The Real Awakening

“You’ve finally come, No. 13.”

The girl wore an angelic, sweet smile under the silver moonlight.

She leaned over slightly to reach a hand out towards the boy, her slim, snow-white wrist looking like cream under the warm, dim glow.

The boy stared at the hand – the hand that was slowly moving towards him – and without the slightest bit of hesitation, grabbed hold of it as though due to a supernatural force. He borrowed her strength to pull himself out from the gutter.

“What are you…you all doing here?”

The boy shakily looked at the girl, then at the four others behind her that were wearing identical white gowns.

“Shhh, lower your voice.” The girl pressed a finger against her lips, blinking her large bright eyes as she quietly stated, “We’re plotting a secret plan here.”

“Se-secret plan?” The boy gulped anxiously.

A chuckle escaped from the girl’s lips as she pulled him by the hand towards the other four. “No. 13, you’ve arrived just in time; we were halfway through our discussion. You’re welcome to join.”

“Discussion? What are you discussing?”

The youth apprehensively stared at the four boys standing by the garbage dump.

Similarly, the four boys were sizing him up.

One of the boys with a tall and lanky frame and appeared to be around eighteen had an ugly scar on his left cheek. The scar was very long and deep, as though someone had deliberately carved it out with a knife. It stretched all the way from the corner of his mouth to his brow, so the vision in his left eye seemed to be impaired, and he could only turn his head to look at others with his right eye.

This scarred boy – No. 31 – was no stranger to the youth, since they sat across each other during their daily meals. The first time the youth had seen the fierce scar, he had gotten quite a fright.

However, the scarred boy did not seem cowardly nor did he carry self-loathing as a result of the scar on his face. It was quite the opposite; his gaze towards others always carried an inherent hostility and ruthlessness.

It was obvious that this was a guy with a violent temper and no patience.

The youth shrank back a step, but heard the scarred boy let out a snort of disdain.

The boy then arrogantly declared, “We’re discussing our countermeasures for escaping this place. If you have the guts then stay, if you don’t, then just take a hike back down the pipe and obediently wait for death.”

“No! I don’t want to die!” 

The youth lifted his head with a flash of understanding. He resolutely gritted out through clenched teeth, “I-I’m like you guys, I want to escape from here too!”

Everyone went quiet at this, their gazes locked onto him.

They had originally assumed it would take some effort to persuade this cowardly and timid boy, so they hadn’t imagined he would express his stand so quickly.

Someone couldn’t help but chuckle, though with their mouth closed, it came out as a kukukufrom the depths of the throat that was extremely uncomfortable to hear.

The youth shifted his line of sight over to a beanpole-skinny boy bent over from laughing. He sported a head of abundant hair that looked like a dried-up bird’s nest coiled atop his head, with a small tuft hanging down to cover half his eyes.

This person was No. 49, the one that sat two seats away from the youth during meals. Every time No. 49 picked up his bowl, he would purposely chew loudly and send rice grains flying everywhere. If the whitecoats reprimanded him, he’d just let out a muffled chuckle to himself. No one had any idea what he laughed about.

Amidst the ear-grating laughter, the girl took a step forwards to give the youth a good look. With a serious expression, she said, “Like you, no one is willing to die. That’s why we have to form a union and work as one towards our common goal: to come up with a way of escaping this place.” 

She stuck her hand out towards the others as she said, “I’m No. 17, my name is Gu Xiao Rou.”

Without any hesitation, the scarred boy placed his hand on top of hers and heroically declared, “I’m No. 31, my name is Wang Hai Tao.”

The third one to stretch his hand out was the boy that was always laughing. With a mysterious grin, he stated in an eerie tone, “I’m No. 49, my name is Xu Ming.”

Soon afterwards, the fourth person – a delicate boy with large black-framed glasses – lifted his glasses to sharply scan the others before reaching out. “I’m No. 2, my name is Sun Yuan.”

The fifth boy kept his head down the entire time. After a long while, he finally took a slow step forwards to hesitantly reach out and mutter unhurriedly, “I’m No. 26, my name is Li Qing.”

At this point, the five had completed their self-introductions and now pointed their attention at the final person.

