"First my mom and dad started coming home every night—so many parents the house was overflowing. Then someone started calling me husband out of nowhere. I just passed through a tunnel during Ghost Festival… how did I suddenly collect a whole family set?"
Watching Vivian Shaw disappear down the corridor, Gavin Moore felt his face go pale.
Now he was certain—Vivian, just like the parents who had brought him cake, was something formed from the unknown.
"She not only knows what happened in the tunnel," Gavin thought,
"she even predicted I'd come to Nightlight to delete the games."
Once Vivian's figure vanished, color slowly returned to Gavin's face.
Behind him, the fat cat came back to life, curling up against his back.
"The roads are blocked by the storm. If I want answers now, the only person I can ask is Vivian."
He forced himself to calm down.
"But she's different from my parents… she isn't restricted at all. She can move freely through the city—even in daylight."
"Fortune! What are you doing here?"
David Wei scooped the fat cat up with one arm, laughing as he rubbed his face against its fur.
"Gavin, why don't you stay? Even Fortune doesn't want you to leave."
"He's not attached to me," Gavin said quietly.
"He just values his life."
It was the first time Gavin had ever seen a cat play dead—completely motionless, no matter what happened around it.
"David," he added, lowering his voice,
"I know you're a good guy, so I'll say this one last time. Don't go out after dark. Stay away from the new coworker. There's something very wrong with her."
"I've seen the news. I know Harbor City's been getting ugly lately," David replied.
"Take care of yourself. If you need anything, call me. We've worked together for years."
Ignoring the cat's desperate resistance, David carried Fortune back into the office.
The fat cat clawed at the glass door, howling miserably at Gavin outside.
"Come with me," Gavin muttered with a bitter smile.
"That's when you'll see what real hell looks like."
Leaving Nightlight Games behind, Gavin didn't go home.
Instead, he walked to a bus stop and stared at the city transit map.
Harbor City was a city of extremes.
Nineteen districts in total.
The prosperous Eastern District housed global elites—glittering, modern, unreal.
The Old City District, where Gavin lived, felt like a different world entirely—cramped apartment blocks stacked together, suffocating just to walk through.
A century ago, Harbor City had risen from war—a refuge for politicians, merchants, refugees.
One of the world's three great free ports.
Now, after the AI and biotech revolutions, it stood at a crossroads.
None of that mattered to Gavin.
As his eyes scanned the bus routes, his mind flooded with murder cases and urban legends.
"The Butcher Case. The Dismembered Cat Doll. The Sex Maniac. The Acid Dissolution. The Crimson Pavilion Cookhouse. The Dog Pit. The Submerged Corpse…"
His eyelid twitched.
And worse than the crimes were the stories.
"Borrowed Lifespan. Flesh Immortal. The Hanged Man. Night of the Returned Soul. Skin-Swap Clinic. The Headless Doctor. The Cannibal Elevator…"
Hospitals. Schools. Malls.
Hallways. Elevators. Under beds. Inside drawers.
If it existed in the city, Gavin had imagined horror growing inside it.
"If Vivian's right… then it's not just my games. Every nightmare I've ever imagined could manifest here."
He didn't want to admit it—but it felt like he had personally opened the gates of the apocalypse.
"That other world… it's using my memories to shape horror, merging it with this city."
Dark clouds pressed lower and lower, the city like a prisoner being strangled—thrashing toward death, soaked in sin.
Standing at the bus stop, staring at rain-soaked streets, Gavin muttered bitterly:
"If my brain were full of porn instead of horror, none of this would be happening."
Vivian was clearly not normal—but she might hold answers.
Right now, answers were everything.
At 5:30 p.m., Vivian emerged from the office building, holding a red umbrella.
As if she had known he would still be there.
"Were you waiting for me?" she asked, smiling.
"I just haven't decided which bus to take."
"Then let's go together."
She held the umbrella between them and tilted her head toward him.
Her gaze was affectionate—but twisted.
Like a collector admiring a priceless artifact.
The bus arrived.
Gavin waited until Vivian sat down before standing alone at the back.
An hour later, they returned to the Old City.
The buildings made Gavin instinctively want to put distance between himself and the woman beside him.
Lijing Apartments consisted of four buildings arranged in a grid.
Vivian lived in the building directly opposite Gavin's.
It wasn't hard to imagine she had been watching him for days.
"Don't misunderstand," Vivian said softly through the rain.
"The murders around Lijing Apartments have nothing to do with me."
"I've been terrified every day."
"So… to avoid fear, you removed the threats?" Gavin replied.
Only then did Detective Lin's warning resurface in his mind.
During the three days he'd been trapped inside his apartment, many things had already spread.
They crossed the courtyard and entered Building Two.
On the third floor, an elderly woman was burning joss paper in the hallway.
Ash filled a brazier at her feet as she bowed toward a memorial portrait.
The woman's hair was snow-white.
The man in the photo looked barely forty.
An old woman bowing to a younger man—it felt wrong.
"Her adopted son committed suicide three days ago," Vivian said quietly.
"Neighbors say he was a good man. Honest. Hardworking. No blood relation—but he treated her family like his own."
"People who don't talk much often carry the heaviest thoughts," Gavin replied.
He had known Mr. Zhao.
Always smiling. Always cleaning the building with his phone in hand.
The smile had never reached his eyes.
Gavin bowed toward the portrait.
Then Vivian led him to the fifth floor.
Laundry lines stretched across the hallway, brushing dangerously close to exposed wiring.
The clothes looked gray, lifeless—swaying even without wind.
Rusty iron doors lined the corridor.
Faded red couplets. Crooked fortune symbols.
Everything felt wrong.
"We're here."
Vivian unlocked the door to Apartment 2507.
Gavin hesitated.
This was where Mr. Zhao had jumped from—three days ago.
"You rented the dead man's apartment?" Gavin asked.
"His seventh night hasn't even passed."
Unbidden, a scene from one of Gavin's games surfaced in his mind—
A man playing a summoning ritual with his dead wife…
while secretly watching footage of his own death.