Doomsday Wonderland

“I want to buy a batch of houses. If possible, I want them to be near to each other…”

Lin Sanjiu had just started her sentence when she was interrupted by a loud noise. The contents of the toilet sloshed in the holding tank, making a noise so loud that it drowned out all other sounds. Baffled, Lin Sanjiu peered ahead to see that the young property agent had leaned his body forward with his brows tightly creased. He touched his ears and mouthed, “Keep going. I can hear you.”

He only released the flush lever after a long while, and the toilet gradually came to a still.

“What…are you doing?” Lin Sanjiu asked with a blank expression as she was too flummoxed to come up with a response, “Why would you…?”

“Ahh, don’t mind about that. It’s just a requisite measure.” Timo shrugged. Then, he turned and tore several pieces of documents down from the wall. After he shoved the documents into the gaping collar in front of his chest, he lifted the toilet lid. “May I know what kind of houses are you looking at?”

“I’m looking for a batch of houses that are very near to one another. A contiguous lot, if possible,” Lin Sanjiu said hesitantly, “Also, it has to come with a complete set of facilities.”

“A contiguous lot? Hmm, alright.” Timo lifted the toilet lid. “I’m not sure if I have anything that suits your criteria, but anyway, let’s take a look.”

‘Look at what?’

Just as Lin Sanjiu thought that the man would pull out the documents about the houses—or a packet of heroin—something fluttered in her brain which prompted her to look down.

Earlier on, she only heard the water flowing down the tank, but she did not hear the sloshing of contents moving into the pipe. Right now, the toilet bowl was overfilled with a sea of blackish liquid. She could clearly see the ripples that spread towards the rim of the bowl.

“First time buying a house?” the estate broker teased, “Well, you’ll see the light soon. Come, sit here.”

After that, he pulled a folding chair out from nowhere. A clueless Lin Sanjiu crammed herself into the chair and sat next to the toilet bowl. It was uncomfortable for her as the cubicle did not have enough space for her to position her long legs.

After that, Timo took a cane out from behind the water tank. He sat down and began stirring the blackish liquid inside the toilet bowl.

“Why are you looking at me?” asked Timo as he rolled his eyes at his stupefied customer. The unconvincing real estate broker pulled the cane out and rapped the rim of the bowl. “Look here. Is this what you are looking for?”

Before Lin Sanjiu could ask where she should look, she instinctively peered into the toilet bowl.

The blackish liquid was clearing up as various colors and shapes began to fill the space, forming a view that was very familiar to Lin Sanjiu. She felt like she was looking at a house tour. The living room was an unusual circular space surrounded by a ring of rainforest-like plants.

“This is…” Looking straight into the pool of water, Lin Sanjiu was so dumbfounded that she was tongue-tied. The quality of the image was superb and the water was calm, disturbed only by the occasional rippling wavelet.

“This is the most suitable house on hand, and the house is in tip-top condition. What you’re seeing now is a kind of liquid crystal that can playback whatever graphics that have been preloaded into it. Why do you look so surprised? Have you never seen a Special Item before? I thought you were a posthuman, so you should be accustomed to a gadget such as this. Anyway, this is a kind of vision fluid that was developed from a Special Item.”

“What’s the use of developing it?” As Lin Sanjiu asked, she craned her neck to have a clearer look at the graphic in the toilet bowl. The view had now changed to a rectangular passageway that looked like a corridor. However, the corridor was too long, so the exit was merely a globe of light the size of a human fist. The broker tapped lightly on the corridor, and several sheets fell off from the walls on both sides, revealing the darkness within. Lin Sanjiu had no idea what the use of it was.

“It is pretty useful, but now isn’t the time to talk about it.”

Lin Sanjiu was certain that Timo was just being lazy. She noticed his indifference from the way he drawled his words when he was introducing the houses.

“How many of you are going to stay there? Including the camouflage barrier, this house has a total area of 2,000 square meters, and all the basic facilities are readily available. It has a total of 12 rooms and several storerooms, so I’m certain it can fit your party perfectly.” Like all other real estate brokers in the modern days, he was skilled at capturing his customer’s heart by emphasizing the pros of his product.

