Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I couldn't sleep at all for the rest of the night. Every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was that damn Ethan Zhou.

I must have been driven crazy from being single for over twenty years—even an old-fashioned guy like Ethan Zhou was starting to look attractive to me.

In the days that followed, I made a conscious effort to avoid making eye contact with him.

Probably because the game had just been released and he had all kinds of data to monitor, Ethan Zhou became extremely busy. Later, he even started sleeping at his studio—I didn't see him much for several days.

When I was bickering with Ethan Zhou every day, time seemed to fly by. I'd often be in the middle of a thrilling part of a TV show when he'd order me to go back to my room.

When he was being too strict, I felt restricted everywhere. But now that he wasn't at home, everything felt wrong.

But he still found ways to keep an eye on me—even when he was staying at the studio, he didn't forget to send me text messages, reminding me not to stay up late, to order fewer takeouts, and filling the fridge with ingredients, as if he was afraid I'd starve to death or die from staying up late without him.

One night, I was bored, so I turned on my computer and continued playing the game Ethan Zhou designed.

It was really fun—I played for two whole days before finally beating it.

It wasn't until the end that I discovered the cruel truth hidden behind this game.

The weird, fragmented dreams actually revealed a broken family: a father who was violent, a mother who suffered abuse, and a child who had forgotten the pain of his childhood but had unknowingly put himself back into that pain.

The police officer who entered the haunted house was that child. As an adult, he had lost his childhood memories. When he stepped back into that nightmare-filled house, he was trapped in a loop of his childhood nightmares again and again. Only the teddy bear given to him by a stranger on his birthday could unlock the door to rebirth, finally allowing him to escape from the nightmare.

The game left a deep impression—it had a dark atmosphere and oppressive scenes. Players could really feel the protagonist's pain and suffocation.

In the following days, I couldn't sleep well and even lacked energy in class.

Ever since I played that game, I'd been feeling a little neurotic.

I thought I should ask Ethan Zhou for some "mental damage compensation."

When I got home in the afternoon, Ethan Zhou sent me a WeChat message, asking me to find his ID card in the second drawer of his room, take a photo of it, and send it to him—he needed it urgently.

The boy in the ID photo looked very handsome, with a hint of rebellion in his eyebrows.

I couldn't help but smile. I was about to send the photo to him when my eyes accidentally fell on another photo—it was the only photo I'd seen in Ethan Zhou's house.

It seemed to be a photo of a family of three. I say "seemed" because the face of the man who should have been the father was almost completely covered with marker pen.

"The scar on his forehead," "the teddy bear by his bed," "the scribbled-out father in the photo"—everything matched up with the game.

My heart tightened sharply at that moment.

"Dad, about Ethan Zhou..." I called Old Lin.