Chapter 1 - The Absence of The Gods part 2
Translator: Jayre
12:13 on August 31, 2022, Shanghai ————
When “ゲームスタート” sounded, TangZhi opened his eyes suddenly.
The scene that entered his view was the LCD TV in the living room, showing pale snowflakes along with a slight static sound.
“Woke up?” A low magnetic voice asked.
TangZhi looked sideways, only to remember that he was sleeping beside the man.
In the brightly lit living room, TangZhi wiped his face and tiredly sat up. He lowly asked, “BoYe, how long did I sleep for?”
The man in front of him was called BoYe, his homosexual lover. This year was their fifth year of dating.
In these five years, it was a long distance relationship for four years, and this semester he came to China as an exchange student. He originally thought he could end the state of being separated, but…...
He leaned back against the sofa and muttered, “It seemed like I had a very long dream.”
“It hasn’t even reached a quarter of an hour.” The man placed his book down and rose to pour a glass of water for him. “What kind of dream was it? An erotic one?”
“......”
TangZhi tilted his head and stared at the direction the man left in.
The feeling of suffocation in his heart had dissipated. TangZhi sat cross legged on the sofa, relaxed, as he turned his face to look out of the French window.
The sky was abnormally bright, as if there was a hole in it and all the sunlight had leaked in. Aside from the dazzling halo, nothing else could be seen.
They lived on the eighteenth floor, but the seawater outside had already reached the edge of the floor, and waves brought by floating objects occasionally.
The deep blue sea reflected the opposite tall building that was raging with fire and filled with smoke. That floor had been burning for three days and three nights, leaving only a pair of charred reinforced concrete frames.
The scene of half sea and half fire burned itself into the eyes and reminded people where they were over and over again.
“This should be hell……” TangZhi mumbled.
BoYe came out of the kitchen with a mug and following TangZhi’s gaze, he looked out the window. Knowing that the latter was thinking about something nonsensical, the former walked over to the window and pulled the curtains down.
“Look on the positive side. Since the earth is going to explode, humanity can take a vacation.” He passed the mug to TangZhi. “Tomorrow is Monday but I don’t have to go to work and you don’t have to go to school. We can even slack at home, it’s great.”
“I would rather attend school……” Blowing up one side of his cheek, TangZhi accepted the mug. The warm milk gave off a reassuring warmth as he raised his head and asked, “Are you not nervous at all? It’s already the seventh day.”
This abnormal situation started seven days ago.
That morning, BoYe went to work but he could not open the main door of the house. It was not only the door, the windows could not be opened either. In addition, there were no signals and he could not contact the outside world.
It was like they were enclosed in a different dimension.
After the two tried all methods to no avail, they could only accept reality and wait quietly at home, with only the electronic clock reminding them of the passage of time.
Through the glass window in the living room, they watched the world undergo upheavals and changes. From the first day when the world became dim, to the third day when the sea water poured into the city from the east, and until the fifth day when there were no signs of birds flying in the sky, everything was just as described in Genesis.
Just like how God used seven days to create the world, the mysterious force used its strength to destroy the world in seven days.
Today was the seventh day, the Sabbath.
(T/N: Sabbath is the seventh day and is also the rest day.)
BoYe sat back on the sofa and naturally took the boy into his arms. “What’s there to be nervous about? From the third day onward, I suspected that what we are seeing is not real. How can the house still have water and electricity if the outside is already like this?”
TangZhi took a sip of the milk and softly muttered, “It is as you said…… but I can’t stop feeling nervous.”
BoYe raised his left hand and placed it in front of TangZhi to play with. The former tilted his head, leaning towards the latter to softly kiss his ear and said, “I should do something so that you won’t have the energy to think about it.”
Of course, TangZhi knew what “doing something” meant, his face flushed red and he drank the milk silently.
The hands of the two intertwined were slender, and the ring finger of the left hands had the same platinum ring nestled on them, simple but generous.
BoYe furrowed his brows and turned the ring on TangZhi’s finger. “It’s a pity that we couldn’t hold a wedding.”
The two were originally scheduled to have their wedding in Norway on September 7 but the situation now rendered it impossible.
A suggestion: “Why not have the wedding done tonight?”
“What do you have in mind?” TangZhi set the mug down and looked at him.
BoYe said, “If we just keep it simple, it will be enough to enter the bridal chamber at night.”
“BoYe!” TangZhi slapped his face.
The two were nestling on the sofa and fighting when they caught a glimpse of the lamp in the study flashing quickly.
“Is the light broken?”
TangZhi halted his movements, turned his face and asked.
BoYe pulled his hands from under TangZhi’s clothes and got up to walk towards the study. “I’ll take a look.”
TangZhi straightened his large t-shirt and gazed towards the television. It was still filled with snowflakes.
After a while, he felt something was off.
The light was still flickering, but there were no movements after BoYe headed in.
“BoYe.” He shouted towards the study.
There was no response.
TangZhi stood up hesitantly, and feeling uneasy, he slowly approached the study. “BoYe, are you alright?”
When he walked till the door of the study, he stopped suddenly.
The curtains were drawn in the room, the lights flashed at an extremely fast frequency and the man stood motionlessly in the middle.
In the dark, TangZhi could see his pale complexion clearly.
“BoYe?”
He was about to step forward, but BoYe stopped him. “Candi, don’t come over.”
(T/N: ‘Candi’ was in english and I kept it as it is rather than changing it to ‘Candy”)
The lights flickered, and the man disappeared.
TangZhi’s heart jolted in shock. He was about to enter the study when the door swung shut and he crashed into it.
“BoYe!”
TangZhi was so anxious his eyes turned red, and his hand kept banging against the door.
At this moment, all the lights in the house flashed and TangZhi felt a subtle change in the texture of the door under his hand.
When the lights were dimmed, his hand felt a sheet of coldness, when the lights were bright, before him became a solid wooden door.
He did not care about this and desperately pulled at the doorknob. “BoYe! Are you in there?”
When his sentence ended, all the lights went out. Or rather, all the lights in the world went out.
The next second, the light reappeared, and TangZhi found that he was already in a cuboid shaped space. The room was so small he could only stand up and even turning around was difficult.
He looked about, feeling slightly panicked. It was a coffin-like white rectangle, with the joints sealed to tightly lock people inside.
TangZhi patted the wall in front of him, and it felt cold.
There was a startling loud sound, scaring him into backing up against the wall behind him. Following that, the four white walls gradually melted and turned into transparent glass.
Finally, TangZhi saw the surrounding scene. His mouth hung wide open, shocked into speechlessness.
As far as he could see, there were glass cubes one after another, and they were arranged neatly and orderly.
There was a person in each glass cube, and everyone was uniformly dressed in white clothes. Some were furiously beating at the glass, some were angry through their mouths; some were crying and crying with tears tracks all over their faces; but there were more who were like TangZhi, anxiety and confusion all over their faces.
At this moment, humanity was like toys on the shelves of the shops, being stuffed into transparent boxes.
If the view was zoomed out indefinitely, each glass room would become a piece of a scrolling code, circulating up and down in a border-less space.
If you take a piece of code and enlarge it, zoom in, and enlarge it again, and then zoom in into one of the glass cubes and into the eyes of the person in the room, you can see the deepest part of their eyes, and in the darkest part was-
Fear.
***
The author has something to say:
ゲームスタート: The game begins.
The first snow today, let’s start writing.
Some say that after licking the little milk bag, the heart becomes empty, let’s just start writing.
***
Reviews and comments are greatly appreciated~ Let me know what's good and what could be improved ^^
~Jayre