Chapter 8: Dont Open Doors Carelessly
Yu Sheng stepped into the small kitchen, closing the door behind him with a quiet click. He reached for the vent hood switch, and as its loud, constant hum filled the room, he felt his heart finally begin to settle.
It was as if the thin wooden door and the machine’s steady drone created a barrier between him and the strange, unsettling world outside. For a moment, he could pretend that he was somewhere else. Not in Boundary City, with its eerie streets and looming shadows, but in his real home. A place that felt safe and familiar.
The house he lived in now was nothing like the one he had left behind. But this kitchen—this one small room—he had done his best to make it feel like the kitchen from his old life. He had arranged everything just the way he remembered, right down to the smallest detail.
Every day, when he cooked, he allowed himself to pretend. To imagine he hadn’t opened his front door that fateful morning and stepped into a different world. Sometimes, if he was busy enough, he could almost believe that if he looked up, he would see his old street through the window. The familiar road outside, bathed in the warm, reddish light of the evening sun, the apartment buildings glowing in the sunset.
But the moment he looked up, reality would crash back down. There were no apartment buildings here. Just a barren, empty space, with old, low houses in the distance and a mess of tangled utility poles. Once a comforting sight, the sky was either blindingly bright or oppressively dark—never the peaceful twilight he longed for.
Yu Sheng sighed heavily, pulling down the blinds to shut out the dismal view.
He set to work, picking through the vegetables, washing them under the cold water, then heating the wok. The familiar sounds of oil sizzling as he fried the scallions gave him a sense of routine and normalcy. Meanwhile, the faint sound of a television show drifted in from the other room. It struck him as odd, even though it shouldn’t have. Despite all its oddities, this city still had its own news channels, TV shows, and even phones. In fact, much of what he had learned about Boundary City came from watching TV and scrolling through the news on his phone.
“Yu Sheng! The TV’s too quiet! Turn it up for me, would you?”