Chapter Four: The Crossed-Out Diary

Even though she had already mentally prepared herself, Lily still couldn’t hide the gloom on her face when she heard the bell. There really must have been something wrong with John’s team; if she and the others didn’t go searching...

Lily stopped her wandering thoughts, patted her cheeks gently, moved the brown string that served as a bookmark in John’s diary to the page she’d just finished, closed the diary, turned off the desk lamp, and left John’s room with the diary in one hand.

She wanted to take the diary back to her own room to read slowly, though judging from her earlier experience, it would probably make her very angry.

But since going out to search for John was already a foregone conclusion, Lily needed to prepare thoroughly; the only thing she couldn’t be sure of was how much John had written that would actually be useful.

And there was one more thing: the day after tomorrow was her birthday, her fifteenth coming-of-age ceremony.

At St. Lance Orphanage in the capital city of Dunlun, British Empire, the coming-of-age ceremony for children was held on their fifteenth birthday.

If a child reached this age and had not yet been adopted by a family or taken away by some institution for a particular talent, then on the day after their coming-of-age celebration, they would have to pack their belongings and leave the orphanage. With the Empire’s comprehensive child laws and welfare benefits for orphans, they would seek their first job to support themselves.

Now, there were no more teachers or adults left at the orphanage. In the first two or three months after the fog enveloped the orphanage, the teachers, driven by fear of the never-ending gloom and the inability to contact the outside world, all chose their own ways to escape. One by one, they left or scattered; even the orphanage director fled, and none ever returned.

The orphanage had truly become an orphanage in every sense.

Just earlier in the basement, Hugh had strongly opposed her idea of venturing out like John did. She, Aiden, and Hugh themselves had all witnessed something terrifying:

On his birthday, at midnight, John was suddenly erased, inch by inch, as if by an unseen hand wielding a giant eraser. The process was very fast—only 2.4 seconds.

Although John reappeared in front of them afterward, that fear was beyond words—just as Lily had read in a psychology book: all fear comes from the unknown.

A few fourteen- and fifteen-year-old children watched as their companion was suddenly “erased,” and found the door became impossible to open, no matter how they shouted or banged; no one could hear them...

It truly frightened them out of their wits.

Strangest of all, that day, Aiden’s wristwatch and the clock in John’s room both stopped at the exact same time—

00:24:24!

This made it hard not to suspect that John’s disappearance was connected to the mysterious fog that shrouded the world.

Now Lily pinned her hopes on this unknown terror—of course Hugh thought she must be crazy.

But later, the group speculated further, believing that if the fog was indeed causing these effects, then perhaps every child reaching their fifteenth coming-of-age would be “erased” once.

As for what John experienced after being “erased,” he was vague, only saying he could barely remember.

Yet now, his diary mentioned “that world.” Lily had reason to suspect John was lying; he did remember what he’d been through.

But why would John lie?

Forget it. Since there was no answer, she’d let it go for now, get something to eat, and examine John’s diary more carefully in her room.

She didn’t see Hugh in the dining hall, but Lily didn’t have the energy to care. She believed Hugh understood, but needed time to accept it. So she finished her dinner quickly, exchanged a few words with Ander, then hurried back to her room.

She spread the diary out on her desk again, switched on the lamp, and took out another small notebook to jot down important sections and her own thoughts.

August 28, Rain + Fog

After borrowing Aiden’s Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary, I finally figured out what those two blocky characters that always haunt my dreams are—

Midnight

Those are the characters, but what do they mean? Just looking at the dictionary’s explanations for each character, I can’t find a definition that helps me understand. Couldn’t this Oxford dictionary include more compound words?

At this point, Lily copied the two characters, “midnight,” onto her own notebook, a little crookedly, and put a question mark after them.

John said these characters haunted his dreams... But he only slept two or three hours a night. Would he even dream?

No wonder some of the younger children said they saw a shadow flitting around the orphanage at night...

It must have been John.

Shaking her head helplessly, Lily turned to the next page, but suddenly clapped her hand over her mouth.

There, John’s diary page had been slashed through line by line with thick, black ink, each stroke at least as wide as a finger. Even the blank areas weren’t spared—the entire page was a solid, inky black.

“What on earth...” Lily finally regained her composure, staring at the diary in front of her, at a loss.

Had John done this himself? And why?

The whole page was black except for the date at the very top, faintly visible—September 1, Rain.

“September 1... September 1... Did something happen?” Lily couldn’t remember, which meant, in other words, that nothing major had occurred.

Thinking it over, Lily got up and left her room, heading to the computer area on the third floor. From the drawer of a small table beside a computer, she took out a ledger, then returned to her room.

On her way, a few children playing on the third floor greeted her. She only responded with a brief smile and didn’t stop, which surprised them—normally, Sister Lily would chat with them a little.

But Lily didn’t have time for that, hurrying back to her desk and quickly scanning the ledger she held.

“September 1... September 1... Here it is!” Lily found what she was looking for.

August 29: John’s group set out for a ‘screen patrol.’ Team members: John, Campos, Hodges, Tran, Camille, Watson.

Returned the afternoon of September 1.

This ledger was used to record when orphanage members went out—a long-standing tradition. Though there were no adults anymore, Aiden still insisted on keeping it up.

So, what exactly happened during John’s “screen patrol” expedition?