Chapter 8 Preparation to Leave Home

Ma En didn't scream. But he couldn't stop himself from stepping back, and his foot found nothing — the edge of a stair. He lost his balance completely. If his right hand hadn't locked onto the railing, he'd have gone tumbling. His heart slammed against his ribs. The cold shock of it crawled over his entire body in an instant. He swung the flashlight toward the cat head, stared —

— and saw a woman.

A girl, sixteen or seventeen. Her body wasn't bare. She wasn't as physically mature as what he'd glimpsed a second ago. She wore a blue and white tracksuit — the style from the nearby high school. Her hands came up to shield her face from the light, turning away. The half of her face the beam caught was pale and smooth, her shoulder-length hair glossy black, a red fruit-shaped hair clip glinting faintly.

Ma En blinked. Everything he'd just seen — all of it, hallucination? He wasn't sure anymore.

"What are you doing!?" The girl's voice cracked high and sharp.

"..." He couldn't speak. For a long moment he just stood there, looking around. Nothing else out of place. No other residents stepping out to investigate. The building was still dark, still silent — as though he and this girl were the only people in it.

She'd already gotten to her feet. Scared, but defiant enough to kick at him. He caught her foot on instinct, pulled — nearly dragging her off the stairs before he caught himself and grabbed her again. This time she froze completely, her whole body rigid.

Ma En held the flashlight steady and looked at her carefully. She was not the cat-headed thing he'd seen for that split second. Definitely not. He helped her up, quickly. He still had no idea what had just happened, but he had enough common sense to know that everything he'd done to this girl in the last thirty seconds was wrong.

"S-sorry. I was — I was in a rush." He apologized, more than once, but the whole sequence of events left a strange taste in his mouth. Something off. Something that didn't add up.

The girl didn't relax. She curled into herself, trembling. Ma En got her braced against the railing, half-convinced she was about to pass out from fright. After a while, the pale, rigid blankness of her face finally softened.

"Feeling better? I really am sorry." He tried again.

She raised her face. Their eyes met. She flinched back. Then Ma En caught a faint damp smell, and when their gazes connected, he felt a sharp stab of embarrassment.

"If you're alright, I'll head up." He stood. Thought about it. Then added: "I live in this building too. Unit XXX. My name's Ma En."

He knew that staying would only make things worse. Even with the best apologetic intentions, this wasn't a situation that allowed for further conversation. The kindest thing he could do was leave and let her collect herself.

Ma En got back to his apartment and locked the door behind him. At that exact moment, the power came back. Every appliance in the apartment hummed to life at once.

He turned on every light in every room. Then he walked straight to the bookshelf, pulled out the nameless book — labeled Seven Transmutations of the Profound Mystery Records on its spine, though the name was his own invention — and opened it.

The contents had changed. Exactly as he'd expected.

No — "expected" didn't cover it. Whether the contents changed or not, nothing about this book could surprise him anymore. He'd spent 20 years preparing for something like this. He'd learned to read at two. Started mathematics at three. By four, he was absorbing the fuel for his imagination from children's science books. He knew the story of Ye Gong, the man who loved dragons until a real one showed up. And from that point on, he'd made himself a promise: if he ever found what he was looking for, no matter what followed — danger, horror, things beyond everything he'd ever imagined — he would not regret it.

So the fear he felt now — a terror that no amount of willpower could diminish — came without regret.

All of this was within expectations.

What he saw in the book was no longer the incomprehensible script. The entire book had gone blank. Those strange, unprecedented characters — every last one — had vanished. Nothing remained but white pages. He counted them, first to last, with careful attention. Nearly a third of the pages were gone. And yet the book's thickness hadn't changed at all. He weighed it. The weight was exactly the same.

Ma En held the book, dropped into his desk chair, and sat in silence for half a minute.

He was absolutely certain: what this book and its consequences had brought him wasn't only fear.

This was what he'd wanted. What he'd spent all those years searching for.

Something that might exceed his imagination, might lie beyond the mathematics and physics he understood, something inexplicable and strange — it had finally appeared in front of him. He wasn't completely sure. But the possibility was enough to make this his starting point.

He knew he wasn't the smartest person in the world, or the most knowledgeable. Scaled to the entire global population, who knew how many people shared his kind of fixation? Who knew how many had his level of conviction, his willingness to act? But not all of them would encounter what he'd experienced these past days. Not everyone would find a tangible, clearly existing object of genuine strangeness.

He was unlucky. He was also fortunate. What right did he have to complain about 24 ordinary years? Even if the road ahead meant danger, terror, possibly death — suffering that ordinary people couldn't begin to imagine. None of that mattered anymore. This was worth it. He'd found what he'd been looking for. That alone was the best possible outcome.

