Chapter 388

The town was called Mengyinhu. To anyone who hadn't lived there, it seemed quaint, maybe even charming in a forgotten sort of way. It was small, nestled between two sleepy hills, with roads that seemed to twist into nothingness and homes that looked as though they had seen better days long ago. The kind of town where no one ever really leaves, but no one talks about it either.

Kian had moved there just over a year ago. A fresh start, he thought. Escape from the city, the noise, the suffocating weight of memories. Mengyinhu was supposed to be the reset he needed, the place where he could live quietly, far from everything that had made him want to forget. But no matter how hard he tried to settle in, something always felt wrong.

It was the mornings. Always the mornings.

Every day, Kian would wake up at 7:30 a.m. on the dot, the light barely creeping through his curtains, the stillness in the air unnatural. It would start with a sound—the tapping of something against glass. Not loud, but insistent. He would ignore it at first, thinking it was just a bird or a windblown branch. But then the doorbell would ring. Three sharp presses. Always three.

When Kian opened the door, there was no one there. It happened every day. At first, he thought it was a prank, some odd tradition that the locals played on newcomers. But the days went on, and the same things happened again and again. The doorbell. The tapping.

And yet, as strange as it was, everyone in the town acted as though nothing unusual was going on. The townspeople, with their faces frozen in polite smiles, their voices almost too bright, seemed oblivious to it all.

At least, that's how it seemed at first. But Kian began to notice the way they moved, the way they spoke, like they were trapped in some strange dance they couldn't stop. And the way their eyes... They didn't blink.

One morning, the doorbell rang again. But this time, Kian didn't open the door. Instead, he stood by the window, watching the street below. He saw the same people, walking the same path, at the same time. The baker with his basket of bread. The old woman with a cane, moving slowly but steadily.

The children with their backpacks. Everyone seemed to be going through the same motions, like clockwork.

Except this time, Kian noticed something strange. They weren't just walking—they were going in circles. The same people, the same motions, over and over. They would start at one end of the street, walk to the other end, and then turn around to do it again. And again. And again. No one ever stopped. No one ever spoke.

Kian didn't know what to think. It felt like a dream, the kind of dream you can't quite remember when you wake up, but you know it was important. He tried to shake the feeling off, tried to force himself to go back to sleep, but the sense of something wrong gnawed at him.

The next day, he decided to get to the bottom of it. He'd follow one of them, maybe talk to someone, see what was going on. But when he stepped out of his house, he couldn't help but notice that it was the same day all over again. The same street. The same people. The same everything.

The same doorbell.

He ran back into the house, panic starting to claw at the edges of his mind. Something was wrong—no, something was terribly wrong. The clock on his wall read 7:30 again, but his watch said 8:00.

The same time. Over and over.

He tried everything. He waited until 8:15, hoping to find some escape from this cycle, but the doorbell rang once more at 7:30. That cursed 7:30. That damned morning. It was as if time itself had come to a halt, trapping the town in a loop it couldn't break out of.

No one seemed to notice, or worse, no one seemed to care. Everyone went on with their endless repetitions, their pointless tasks, their meaningless movements.

Kian went to the town's square, hoping to find someone who could explain what was happening. The square was empty, except for a large fountain in the center, its waters still and unmoving. A small plaque beside it read: Time is but a circle. What begins will return. Kian scoffed. A riddle. Another strange, useless detail that seemed to mean nothing.

But then something caught his eye. At the edge of the square stood a figure. It was a man, but he didn't look quite like the others. He was still, watching Kian with an expression that was too knowing, too quiet. His eyes seemed hollow, but there was something almost familiar about him. Something Kian couldn't place.

Kian approached him, his footsteps echoing loudly against the stone. "What's going on here?" he asked, voice trembling.

The man didn't respond right away. Instead, he looked at Kian for a long, unsettling moment. And then, when he finally spoke, his voice was a hollow rasp. "You're not supposed to be here."

Kian took a step back. "What do you mean? What's happening to this place?"

The man didn't answer. He simply turned and began to walk, moving with an unnatural fluidity, as though he had done it countless times before. Kian tried to follow him, but no matter how fast he moved, the man always stayed just ahead, his pace never quickening, never slowing.

It felt like a game, an endless chase. But the man's figure was growing more and more distorted, the edges of his body becoming harder to define, as if he was slipping through the cracks of reality itself.

Finally, Kian stumbled to a stop. He was lost, the square now impossibly vast, stretching on in all directions. The town no longer felt like a town. It was a vast, empty maze, its walls shifting just out of sight.

And then, like a cruel twist of fate, the doorbell rang again.

When Kian opened the door, he wasn't surprised to see nothing but the empty street before him. He stepped outside, but everything was the same. Same street, same buildings, same people walking in their endless loops. It was all too much to comprehend. His head pounded, his body shaking with exhaustion.

The doorbell rang once more, and Kian finally snapped. He slammed the door shut, gasping for breath.

The room felt smaller, the walls pressing in. He could still hear the bell, its chimes reverberating in his skull. He ran to the window, but all he saw were the same familiar faces—faces that didn't blink, didn't speak, didn't notice him at all.

He had to get out. But where would he go? There was nowhere to run in a town where time didn't pass, where nothing changed, where everything kept repeating forever.

He turned away from the window, breathing heavily, and that's when he saw it: the man from the square. He stood in the doorway, looking at Kian with those same hollow eyes, his lips curling into a twisted smile.

"You're one of us now," the man said, his voice barely a breath. "It's too late."

Kian's heart raced. He tried to scream, to run, but his body wouldn't move. He was paralyzed, trapped in this moment, this endless moment. The town wasn't just stuck in time—it had taken him, too. And he would never leave.

The man stepped closer, his form now completely distorted, as if it was struggling to hold itself together. "It's always the same," the man murmured. "We all try to escape, but in the end, we can't. There's no way out. Not for you. Not for anyone."

Kian wanted to shout, to fight, to break free. But his mouth wouldn't move. His body was frozen, like the rest of them, caught in the same loop. The bell rang one last time, and the town continued, as it always had, with no end. Just the same steps. Over and over again.