Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
In May 2119 AD, humans began to become dolls.
Those walking on the street, those eating in restaurants, those halfway through trying on clothes in the shopping mall – all of their movements were frozen in the moments before the change. They didn’t even have time to put away the smiles on their faces before they became static human dolls.
There was no warning, let alone a reason.
People were confused, fearful, hysterical, and desperate.
They held up bright red banners for demonstrations. They questioned whether this was a terrorist attack by a mysterious organization or maybe the invasion of alien civilization through the internet, and some people took their families to take refuge in the countryside… They did everything they could, but the people around them still became dolls one by one.
Gradually, people became numb to it.
They went to school and work as usual. Life carried on as usual.
But the daily TV news added an announcement——
After reading the press release, the announcer would tell the audience in a standard tone of voice: “If you find that someone around you has turned into a doll, please call the emergency number 123, and the relevant department will deal with it in time…”
What they meant by dealing with it was that they would package the dolls and send them to scientific research institutions.
If the scientists were able to make some sort of discovery, it would be good. If they couldn’t find anything, they would just wait for the family to claim it. Then, whether it was buried or put in the home as a decoration depended on the family’s desires.
Bai Youwei watched the news for a while and saw that the time was almost up. She picked up the remote control to turn off the TV, then pressed the button on her wheelchair to head towards the dining room.
Her legs were crippled. Her parents divorced when she was a child and they started a new family. Probably because they felt guilty over their daughter’s condition, the couple never hesitated to spend money on Bai Youwei. They let her live in the most luxurious villa and hired the most expensive nanny, but they couldn’t spare time to accompany their daughter.
However, Bai Youwei didn’t care about that.
She had long become used to being alone.
The dining room’s clock was ticking and the hands pointed to 12:10. Bai Youwei dined at around noon every day, but now there were no dishes on the table.
Her surroundings were very quiet, and the ticking of the clock made the gorgeous villa seem especially silent.
Bai Youwei waited for a while, then smelled the burning scent coming from the kitchen.
She adjusted her direction and rolled over in her wheelchair. The nanny stood with her back to her and her hand maintaining a cooking posture. She stood frozen beside the gas stove, but there was no movement.
The nanny had turned into a doll just now.
She still had her original face, but the texture of her skin appeared completely different. Her previous flesh had become plastic skin, her eyeballs became glass beads, her hair became chemical fiber…
The former nanny of the family went back to take refuge in her hometown. The nanny in front of her had just arrived two days ago, and Bai Youwei hadn’t even memorized her name yet, but she had already become like this.
She stared at her for a while, then slid over in her wheelchair, turned off the fire, and dialed the emergency number 123 according to the news.
The line was busy.
Bai Youwei thought about it for a while and called her mother. The nanny was the person hired by her mother, so she should be able to contact the nanny’s family.
The phone was connected. The chatter, laughter, and music on the other end were a stark contrast to her loneliness.
It was really jarring to the ear.
She explained what happened in a few words, then hung up the phone.
The house was very quiet, but it was also quiet outside. The sun was scorching, the garden pool reflected the sparkling light, a hibiscus flower was drooping with purple flowers and leaves under the scorching sun. Everything appeared mundane and ordinary, but Bai Youwei knew that this world had long become abnormal.
…
At two o’clock in the afternoon, there was the sound of a car engine outside the villa.
Bai Youwei looked through the window and saw a tall man ringing the doorbell.
She thought about it for a moment, went to the kitchen to get a fruit knife, and rolled over in the wheelchair.
Across the iron gate, the man’s figure appeared tall and straight. He appeared stern, and his long black eyebrows framed his deep and quiet eyes.
He looked a little familiar, but she couldn’t remember where she had seen him before.
“Are you Weiwei?” His voice paused slightly and had the unfamiliarity of a first meeting. “I’m Shen Mo. Your mother knows something has happened here and told me to pick you up.”
Bai Youwei froze.
Shen Mo… No wonder she felt that he seemed familiar just now. He turned out to be Uncle Shen’s son, and he looked a bit similar to Uncle Shen.
