My Roommate is a Non-Human | Chapter 11 | The Black-Eyed Smile | Novela.app

I got out of bed and drew back the curtain. Sitting on the other side was a classmate I happened to know—Zhang Litian. We had taken Marxist Philosophy together during our freshman year; we’d sat next to each other five or six times, and I’d even borrowed his notes. He was that rare breed of STEM student whose personal hobby was actually Marxism, and he took the lectures quite seriously. However, that particular professor was a hack who spent every day rambling about the stock market. Zhang Litian considered it a total "bird course"—pure garbage. He used to sit there and whisper rebuttals to every single sentence the man uttered, claiming the professor didn't understand the true essence of Marx. Later, he started crashing the lectures of a different class, and we only saw each other in passing after that. My impression of him was that he was a very opinionated, talkative guy—the kind who was usually quite interesting and extroverted. Now, he was holding a cup, watching me with keen interest. It was as if he had expected me to come, and had been quite bored waiting for my arrival. "Do you still remember me?" I asked. He gave a smile that felt heavy with hidden meaning. "How could I forget?" There was something indescribably uncomfortable about his smile. Nevertheless, I pulled over the companion chair my roommate had used and sat down by his bed. "What happened to you all last night was so strange," I said. He maintained that same smile. "Do you remember what you dreamed about?" He countered with a flat question of his own. "Did something happen to us last night?" I was momentarily speechless, stunned not only by his apparent lack of concern but also by his tone—polite, yet strangely aggressive. I pulled up a post on Renren to show him. It was written by a guy I played basketball with; his entire neighboring dorm had been hauled off to the hospital the night before. The post said that around one in the morning, while he was washing his face in the communal sink, loud wailing and crying had suddenly erupted from the dorms on the left side of the floor. At first, he nearly wet himself because he didn't think the sounds were human. He described them as more like the howling of wolves or wild beasts, but you could tell it was terrifying and deeply sorrowful because of the way the voices trembled. He figured there couldn't be any wild animals in the dorm, so he assumed some guy had just gone through a bad breakup. But as he walked back toward his room, things turned macabre. The number of people howling grew. He looked genuinely haunted as he told the story, and I understood why. The hallway lights were usually off by that time, leaving the corridor pitch black except for the green glow of a few "Emergency Exit" signs. To suddenly hear dogs barking and beasts baying from behind every dorm door—I wouldn't have been able to handle it either. He said that luckily, plenty of people had remained lucid. Many were startled awake and opened their doors to peer out. He took the opportunity to duck into the dorm opposite his own, as his own roommates were too terrified to even open the door. The terrifying part was that there were still conscious people inside those howling rooms; he could hear them talking, screaming in a panicked frenzy. The sound of things crashing and breaking echoed from within—it was unclear if the lucid ones were trying to escape or if the beast-like ones were going on a rampage. They eventually called the police. Even the officers were spooked when they heard the sounds over the phone and told them to call an ambulance immediately. Later that night, even the Armed Police were deployed. Fortunately, there were no fatalities, though some of the frantic individuals had injured themselves in their madness. I asked him if the howling seemed to mean anything. He thought about it and said no, it just sounded like animals. Later, I looked at statistics compiled by other students on Renren. It turned out that the people who had suddenly lost their minds in the middle of the night weren't just from the College of Arts; there were many from the College of Philosophy and the College of Liberal Arts as well. Other departments had more sporadic cases. After I finished describing the events of the previous night, Zhang Litian remained remarkably calm, seemingly indifferent. His reaction surprised me. If it had been me, I would have been scared out of my wits. Perhaps he was just exceptionally brave. I hadn't forgotten my original purpose. I had shared all of this because I wanted to ask what he had seen in his dream. He didn't dodge the question. In fact, his answer was fascinating. He said, "Non-Euclidean geometry." My mind went blank. Non-Euclidean geometry? When it came to math class, I was just like the vast majority of students: my thoughts alternated between "What is this?" and "What the hell is this?" That was exactly how I felt now. If you said you dreamed of non-Euclidean geometry and woke up crying, people would take it as a joke. But to use it as an explanation for a mass outbreak of collective mania and hysteria? That was a bit of a stretch. "You're saying you saw some non-Euclidean geometry, and you were so scared that you jumped from your top bunk, crushed the plastic chair beneath you, and shattered your lower leg into splinters with compound fractures?" "Is that strange?" He looked at me, fingers interlaced in front of him, wearing a lazy smile. That smile again. I was starting to find it repulsive. I forced out a few polite pleasantries and stood up to leave. Just then, a few young people carrying flower baskets passed by and asked if we knew where Jin Mu was. I froze. In that lightning-flash of a moment, I remembered the name. I stood there, paralyzed, my entire body beginning to tremble with agitation. Jin Mu. Jin Mu... Jin Mu was a star figure at our university. He was in my year, a student in the College of Arts who had delivered the speech as the student representative at our convocation. He