As if it was really to express her contempt, Pixels’ pixelation reverts soon afterwards. She gives the giant match to Tang Mo, turns, and skips into the depths of the bookshelves. Her long pigtails bounce with every step as she slowly disappears.

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“Ding dong! Confrontation game ‘So Who Really Stole My Book’ has ended.”

“Calculating game rewards…”

“Player Tang Mo has successfully completed the mission and received rewards ‘Giant Match’, ‘Pixels’ Contempt’.”

“Player Chen Fangzhi has failed.”

The clear childlike voice echoes in the empty library and Tang Mo and Weirdo’s ears. Normally, even online card games will have rewards like online currency, so Tang Mo had already guessed that this big match was his reward.

But what is ‘Pixels’ Contempt’?!

Wasn’t that a game hint? The fuck do you mean by game reward?

Tang Mo’s face pales, then turns green. He’s conflicted, but in comparison, Weirdo’s in an even worse mental condition.

Weirdo lost this game. If there are rewards, there are also punishments. Losing a normal game usually means losing money, but no one knows what to expect from losing a Black Tower game.

The Black Tower didn’t specify any punishments, either. Weirdo blanks out for a long time, then slowly turns his head to look at Tang Mo. “...will I die?”

This is a question that Tang Mo can’t answer either. He reassures him, “It shouldn’t be that serious.”

Weirdo suddenly gains confidence again. “I believe you. You’re smart, and everything you say is logical. It wouldn’t be so cruel, it’s god, it will bring me hope and rebirth, it is my god…”

Tang Mo holds his big match, calmly watching Weirdo slowly descend into madness.

The Black Tower not immediately giving out the punishment unsettles him. It’s like the calm before the storm; behaviors that don’t follow normal game routines often mean scarier, less predictable results. But in his own mind, Tang Mo is also reassuring himself: if losing a game means death, then half the people in the entire world have to die.

For hundreds of thousands of people to die, that’s impossible, right?

Yeah, that’s impossible.

Should be impossible… 

The confrontation game has ended, but the library has yet to return to normal. Tang Mo and Weirdo both try, but they’re still unable to go downstairs. Similarly, there’s still only blank whiteness outside the window.

They’re still not back in Suzhou.

Time steadily ticks by, second by second, yet Tang Mo and Weirdo are still stuck on the third floor of the library.

When the clock on the wall hits six o’clock, Tang Mo’s body suddenly tenses, an unprecedented fear wiping his brain blank.

His heartbeat races again.

His heart beats so quickly that it could fly out of his chest. Tang Mo grabs onto the bookshelf but can’t find his balance, collapsing along the bookshelf to land on the floor. Weirdo rushes over from afar. “What happened?”

The rush of blood makes Tang Mo’s skin flush bright red within a minute. Every inch of skin is bright red, making him look like a boiled crab. Weirdo stumbles backwards in fear but quickly gathers the courage to walk to Tang Mo’s side. “Are you okay? Why are you so red? And your face is hot… you have a fever?!”

Tang Mo’s heartbeat is much too fast, but he’s still conscious. With difficulty, he says, “Heart…”

Weirdo immediately understands and puts his hand on his chest. “How is your heartbeat so fast! This has got to be 200 beats per minute… no, 300!”

Tang Mo can no longer speak, but he corrects Weirdo in his mind: 394.

They can’t leave the library, and there’s only Tang Mo and Weirdo inside. Now, with Tang Mo like this, Weirdo can’t even do anything. He can only help him to the service desk, shove everything off, and lay him down. Afterwards, Weirdo runs to the restroom, wets some paper towels, and puts them on Tang Mo’s forehead, hoping that it will cool him down.

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Tang Mo’s heartbeat has already reached 532 beats per minute. He doesn’t know how fast a human’s heart can beat, but he feels as if his heart will explode each passing second. But for some reason, his heart totally defies all medical knowledge and continues to beat.

Weirdo keeps running to the bathroom to get wet paper towels, layering them on every inch of Tang Mo’s exposed skin.

Tang Mo can tell that it’s not doing anything, but he’s grateful that Weirdo is trying so hard to help him. He can’t speak, so he only looks at a worried Weirdo with bloodshot eyes.