The youth’s tightly clenched fists had long since grown sweaty. A few seconds of silence passed before he ultimately reached out as well to place his hand atop the others’ piled hands as he stammered, “I-I’m No. 13. My name is….my name is…” 

They stared at him, but even after repeating “is” many times, he could not utter his own name. Finally, it was Gu Xiao Rou who helped explain on his behalf, “No. 13 seems to have lost his memories.”

“Heh, lost his memories?” Wang Hai Tao snorted while casting him a look.

The youth bit his lip and flushed as he awkwardly nodded and mumbled, “Sorry I….I don’t remember my own name. You guys can just call me No. 13.”

“Don’t fret, take your time and you’ll eventually remember.”

Gu Xiao Rou patted his shoulder comfortingly.

Sun Yuan stared at him suspiciously but did not speak.

Xu Ming began to chuckle strangely again.

A moment later, the boy called Li Qing spoke up. He looked towards Gu Xiao Rou and steadily said, “You mentioned earlier that you already had a good idea on how to escape. Why don’t you share it with everyone?”

Gu Xiao Rou met the eyes of the fives boys and replied, “I’ll be honest with you guys, I’ve actually snuck out here by myself multiple times and observed this area for a while. But since there are many places with surveillance cameras, I was afraid of running around recklessly. Only this garbage dump is relatively safe and concealed. Aside from coming to dump trash, those people don’t really come here. So then I kept wondering if we could find a chance to break free from here.”

“Here? There’s only a pile of stinking garbage here and nothing else. How could we run away?”

Xu Ming pinched his nose while surveying their surroundings in disgust.

Gu Xiao Rou grinned and shook her head, then waved for the others to come closer.

Each person stuck their heads in to form a circle to hear her quietly state, “So the thing is, I was thinking of two plans and wondered what you guys thought of them.”

“Hurry up and tell us, what are the two plans?” Wang Hai Tao urged.

Gu Xiao Rou lowered her voice even further as she whispered, “The first plan is to dig a tunnel.”

“Dig a tunnel?” Li Qing frowned.

“That’s right, dig a tunnel.”

Gu Xiao Rou repeated, then turned her head and used her chin to point at the tall wall behind the garbage dump. “Look over there. My guess is that the stone wall is about five metres tall. Although I don’t know what kind of place this is, there isn’t any wall that’s higher than that one. In addition, there’s an electric net and surveillance camera set up on top, with the camera lens pointed outside the wall. What do you guys think that means?”

The five boys exchanged looks with one another, but none responded.

Gu Xiao Rou frowned slightly before patiently explaining, “This means that the tall wall is very likely the isolating barrier. As long as we pass over this wall, we might be able to return to the outside world.”

“P-pass over this wall?”

Sun Yuan peered at the towering wall and shook his head. “No, it’s impossible. This wall is so high up that we can’t possibly get over it. Besides, there’s a high-voltage electric net—”

“So if we can’t go up from the top, we can only go through from the bottom,” Gu Xiao Rou interrupted.

Wang Hai Tao considered this for a moment. “You mean we’d dig a tunnel below this wall?”

“Yes. Look here, it’s dirt and not cement.”

Gu Xiao Rou stamped on the dirt and added, “So we can start digging from this garbage dump and keep going until we reach the other side of the wall. We can’t possibly finish digging the tunnel in a single go, so we can use this trash to hide it. The hole of the partially dug-up tunnel can be concealed with some dirt and then covered by the metal garbage dump to perfectly hide it from view. This would make it harder for people to discover it.”

“How long would digging such a tunnel take?” Li Qing asked.

Gu Xiao Rou replied, “I measured with my stride before—the distance from this garbage dump to that wall is about fifty metres.”

“F-fifty metres?” Li Qing blurted out loudly.

“Shh—be quiet!” Sun Yuan frowned at him.

Li Qing immediately covered his mouth, then shot a ridiculing look at Gu Xiao Rou while hissing, “Don’t tell me you plan on having everyone dig a fifty metre-long tunnel with our bare hands? Do you think we’re rodents?”

Gu Xiao Rou answered, “No, we can steal a spoon from our meals.”