Uncle Shen was a good friend of her mother and a business partner. In fact, Bai Youwei thinks that the term “back burner guy” was more appropriate.
Bai You silently put the fruit knife in her pocket and opened the courtyard door——
Shen Mo looked at the girl in front of him.
She had porcelain skin, long soft hair, and she was wearing a long, light blue shirt dress. As her name suggested, just by looking at her, one couldn’t help but associate her with fragileness, youthfulness, and the like.
She looked very well-behaved, and not as difficult to get along with as Auntie Wang had said.
“Pack your things. I’ll send you to Yangzhou,” Shen Mo said concisely.
Bai Youwei shook her head. “I’m not going.”
Shen Mo was a little surprised. Raising his eyebrows, he said, “It’s not safe in the city now. All those who can walk have already left to seek refuge. If you stay here, no one will take care of you. Sooner or later, you will die.”
Bai Youwei lowered her head and looked at the delicate patterns on her skirt. “No. I’m already like this, so I’ll be doomed no matter where I go.”
Shen Mo had not expected her to be so stubborn.
He wasn’t good at persuading people, let alone coaxing children. He walked directly into the house. “Which room do you live in?” he asked.
Her eyes flickering, Bai Youwei stared at him suspiciously. “What do you want to do?”
Shen Mo ignored her. After entering the house, he walked around, found her bedroom, then began to pack clothes and daily necessities.
With an aggrieved expression, the girl followed.
After Shen Mo finished packing, he stood in the room and looked around, then asked, “Where is the medicine?”
Bai Youwei stayed in a wheelchair all year round, so medicine was a necessity.
She was silent.
He simply stopped asking.
The room quickly became messy.
Bai Youwei sat in a wheelchair as she watched him turn the room upside down. She clenched her fists tightly, and her voice was low as she said, “You… do you think that since you saved a lonely and helpless girl, you’re all that high and mighty now?… But you don’t know that you are actually harming me.”
His expression calm, Shen Mo stopped.
Bai Youwei took a deep breath and continued, saying, “Have you considered the consequences of forcibly taking me away? … When I arrive in Yangzhou, as a crippled woman, how should I live? Do you know that I need people to help me eat and go to the toilet? I have to wear diapers for long distance travel, so you simply…”
She sucked in a breath. “You don’t understand anything at all! I won’t go with you!”
At the end of her speech, her voice was hoarse and she had suppressed a sob.
Shen Mo looked at her and was silent for a while. He lowered his voice as he said, “I indeed don’t understand, but I understand at least one thing – you will die faster if you stay. If you leave, perhaps there will be hope.”
Hope?
Bai Youwei felt coldness in her heart.
Not even her biological parents cared about her, and her life was like that of the walking dead. Even if this world was normal, she still had no plans to live on.
She was a hopelessly crippled person!
Shen Mo walked to Bai Youwei. His dark eyes were oppressive, while his tone was calm and firm as he said, “Don’t worry. I will send you to Yangzhou without incident.”
Bai Youwei bit her lip.
She had no choice.
Shen Mo pushed Bai Youwei away from the villa and came to the SUV on the side of the road.
He lifted Bai Youwei from the wheelchair and felt that she was incredibly light. Although the girl in his arms was thin, she was also soft.
With her face leaning against his chest, a faint fragrance lingered. The aroma of the milk rose shampoo and the medicinal smell were mixed together to form a strange scent that gave one an indescribable feeling.
Looking at the tightly drawn little face, he felt a little softhearted and comforted her again, saying, “I’ll drive faster. We will be there in an hour and a half. Someone will take care of you over there, so don’t worry.”
Bai Youwei obviously hated his overbearing method and ignored him with a sulky face.
Shen Mo smiled, closed the rear door, sat in the driving position, and turned the key——
It didn’t take long before he found out that he had miscalculated.
The situation was worse than expected and dolls appeared on almost every road. Although the reason people turned into dolls was unclear, it was well known that the places where dolls were clustered together were high-risk areas. Everyone would avoid such roads as much as possible when they travel.
Shen Mo began to take a detour, and after going around for more than an hour, he finally arrived at the highway intersection.