After an hour, Tang Mo counts his heartbeat and finds that it’s decreased a bit.

To Weirdo, it seems like his cold compresses have worked, so he hurries to get some more, putting them over Tang Mo’s eyes as well.

After a very long time, Tang Mo feels like he can move again. He takes away the wet paper on his body and shakily climbs off of the table.

Weirdo has just come out of the restroom and immediately runs over. “You’re okay now?!”

Tang Mo opens his mouth, finding his throat scarily dry. He swallows and nods with a smile. “Yes, I’m a little better.”

Weirdo lets out a breath of relief. “That’s good, I was so scared.” 

Tang Mo looks at him earnestly. “Thank you.”

Weirdo shakes his head. “No problem, I couldn’t just leave you there alone.”

Their relationship is a little awkward at the moment. On one hand, Weirdo pulled Tang Mo into an unknown game and brought him into unknown danger, which pushed them apart to the point of being on the defensive. But on the other hand, the game ended like it really was just a normal game, and when Tang Mo suddenly collapsed, Weirdo didn’t abandon him. Even if he didn’t actually help with anything, Tang Mo can’t be ungrateful.

After this situation, they seem to have grown a little bit closer.

Weirdo: “What happened just then, with your heartbeat? My dad’s a doctor. For normal people the heart will be unable to supply blood by the time it reaches 250 beats per minute, much less what yours was, and the person will die within minutes.”

Tang Mo thinks a bit and decides to tell Weirdo what happened. “Have you experienced anything like that during these few days?”

Weirdo shakes his head. “No.”

Tang Mo furrows his eyebrows and patiently explains. “From three days ago, my heartbeat started to increase. It was never this fast before, but it was always above 300 beats per minute. At the same time, I became very irritable. Maybe it’s because of the whole Black Tower Incident. I’m not ‘Anti-Black Tower’, but I’m also not entirely ‘Pro-Black Tower’. This is pretty big news, so it’s not unreasonable for me to be irritable. But I don’t know what’s with the heartbeat thing either.”

“Maybe you’re sick?”

“Because of the Black Tower thing, I never ended up going to the hospital.”

Weirdo thinks about it for a while. “You should go to the doctor soon. I’ve never heard of this kind of illness before where someone’s still alive with a heartbeat of more than 300 bpm. It’s probably just you in the entire world. Or maybe you’ll be recruited by the government for research and become a lab rat,” he jokes. “Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t go to the doctor after all.”

Tang Mo laughs.

“Crack——”

The sound of a door opening echoes in the quiet library.

Tang Mo and Weirdo look at each other. This is the sound of the main door on the first floor being opened!

They race downstairs. The forces preventing them from leaving the third floor have all disappeared, and they run to the tall redwood doors of the library with the fastest speeds of their entire lives.

The key turns in the door, and with a creak, the door opens a crack. Long-awaited sunshine spills through the thin crack to shine on Tang Mo and Weirdo’s faces. This warmth is not that of the ‘angel’s daytime’ in the game, but that of the real sun.

Tang Mo closes his eyes. Even his pores relax in the warmth of the sun.

“Huh, Tang Mo? Why are you here?” a clear voice says. “You came to pick your stuff up so early?”

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Tang Mo opens his eyes. “Xiao Zhao?”

It’s only now that Tang Mo remembers that he came to the library yesterday evening to pick up his stuff because Director Wang said that the library was going to be used by the government. He takes a couple of seconds to organize his thoughts. “You came to pick up your stuff?”

Xiao Zhao laughs. “Yeah, my parents think the Black Tower is way too weird, so we’re going back home to avoid it. We’re leaving at ten o’clock, so I came to pick up some stuff. Wait, wasn’t I asking you why you’re here so early? What’s that in your hand? A match? Ah, Weirdo… ahem, why’s he here?”

Weirdo swallows nervously.

Tang Mo calmly explains, “I bumped into him when I was getting my stuff, so we talked for a bit.”

“You have stuff to say to him?” Xiao Zhao mutters. She raises her head and begins to step inside. “Then I’ll go get some stuff and stop bothering you.”

