Doomsday Wonderland

Wu Yiliu stared down at his coffee cup, a lingering coffee stain clinging to the rim. He fixated on the brown mark, feeling as if his eyelids were shrinking, soon unable to contain his eye sockets and eyeballs— he knew his eyes were widening abnormally, revealing his fear to anyone who saw, yet he couldn't control it.

Li Bo was finished too.

The restaurant's leather armchair beneath him had become the only solid and reliable thing in the whole world. He sat on that small cushion, and the world outside seemed like coffee with milk, a flowing liquid hue, mingling and swirling together, constantly rotating, sinking, rising and falling, crumbling apart... Only those two faceless faces in front of him were getting closer and closer.

The thing that once wore Li Bo's face casually tossed its face onto the dining table and asked, "Wu Yiliu, what are you staring at?"

How is it still able to speak? Wu Yiliu felt as if he was on the verge of passing out, his mind a chaotic mess. If the muscles beneath the skin had been exposed like a physiological anatomy model, perhaps speaking wouldn't be strange, but those two... those two...

"The seafood mixed rice is ready."

The female waiter with a face cracked open, revealing black eye sockets, inadvertently saved his life at that moment. As she spoke, a steaming hot heavy plate landed in front of Wu Yiliu, diverting the attention of the two entities across from him. The table was small, and his plate clanked against Li Bo's, causing the human face on the table to quiver slightly.

'They haven't noticed I'm different; they haven't noticed I'm different.'

Clutching onto this glimmer of hope, Wu Yiliu abruptly stood, almost knocking over the coffee cup, "I-I'll go wash my hands. Before eating, I must wash my hands..."

"Be careful," Alice quickly reached out to steady the cup. Her hands were still human, but the thing on her neck made the buzzing sound as she spoke.

'What is she? How can she talk? Is my hallucination getting worse? If I reach out and touch their faces on the table now, will I feel them?'

Wu Yiliu stumbled toward the restroom, startling a passing waiter. If it weren't for the stubborn awareness in the back of his mind, reminding him to appear normal, he might have already knocked over numerous people and tables. He rushed into the restroom, locked himself in a stall, and fumbled with the latch.

Logically, humans can't remove their faces. There are no ghosts in the world; it must be a problem with his mind. Wu Yiliu's vision began to blur, so he rubbed his eyes, immediately wetting his hands. As his vision cleared, he realized he was crying, unable to control himself. He wanted not only to cry but also to vomit—

"Can you... can you see it too?"

A trembling female voice suddenly echoed in the men's restroom.

Wu Yiliu froze, quickly wiped his face, and held his breath without responding. The woman closed the door and came in, seemingly confused, and whispered, "Don't be afraid of me; I've been scared for a long time alone. Please, answer me."

Wu Yiliu gritted his teeth in silence. Who knew what was outside; even if he saw the other person and her face was normal, there was no guarantee that she wouldn't remove her face later— moreover, all this could be a hallucination from his possibly schizophrenic brain.

The woman suddenly sobbed, seemingly unable to bear it any longer. She entered the adjacent stall, and Wu Yiliu quickly moved a few steps in the opposite direction. He slightly lowered his body and saw a pair of black women's flat leather shoes, adorned with butterfly knots on the surface.

"I'm beginning to wonder if I'm crazy," she said with sobs, accompanied by a thick nasal sound and the continuous sniffling. The woman herself didn't seem to know if she was talking to him or venting to herself. "I can't take it anymore. At first, I could pretend in the company, but recently, my parents, my best friends, almost all of them... Their faces have started to change, and those who haven't changed can't see anything... I can't take it anymore, I wish my face would deform too..."

The door to the men's bathroom was suddenly pushed open, and the woman hastily stifled her crying.

Both of them held their breath, each confined in their respective stalls, listening to a set of footsteps entering the bathroom, approaching the urinal. As the sound of water splashing rang out, Wu Yiliu thought for a moment, quietly opened the door a crack, and looked out.

When the man zipped up and walked over to the sink to wash his hands, his teetering face reflected in the mirror. He seemed completely unaware that his face had skewed entirely to the side of his ear, and where there should have been facial features, there was now only a stretch of tight, flat human skin. The edge of the skin had a small black hole, perhaps an eye; after looking at his reflection, he left as if quite satisfied.

The woman stopped speaking. Through the partition, Wu Yiliu could faintly feel the gradually intensifying fear on the other side - he could imagine her thoughts: after all, he had not given his opinion, what if he also had a problem with his face? What if she had just exposed herself to a deformed person?

As he was thinking this, he heard a "click" from next door, and the woman opened her door. Wu Yiliu quickly closed his own door, and before he could decide what to do, the woman had hurriedly run away.

He gave a bitter smile.

It seemed that what she had just said was true; otherwise, she wouldn't have suddenly become afraid, wouldn't have fled without being seen... What about him? What should he do now?

He couldn't stay in there forever; but after going out, how should he face those two things on the table that used to be Li Bo and Alice? When they discovered he couldn't take off his face, what would they do to him?

If it were really a hallucination, that would be great.

Wu Yiliu leaned against the door, lost in thought, unable to muster any courage. Subconsciously, like a child, he felt that if he hid long enough, things would turn the page - until a loud knocking on the door nearly made him fall, followed by Li Bo's voice. "Wu Yiliu, are you okay?"

If you didn't think about what was showing under his hair, he sounded almost the same as before. Wu Yiliu collapsed on the toilet lid, his throat feeling choked, and it took him a while to squeeze out the words, "No, no problem..."

"Then hurry back," Li Bo said, standing close to the door outside.

Wu Yiliu wiped his cold sweat and tears several times, stood up trembling, and opened the door. There were no windows in this bathroom, he couldn't escape like in a movie; besides following Li Bo back to the dining room, he had no other way to go.

Li Bo had put his face back on. Not perfectly, but casually and carelessly hung on the facial bone, with half an eye swinging back and forth in the air like a small flag in the wind.

Wu Yiliu was escorted back to the dining room by Li Bo like a condemned prisoner. There were still only a few scattered guests in the dining room, some still normal, some already unbearable to look at, but no one's face showed any unusual expression.

The woman who had spoken earlier seemed to be in her twenties; now, there was only one young female guest in the restaurant of this age, with a normal appearance, eating by the window. But as Wu Yiliu walked by, he found her calm and her eyes not red; he noticed she was wearing a pair of white sandals.

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