Ashes Of Deep Sea

The dense fog tumbled endlessly outside the window, so thick it seemed as though the entire world had vanished beyond it, with only the ambiguous light of Sky Light penetrating the mist and casting a dim, half-conscious glow into the quiet room.

The slightly disordered bachelor apartment, where Zhou Ming leaned over his desk—random items shoved carelessly aside—looked haggard as he feverishly penned:

"Day seven, the situation hasn't changed at all, the dense fog shrouds everything outside the window, the windows sealed by some unknown force... The entire room feels like it's been 'cast' into some sort of abnormal space...

"No way to contact the outside, no water or electricity, yet the lights stay on, and the computer still boots up—even though I've unplugged its power cord..."

It was as if a faint whisper of wind suddenly came from the direction of the window, and Zhou Ming abruptly lifted his head from his diary, a glimmer of hope momentarily brightening his worn eyes. However, the next second he realized it was just an illusion; outside the window, nothing but the persistent pallid fog, a world of deathly silence hovered coldly over his cramped dwelling.

His gaze swept over the windowsill, noticing the wrench and hammer tossed aside in disarray—evidence of his past few days' desperate attempts to leave the room. But now, those tough, crude tools just lay there silently, as if mocking his pitiful predicament.

Seconds later, Zhou Ming's expression returned to one of eerie calmness. With this abnormal serenity, he bent his head down once again and resumed his writing:

"I'm trapped, a predicament without any clue. Over the past few days, I've even tried dismantling the roof, walls, and floor, but no matter how hard I try, I can't even leave a mark on the wall; this room has become like... like a box 'cast' together with space, no way out...

"Except for that door.

"But the situation beyond that door... is even more wrong."

Zhou Ming stopped again, slowly reviewing the words he had just written, casually flipping through his diary, looking back on the things he'd written over the past days—oppressive language, meaningless musings, agitated doodles, and the bad jokes he wrote in an attempt to relax his mind.

He didn't know what the point was in writing these things, didn't know who would ever read this jumble of nonsense. In fact, he wasn't even someone who normally kept a diary—as a high school teacher with very limited free time, he didn't have the energy to spare for such things.

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

When he awoke, he found himself trapped in his own room.

The fog outside would never clear, so dense that you couldn't see anything but the mist; the world seemed to have lost the alternation of day and night. The room was filled with a constant, somber light, twenty-four hours a day. The windows were locked shut, utilities cut off, no signal on the cellphone, and no amount of noise in the room could summon any help from the outside.

It was like an absurd nightmare; everything in the dream worked against nature, but Zhou Ming had exhausted all means to ensure one thing: there were no illusions, no Dreamscape; there was only a world that was no longer normal, and a self that was, for the time being, still sane.

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

A plain, cheap white wooden door, still adorned with the calendar he had forgotten to replace since last year, its doorknob polished shiny, the doormat at the foot slightly askew.

That door could be opened.

If this closed, transformed room was like a cage, the most malicious aspect of this cage was that it actually retained a door that could be pushed open at any time, enticing the prisoner inside to leave. But what lay beyond that door was not the "outside" Zhou Ming longed for.

There was no familiar yet comforting corridor, no sunny streets teeming with lively crowds, none of the familiarities he knew.

Only an alien and unsettling foreign land—and "there", too, was an inescapable trap.

But Zhou Ming knew that he didn't have much time left to waver, and the so-called "choice" had been nonexistent from the start.

His food reserves were limited, and he was down to the last quarter of a few buckets of mineral water. After trying every method to escape and call for help in this sealed room, there was only one path left before him: prepare to seek a glimmer of hope on the other side of "the door."

Perhaps, he would also have the opportunity to investigate what had caused the current bizarre and supernatural situation.

Zhou Ming took a deep breath and lowered his head to jot down the last few lines in his diary: "...But no matter what, the only choice now is to head to the other side of the door. At least on that eerie ship, there might be something to eat, and the exploration and preparations I've made over the past few days should be enough to survive on that ship... though the preparations I could make were indeed limited.

"In the end, to whoever may come after, if I cannot return, and someday someone—perhaps some kind of rescue personnel—opens this room and sees this diary, please do not take everything I've written as an absurd tale—it really happened, as hair-raising as it is, there really was a person named Zhou Ming trapped in a mad and weird temporal anomaly.

"I've done my best to describe all the unusual phenomena I've witnessed in this diary, as well as all the efforts I've made to escape. If there really are 'others to come,' please at least remember my name, and remember that all this has happened."

Zhou Ming closed the diary, threw the pen into the pen holder beside him, and slowly stood up from behind the desk.

It was time to leave, before he was completely overtaken by passivity and despair.

But after a brief moment of thought, he did not head directly for the only door that led to the "outside world." Instead, he walked straight to his bed.

He had to face the "foreign land" on the other side of the door in perfect condition—and his current state, especially his mental state, was not yet up to par.

Zhou Ming didn't know if he could fall asleep, but lying in bed and emptying his mind was better than going to the "other side" while excessively tired.

Eight hours later, Zhou Ming opened his eyes.

Outside the window was still a sheet of chaotic mist, the day and night indistinguishable Sky Light carried a depressing obscurity.

Zhou Ming ignored the view outside the window. He took food from his dwindling supplies, eating until he was mostly full, then went to the corner of the room where there was a full-length mirror.

The man in the mirror still had disheveled hair and looked quite disheveled, lacking any notable characteristics, but Zhou Ming still stared intently at his own reflection, as if to imprint his image permanently in his mind.

He gazed at the mirror for several minutes then murmured in a low voice, as if speaking to the person in the mirror, "Your name is Zhou Ming, at least 'here' your name is Zhou Ming; remember this at all times."

After that, he turned and left.

He came to the all-too-familiar door, took a deep breath, and placed his hand on the handle.

He carried nothing extra with him, not food nor any defensive equipment. This was based on experience from several previous "explorations"—beyond his own body, he couldn't take anything through the door.

In fact, he even felt the need to put a question mark by this "self" because...

Zhou Ming turned the handle and pushed the door open. A pulsating mass of gray-black mist appeared before him like a curtain, and amidst the quivering fog, he thought he could hear the sound of waves crashing against the shore.

Stepping through the layer of mist, the slightly salty sea breeze hit him head-on, the once illusory sound of the waves became clear, and his feet felt a slight rocking sensation. Zhou Ming opened his eyes after a brief moment of dizziness, and his gaze fell upon the expansive open wooden deck, the tall masts standing under dark clouds, and beyond the ship's rail, the endless, gently undulating sea surface.

Zhou Ming looked down and saw a body stronger than he remembered, wearing an intricately made and costly but completely unfamiliar captain's uniform, with large-knuckled hands and a classically elegant black flintlock pistol in his grip.

Yes, even the "self" deserved a question mark.

(Mama Mia! I'm back!)