Right when one of her legs is inside the door, Tang Mo opens his eyes wide, pupils trembling.

“Zhao Yan!”

Zhao Yan is Xiao Zhao’s full name. She’s worked at the library for half a year, and very few people call her by her full name. Now that Tang Mo suddenly loudly shouts it, she looks at him weirdly. “What’s wrong?”

Tang Mo’s lips part slightly, but not a single word comes out. He only looks weirdly at Xiao Zhao’s lower body. She follows his gaze, and when she sees what he’s looking at, she falls to the ground, crawling backwards with her hands.

“What is this, what is this… where are my legs! Where are my legs!!!”

Tears spill out of her eyes.

This is a little girl born in 1996, freshly graduated from college[3]. She sobs, desperately grabbing for her lower body, but there’s nothing there, only emptiness.

In Tang Mo’s eyes, there’s like an invisible string stretching from Xiao Zhao’s thighs to her upper body. Everywhere the string touches, her body disappears, as if there was something erasing Xiao Zhao from this world.

He doesn’t know when this string appeared. By the time he noticed it, Xiao Zhao’s legs were already gone, yet she didn’t know at all and still stood talking with him.

Tears and snot drip down her face. Xiao Zhao’s waist is completely gone, but she crawls to Tang Mo’s feet, grabbing his pant legs with her hands, and wails, “Help me, Tang-ge, help me! What happened, what happened to me? Tang-ge, help me!”

Tang Mo reaches out to hold Xiao Zhao’s hand, but two seconds later, that string reaches her arms and her hand disappears.

The invisible string reaches Xiao Zhao’s neck.

She is now only a head lying on the ground, eyes filled with tears, looking at Tang Mo.

“I don’t want to die… I don’t want to die. I haven’t dated anyone yet, I haven’t liked anyone yet. I want to go back and watch cartoons, the webnovel I was reading hasn’t even finished… Dad… Mom… I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die. Tang-ge, Tang…”

Her mouth disappears too.

Those tear-filled eyes continue to look at Tang Mo until this entire person vanishes from the Earth.

Within a minute, a whole living person has just disappeared.
​
Tang Mo’s brain is completely blank, but right now, what’s scariest to him is that even in this situation, he’s somehow very calm. He looks at the place where Xiao Zhao disappeared, looks for an entire thirty seconds, then remembers something and quickly turns to Weirdo.

In the pitch-black library, Weirdo’s legs have completely disappeared. He looks at Tang Mo, face pale, and smiles, fearful and pitiful. “Tang… Tang Mo, is this the punishment for losing the game…?”

“Weirdo!”

Bam!

Weirdo falls to the ground.

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Tang Mo rushes to him and holds his hand.

Weirdo is crying. Tears roll down his cheeks and snot sticks to his lips. Like Xiao Zhao, he grabs Tang Mo’s hand tightly, saying again and again, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die… Tang Mo, save me, I don’t want to die…”

Tang Mo can’t do anything. He presses his hand down on the parts where Weirdo hasn’t disappeared, but when the invisible string comes, it still disappears, and all he ends up touching is air.

Weirdo is only left with the upper half of his body.

Tang Mo: “Don’t be scared, there has to be a way.”

Weirdo, a grown man, cries like a baby. “What way? I don’t want to die, I really don’t want to die… Tang Mo, save me! You eliminated me, you have to save me! Save me!”

Tang Mo can’t say a single thing.

Weirdo doesn’t talk anymore. He only cries and continues to cry. Time becomes impossibly slow, and when his chest is nearly all gone, he suddenly grips Tang Mo’s hand tightly, looking at him with bloodshot eyes, hoarsely yelling, “I have a daughter. She’s in Shanghai. Her mom and I are divorced. Help me look for her, see if she’s still alive. Her name is Shanshan, Chen Shanshan. She has to live, has to live! Help me look for her, just one look!”

Weirdo’s hand disappears.

“Help me, Tang Mo, I’m begging you, please help me. She has to be alive, she has to be!”

Tang Mo: “Where does she live?”

“She’s in Jingan District, she goes to school at Shibeili, she’s in seventh grade[1]. She…”

Weirdo’s mouth disappears.