Lin Sanjiu tried to imagine the day when all of them stayed in a house together. She realized that it was probably a nightmare. Rabbit would surely often pick a fight with Hei Zeji, and she was confident that the cat doctor would abuse his power to help him satisfy his strange hobby of collecting corpses.

“No, I don’t think this will do. Do you have others?” Lin Sanjiu asked, “My friends are all pretty eccentric, and I don’t think they can stay together harmoniously without getting into a fight.”

Upon hearing her words, Timo began to stir the liquid again. There was nothing special about his motions. It occurred to Lin Sanjiu that it was the spot where he dipped the cane into that gave different commands to the vision fluid. When he stopped stirring, the previous image disappeared, to be replaced by a long paragraph filled with tiny letters.

“If you want adjoining houses, currently I have only two on hand, and the other houses nearby have all been sold out. So, I have two options for you. Firstly, you can snap up these two houses first, and then slowly acquire the remaining adjacent houses. Or secondly, you can take a look at one of the condominiums I have right now. It has a quiet environment and an excellent security system, but the compromise is that the price isn’t very customer-friendly.”

Right now, money was her last problem to worry about.

Nevertheless, the image that appeared on top of the toilet bowl did not quite match the image Lin Sanjiu had in mind. The condominium was not a building. In fact, it could not even be called a condominium. It was a perfect annular white eminence with sophisticated metal plates protruding from the hollow center of the ring that formed an intricate pattern.

“This…What’s this?” Lin Sanjiu glanced at Timo. She noticed that the real estate broker believed that she would not be interested in buying the lot, so he looked rather unenthusiastic.

“Why is it a ring?”

“Well, they are designers, and we commoners will never understand a designer’s brain.” Timo spun his black-ringed eyes in a full circle, but he did not look at her. “It’s very spacious. The total area is 302.8 acres with 36 units available. It comes with 4 large dining halls, a tennis court, an air pressure control system, a water circulation system, cold storage…Umm, there’s also a gym, a shooting range, an unmanned semi-autonomous clinic…” He was too lazy to describe every single facility to Lin Sanjiu, so he just sped through the images using the cane and gave a vague explanation.

In the image, the pale cyan wall gave off a metallic sheen. The interior was enormous, and the longer Lin Sanjiu looked at the image, the more she was absorbed into it. She even forgot the fact that she was staring at the toilet bowl.

Perhaps it was some sort of feeling that she could not describe, but the moment she saw the white ring, she could feel her heartbeat getting faster.

“Okay, I’m buying it. How much is the price?” she uttered the words before she could even come to her senses.

Several moments of silence crawled by and left a slimy trail of denial behind them.

Timo lifted his heavy eyelids. His eyes were getting wider and larger with every passing second, looking like a wolf that had its eyes set on a prey. “The price is high.” He placed the cane on the ground as his hands clasped together tightly. “I mean like, insanely high.”

“Just name the price.”

Timo quoted a price, but it made no sense to Lin Sanjiu because she had no idea how many red crystals it would cost. She only knew that it was a huge sum of money. However, the price of the unit was decided by the landlord. If she wanted a discount, she had to meet the landlord in person to activate her Scrooge McDuck power.

“It doesn’t matter. You can convert the money into a check in the Heaven zone. Then, you just fill in the numbers.” Timo’s attitude towards Lin Sanjiu suddenly changed. “And my brokerage fee is—”

“Hold on a sec. Don’t you need to bring me to check the units before we strike the deal?”

The broker froze. He smacked his lips as if he was considering how to reply to that question so as not to rub Lin Sanjiu the wrong way. “Well, you can’t personally go and have a look at the unit. Don’t get me wrong! The units are all in perfect condition. If you want, I can try to arrange with the landlord and set up a holographic tour for you.”

“Why can’t I go and check the units personally?” Lin Sanjiu asked, her brows raised in question.