“Spoon?” Xu Ming shook his head of bird’s-nest hair, his laugh shaking through his entire body as he mocked, “Six people using spoons to dig up a tunnel? Do you think we’re in [the tale of] Arabian Nights? I’m sorry to tell you, but before we even finish this tunnel, we’ll have already kicked the bucket.”

Gu Xiao Yue shot him an unhappy look. 

At this moment, the youth who had stayed silent the entire time also stammered, “I-I also…don’t think this is a good idea. Putting aside the issue of how long digging the tunnel would take, stealing spoons is also a very risky task. Plus, where would we hide the stolen spoons?”

“That’s…” Gu Xiao Rou was speechless for a moment and did not respond.

Sun Yuan continued, “Moreover, there’s another huge flaw to this plan: while we’re digging the tunnel, we’ll definitely end up getting covered in dirt. How would we explain that once the whitecoats notice?”

Gu Xiao Rou was stunned again. She had not considered this issue at all, so she could only bite her lip and stay silent.

Wang Hai Tao hummed to himself before firmly declaring, “No, we can’t use that method. Tell us the other one.”

Gu Xiao Rou glanced at the others before sighing, “I’m afraid the other method is even riskier.”

Li Qing commented, “Oh? Let us hear it first.”

Gu Xiao Rou clicked her tongue and took two steps back. “This garbage dump is actually very large, and it’s split into two areas. The area we’re standing in is used to discard daily waste and leftover food. But what do you guys think the other area is used for?”

“There’s another area? What’s discarded there?” Sun Yuan curiously pushed his glasses up.

The corners of Gu Xiao Rou’s lips turned down. Instead of answering, she beckoned at them with a curled finger and mysteriously said, “Follow me.”

She then spun around and began to stride forwards.

The five boys looked at each other, and after pausing for two seconds, began to walk after in a line.

At the moment, the night was deep and the path was completely dark. There were no outdoor lights here, and only the cold moonlight hazily shone down on them. Before long, the six people arrived at a wider lot.

Gu XIao Rou pointed ahead and quietly directed, “Look over there.”

Upon following her finger, they saw black piles randomly scattered around the bare ground under the dim light. The objects were long and had no defined shape, laying limply in the mud…

“Those…”

The youth squinted in confusion. But because it was too dark, he couldn’t see clearly and unconsciously took a step forwards. After getting a closer look, he froze for a few seconds and immediately reeled in shock, stumbling backward.

“Th-those…those things are…”

The youth swiveled his head to peer at the others in shock and fear. All of them sported poor complexions.

There was no doubt – they had seen these black things multiple times whenever they ate every day.

These were the body bags used to store corpses.

Which also meant that the mountain of things in front of them were…

The five boys stared at Gu Xiao Rou in half disbelief.

Gu Xiao Rou nodded and stated, “This is where those people discard corpses. What you’re seeing right now is the dead people.”

Dead…dead people…

In that moment, a shudder went through their hearts.

A chilly breeze blew past. Everything around them was silent.

The dead could not speak nor move, simply lying peacefully there. Perhaps the flesh had begun rotting away, or perhaps the souls still lingered around nearby…

Facing the corpses that had lost their lives, the six children were quiet for a very long time. Their expressions were somewhat stiff, whether due to fear or other reasons. It felt like an enormous shadow of “Death” was gradually shadowing over them.

A while passed when finally, Wang Hai Tao asked, “What is your second escape plan?”

Gu Xiao Rou took a deep breath and squeezed out through clenched teeth: 

“Play dead.”

“Play dead?”

The five boys were stunned as they stared at the only girl in confusion.

Gu Xiao Rou bit her lip and slowly explained, “I’ve already seen it twice in the middle of the night. The corpses here are moved onto a car and secretly shipped out. So I was thinking—”

She shot everyone a cautious look before solemnly continuing, “We could hide in the body bags and pretend to be corpses.”

Pretend to be…corpses?

Sun Yuan pushed his glasses and asked, “You mean pretend to be corpses and then get shipped out?”

“Yes. No matter what, at least we can get out of here.”

“We get out, and then what?”

“Then we find a chance to run away.”

“What if we can’t run away?”

Gu Xiao Rou sighed. “There isn’t any escape plan that’s 100% reliable. If you’re always worried about this and that, then you’ll never leave this place.”

