Chapter 3

Seeing the alert pop up, Liu Zhiyi went still.

She glanced over where she was, and all at once the word sweet felt loaded with malice.

Liu Zhiyi noticed a little heart icon flashing away at the top of the watch.

She tried tapping the alert window.

It wouldn't budge, so she felt her way through swiping left and right. It was her first time with a kids' watch like this; its features were probably much like a smartwatch's.

Swiping left brought up the settings. At the very top was location tracking — switched off.

Below that were tools like do-not-disturb, a flashlight, Bluetooth.

Liu Zhiyi looked them over; no hurry to use any of them yet. She swiped right.

Swiping right showed the heart-rate screen, and there she found why the little heart had been flashing.

Right now the whole screen was tinged faintly red, the heart-rate number swinging between 100 and 160, its color flickering between red and black.

Liu Zhiyi watched for a few seconds.

At 100 the number was black; above that, red.

Below it a line of red text flashed along with it — Please mind your emotions.

Liu Zhiyi took a few deep breaths and pulled the couch blanket around herself.

It did nothing for clearing the game, but something wrapped around her lent a little sense of safety, and she needed to get her heart rate down fast.

She worked at emptying her mind — not thinking of her mother, not thinking of the cat.

That was hard, honestly, with the dark and the silence all around.

After some effort her heart rate came down a little, but back to fully normal clearly wasn't going to happen.

Liu Zhiyi couldn't just ignore the fear inside her.

Maybe the starting item had allowed for that.

Though her heart rate still hovered between 100 and 120 and the screen stayed tinged red, the line "Please mind your emotions" vanished.

At the same time, the watch buzzed.

Liu Zhiyi swiped back to the original pop-up, and under the words Novice Task a new prompt had appeared.

[Once you've settled your emotions, please begin observing your surroundings and gathering relevant clues.]

Right, right, gather clues — that's how these games usually go.

Liu Zhiyi came back to herself, her next goal found.

Only now did the cat's "game plug-in" feel real to her.

She was, when it came down to it, an ordinary person; dropped into a game like this out of nowhere, her head still blank, without the novice guidance she really wouldn't have known what to do…

Liu Zhiyi searched the couch first, working her hands into its cracks, even lifting the cushions to look underneath.

Until the watch buzzed again, as if silently prodding her.

Only then did Liu Zhiyi turn her eyes to the dark beyond the column of light, and to the two-faced Buddha.

Clues, of course, wouldn't sit only where there was light.

Liu Zhiyi hesitated, images rising in her mind unbidden.

In college she'd done a horror-themed escape room with friends.

Her friend was an escape-room regular and had picked a heavy-scare one.

She'd never played, and figuring at two hundred-odd a go she was here now and might as well get her money's worth, she'd gone straight for a role with a solo task.

And doing that solo task, she'd been shut alone in a pitch-black room with only the flashlight in her hand for light — just like now.

Only the escape room was fake, and this was real.

Still, this beat the escape room a little; at least there was a lamp overhead.

It was just that what the lamp lit was off.

Whether the lamp above the couch or the statue, the light was miserly, penned in close around each, not even reaching the floor nearby, as if some shade were blocking it.

Liu Zhiyi looked at the dark past the couch.

The watch was buzzing faster now, the line about gathering clues flashing on the screen, as if pressing her to hurry.

So it really would be like that escape room — feeling along walls and tables in the dark for clues.

Liu Zhiyi let out a long sigh. She really did not want to walk into the dark like this.

What had she done in the escape room back then?

—Turned on the flashlight.

Liu Zhiyi swiped around the watch screen a few times.

The kids' watch did have a flashlight, though holding a hand up at her chest to aim it ahead made for an awkward pose.

Liu Zhiyi wrapped the blanket around herself, covering nearly every bit of skin that would show, leaving out only her eyes and the watch.

The lamp overhead lit little of the floor, but it was bright enough, at least; she wasn't wholly in the dark.

So Liu Zhiyi consoled herself, and worked up her nerve.

The instant that thought rose —

—Fzzt.

The lamp overhead flickered and went out.

Liu Zhiyi: "…Shit!"

The dark dropped over her eyes so fast that for a second she felt she'd gone blind — she couldn't even see the watch's light or the statue.

It had to be some physical reaction.

Liu Zhiyi blinked. Not daring to move, she could only wait in the dark for her sight to come back.

When a person can't see clearly, they fix, without meaning to, on their other senses.

Like now — Liu Zhiyi caught herself listening without intending to.

When she could see, it had all seemed so quiet; now that she couldn't —

first she heard her own breathing.

Liu Zhiyi hadn't known her own breath could be so loud.

In a place like this even her own breathing was frightening, so she softened it — but then her ears, beyond her control, fixed on making out that same breath.

It was exactly like something out of a horror novel.

Liu Zhiyi was truly afraid she'd hear something she shouldn't.

But her ears and her head were beyond controlling.

The less she wanted to imagine, the more her mind imagined; the less she wanted to listen, the harder her ears listened.

—Huff. —Huff.

She heard her own breathing.

Slow, but shaking.

The brief blindness from being plunged into the dark was fading; she could make out the statue's outline again, though everything past it stayed black.

At least she could see — Liu Zhiyi meant to let out a breath of relief.

But her ears were still listening; shifting her attention wasn't so easy.

—Huff. —Huff.

Don't listen! Don't listen!

Liu Zhiyi wanted to clap her hands over her ears.

She reached out blind, feeling in the dark for where they were.

The instant the back of her hand passed beyond the blanket, she felt a cold draft.

Then —

—Haa.

a soft puff of breath, not her own, sounded right by her ear.

In that instant every hair on Liu Zhiyi's scalp stood on end.

All power to think left her; her body lunged forward on instinct.

But the blanket wrapped around her had turned into a snag; she stepped on it, went down to the floor, rolled a few times, then scrambled up half-crawling and clawed her way toward the statue.

The statue was right there in plain sight — how could it be so far?

Liu Zhiyi crawled for her life.

She crawled for who knew how long, until the buzzing at her wrist pulled her back.

This buzz wasn't like the ones before; it carried a faint electric jolt.

Liu Zhiyi raised her arm. The watch's flashlight had gone off — knocked against something during her scramble.

Now she could see the red heart on the screen flashing again without stop.

Her heartbeat had shot back to 160, and looked set to break past 180.

And at the same time, the halo of light around the statue was flickering too, about to dim out.

Slow as she might be, Liu Zhiyi could work it out: her heart rate was probably eating into the safe room's time as well.

She took a few deep breaths and bundled the blanket around herself.

Thank god she hadn't been scared into dropping it while she crawled.

After some effort her heart rate came down a little, though still higher than before, wavering between 140 and 160.

The red heart still flashed, but at least the electric sting had left the buzzing, and the statue's halo, though a good deal dimmer, had stopped flickering.

She couldn't keep jumping at every little thing. Liu Zhiyi wiped the cold sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

She didn't dare listen closely again, and worked to keep her attention on the kids' watch, swiping its face for the flashlight icon.

After that round — badly shaken as she'd been — she'd grown a little used to the place, and the fear had ebbed a touch.

Still frightened, but at least some of her reason had come back.

That was enough to settle her, finally, on searching the place properly, to turn up some clues before the safe room's time ran out.

Before switching the flashlight on, she swiped the watch over to the task screen to check for any new prompts.

And there it was — a new prompt beneath the line about gathering clues.

The prompt opened with a little crying-child-face icon, and after it a few words — The Cruel-Humored Mother.

Below the icon ran a description:

[Mind your heart rate. At this stage your mother can't catch you, but she'll play some scary little games with you.]