Timo sighed as he moved his hands to rub his face. He looked like an exhausted marathon runner who had just reached the finish line and was told that the organizer had decided to extend the marathon for another twenty kilometers.

“Why do you think I set up my office inside a washroom?” Timo said, his face drawn. “Do you have any idea how many times I have to listen to other people pee and poop in a day? Well, that’s fine for me since the moment I decided to make a washroom my office, I knew what were the compromises and what I would go through every day, but I never thought this kind of thing would happen to me! Last night, somebody showed me his finger through the gap below and tried to lure me out…No, I just can’t. I am not gay.”

Staring dumbfoundedly at Timo, who suddenly went out of control and began ranting and raving, Lin Sanjiu said, “Then, why don’t you leave?”

“Amongst all my other spots, washroom is the safest.” Timo let out a long sigh. “Being a real estate broker is not as easy as you think. There are a lot of hidden crises and dangers lurking in the dark waiting to mow you down when you are at your most vulnerable. If I had good parents, then perhaps I wouldn’t have to work in this industry.”

Suddenly, he peered at the door and stopped speaking.

“You make yourself sound like you are a drug—” Lin Sanjiu could not help laughing.

The real estate broker pulled the toilet lid down dejectedly. He threw himself onto it and continued, “You posthumans possess all sorts of powerful abilities, and there’s but one character common among you—you tend to be impulsive, and in the end, you make more enemies than friends. Those who have settled down in the Twelve Worlds are even more so. Everybody wants to catch the broker who sells houses to their enemy so that they can flush out the location of their enemy’s house or the way to deactivate the house’s camouflage barrier or cut off their enemy’s escape route. More importantly, the technology of installing a fixed teleport point in a house has already been diffused to society.”

Lin Sanjiu was bewildered as understanding dawned upon her. If her enemy found out the location of her house and hid in the dark, they could wait for the right moment to strike. For example, the few seconds before they opened their eyes after they were transferred from another world was their most vulnerable state. In that state, regardless of how powerful she was, she was certain that she would be dead in no time.

“Do you know why there are ordinary humans like me in this industry?”

Lin Sanjiu shook her head.

“Because we are weak, and you posthumans can get rid of us whenever.” Timo looked straight into her eyes. “So, we have learned our lesson. We won’t and will never ask for some information such as the location of the houses that might put us in danger.”

“Well, luckily I don’t have one.” Lin Sanjiu smiled in relief. “I used to have one, but now, I guess we’ve already become friends.”

Timo stared at her for a moment before saying, “Please don’t make me laugh. Among those who could afford to buy a property in the Twelve Worlds, I am 100% certain that there’s somebody out there that wants you dead. This is an unbreakable curse.”

“I’m being very serious. I really don’t have any enemies,” Lin Sanjiu said again.

“Well, I guess you are lucky then,” Timo reluctantly agreed. After all, Lin Sanjiu was one of his largest accounts after such a long while. He rose to his feet, pulled out a piece of paper and wrote something on it. “Tomorrow at this time, go to the address written on this paper to view the hologram. It would be even better if we can strike a deal on the same day. Well, that’s all from me. The exit is over there. Please see yourself out.”

Lin Sanjiu’s heart went pit-a-pat. The snowy white annulus showed up in her brain again. Lin Sanjiu had no idea why, but she already had her heart fixed upon the building at first sight. She felt as anxious as a young man on his way to his first date, and she could not wait for the arrival of the next day.

Naga-ashi turned its head the moment the door opened. It had been waiting for Lin Sanjiu at the basin.

Timo watched Lin Sanjiu go out of the washroom. Lin Sanjiu kept her distance from the kuchisake-onna while her head was held low. She did not even spare a single glance at Naga-ashi as if it was invisible.

On their way back, the kuchisake-onna brandished its blade-like arm in the air, her movements so fast Lin Sanjiu could see nothing but only afterimages. It occurred to her that in just a few hours, it had accumulated enough desire to be vented again.