“She’s right. No matter what way we try to run, we’ll have to take risk. Either we wait for death or we run away with the realisation that we will definitely die.” Li Qing lowered his eyes and calmly declared, “I choose to run.”

“I also choose to run. To succeed or die trying.”

As Wang Hai Tao spoke, he curled his hands into fists.

Xu Ming chuckled and added, “Alright, let’s run, let’s run. We’ll all run together.”

The youth stared at them while biting his lip, choosing not to speak.

After a moment’s contemplation, Sun Yuan conceded, “Fine, if we’re pulling all the stakes, let’s use the second method to escape.”

“But…” The youth stammered, “But how will we know when they come to ship out the corpses? We can’t come try our luck every night.”

Gu Xiao Rou hummed to herself before replying, “Since we’re locked in here right now, we don’t know the time nor the date. But have you guys discovered that the kitchen’s meals keep repeating?”

“Repeating?”

“It might be from Monday to Sunday, but it repeats every seven days. Although I don’t know exactly what day of the week it is today, both times I’ve seen them ship out corpses, it was when we had curry rice for dinner. So—”

Gu Xiao Rou lowered her voice and declared word by word, “So the next day we have curry rice is the moment of escape.”

At this, the rest of them went quiet.

There was only dead silence around them, the pitch-black night carrying a gloomy, fog-like heaviness.

The next day we have curry rice is the moment of escape!

This sentence struck like a clock on the hour, repeatedly ringing through their heads.

In the following days, the youth continued waiting in both anticipation and fear. He would restlessly watch the food being brought out during dinner every day, his racing heart about to jump out of his throat each time the dishes were set down. But after seeing that the contents of the bowl were not curry rice, he couldn’t help but feel a trace of relief.

Because despite praying for the opportunity to escape to arrive as quickly as possible, he was also constantly terrified and worried—worried that the plan might fail, worried that they might be discovered midway through their escape, worried what fate they’d face if they were captured before they escaped…

Time passed day after day, his emotions in a constant complicated conflict.

The first day was stir-fried tomatoes and eggs, the second day was green pepper and potatoes, the third day was radish and meat, the fourth day was cucumbers and eggplants.

Four days of waiting and suffering later, the youth finally saw a bowl of steaming curry rice placed in front of him on the fifth day. The moment the bowl touched the table, he couldn’t resist lifting his head to shoot peeks at the other five people.

Gu Xiao Rou and Li Qing kept their heads lowered, eyeing their own bowls in concentration; it was impossible to discern their facial expressions. Wang Hai Tao shoveled the food in his mouth, his movements seeming almost solemn. Sun Yuan pushed up his glasses and his eyes accidentally met the youth’s, but he immediately turned away. Xu Ming let out a strange chuckle as he placed the food in his mouth, causing the rice to fly out. Even after the whitecoats reprimanded him, he did not stop laughing for whatever crazy reason.

The youth bit his lip and kept his head down as he wordlessly ate his curry rice.

After anxiously finishing dinner, it was finally nighttime. As usual, the whitecoats arrived at his room to inject him with a strange liquid.

He used the same method as last time, gripping the half hair clip so that the pain kept him awake. Soon after the whitecoats left, he immediately gritted his teeth and crawled into the pitch-black, slippery gutter with feelings of both extreme nervousness and boundless urgency. 

Everything seemed to advance smoothly. By the time the youth finally came out from the gutter exit, the other five were already standing there waiting for him.

Tonight was a full moon.

The shining, round moon was a massive silver disc suspended high against the curtain of night, dimly illuminating the sky full of stars.

Under the cold moonlight, each person’s face showed a trace of obvious impatience and uneasiness. In tacit mutual understanding, they glanced at each other without uttering a word.

They knew very clearly that tonight was the night that would determine victory, to succeed or die trying. There was no room for retreat.

Gu Xiao Rou tilted her head back to gaze at the evening sky and quietly stated, “Everyone’s arrived.”

She spun around and began to stride forwards without a single glance back.

The five boys silently followed behind. None of them spoke a word the entire way to the lot with piles of corpses. 

There were quite a few more body bags on the ground than there had been several days ago. As far as the eye could see, there were corpses scattered around—at least sixteen of them.

