A pile of ruined furniture sat on the open ground in front of the residential building.
It had fallen from upstairs.
A wooden table split in two, splinters still sticking out from the broken edges.
A few plastic chairs lay crushed underneath, their legs bent at impossible angles.
There was also half a palm-fiber mattress, with strands bursting from the torn fabric.
When the wind blew, the strands trembled, shaking in a way that was deeply unsettling.
Little Frost walked around it, lifting her bicycle to the building entrance to avoid running the wheels over a patch of broken glass.
The building door was made of iron, half-open, its hinges long rusted shut.
It couldn’t be pushed or pulled, just stuck at that halfway position.
The couplet on the door had been torn off by the wind long ago, leaving only two strips of faded red paper pasted on either side of the doorframe, bleached to a pinkish orange.
When Little Frost entered, she glanced at them.
The two strips still had characters on them, but not complete characters—just radicals, with a left-side “衤” remaining.
Mu Yingying looked up at the building.
The building had five floors total.
The first and fifth floors had collapsed by more than half, with steel bars poking out from the broken floor slabs, rusted black.
The middle section from the second to the fourth floors was still standing.
On the third floor, the window of the far-right unit was intact—not just unbroken, but very clean.
The curtains were white, hung neatly, the folds pressed evenly, without a speck of dust.
Every other window in the building was either shattered or coated in a thick layer of rubble dust, grayish-yellow, like a film over an eye.
That one window stood out from the entire building.
Mu Yingying squinted.
“White Peace.”
White Peace: “Mm.”
“Why is that window so clean?”
White Peace looked up at the window.
Sunlight struck the glass, the reflection harsh, but she didn’t squint.
“Someone inside is taking care of it.”
Mu Yingying: “…Someone?”
“People from before. The ones who still live in that unit, who think they haven’t died.”
Mu Yingying swallowed.
“…Shit, another weird thing?”
Little Frost steadied her bicycle and turned to ask White Peace, “Should we go in?”
She didn’t look at that window—she only looked at White Peace.
White Peace withdrew her gaze.
“Go in.”
She stepped onto the stairs, barefoot, treading on the concrete steps without making a sound.
Little Frost and Mu Yingying exchanged a glance.
There was no hesitation in that look—they no longer needed much hesitation between them.
Little Frost pushed the bike and followed, while Mu Yingying took the rear, her hand on the hilt of her Tang Dao, palm dry.
The stairwell lights were broken because one wall of the building had collapsed.
Light came in through that gap, cutting a large bright section across the steps.
The sky outside the gap was gray-white, and the light on the steps was also gray-white, making the dust particles clearly visible.
The stairwell was very quiet.
Little Frost pushed the bike up the steps, and the bicycle chain lightly clinked against the frame, the sound swallowed by the corridor walls.
When they reached the third floor, the light dimmed a little.
The brightness from the gap on the second floor reached up, but by the third floor, only a thin layer of scattered light remained.
At the end of the corridor was that unit.
Doorplate: 3-4.
Little Frost saw the doorplate first.
It was an iron plate, with characters embossed, once filled with red paint that was almost gone, but the numbers 3-4 were still clear.
Below the doorplate was a small family name plate, a plastic frame with a handwritten card inside.
The card said “Lin” in fountain pen strokes, straight horizontal and vertical, the hooks steady—the writer had probably practiced.
Below the family name plate, a hand-drawn smiley face was pasted—drawn with a red marker, the lines crooked, one eye bigger than the other, the mouth drawn too large, curving outside the cheek.
It must have been a child’s handwriting, a child’s drawing.
The door was half-open—not forced open, but left like that after being normally opened and never closed again.
White Peace pushed it gently, and the door swung inward silently—the hinges had likely been oiled.
Inside was clean—not the kind of clean from daily sweeping.
There was still a thin layer of dust on the floor, but things were in their original places, all the furniture still there.
The cushions on the sofa were placed squarely.
On the coffee table sat a white ceramic coaster—the cup was long gone, but the coaster remained, untouched.
The dust was even, a thin layer like powdered sugar on a cake, with no footprints.
An old three-door wardrobe stood against the wall, its doors closed.
A small patch of paint on the wardrobe had chipped off, showing the wood underneath—maybe from moving furniture, or from a child hitting it with something.
The wardrobe doors were shut tightly, the seams perfectly aligned.
But in the corner of the living room, on the wall, that huge floor-to-ceiling mirror—
That mirror was clean enough to reflect light, abnormally clean.
The mirror was embedded, almost covering the entire wall from floor to ceiling.
Its frame was dark brown solid wood with simple carvings—not the elaborate European style, but the minimalist cloud patterns found on old Chinese furniture.
As soon as Mu Yingying entered, she saw that mirror.
She entered, and that position had a mirror—the moment she saw it, she stopped.
The mirror reflected the living room, but she wasn’t in it.
A normal mirror would reflect the person standing in front of it.
But this mirror was clearly wrong.
It reflected the living room—the sofa, coffee table, dining table, wardrobe, light fixture, curtains—all present, in the exact same positions.
But Mu Yingying wasn’t inside, White Peace wasn’t inside, and Little Frost wasn’t inside.
There were people in the mirror, and the living room lights were on.
A warm yellow chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling, its shade frosted glass, light shining through.
The dining table was placed in the middle of the living room, covered with a white tablecloth, spread flat, the four corners hanging down, each weighed down by a small wooden clip.
Six dishes, a pot of soup, and a small pink cake.
On the cake was inserted a single, unlit, number 7–shaped candle.
The candle was pink and white, the wick untouched by flame, white, a complete short length.
Three people sat around the table—a family of three, at a glance.
The scene was warm, so warm it was eerie.
A man wore glasses, a white shirt with sleeves rolled to mid-forearm, one button at the collar undone.
His hair was a bit messy, a few white hairs at his temples—not many, hidden behind those black frames; you almost wouldn’t notice.
He was picking a piece of fish for the woman beside him, using public chopsticks, even picking out the bones first.
The woman wore a beige sweater, the sleeves a bit long, covering the backs of her hands.
Her hair was tied in a low ponytail, a few stray strands falling over her forehead.
She didn’t bother tucking them back, because she was wiping cream from her daughter’s mouth with a tissue.
As she wiped, she tilted her head, lips slightly pursed—that universal mother expression, focused and earnest.
A little girl had two pigtails, their elastics pale pink, almost the same color as the cake.
She was grinning with puffed cheeks, a bit of unswallowed cream at the corner of her mouth.
She had just licked the cream flower off the cake with her lips.
Her tongue was still out, ready for a second lick.
Her legs couldn’t reach the ground, swinging back and forth under the chair.
Her left slipper was half off, hanging on her toes, about to fall.