The situation had reached its worst point, but Chen Ge not only refused to give up hope — he was even encouraging those around him.
Ever since he had obtained the Black Phone, he had faced far too many desperate situations. Pain and misfortune had hammered his nerves a thousand times over, granting him a mental resilience that ordinary people could never hope to possess.
"Ying Tong, leave this building. Walk out through that door, and you'll see the outside world. You'll never have to shut yourself away again."
Very few people ever talked to Ying Tong about the outside world. The place Chen Ge described — brimming with color, bathed in light — filled Ying Tong with longing.
The boy slowly perked up and began telling Ah Mu the story of his brother.
For as long as Ying Tong could remember, his mother had forbidden him from playing with Ying Chen. Whenever the two brothers were together, one of their parents was always watching nearby.
Back then, Ying Tong had simply thought it was strange. He loved playing with his older brother. Ying Chen was an incredibly fun person who always came up with novel games and had tons of friends in the neighborhood. Everyone liked being around him, and Ying Tong had been like Ying Chen's little shadow.
When their parents saw how close the brothers were, they didn't feel happy — they felt worried.
Ying Tong had been born with a problem in his eyes. His vision was far worse than other children's, and when they went out to play, it was his brother who looked after him. He was very grateful to his brother.
But one day, after they had finished a game of hide-and-seek, Ying Tong's mother furiously pulled him into his room. From outside came the sound of Ying Chen crying and screaming — it seemed their father was beating him.
Inside the room, Ying Tong didn't understand why. He even begged his mother not to hit his brother.
His mother never told Ying Tong why his brother had been beaten. Later, through the family's nanny, he learned what had actually happened that day.
During the game of hide-and-seek, Ying Chen had led Ying Tong to secretly sneak out of their apartment building and into a building that hadn't been finished yet. Ying Chen then made Ying Tong stand on the balcony of the third floor.
That balcony had no protective railing. If Ying Tong had moved around carelessly, he could easily have fallen. Fortunately, some workers spotted them and stopped it in time.
Ying Tong couldn't understand why his brother would do something like that. He grew frightened, constantly had nightmares, and couldn't sleep. As a small child, he recalled the warnings his parents had once given him, and the image of his brother in his mind began to change.
Roughly a few months later, Ying Tong woke up one morning to find his brother's room empty. His parents told him that his brother had been sent away for treatment.
Young Ying Tong's understanding of illness was still limited to the physical level. He didn't read much into the sorrowful expressions on his parents' faces.
Another half year passed — just one month before the accident that killed Ying Tong's parents — when Ying Chen was brought back home.
After treatment, Ying Chen had become even more "normal" than an ordinary person. Seeing this version of Ying Chen, their father couldn't shake a lingering sense of worry.
A month later, Ying Tong's parents died in a car accident, and Ying Chen and Ying Tong began living under the care of their relatives.
According to Ying Tong, the relatives were a bit money-grubbing and stingy, but they were good people who took excellent care of the two brothers — a stark contrast to how Ying Chen outside the door described them.
Losing their parents young forced Ying Tong to mature far beyond his years. By the age of five, he understood that death meant an eternal departure.
During the time he lived with the relatives, Ying Tong gradually discovered another side of his brother.
Ying Chen had a peculiar hobby: he liked making insect specimens. He would dissect insects and then reassemble them, and his bedroom was full of such specimens.
This hobby went on for a while, until one day, Ying Tong walked into Ying Chen's bedroom and saw a bird specimen.
Perfectly restoring a bird to its appearance in life required many tools. Ying Tong had once opened Ying Chen's drawers and found all manner of strange, bizarre objects inside.
He told the relatives about this, but they were outsiders after all and didn't intervene in Ying Chen's hobby.
In the days that followed, Ying Chen came home later and later from school. He always had injuries — some were scratches from cats, others were bruises.
This went on for a long time, until one day community workers showed up at their door, suspecting that the relatives were abusing Ying Chen and Ying Tong.
Though Ying Tong tried his best to deny it, no one knew what Ying Chen had told the community workers. They didn't believe Ying Tong and instead felt deeply sorry for him.
The relatives received a warning from the community, and that very night they got into a fierce argument with Ying Chen. The next day, the community workers came again.
Ying Chen had joined numerous anti-domestic-violence group chats. It was also around that time that he began managing social media accounts, portraying himself as a pitiful child whose home had been seized by outsiders.
The situation escalated further and further, and after about half a year, the relatives were driven away.
Ying Tong remembered that day vividly. Before leaving, the relatives typed their phone number into Ying Tong's braille phone and told him one thing.
When Ying Tong was still a baby, Ying Chen had once sneaked over to his crib. No one knew what he had planned to do that day — only that he was holding something in his hand.
Their father had told Ying Chen's attending doctor about this, and the doctor later passed it on to the relatives. As one of the people involved, Ying Tong was actually the last to find out.
Ying Tong was terrified. From that day on, he kept his distance from his brother. But Ying Chen continued to act as usual, enthusiastically inviting him to go out and play. Ying Tong never went with him again.
After the relatives left, Ying Chen grew more and more brazen. All sorts of strange smells began emanating from his room. Yet during that period, Ying Chen didn't do anything to hurt Ying Tong — he even took meticulous care of him.
Every day he would help Ying Tong massage his eyes, then ask how much his vision had recovered.
In truth, after the early treatment, Ying Tong's vision had partially recovered. But he didn't dare tell his brother. He simply continued as he had in childhood, always telling Ying Chen that he couldn't see anything.
Ying Tong was lying. What was truly terrifying was that Ying Chen probably knew he was lying — and never called him out on it.
From insects, to birds, to stray cats — just when Ying Tong thought his brother couldn't possibly do anything worse, he found a bundle of blood-soaked hair in his brother's bag.
Ying Chen came home later and later. He replaced all the locks on the bedrooms with new ones, and kept every key on himself.
Ying Tong would hide in his room, and he could always hear the sound of doors opening late at night. Ying Chen's footsteps would drift between the kitchen, the bedroom, and the bathroom, and occasionally he would hear truly horrifying sounds.
This went on for a while, until one night when Ying Chen went out to "take out the trash," Ying Tong noticed that his brother's bedroom door was ajar. He slipped inside and saw a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life.
An arm was reaching out from beneath Ying Chen's bed. It was a body that had been processed.
What happened that night after that, Ying Tong didn't elaborate on. He only told Chen Ge and Ah Mu that from that moment on, he had resolved to escape.