His eyes stare at Tang Mo.

That invisible string has reached his ears. Unblinkingly, he stares at Tang Mo, eyes so red they’re scary, as if he’s using all of what’s left of his strength.

“I’ll find her. She must be alive.”

That line has wiped away Weirdo’s ears, but his eyes immediately relax. He’s still crying, but he can no longer speak. He only looks at Tang Mo, and blinks at him before his eyes disappear. A single tear falls to the ground.

Tang Mo kneels by the entrance of the library alone. Outside the door, Xiao Zhao is gone. Inside the door, Weirdo is gone too.

Eight o’clock rings through the library. The grandfather clock chimes eight times, but Tang Mo still kneels on the ice-cold floor.

“Slumber, slumber, O my darling baby. Gently rocked by Mother’s gentle hand…”[2]

A kind and gentle woman’s voice resounds throughout Suzhou.

Tang Mo turns his head stiffly to look at the huge black tower 200 meters away from the library.

Rainbow lights flash on the body of the black tower. A day ago, there were thousands of people near the base of the tower. A day later, there are only seven or eight, slumped on the ground like Tang Mo, looking up at the singing black tower, at a loss for what to do.

When the woman finishes the first two lines, a chorus of children begin to sing as well.

“Slumber, slumber, O my darling baby,
Gently rocked by Mother's gentle hand;
Softly rest and safely slumber,
While she swings thee by this cradle-band.”

The voices sing this song over and over, and the wind travels across the land, bringing this beautiful singing to places even farther away.

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After the song is done, that familiar crisp child’s voice appears again.

“Ding dong! 498,160,000 players successfully loaded…”

“Saving game...”

“Loading game data...”

“Inserting player information...”

“Save successful...”

“Load successful...”

“Insert successful...”

“Ding dong! November 18th, 2017. Welcome, players, into the game.”

“Announcing the Three Definite Rules of the Black Tower——”

“Number one, all explanations are owned by the Black Tower.”

“Number two, game time is 06:00-18:00.”

“Number three, all players, please try your best to attack the tower.”

“Ding dong! Happy playing!”

Notes

[1]

'Shibeili' refers to the two 'li-ke' (science/math) homerooms of Shibei Junior Middle School. Shibei Junior Middle School does, in fact, exist, and it is a very, very famous school as Shibeili are two of the most outstanding homerooms in the entire country, almost all of its 80 students going to very famous upper middle schools/high schools after they leave. For context, in China, students are separated into humanities or science homerooms, which determine what path the students want to take in the future (and also affects what schools they apply to for college). There may also be homerooms focusing on arts, but the big two are humanities and science. These homerooms are just like the ones we have in America, except Chinese students stay with their homerooms for the entirety of their time at the school, taking every class every year with the same 30-40 people. Again, no matter what 'homeroom' they're in, students learn every subject but have a concentration in their own, i.e. humanities or science. For most schools, homerooms are assigned by the students' rank, but for very competitive schools like Shibei JMS, students may have to test into homerooms, especially the two science homerooms since Shibeili is so academically excellent. Also for context (and to explain Chen Shanshan's grade level), what Americans refer to as 'middle school' is actually junior middle school in China, and what we think of as 'high school' is actually upper middle school (and college is 'big school'). China's elementary school is actually six grades, and each middle school is three grades. So Chen Shanshan is in 初一, or her first year of junior middle school, but in America, that would actually be seventh grade, if we're going by 12 grade levels. Here, I've chosen to go by American standards to make it easier for English-speaking readers to understand, but I think it's important to remember that Chen Shanshan has only just entered junior middle school and is still, in fact, a very young child. (Yes, this will be important later.)

[2]	This lullaby (simply called 'Lullaby' in China) is Wiegenlied D498 (Op. 98, No.2), composed by Schubert. I took the lyrics directly from Wikipedia since it wouldn't have sounded good if I translated them directly. You can listen to it here (instrumental only).

[3]	This book was originally published in 2017, which is the same year that the events in the book take place. In 2017, Xiao Zhao would have been 20 or 21; while she may not have necessarily gotten a bachelor's degree, it would make total sense for her to have gotten an associate's.

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