Chapter Thirty-Six: The Door

Arriving at Ariel’s doorway, Lily saw that the door was open and assumed Xiu was inside. She called Xiu’s name but received no response, which struck her as odd.

Once Lily took in the arrangement of the room, she found no sign of Xiu, deepening her confusion.

“Ander, where’s Xiu?” Lily, wasting no time, entered Ariel’s room with Dunn and began a careful search, while also confirming Xiu’s whereabouts with Ander.

“I’m not really sure. After I asked Sister Xiu to check the restroom, she said she’d look around some more, and I went down to the basement.”

After hearing Ander’s account, Lily nodded and spoke, “Leave this to me and Dunn. Ander, go look for Xiu and bring her here.”

“All right.” Although anxious, Ander knew there was little he could do at the moment, so he chose to follow his sister’s instructions, turning to search for Xiu.

Once Ander left, Dunn pointed at the bed and said, “The shape of the bulge in the blanket is peculiar. I think Ariel was sleeping there.”

“But she never left…” Lily’s face grew grave.

If Ariel had tried to get up from the bed, the blanket should have been lifted at the edge near the floor to let her out. Surely, no one would choose to wriggle out from under the blanket in such a restricted manner.

“But she vanished.” Dunn looked around once more, confirming he had found nothing further.

“When all impossibilities are eliminated, only one possibility remains.” Dunn ran his hand through his curly hair and looked at Lily.

“You mean…” she began.

“The power you mentioned—the superhero’s ability,” Dunn answered, continuing, “Ariel had no motive to leave the orphanage of her own accord. The window is securely locked. All considered, it’s as if Ariel simply disappeared.”

Lily felt her heart skip a beat.

This meant there were now two possibilities.

One possibility was that Ariel had become a guest but, unable to control her powers, had ended up somewhere else. That would be relatively better. But if Ariel had been “erased” into that other world due to the coming-of-age ceremony and was unable to return…

Lily could not allow herself to think further.

She knew that Ariel’s recorded birthday was not accurate.

“What should we do now?” Dunn believed it would be most efficient to let Lily, who had more information, decide.

“Let’s tell everyone to meet on the third floor at ten. I think I understand the situation regarding Ariel’s disappearance, and for now, we don’t need to worry about her.” Maintaining her composure, Lily tried to act as usual.

Dunn glanced at the clock in Ariel’s room, bared his teeth in a grimace, uttered a quick “Okay,” and jogged out to gather the others. He had only fifteen minutes.

————————————

Summerland, Magic City.

Dressed in pajamas, Ariel huddled, shivering, in a corner on the rooftop of a residential building about ten stories high.

She had some idea of what she had experienced, but she didn’t understand what she had gone through.

It sounded like a tongue-twister, but such was the reality.

Last night, she had been sleeping soundly in her own bed when suddenly, a violent sensation of falling and weightlessness swept over her entire being. Forced into consciousness, she could not comprehend what was happening, only able to scream in terror as she watched herself plunge, again and again, through a series of doors.

Each time, Ariel thought she would slam into the next door, but each opened just in time to let her pass.

Only when she finally regained her senses and managed to suppress her fear did she, after falling through another pair of double doors, glimpse the world behind a door adorned with two strips of red paper.

That world was a patchwork of colors, chaotic and yet imparting an impression of emptiness and silence. Strange floating things wandered about, and in the farthest distance, twenty-two beams of light shone.

Ariel hadn’t had time to observe much before she fell through the next door, but she noticed that in each of these intensely colored worlds beyond the doors, the arrangement of the twenty-two beams always changed.

Bang!

Ariel crashed into a door—this time, it did not open to let her through. Having always worried about hitting a door, Ariel had adopted a protective posture, and though the impact hurt, she managed to avoid injury.

Slowly sitting up, Ariel first rubbed the side of her body that had struck the door, then began to examine her surroundings and the door beneath her.

The world was still awash in dense, mottled colors, with strange things floating back and forth, and the twenty-two beams of light hung in the distant reaches.

Ariel noticed that, despite the heavy colors, nothing could block the penetration of those twenty-two beams.

What Ariel didn’t realize was that the first time she saw those beams, she instinctively knew there were twenty-two—not twenty-one, not twenty-three. How could she have the presence of mind to count them while in such a state of weightless falling?

Ariel began to inspect the door beneath her.

It was a wooden door made of several planks joined together. Because the space was so color-saturated, Ariel couldn’t discern the door’s color. But it seemed she was sitting atop something stuck to the door?

Cautiously, she shifted her position to see what was underneath.

After sliding a bit, she finally saw what was attached to the wooden door—a square piece of paper, about twenty centimeters on each side, affixed diagonally.

In this world, the paper was a vivid red, with conspicuous black block characters on it.

If Lily were here, she could easily recognize those two characters—characters Liu Shiqin had mentioned many times: "Guest."

“What are these characters?” The bright red made Ariel’s eyes ache, so she looked away, but she had still seen the block letters and, instinctively, tried to write them in her mind.

As she finished the last stroke, Ariel suddenly felt the ground vanish beneath her. Before she could react, she tumbled onto another hard surface.

“Ow, ow, ow…” Ariel was on the verge of tears.

But the next moment, a cold wind swept by, making her shudder.

“Wind?” Ariel looked around in confusion.

Far ahead of her, in the distance, a colossal tornado loomed, spanning heaven and earth like a curtain.