The only real concern was collateral damage. The terrifying, inexplicable things this book attracted wouldn't limit themselves to him. They'd reach the people around him. He'd prepared for that possibility long ago — accepted, within the limits of imagination, that involving others was nearly unavoidable. But if he could prevent it, he would.

He had to leave. Had to cut contact with family and friends. Had to make sure, as far as possible, that the fallout wouldn't reach his country. He needed to go somewhere no one knew him and no one would come looking. A foreign country. One rich in legends, diverse in religious belief, tolerant of the bizarre. A country with sufficient population and resources, but whose criminal investigation capabilities hadn't reached the highest tier. Ideally, a country that wasn't fully independent — one that didn't hold a central position on the international stage.

A country that satisfied all of his requirements for refuge: in ideology, culture, resources, and emotional distance.

He'd been ready for this day for a long time. He'd known, for years, which country he'd disappear into once the moment arrived.

Japan.

He was going to Japan. That neither-large-nor-small, neither-far-nor-near neighbor. A country on the losing side of history's wars — one that had rebuilt itself with fierce determination after defeat, yet still wore defeat's consequences like shackles, unable to find the right track. A country that perpetually sought full sovereignty and never quite achieved it. A country deliberately kept in check by every major power in the UN, his own homeland included. Its politics, its economy, its cultural landscape — all of it fit his needs for researching the bizarre. And it perfectly satisfied the condition of keeping disaster far from the people he loved.

Before finding a confirmed strange object, going to Japan would have been pointless. He didn't particularly enjoy traveling abroad. But from tonight, the trip had purpose.

Ma En already had his excuse prepared. Visa, money, logistics — all of it was in order. Everything ready. Only the trigger had been missing.

He knew he'd likely spend the rest of his life in that foreign country, alone and miserable. He might die there. He might not leave remains. He might never return to his homeland or his hometown. That was the price of chasing the bizarre, and he'd been ready to pay it for a long time.

He set the nameless book on the desk, dipped a brush in ink, and wrote on its cover: Seven Transmutations of the Profound Mystery Records. From now on, he wouldn't call it "the nameless book" anymore. The name had surfaced in his mind the instant he'd first touched it, and everything that followed — all those seemingly coincidental, seemingly inexplicable experiences — had only deepened his certainty. Seven Transmutations of the Profound Mystery Records was what this book was supposed to be called.

He set the book aside, took a deep breath, and opened the desk drawer. Inside was a treasure chest — a plastic toy, a birthday present from his parents when he was a child. Despite being plastic, it had a small, delicate lock. The lock was rusted now. Inside it, he'd stored everything he'd imagined he might need someday — everything prepared for a day exactly like this one.

That day had come.

He opened the lock. Lifted the lid. On top of everything else sat a single sheet of paper: a child's drawing, clumsy and earnest. It showed a figure — himself — sitting alone in a small boat, sailing through towering waves toward the place where a gray sky met the sea. This was the truest proof of his existence across 24 years.

"You did well," he said quietly. He lifted the drawing out with careful hands and set it aside. Then he took everything else from the chest and packed it into the suitcase he'd prepared long ago — massive, already stocked with what he'd need for survival abroad. He updated its contents monthly, so there was little to add now.

Next, the resignation letter. His current projects were wrapped up neatly, just waiting for his replacement to take over. Every year, he'd given his windfall savings to his parents — including the money he'd pulled through side channels using his civil servant credentials, amounting to a few million. But this year's portion, he'd keep for himself. He'd need it to survive the hardest part: the beginning.

He thought about writing a will. Then decided against it. He didn't dare. If he survived, he wanted his family to have something to hold onto.

So he'd let them think he was going abroad for work. People did that these days — left the country for jobs, for school, to see the world. He'd tell them he was tired of civil service. Wanted to broaden his horizons. Something like that.

His parents would be furious. But that was alright. Time would soften it.

Ma En rubbed his face hard with both hands. Was there anything he'd missed? The girl — right. The high school girl from the stairwell. If she didn't come looking for him soon, they'd probably never cross paths again. He'd scared her badly, and he was sorry for it. The cat head had almost certainly been his own hallucination, not anything wrong with her — bizarre things didn't appear that easily in this world. He could only hope that whatever Seven Transmutations of the Profound Mystery Records brought down on him wouldn't reach her. He didn't yet have the confidence to deal with any of it.

"That's that, then," he murmured. Gradually, the churning inside him settled, and something like calm returned.