For some reason, the death count had rapidly surged up recently. During today’s dinner, two people had suddenly collapsed too. One of the boys had looked quite young, likely only around ten years old. Before dying, he had been writhing in pain, wailing non-stop that he wanted to go home. His agonised cries had echoed through the cafeteria, making everyone listening feel grief-stricken.

The youth bit his lip and clenched his hands into fists as he wordlessly stood a distance away, spacing out at the corpses. His brain felt stuffed with cotton; everything was blank. Finally, Wang Hai Tao roughly shoved him from behind.

“Oi, what are you doing? You think you have the time to be daydreaming now?”

The other five had already gathered around the bodies and started to open each bag to inspect the corpses. A faint smell of rot wafted out.

Gu Xiao Rou said, “We all should try choosing a corpse that’s similar height and weight to us to take out.”

As she spoke, she turned to glance at the youth and pressed, “What are you still standing around there for?”

“I…”

The youth hesitated, somewhat at a loss. But he heard a thudas Gu Xiao Rou forcefully tossed a body bag that landed right in front of him. The youth was startled and stumbled back a step.

The body bag was slightly unzipped, and one could vaguely make out an ashen face from the finger’s-width crack. It was a boy’s face; under the bright moonlight, a pair of large, round eyes stared wide-eyed at him, with yet-to-dry tears trailing down from the corners.

This was the boy that had been shouting and sobbing about going home earlier today. But ultimately, he had been unable to escape his fate of death.

“This corpse seems to be about similar height and weight to you, so you can just pretend to be this one.”

Gu Xiao Rou pointed towards the other area of the garbage dump and said, “Move the corpse out and drag it over there, then bury it in the garbage bin. Be extra careful about not leaving any limbs exposed when you’re at it.”

The youth chewed on his lip as he nodded and shakily pulled the body bag’s zipper open. The boy peacefully laid inside without moving, the eye sockets already turning bluish.

Taking a deep breath, the youth gritted his teeth and closed his eyes as he reached out to pull the boy out horizontally. He did not dare to touch the skin, only grabbing the arms through the clothing. Despite this, he could clearly feel that the body underneath the clothing had turned cold and started to stiffen.

The distance was not far, only about a dozen or so metres. But dragging a heavy corpse made the youth feel like he had to walk for a long, long time. When he finally managed to bring it over to the garbage bin with much difficulty, he suddenly collapsed on his knees and large tears began to fall from his eyes uncontrollably.

He actually did not want to cry, but he could not hold them back. He did not know if it was out of fear or out of pity for this boy’s death. The tears streamed down in succession and he could not stop them. 

As he sobbed quietly, he used his hands to split the stinking pile of garbage and firmly bury the boy’s corpse underneath.

When he finished, he finally felt a wave of relief and he used both arms and legs to stand up.

At this point, someone had discretely walked over to stand behind him. The person’s footsteps were very quiet, but he had still sensed them.

The youth used his filthy hands to wipe the tears from his face and asked in a choked voice, “I’ve buried him, now what?”

He turned around and saw that all five people were standing in line behind him with smiles that did not reach their eyes. Under the dim, waning moonlight, their faces showed traces of a strange coldness.

“You-you guys—”

Before the youth could finish his sentence, Wang Hai Tao shot forwards and instantly restrained him against the ground. The next second, firm hands wrapped around his throat.

“Ugh…save…”

The youth struggled and tried to shout for help, but four or five hands simultaneously covered his mouth and nose.

“Xu Ming, Li Qing, keep hold of him and don’t let him shout.”

This was Gu Xiao Rou’s voice methodically giving orders.

The youth was securely pressed into the ground; even as he flailed his limbs with all his might, he could not break free. Many people’s limbs were restraining him together, and there was a pair of hands choking him by the neck. He could not utter a sound and could only feel his breaths becoming more urgent.

No, I can’t, I can’t breathe!

The youth’s eyes widened in terror as he glare at the distorted faces in both disbelief and fury. 

Gu Xiao Rou, Wang Hai Tao, Xu Ming, Li Qing, Sun Yuan…

They were smiling, they were smiling sinisterly…

Why…Why do this…

The youth’s body began to spasm as his mind blanked out from lack of oxygen….

The scene before him began to blur more and more, more and more…