"A snail? The old lady just warned me to watch out for snails, and now Jiang Ming has pulled out a snail shell?"
Chen Ge couldn't quite figure it out, but he knew the old woman would never try to harm Jiang Ming.
Carefully placing the snail shell back in his pocket, Jiang Ming took Chen Ge's hand and led him out of the old woman's cottage.
The child darted around the shared apartment building with Chen Ge in tow — they went to the rooftop windowsill, the coal storage room, the garbage-filled compartments. Whenever Jiang Ming spotted a snail, he would light up with joy.
Chen Ge didn't understand why Jiang Ming was trying so hard to find snails. He simply watched the boy's earnest face, unable to bring himself to interrupt.
Silently accompanying Jiang Ming, they searched the entire apartment but found only four snails. Jiang Ming tucked them all into his pocket, then took Chen Ge's hand and ran toward the first floor.
As long as they didn't make a sound, those strange neighbors wouldn't come over. Jiang Ming's father, after being beaten by the old woman, hadn't shown up again.
"Are you going home?"
Jiang Ming nodded happily and led Chen Ge to stand outside the rental unit with the wooden sign hanging on it. He reached up and pulled the light cord.
The light inside flickered several times, then the rental door opened. A slender woman with paper-pale "skin" appeared behind it.
Seeing Jiang Ming return safely, a gentle smile spread across her face. Then she caught sight of Chen Ge, and a flicker of alarm crossed her eyes — she seemed frightened by the arrival of a stranger.
The woman began signing to Chen Ge with hand gestures. She appeared to be deaf and mute as well.
Chen Ge couldn't understand complex sign language, so he simply maintained a warm smile, trying to make himself seem approachable.
The rental door slowly opened wider. Jiang Ming excitedly ran to the woman's side and, as if showing off one by one, pulled snails from his pocket.
The woman stroked the boy's head, a gentle smile on her face, quietly watching Jiang Ming's happy expression.
"This must be Jiang Ming's mother."
Stepping inside, Chen Ge closed the door behind him.
Looking at the peaceful scene before him, Chen Ge felt utterly unable to become part of it. The woman's face looked like any normal person's, but her body was covered in patches.
From a distance, Jiang Ming's mother looked like a cloth doll. Only her hands — the ones that needed to work — and her face bore no patches. Everywhere else was stitched and mended, her skin like a tattered old coat.
Chen Ge couldn't imagine what the woman must have endured to appear in the child's memory in this form.
The woman signed with her hands, seemingly praising Jiang Ming, but the warm atmosphere inside the room was soon shattered.
The light outside the door lit up again. Both the cloth-doll mother and young Jiang Ming looked toward the door. In the end, Jiang Ming's mother walked over and opened the rental unit's door.
A pungent smell of alcohol rushed into their nostrils. A grotesque drunkard appeared in the doorway.
His mud-like body leaned against the doorframe, and his arm — fused with a liquor bottle — pointed at Chen Ge. The drunkard glared furiously at the cloth-doll woman.
The woman signed to him, but the drunkard had long since lost patience. He shoved her aside.
Seeing the drunkard barge in, Jiang Ming pulled those snails from his pocket and hurried over to the man, holding them out in both hands, wanting to show them to the drunkard. But before he could even extend his hands, the drunkard slapped his arms away.
The snail shells clattered to the ground. The snails Jiang Ming had worked so hard to find were crushed underfoot.
The drunkard stared at the broken snail shells on the floor. His face turned crimson, veins bulging one by one. He seemed even more enraged.
With nowhere to vent his fury, he flipped the small table in the living room. A water bottle on the table nearly struck Jiang Ming, but the cloth-doll woman managed to block it.
Hot water splashed across the floor, some of it landing on the drunkard. His entire body flushed red, and he grabbed the cloth-doll woman by the hair, slamming her down.
The woman's first reaction after falling was to wave at Jiang Ming, urging him to hurry and hide inside the room.
The drunkard dragged the woman by her legs, and his arm — fused with the liquor bottle — came down again and again.
The boy stood in the wreckage of the living room. He didn't know what he had done wrong. The snails on the ground had been crushed. His cloth-doll mother had been knocked down.
His shoulders trembled with fear. He didn't know who to turn to for help. He watched his mother in pain and wanted to go help her, but he was powerless. He couldn't even speak.
"Don't be afraid."
Chen Ge gently patted Jiang Ming's trembling shoulder. "I'll help you."
Chen Ge delivered a kick to the drunkard. Once the drunkard and the cloth-doll woman were separated, he swung the Skull Crusher down onto the drunkard's shoulder.
Thud!
The drunkard slammed into the rental unit's door. Chen Ge gave him no chance to recover and pressed his assault.
"Jiang Ming, look carefully — he's not invincible. He's just a weak coward. You don't need to fear him at all!"
The drunkard's body was rapidly regenerating. His arms were merging with the furniture in the room, and his expression grew increasingly ferocious.
"I'll lure him into the inner room. The moment the door opens, you two get out of here!"
To buy Jiang Ming and the cloth-doll woman time, Chen Ge had no choice but to knock the drunkard down again and again.
Every time he was knocked down, the drunkard's appearance grew more horrifying. His body was constantly expanding, his back fusing into the wall, slowly merging with the entire room.
In Jiang Ming's memory, the words "home" and "father" were intimately linked, so Chen Ge was not at all surprised by this. The only thing that worried him was that Jiang Ming and the cloth-doll woman hadn't fled the room.
Cracks appeared on the walls. The ceiling began falling apart in large chunks. The floor shook violently. The light behind the door flickered several times, then suddenly went out.
With the light gone, a thick, putrid stench drifted down from above in the dim room.
The cracks in the roof grew wider and wider. The drunkard's bloated body — now several times its original size — touched the ceiling. And just then, the entire roof of the rental unit collapsed.
The stench hit them in the face. The thing that had crushed this home appeared!
A hard shell spiraling with ridges. A slimy body. A massive blood-red snail perched atop the ruins of this family.
Endless waves of negative emotion poured into the drunkard's body. Beneath the giant snail's smaller pair of tentacles, a slit had opened, revealing rows upon rows of countless teeth.
An enormous body extended from the shell. The blood-colored snail lunged at Chen Ge.
"A snail? Why is there something this terrifying inside Jiang Ming's dream?"
Chen Ge shielded Jiang Ming as he retreated. The entire world behind the door had completely transformed since the snail appeared — the walls were seeping blood outward, and the apartment building seemed on the verge of collapse at any moment.
"Upstairs! Go find the old grandmother!" Chen Ge led Jiang Ming and the cloth-doll woman running toward the upper floors. Those neighbors — already barely distinguishable from monsters — had been driven mad under the blood-colored snail's influence.