voices wouldn’t carry through, a shrill, bloodcurdling scream could pierce through anything.
On the third night, sometime past two in the morning, everyone heard the first scream since that man had announced, “The game begins.”
Accompanied by the screams was the violent sound of heavy, blunt impacts.
“Ah—!”
It sounded like someone was smashing their head against the wall.
Or rather… someone else was forcing their head against the wall and smashing it.
The screaming person tried to say something several times, but could only force out a few muffled, indistinguishable syllables from their throat before being completely drowned out by the thunderous impacts.
Everyone heard the commotion, yet no one spoke a word.
But they all knew that after this night passed, many things were going to change.
There were no tools like knives, ropes, or wooden clubs in the rooms, but if you wanted to kill someone, there were plenty of ways.
Chi Qing had no doubt that the person screaming wasn’t the only one who died that night. Surely, there were others who had their throats crushed or their noses and mouths smothered, dying without making a single sound.
That night, everyone kept their eyes open and stayed awake.
Deep into the night, Glasses suddenly asked him a question: “Will you kill me?”
Chi Qing’s germaphobia wasn’t as severe back then, but he was still more fastidious than an average person, saving his drinking water just to wipe his hands clean.
After a long time—so long that the topic seemed to have already passed—Chi Qing gave his answer.
“No.”
However, Chi Qing choosing not to act didn’t mean he would tolerate the other party acting against him.
In the middle of the night, he felt a wave of suffocation in his sleep. The lack of oxygen forced him awake; a pair of hands wrapped around his neck was tightening ruthlessly. When pushed to the brink, instead of using more indirect methods, people tend to choose the simplest and most brutal one.
They didn’t even need to patiently and carefully search for a murder weapon, or rack their brains trying to orchestrate a crime scene that looked like a “natural death.” There was only one singular thought required: Kill him.
Every single cell in the body was screaming it out.
Kill him.
Murder him.
…
Hurry up and die.
Chi Qing was at a severe disadvantage, unable to move, his breathing completely cut off.
He used his last ounce of strength to thrust his knee upward, slamming it directly into the other person’s lower abdomen. Chi Qing distinctly felt the grip on his neck loosen. Seizing the moment, his right hand stealthily flipped open the bedsheet on the makeshift pallet on the floor, pulling out a hidden chopstick he had sharpened to a point.
Chi Qing pressed the chopstick against Glasses’s neck. “Let go.”
Glasses’s hands paused.
Chi Qing: “Otherwise, you can test whether I die first, or you die faster.”
“I don’t want to die,” Glasses suddenly began to weep, tears spilling from his eyes. “…I’m sorry, I’m just too scared. I don’t want to die.”
The force in Chi Qing’s hand also slackened a bit. He was just about to say something when Glasses suddenly lunged at him, the bloodshot crimson in his eyes no longer concealable.
Yet, fate is often full of cruel irony.
Chi Qing genuinely hadn’t expected him to lunge, and the chopstick was successfully snatched away by the other boy. However, just as the two of them tumbled backward, Glasses’s hand flailed uncontrollably in the air, and the sharpened end accidentally plunged directly into his own carotid artery.
Chi Qing’s back hit the ground, and Glasses pressed down entirely on top of him, eyes wide open.
A total field of red.
The glasses on the young boy’s nose bridge fell to the floor as blood sprayed out like a fountain.
“The week is up,” that man appeared on the seventh day exactly on time, pulling open the iron door. “Let me see… who managed to survive.”
At that time, Chi Qing thought this was his ultimate goal.
But he never expected that this seven-day game wouldn’t just end there.
The survivors were automatically re-divided into pairs of two, shuffled again, and locked into different isolation cells than before.
Another seven days began.
Chi Qing was blindfolded and led into a new room.
This time, the teenage boy in the room had a completely different personality from Glasses. He sat quietly on a bed against the wall. Seeing Chi Qing enter, he curled his lips into a polite, faint smile and greeted him: “Hello.”
This newly assigned two-person setup was far from ordinary, because there was absolutely no telling how the other person had managed to “survive.”
Everyone claimed they hadn’t killed anyone.
And no one dared to truly close their eyes and sleep.
Chi Qing constantly speculated about that man’s ultimate motive: if things continued to progress like this, then the children he had gone through so much trouble to kidnap would die off one by one, and their numbers would only dwindle… What did he want to do?
Could it be that he merely wanted to watch them slaughter each other?
Chi Qing continued to think: What would happen in the end?
—In the end, there would likely only be one person left.
Just when Chi Qing’s mental state was on the verge of total exhaustion, he heard someone tap against the wall a few times, passing a message to him.
These were things he and Xie Lin had never spoken about.
Just like the Chief’s question earlier today—”How did you survive?”—he couldn’t find an answer to it right away.
…
What about Xie Lin?
How had Xie Lin survived?
At that time, had he bloodied his hands?
“—Beep beep!”
The taxi had arrived. Its headlights pierced through the hazy gray rain, casting their glow onto Chi Qing.
Immediately after, the driver rolled down the window and asked, “Are you the one who called for a car?”
Chi Qing folded his umbrella, snapping back to reality as he answered, “Yes.”
