Alien Hotel

In the past twenty years of his life, Yu Sheng has always believed that he is just an ordinary person, living an ordinary life and doing ordinary things. In the foreseeable future, This ordinaryness is destined to continue - until the day when life ends in an ordinary way.

Yes, he'd always thought so - but those days seemed so long ago.

The sky is dark, and the gloomy clouds are gradually spreading from the northeast like thick cotton wool, covering the entire city. The air is soaked with a moist atmosphere, and a rain is brewing in this atmosphere, maybe ten minutes later It will fall.

Carrying the vegetables and spices he had just bought from the supermarket, Yu Sheng mingled among the pedestrians, hurriedly crossing the street and walking towards his residence in the increasingly dim light.

When passing a store, he subconsciously stopped and looked at the sign at the entrance of the store. He stared there for several seconds before looking away and continued walking forward in a hurry.

The number of pedestrians on the road gradually became less and less, and the huge city seemed to be becoming quiet in the atmosphere of imminent rain. Yu Sheng raised his eyes and looked at the commercial street in front of him illuminated by the lights of the merchants. Although it was already a familiar scene, there was something difficult to see. The strange feeling of metaphor still arises from the bottom of my heart.

Yes, a sense of strangeness - he has lived in this city for more than twenty years, but now, this ridiculously huge, seemingly boundless "boundary city" is a very strange place to him. place.

Because this city is not what he remembers as "real". Although some places are very similar, more places are specious - the boundary city where he grew up is not so huge. He remembers that the building in the city center should be called Boyuan Building, not the current "Director Tower". He remembered that the shop at the intersection of Siyuan Street was originally a wall, and his original home was not the huge, dilapidated and crumbling old house deep in the old city. .

And more importantly, there are not so many things that are "not quite right" in the city he remembers, including but not limited to old-fashioned phone booths that appear randomly at certain intersections and are painted as if they were from the last century. The steam locomotive passing by the roof of the building late at night, the empty classroom where the sound of reading is constantly heard, and...

In the evening when it was about to rain, standing under the street lamp, there was a dark shadow as thin and tall as a telephone pole.

Yu Sheng raised his head and stared at the streetlight not far away. A human-shaped silhouette that looked like a hemp pole was standing there dullly. The top of the body, which was three to four meters high, was covered with a dark picture that made it impossible to see the facial features. The face, the shadow seemed to have noticed this side, but it just stood blankly, facing Yu Sheng's eyes from afar.

Passersby in a hurry passed under the tall and thin shadow, and no one seemed to notice the strange thing standing next to the street lamp. Some people even walked directly through the shadow without being affected in any way.

Only Yu Sheng himself could see that thing.

So after a few seconds of meaningless staring, he withdrew his gaze, suppressed his pounding heart, took another path and hurried away.

Yu Sheng was never sure whether it was the sudden change in the city or the change in himself, but he clearly remembered that the ordinary and normal life in his memory left him one morning two months ago. Far away——

He remembered that on that sunny morning, he opened the door of his home and went to the small supermarket at the intersection to buy some oranges.

That was the last time he opened "the door of his own home". After that, he never saw the home in his memory again.

He had also analyzed that maybe this was some kind of "time travel". He opened the door of his home and stepped into another parallel world that was seemingly different from his hometown. He could never find the door that could return to the original world. Because the channel of time and space collapsed the moment he stepped through the door.

Another possibility is that a "change" occurred in me. When I stepped out, or at some point after that, I became "different from ordinary people" due to some unknown influence. So his eyes began to be able to see certain "things" hidden under the surface. He was still living in the place he was familiar with, but he could no longer see those familiar things...

But none of these analyzes make sense.

In any case, he can no longer go back to the "ordinary and normal world" in his memory. This strange and huge city is like a boundless forest, imprisoning a confused drifter in its gloomy and intertwined world. Between the branches and vines, just two months were not enough for Yu Sheng to uncover the secrets of this "forest".

In fact, he has just roughly adapted to the familiar yet unfamiliar "new home" and has barely resumed his "daily life" here.

Fortunately, he is still "born" in this border city that is incompatible with his memory. He has a normal identity certificate, a legal and valid address, some moderate savings and a job that doesn't look like much. How to make a reliable living - if this is really some kind of "time travel", then at least he does not have to face the three major problems of "who am I, where am I, and where should I get an ID card" like most time travellers? .

