The thick, endless fog rolled outside the window, shrouding the world beyond in a mysterious veil. Only the dim light of the hazy sky pierced through the fog, casting a dim glow in the quiet room.
In the slightly disheveled apartment, Zhou Ming sat at his desk, frantically scribbling in his notebook. The clutter on his desk was pushed aside in haste, while he continued to write with a feverish intensity:
"On the seventh day, nothing has changed. The thick fog still engulfs everything outside the window, and the windows have been mysteriously sealed shut... The entire room seems to have been cast into some kind of abnormal space...
"No way to contact the outside world, no water or electricity, but the light is still on, and the computer still works - even though I have unplugged its power cord..."
A faint breeze suddenly blew in from the window, causing Zhou Ming to look up from his writing. His haggard eyes lit up briefly, but in the next moment, he realized it was just an illusion. The window remained shrouded in pale fog, and a dead silence hung over his small abode.
His gaze fell on the discarded wrench and hammer on the windowsill - remnants of his attempts to escape over the past few days. But now, these crude tools lay still, mocking his predicament.
After a few seconds, Zhou Ming's expression returned to a calm state, and he lowered his head back to his notebook:
"I am trapped, completely at a loss. Over the past few days, I have even tried to remove the roof, walls, and floor, but with all my strength, I could not leave a single mark on the surface. This room has become like a box, cast together with space, with no way out...
"Except for that door.
"But something is off about the situation outside that door..."
Zhou Ming paused once again, taking a moment to review what he had just written. He absentmindedly flipped through his notebook, looking at the suppressed words, meaningless musings, restless scribbles, and the sarcastic jokes he had written down to distract himself.
He had no idea what the point of writing down these ramblings was, nor who would read them in the future. In fact, he wasn't even the type to keep a diary - as a high school teacher with limited free time, he had little energy to spare for such things.
But now, whether he liked it or not, he had plenty of free time on his hands. After waking up from a nap, he found himself trapped in his own room.
Outside the window was a never-ending fog, so thick that nothing could be seen beyond it. The world seemed to have lost its day and night cycle, and a constant, dim light filled the room. The windows were locked, the power and water were out, his phone had no signal, and no amount of noise he made would attract help from outside.
It was like a bizarre nightmare, with everything operating against the laws of nature. But Zhou Ming had exhausted all possible methods to confirm one thing: this was not a hallucination or a dream. It was simply an abnormal world, and he was still himself, for the time being.
He took a deep breath, and his gaze fell on the only door at the end of the room. It was a plain, cheap, white wooden door, with last year's calendar still hanging on it. The doorknob was polished, and the foot mat in front of the door was slightly askew.
That door could be opened. If this enclosed and altered room was like a prison cell, then the most malicious aspect of this cell was that it had a door that could be opened at any time, tempting the prisoner to leave. But what lay beyond that door was not the "outside" that Zhou Ming wanted.
There were no familiar hallways, no sunny streets with vibrant crowds, and no signs of anything he knew. There was only a strange and unsettling foreign land, and "over there" was also an inescapable predicament.
But Zhou Ming knew that he had little time left to hesitate, and that the so-called "choice" had never existed from the beginning. His food supply was limited, and he had only a quarter of the bottled water left. He had tried all the means of escape and rescue in this enclosed room, and now he had only one option: to prepare himself and seek a chance for survival on the other side of the "door."
Perhaps, he might have a chance to investigate what had caused this strange and oppressive supernatural situation.
Taking a deep breath, Zhou Ming lowered his head and wrote the final few paragraphs in his diary: "...but no matter what, the only choice now is to go to the other side of the door. At least there should be some food on that creepy ship, and my exploration and preparation over the past few days should be enough to keep me alive there...even though my preparation is actually quite limited. "In the end, to whoever finds this diary in the future, if I am unable to come back and someday there really are rescue personnel or something similar that opens this room, please don't take everything I've written as a ridiculous story. It really happened, even though it's bone-chilling, there really was a person named Zhou Ming, trapped in a crazy and bizarre temporal anomaly. "I've done my best to describe all the abnormal phenomena I've seen in this diary, and recorded all the efforts I've made to escape. If there really are any 'future readers', please at least remember my name, at least remember that all of this really happened." Zhou Ming closed the diary and threw the pen into the nearby pen holder, slowly standing up from behind the desk. It was time to leave, before being completely trapped and in dire straits. But after a brief moment of thought, instead of directly heading towards the only door that led to the "outside world," he walked straight to his bed. He had to face the "foreign land" on the other side of the door with complete readiness - and his current condition, especially his mental state, was not good enough. Zhou Ming didn't know if he could fall asleep, but even forcing himself to lie in bed and empty his mind was better than going to the "other side" in a state of extreme fatigue. Eight hours later, Zhou Ming opened his eyes.
Outside the window, the chaotic mist still shrouded everything, and the gloomy light of day and night brought a depressing darkness.
Ignoring the situation outside, Zhou Ming took out some food from his dwindling supplies and ate until he was about 80% full. He then came to the dressing mirror in the corner of the room.
The man in the mirror still had messy hair, looking quite disheveled and without any sense of style. However, Zhou Ming stared at himself in the mirror as if trying to imprint his appearance permanently in his mind.
He gazed at the mirror for several minutes before speaking to himself in a low voice, as if speaking to the person in the mirror, "You are Zhou Ming, at least on 'this side,' you are Zhou Ming. Remember this at all times."
Afterwards, he turned and left.
Standing in front of the door, which was as familiar as ever, Zhou Ming took a deep breath and placed his hand on the doorknob. Apart from his clothes, he didn't carry anything else, no food, no defensive equipment. This was a lesson learned from previous "explorations" - he couldn't bring anything else through this door except himself.
In fact, he even felt that he himself was questionable, because...
Zhou Ming turned the doorknob and pushed open the door. A writhing mass of gray-black mist appeared before him like a curtain, and within the undulating mist, he could hear the sound of waves.
Stepping through the mist, a slightly salty sea breeze greeted him, and the illusory sound of waves became real. He felt a slight swaying under his feet, and after a brief dizziness, he opened his eyes to see a wide wooden deck, a towering mast standing under the dark clouds, and a sea that seemed to have no boundaries and was gently undulating beyond the ship's rail.
Looking down, Zhou Ming saw a more muscular body than he remembered, dressed in an exquisitely crafted captain's uniform with an unfamiliar style, a pair of knuckle-dragging hands, and a classic yet exquisite black flintlock pistol that he held in his hand.
Yes, even "himself" was questionable.