had already achieved a degree of fame before entering university; his sculptures and oil paintings were incredibly soulful and highly regarded in those circles. Many established artists held high expectations for him. Consequently, even though he didn't go out of his way to seek fame, he frequently appeared on the university's homepage or in the campus newspaper. A person like that should have had no intersection with my life. I had only seen that young, aloof face when clicking through news links, or heard that clean, clear voice when I was occasionally dragged along to fill seats at various conferences. But last night, I had suddenly formed a much deeper connection with him. The person who had called me in my dream, told me to take the elevator to the B1 floor, and finally left me a gold coin before jumping to his death—that was Jin Mu! I nearly jumped out of my skin. "Is... is he okay now?" The people who had come to visit him looked dejected. "It doesn't look good. He's in the ICU. We don't know the specifics." I wanted to see him. The urge was overwhelming. I hoped he would wake up soon. Even if I couldn't see him, just asking a doctor about his condition would be enough. I felt a unique sense of kinship with him, likely because his existence made me feel less alone. I had encountered so many bizarre things on my own; knowing that Jin Mu might have had the same experiences—even if only in a dream—and might be able to answer my questions gave me a sense of peace. To use a cliché, I wasn't fighting this battle alone. I asked them to wait a moment, intending to go with them. But Zhang Litian spoke up. "You guys go ahead. Xiao Ye and I will head over in a bit." The visitors didn't know us, so they simply left after he said that. I was left feeling utterly baffled. I wasn't that close to him, and besides, his leg was broken—how was he going to go anywhere? "Do you want me to get a wheelchair for you?" I glanced at his right leg, which was heavily wrapped in bandages. There were likely two layers of splints and a cast inside. "Do you think I need a wheelchair?" He looked at me, his smile widening as he shook his head. He reached out, placed his paper cup on the nightstand, and stood up right in front of me. My realization was belated, but a very bad feeling finally began to sink in. The smile that was always heavy with meaning, the deep eyes, the vague and suggestive words... And now, walking on a broken leg as if it were nothing. I took a step back and swallowed hard. "I'm leaving. I'm a bit hungry, going to find something to eat." He watched me, smiling without a word, and began walking toward me step by step. Because the group of people from earlier had passed through, the curtains separating the beds had all been pulled open. Now, through those gaps, I saw more patients standing up. They were all my classmates. They had different faces, different heights, different genders. Some had already changed into their own clothes because the doctors thought they were fit to return to school, while others were still in hospital gowns, parts of their bodies bandaged, some even still hooked up to IV drips. But now, every single one of them stood up, as if by prior arrangement. And their expressions were all identical to Zhang Litian's—watching me with a faint, mocking smile. It wasn't that they were mindless. It wasn't a fit of insanity. But that synchronized movement made it even more terrifying. It was as if behind all these different faces, there was actually only one soul, one pair of eyes. I finally realized where the sense of wrongness I felt when looking at Zhang Litian came from. His eyes were pure black, like a deep well. We often pride ourselves as the "black-eyed" descendants of the Yan and Huang Emperors, but in reality, the eyes of Eastern people are brown. How could a human's eyes be pure black? I swallowed and yanked a curtain aside, heading for the exit. I refused to believe it—this hospital was full of people. There were elderly people and children in the hallways, doctors and nurses moving back and forth, and my roommate was due back any minute. What could they possibly dare to do to me? But they kept following behind me. I heard a nurse run over to stop Zhang Litian, shouting, "You can't just walk around!" But besides him, others were swaying as they followed. No matter which way I turned, I couldn't get away. I tried to go down the stairs, but suspicious classmates were coming up from below. A person suddenly stepped out from the nurse's station ahead and even winked at me. I wanted to ask for help, but I didn't know where to start. To the doctors, these were just patients who were ready to be discharged. There were only so many paths on this floor. No one would believe they were trying to corner me. And so, I had to make a choice again: the emergency stairs or the elevator. This time, I chose the elevator. One had just arrived on our floor; it was already crowded and the doors were about to close. I rushed forward, pried the closing doors open, and squeezed inside. A mother holding a child shot me a glare. I was terrified it would be over capacity, but it wasn't. The elevator doors slid shut smoothly, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Inside the car, surrounded by the smell of disinfectant, I actually felt a long-lost sense of safety. But then I suddenly noticed someone smiling at me in the elevator's mirror. He was standing not far from me, separated by the woman holding the child. I knew something was wrong with him too, but I told myself that with so many people in the car, there was no way he could do anything to me. The elevator stopped on the third floor. The woman with the child got off, leaving an empty space. I tried to squeeze further in, earning scowls from the others, and that man stepped up right next to me. His entire body was burning hot; once again, I felt that terrifying, scorching heat. The elevator doors closed once more. I chanted silently in my mind: *We'll be at the first floor soon. Just one more floor, just one more!* ***