Qi Xin sighed.
In front of her, she had barely managed to eat half of the wontons, while the spring rolls remained untouched. It wasn’t because she was dieting, nor was she being picky. She simply couldn’t eat anymore—that was all. Her stomach seemed to have shrunk into a tight knot. Putting food in her mouth no longer felt like eating; it felt like forcing something inside. Without an appetite, eating was a painful affair.
She pulled a napkin from the dispenser on the table and wiped her fingertips, even though there was no grease on them. Turning to the proprietress, who was seated in a chair watching the TV mounted high on the wall, she asked, “Excuse me, where is the washroom?”
The older woman had finished cleaning and was now absorbed in a family reunion program, watching a mother and daughter, separated for thirteen years, finally find each other, wailing as they embraced. She was grinning from ear to ear with delight. Qi Xin couldn’t understand what she found so funny. Weren’t middle-aged women who watched these shows supposed to be sentimental types? How could this woman be cackling with glee as if she were watching a comedy skit? It was utterly baffling.
Her godmother absolutely adored this kind of video and would frequently send similar short clips to Qi Xin’s mother. Sometimes the content featured a vicious mother-in-law and a pitiful daughter-in-law; sometimes it was about a daughter who went missing at age four and, decades later in her thirties, finally returned to her biological parents; other times it involved a married couple running a business together, both tripping over themselves to take the blame and go to prison so the other could stay outside to care for the kids. In short, they were cheap, tear-jerking videos set to overused, sentimental music—the fast food of the video world.
Qi Xin knew her mother had never once clicked on those videos. Far more than those sobbing dramas, her mother favored a specific brand of low-brow power fantasy for middle-aged women. Stories about a middle-aged woman discovering her husband’s infidelity, awakening overnight, divorcing him, and taking all his money. Or narratives with a cruel mother-in-law and a weak husband, where the heroine uses her wisdom and cunning to make the hag do all the housework and force the spineless man to slave away at work while she just has to stay beautiful and spend money at home. The acting in those short videos was always abysmal, and the so-called “battles of wits” were crude and preposterous, but her mother ate it up, never tiring of it. Even when the exact same script was reused with countless different actresses, she would still delightedly save every single one.
So, when Lian Hui complained that her father always liked to watch pseudo-intellectual videos about politics or finance, Qi Xin didn’t see the problem. It was a rite of passage—a ritual every middle-aged person, man or woman, had to go through. Their lives were already tedious and dull enough. Why ridicule and strip away this one last, tiny pleasure?
Hearing Qi Xin’s question, the proprietress looked up and pointed toward the staircase leading to the second floor. “The washroom is at the far end of the second floor. It’s a bit dark, so watch your step. The light switch is on the right-hand side as you go in.”
Qi Xin thanked her.
As she climbed the stairs, Qi Xin realized the shop was far older than she’d initially thought. The wooden handrail had been polished spotless by the proprietress, its glossy, smooth surface marred only in places by patches of decay and blackening. The wooden steps were slightly warped here and there, groaning annoyingly underfoot.
The second floor also had two tables. Judging by their appearance, however, these belonged to the proprietress herself. There were no napkin dispensers on them, nor bamboo holders filled with disposable chopsticks. Instead, one held a vase, and the other an odd, octagonal box that Qi Xin couldn’t decipher the purpose of. Three bamboo sticks were sticking out of the box. It looked somewhat like an incense burner, but its design differed significantly from those seen in traditional temples. Besides, who would use bamboo sticks as offerings? Could it be that this particular god was so down-to-earth that they demanded barbecue skewers as tributes? That would be horrifyingly pragmatic, Qi Xin thought.
Qi Xin glanced over the items without lingering. They were the proprietress’s personal belongings, after all. Snooping into others’ privacy was never a good thing.
Still, something puzzled her. The second floor seemed to have about the same footprint as the first. Why did the first floor have eight tables, while up here there were only two? The layout was utterly bizarre. Even if the proprietress had no intention of using the second floor as a dining area, wouldn’t having just two wooden tables here feel excessively empty?
Curiosity aside, Qi Xin didn’t dwell on it. She made her way through the darkness toward the wooden door at the very end of the hall.
Pushing it open, she paused for a fraction of a second before extending a hand to fumble along the wall in the dark. Finally, she found the bump on the right side of the doorway and pressed it. Bright light instantly flooded the tiny washroom, illuminating every corner.
“…Such a huge mirror?”
Qi Xin stared at the enormous mirror that greeted her the moment she opened the door. Normally, washroom mirrors were placed above the sink and, at most, covered half the wall. But this one, in the cramped little washroom, spanned almost the entire wall from floor to ceiling. Rather than the sink being installed first and the mirror added later, it looked as though the mirror had been put up before the sink was awkwardly mounted over it.
“What a bizarre design.”
Qi Xin averted her gaze, refusing to look at the mirror any longer. An indescribable, unsettling feeling had crept over her, making her skin prickle with goosebumps—perhaps it was just the weirdness of facing a full-length mirror while washing one’s hands. She tried to reassure herself.
The incandescent bulb flickered suddenly. Qi Xin’s heart skipped a beat. Turning off the faucet, she hastily pulled a few paper towels, dried her hands quickly, and resolved to leave this increasingly unnerving washroom at once…
Slam!
Qi Xin jumped violently. The door behind her slammed shut with a deafening bang, as if someone outside had hurled it closed with tremendous force. Simultaneously, there was the crisp click of a lock engaging.
The light flickered again, and this time, it went out completely. The cramped washroom had no windows, plunging her into a complete, dead silence and absolute darkness.
“Aunty? Are you out there?”
Qi Xin’s voice trembled. In the pitch blackness, she strained her eyes wide open, yet she could see nothing. This was beyond merely not seeing her hand in front of her face; she almost instantly doubted whether she’d gone blind. There wasn’t a single glimmer of light. Logically, shouldn’t the light from the hall outside be visible through the gaps around the doorframe? Could this door really be so perfectly sealed that not even a sliver of light leaked through?
“Aunty, are you there?” Her voice quivered, a flood of true crime scenarios rushing unbidden through her mind. “Aunty, my family really doesn’t have any money. Please, just open the door.”
But outside, there was only dead silence. No sound whatsoever.
This overwhelming fear, as if she’d been robbed of both sight and hearing, soon became unbearable. With a trembling hand, Qi Xin reached out, her fingers groping for where the door handle should have been. Her hand closed on nothing but cold air, twice, her rigid posture resembling the convulsive twitch of a dying hen’s claws.
She reached further. This time, her fingers met resistance almost immediately—a hard, smooth surface. A wall. A smooth wooden wall.
Her fingertips scrabbled desperately over the wooden wall, searching for a handle or any means of escape. She found nothing.
Qi Xin took a step backward, but an even greater terror instantly seized her. The sink that had been behind her was gone. In its place was another smooth wooden wall.
As if finally realizing something, she stretched both trembling hands out to her sides.
Unsurprisingly, before her arms were even half-extended, the hard, smooth touch of the wooden walls pressed against her fingertips.
Qi Xin’s face turned ashen. She finally understood where she was. This was no wooden wall. She was trapped, standing upright, inside a coffin!
