Covering his eyes, blocking his ears, unable to reveal any information about the mission to anyone, his mouth could only repeat his own name.
Chen Ge walked through the silent darkness for a long time. He tried to recall the layout of the Haunted House, but gradually discovered something terrible — the place he was currently in didn't seem to be inside the Haunted House at all.
He didn't know where he had wandered. He couldn't communicate with anyone, couldn't hear a single sound. There was only darkness all around.
Biting cold seeped into his chest, and Chen Ge finally stopped walking.
"Am I still inside the Haunted House?"
This was the first time Chen Ge had ever felt such a sense of strangeness toward his own haunted house.
"Could it be that when I pushed open some door, I had already left the Haunted House?"
Terrifying thoughts one after another surfaced in his mind. Chen Ge didn't know what awaited him up ahead, let alone when he would be able to push open the real door.
Groping through the dark, in moments when no hope could be seen, trying to push open whatever door he could touch.
Chen Ge couldn't shake the feeling that he had experienced this scene before. The nightmare-level daily mission called "Door" seemed to be trying to tell him something.
In the absolute darkness and deathly silence, time had slowly lost all meaning. Chen Ge's body grew stiff, his skin terrifyingly cold to the touch. Memories flashed through his mind one after another, and that inexplicable sense of familiarity grew ever stronger.
"Chen Ge?"
Calling his own name again and again, repeating the same motion over and over.
The surroundings grew quieter and colder. Chen Ge's footsteps gradually slowed. A horrifying thought surfaced in his mind — if he kept walking like this, he might never be able to return.
His thoughts grew sluggish, his brain spiraling into uncontrollable wandering. Chen Ge felt an emotion he hadn't experienced in a very long time — despair.
In the past, no matter how terrifying the enemy, how horrifying the opponent, Chen Ge had never given up, because he held firm to something deep inside him. But within this nightmare mission, that conviction was slowly fading.
As if a voice in his mind was whispering to him that despair was the only natural response.
Only then did Chen Ge realize that hope was nothing more than a multicolored soap bubble — a gentle touch and it would shatter.
All this time, he had been like a child clutching a soap bubble, stubbornly standing on the other side of the world, insisting that what the bubble contained was the real world.
Memories were turned by an invisible hand — cold, pain, suffocation. All manner of memories that didn't belong to him surged through his mind.
The sensation was awful, yet strangely familiar, as if he had endured this kind of pain before, and more than once.
His steps grew slower and slower. Ahead seemed to be a road with no end in sight. Every memory and experience had been "infected" by despair, and they wanted Chen Ge to stop walking — to stop here forever.
Up ahead was danger, with no possibility of escape. The darkness was endless.
While his mind could still maintain clarity, Chen Ge reached up and touched the blindfold on his face. He hesitated over whether to take it off.
Removing the blindfold would fail the mission, but leaving it on left him with an overwhelming sense of unease.
"Have I already entered the world beyond the door? Only the door-opener can push a door open outside of midnight — but what if I am the door-opener? What if the doors inside the Haunted House were pushed open by me?"
His fingers rested on the bridge of his nose. In the end, Chen Ge did not remove the blindfold. Instead, he chose to keep moving forward.
"I'm enduring pain that has never existed in my own memories. I'm experiencing a despair that doesn't belong to me. I don't know what the black phone is trying to tell me, but I know that if despair exists in this world, then hope must exist as well."
A person drowning in despair will feel anxious even when surrounded by happiness.
A person who carries hope can see a colorful world inside a single soap bubble, even when they have nothing.
"This world has never treated me kindly, but that has never stopped me from loving it."
For reasons he couldn't explain, Chen Ge thought of Zhang Ya, thought of the other employees of the Haunted House: "Even in the deepest despair, it's possible to encounter the most beautiful surprise."
He did not remove the blindfold. Chen Ge endured a pain he had never experienced before, bearing the dual torment of mind and body, and pressed onward.
No more hesitation. No more overthinking. He quickened his pace.
The pain in his body grew ever more intense, the mental pressure ever heavier. Scene after scene of his own death flashed through his mind.
In his final moments before death, he struggled helplessly, begged desperately — only to be met with death again and again.
Compromise, kindness, trust — all betrayed. The only possible ending was despair.
Veins bulged along his arms. Chen Ge bore it all in silence. He did not stop. He kept moving forward.
"No matter whose despair this truly is, I will keep walking."
Before Chen Ge had obtained the black phone, most of the memories lingering in his mind had been beautiful ones. His parents had wanted him to live on just as he was.
In truth, when he had first received the black phone, he had been given a choice. If he had opened the phone's screen and selected "refuse," he would have continued living with those beautiful memories forever.
But Chen Ge had chosen a different path. He wanted to know the truth. He was willing to bear the despair, to search step by step for his parents.
As he drew ever closer to the truth, those long-hidden pockets of despair would slowly resurface in his memory. But he had no regrets.
How difficult this journey had been — only Chen Ge truly knew.
Days and nights inverted, scrambling to survive every single day, searching for a sliver of life between death, spending every waking moment surrounded by vengeful spirits and Red Dresses.
Even dancing on the edge of a blade could not adequately describe Chen Ge's situation. The slightest lapse in attention, and he would already be a corpse.
He had chosen the hardest path, and he had walked it to the place closest to the truth.
This was not luck handed to him by some benevolent force. This was something he had fought for himself within the torrent of fate.
"I will not change because of this despair. I will not surrender, and I will not betray my past. No matter what has happened, I will face it!"
Scene after scene of his own death flashed through his mind. Chen Ge's entire body felt as though it were being torn apart. Enduring the dual torment of mind and body, he marched steadily forward through the boundless darkness.
Unable to see anything around him. Completely alone.