The highway wasn’t smooth either.
Looking around, they saw that there were about sixty to seventy cars parked at a slant in the middle of the road. Some cars had crashed and whether or not those in the car were alive was unknown.
At the end of the convoy, there were many people who had just arrived on the highway like them. Those people stood outside their cars, stretched out their necks, and, hesitating over whether or not to move on, they looked around.
Shen Mo got out of the car to ask around about the situation.
Bai Youwei laid beside the car window while listening to the people talking.
“What should we do? Should we leave?”
“Leave? The front is blocked by dolls, so how would we get there?”
“If we don’t leave, are we supposed to wait here to die? Out of all the nearest cities, only in Yangzhou and Taizhou has no one become a doll!”
“What about other roads? Are there dolls on other roads?”
“If this continues, we will all be trapped…”
“Husband, what should we do?” A long-haired woman sobbed and cried as she said, “It must be the end of the world… We will all die…”
Her husband didn’t seem to have any ideas either. Smoking a cigarette irritably, he was unable to say a single word of comfort.
Bai Youwei listened for a while and found it meaningless, so she closed the car window to be quiet.
Shen Mo returned to the car. Bai Youwei asked him, “Will we become dolls if we drive from here?”
Shen Mo thought about it for a while. “We’ll look at the situation first. Worst case scenario, we’ll find another way.”
Bai Youwei didn’t trust him much, and she whispered, “There are dolls on other roads.”
Just then, there was movement ahead of them.
Everyone was surprised. When they looked up, they saw a blue pickup slowly driving forward with a sense of tentativeness. Seeing this, several other cars slowly followed behind while keeping a short distance.
It seemed that someone couldn’t wait.
After all, there was no safe place in the city. There were dolls on almost every road. If one wanted to get out of the city, one had to take risks.
The driver of the blue pickup truck was a bald man. Holding the steering wheel, he cautiously drove past several cars with dolls. He found no abnormalities and subconsciously sped up.
When he reached a safe open space, he poked his head out of the car and waved to the person behind, saying, “This road is clear!”
Everyone there was invigorated by these words, and the cars behind kept up.
Someone smiled and greeted the bald man in front of him, saying, “Man, this is all thanks to you!”
The others also smiled, relaxed.
“It looks okay.” Shen Mo started the car and kept up with them.
Bai Youwei said “Oh.”
…
On the highway, cars passed by at a turtle’s pace, and everyone was extremely cautious.
Bai Youwei quietly laid beside the car window.
As the car moved forward, she saw humanoid dolls one after another. With hollow eyes and stiff postures, they were like mannequins in a clothing shop…
She turned her head and saw that there were two dolls in a red car on the opposite side. The person driving was a man and the passenger was a woman. The woman’s belly was high and bulging, so she was obviously pregnant.
Bai Youwei couldn’t help but think: Had the child in her stomach also become a little doll? Did it also have plastic skin, glass bead eyes, and chemical fiber hair? What happened to them when they changed into dolls? Was it possible that the body couldn’t move but they still had consciousness?
The thought made her shudder.
She retracted her gaze and stopped looking.
“Ding! Welcome to the doll game! The theme of this game is ‘The Rabbit and the Turtle Race’ and the rules are as follows:
One: If you refuse to play the game, you will become a doll!
Two: If you lose the game, you will become a doll!
Three: If you win the game, you will be rewarded a doll! …”
An unfamiliar voice rang in her ears, and the sound was especially beautiful. Bai Youwei was stunned.
“Hey, did you hear…?” She was about to ask Shen Mo in front of her, but her field of vision became hazy, and in the next moment, a blue sky, white clouds, and endless greenery appeared!
What happened?!
Bai Youwei stared at the scene in amazement.
Just a second ago she had been sitting in Shen Mo’s car, but at this moment, she was sitting on a green lawn!
It was the same for everyone else! Everyone was stunned to see the runway outside the lawn, where there was a huge screen banner hanging conspicuously with extremely exaggerated characters printed on it——
The Rabbit and the Turtle Race!