Chapter 11

Liu Zhiyi's mind went blank, her heart pounding hard and fast a few times, her whole chest pricking as if with needles; it was a good while before she recovered.

She figured that after long enough in this dungeon, once she got out she really ought to book an appointment and get her heart checked.

Calm down… calm down…

Liu Zhiyi closed her eyes and opened them, going through the motion of blinking and slowing her breath.

Not knowing whether the "woman" crouched in front of her had noticed her, she didn't dare make any large movement.

The watch camera's resolution was low; looking at the other "people" with it just now, at a distance, Liu Zhiyi hadn't made out much that was strange — but this "woman's" face was so close now it was almost against the lens.

So Liu Zhiyi saw it clearly.

Two eyes, a nose, a mouth.

Compared to an ordinary person's features, no great difference.

If she really had to describe it, the face was beautiful — a full forehead, pupils so large they looked like colored contacts, even the nose lovely, the bridge fairly long, the tip turned up a little, the face itself full and faintly sheening with light.

And yet it was precisely this exquisite little face that gave Liu Zhiyi the creeps.

The nose and eyes were each lovely on their own, but put together on one face they were all wrong.

It was like… like…

an ordinary person forcing every feature into something pretty and then cramming them together, until the face took on something inhuman.

Now Liu Zhiyi understood why looking at the other "people" through the watch had given her that crawling feeling too.

Because they were so like people, yet in small ways not quite like people — that almost-human-but-not feeling made her deeply uncomfortable.

Liu Zhiyi watched the "woman" a while and found she hadn't moved at all — nor had any of the other "people."

Did some trigger have to be set off before they could move?

She turned the camera behind her, and once sure there was no "person" there, straightened up, lifted her head, and stepped to one side, out of the "woman's" way.

Once clear, Liu Zhiyi checked the "woman's" position again with the watch.

She hadn't moved; the "woman" still held her crouched, upward-gazing pose.

Had she not noticed her, then?

Liu Zhiyi: "Zhi-Zhi, do the grown-ups never move?"

"Only mama moves all the time," Zhi-Zhi said. "The grown-ups only move when I can't see them."

Liu Zhiyi was puzzled.

"Why can't the grown-ups move while you're watching them?"

Zhi-Zhi: "Because I don't like grown-ups all staring at me."

Liu Zhiyi froze at that. Even as she thought this kid's awfully self-centered, at the same time something came back to her.

It was as if some switch had flipped in her head: let a keyword trip it, and the matching memory would rise on its own.

She remembered the first time her mother led her into the market by the hand.

So many people in the market — all of them taller than the stalls; she'd had to go up on tiptoe and crane her neck to see their faces.

Her mother shopped there often, and was on good terms with some of the stallholders.

"Tomatoes just in, real fresh."

"Oh, Zhizhi, come shopping with your mama?"

"Here, here, have a tomato, Zhizhi."

And she'd seen one tall, smiling head after another leaning down at her from above.

Small children all seemed to be frightened of being crowded and teased by strangers like that.

Grown up, Liu Zhiyi knew the stallholders were only being warm, but she still remembered how it had felt as a child.

They were all people, yet to her child's eyes they hadn't seemed like people, because everyone was smiling, everyone calling her by her pet name.

So scary. So scary.

And then there was a young woman who sold pork, the friendliest of them, who came out from behind her stall, crouched down in front of her, and tipped her head up.

—Huff.

Liu Zhiyi came back to herself; she felt the wind again.

In the watch's camera view, that "woman" was once more crouched in front of her, head tipped up.

In that instant, the "woman's" face and the pork-seller's face overlapped.

Liu Zhiyi's vision began to blur.

"Zhi-Zhi."

"Zhizhi."

She heard someone calling her pet name.

Was it Zhi-Zhi, or Zhizhi?

The calls came one after another, more and more, thicker and thicker, rolling waves of sound surging at her one after the next.

Her head began to spin, the world turning end over end.

—Rumble.

She saw the produce platforms rising slowly, like elevators.

—Fzzt.

The hanging lights overhead crackled with current, swinging back and forth as they stretched longer.

"Zhizhi."

"Zhizhi."

"Zhizhi."

She heard the sounds coming ceaselessly from every side.

In the watch, the "woman" reached out a hand.

"Come, let auntie hold you."

—Waaah!

An ear-splitting cry burst out, and Liu Zhiyi snapped back.

Zhi-Zhi was crying.

She realized with a start that everything around her had grown a size larger — no… her own body had shrunk.

Just recalling a few things from childhood had carried straight over into the dungeon.

Liu Zhiyi was starting to be a little afraid of her own knack for making connections.

Then…

She thought a moment, pressed a hand to her head, and tried hard to think.

Disappear, disappear, dungeon disappear.

—Click.

In the watch she saw the other "people" suddenly turn their heads, all at once, toward her.

Liu Zhiyi jumped.

It didn't work! Some Schrödinger effect this was — why did the good thoughts do nothing and the bad ones land?

And hadn't Zhi-Zhi said before that the grown-ups wouldn't move while she was watching them?

Liu Zhiyi: "Zhi-Zhi, why have the grown-ups all turned to look?"

Zhi-Zhi sniffled a few breaths through the whimpering.

"Wuu… my eyes… I've cried so hard I can't open them…"

Liu Zhiyi: "…"

Exasperating as it was, Zhi-Zhi's little scene had pulled her attention away, and she didn't feel so sad anymore.

She could hardly let herself think about her mother now; one thought and her mind ran like a film, memory after memory of life with her.

And then her heart would sting and the tears would come.

A person's reason and willpower crumbled to nothing before feeling.

Mercifully the "mama" in this dungeon was vicious, very different from her mother in life.

Facing a gentle "mama," she really might not have held out.

Liu Zhiyi: "Can you open your eyes?"

Zhi-Zhi hummed a few whimpers; Liu Zhiyi didn't catch them, but saw the "people" in the watch come to a stop.

It was just that in those few short minutes a whole crowd of "people" had pressed into a row, all facing her direction.

Liu Zhiyi turned at once and pointed the watch at the Zhi-Zhi beside her.

She'd been so busy watching the grown-ups just now that she hadn't looked at Zhi-Zhi.

Now Liu Zhiyi felt she couldn't keep leading Zhi-Zhi by the hand like this — too slow, too inefficient; some hitch on the way and they'd be stuck halfway again.

As it happened, her body had shrunk.

Why not carry Zhi-Zhi in front? It could block these "people" and keep them from touching her.

With that thought, Liu Zhiyi turned her head to look left.

In the watch, Zhi-Zhi had two little pigtails, one hand over the face, shoulders hitching with sobs.

Liu Zhiyi: "Zhi-Zhi… let me carry you…"

The words were barely out when Zhi-Zhi turned her head.

She'd had a guess in the back of her mind, but Liu Zhiyi still got a fright.

She saw a face exactly like her own.