Considering that this is a well-ordered modern metropolis, the above-mentioned problems are particularly important. After all, modern society has a perfect population management system, and it is not easy for a traveler to get rid of his black status in such a city.

Of course, from another perspective, there may be other small troubles when traveling to an old society with chaotic order or a different world with barbaric laws - for example, being cut off as a spy from an enemy country, being cut off as an alien invasion, being cut off as an evil creature emerging from the ground, being cut off and stewed as temporary rations by the goblins in the cave...

Yu Sheng's mind was full of random associations that suddenly emerged from nowhere, and he walked through the old path next to the commercial street and walked towards "home" from another road.

The sky became more and more gloomy, and it seemed that it was precisely because of this increasingly gloomy sky that those "not quite right" things began to increase slowly.

At the edge of Yu Sheng's vision, some shaky figures were reflected on the mottled and old outer walls of the buildings on the roadside. An agile cat jumped out of the shadow on the wall, lightly climbed up a beam of light from nowhere, meowed twice in Yu Sheng's direction, and then melted and fell with the raindrops, splashing water on the ground.

The rain started, earlier than expected.

The wind became a little cold, and the cold air swirled like a substance, drilling into the gaps in his clothes.

Yu Sheng sighed, and could only hold the shopping bag in his hand on his head and speed up his pace.

If he hadn't wanted to avoid the shadow under the street lamp, he could have walked on the avenue and got home faster - although the house was somewhat strange and weird, it was at least a place to shelter from the wind and rain.

Thinking of the shadow under the street lamp, Yu Sheng felt a little annoyed.

Based on experience, he knew that the strange things he saw were basically harmless. At least if he didn't take the initiative to provoke them, those things would ignore him like ordinary people ignored them. But even if he knew it in his heart, he would instinctively avoid those things that looked too weird - but now it seems that taking a detour today is not a good idea.

It's getting colder and colder.

For a rain, this cold is a bit outrageous.

Yu Sheng found that the breath he exhaled was slowly turning into condensed ice mist, and the raindrops falling from the sky were like sharp nails, hard and cold, and painful.

And the ground was gradually turning into a smooth mirror in this freezing rain.

The huge uneasiness made Yu Sheng alert instantly. He realized that the situation was wrong, very wrong. Even in this strange city, this was the first time he had seen this situation.

Unlike the "shadows" that were at most a bit unsightly, he felt... malice this time.

This rain was malicious.

He suddenly looked up, but saw that the small road where there were three or two pedestrians before had been empty at some point, and he was the only one left in the not-so-wide streets.

No one could be seen, and the lights in the distance became hazy and illusory. The intersection at the end of the field of vision seemed to be blocked by something, and it was getting closer and farther. There was only rain, cold rain, around him except for the cold and closed buildings.

He felt as if the whole world was raining for him alone.

Yu Sheng took a deep breath and ran quickly to the nearest house. There stood an old iron door, which looked like the back door of a store. Whatever it was, he had to find someone to help him as soon as possible.

Because the water droplets in the rain had begun to have the sharp texture of a knife blade, and the temperature around him had dropped to the point where every breath would cause a needle-like pain in his lungs.

In just a few steps, Yu Sheng ran to the door and slapped it hard: "Someone..."

His eyes widened and his voice stopped abruptly.

His hand slapped on the wall. The door was painted on the wall.

The nearby windows were also painted on the wall.

A rustling sound came from nearby.

Yu Sheng slowly turned his head and looked in the direction of the sound.

In the freezing rain that fell like a knife blade, a strange-looking thing was slowly floating up from the mirror-like water surface. It gained entity from the dark shadow and stared at Yu Sheng indifferently.

It was a frog, nearly one meter tall, with eyes all over its head, and the reflection of the freezing rain on its body.

The frog opened its mouth, and a sharp tongue shot straight towards the heart of its prey.

"Fuck you..."

Yu Sheng used elegant words and was quick to react. Before the interjection in his mouth fell, his body had already reacted one step ahead - he suddenly dodged to the side, one hand had already taken out the baton he usually used for self-defense from his pocket, stepped forward, twisted his waist, and leaned forward...

The frog's tongue turned a sharp angle in mid-air and pierced Yu Sheng's heart from the back.

Yu Sheng: "...?"

He blinked and watched the frog's tongue stick out from its chest, with a heart beating rapidly at its tip.

"... Fuck you, this thing is mine..."

He thought about it and cursed in his heart.

Then he died.