Disaster Strikes - Chapter 1:

Chapter 1: Prologue – The Disappearance of Chen Mo

(Translator’s Note: This chapter acts as a prologue, but it does not set the tone for the story. It is fine even if you skip this chapter. It is about how MC’s disappearance affected his close friends.)

Six years after graduating from university, Wang Cong, a member of the city’s working class immersed himself in busy work every day. In his occasional leisure time, he wasted it on games.

One day, he received a call from an unfamiliar number on his phone.

“Hello?”

“Wang Cong! You know Chen Mo is real, he just disappeared suddenly. I’m not crazy, why didn’t you tell them about Chen Mo! Why!”

Listening to the angry voice on the other end of the phone, Wang Cong’s face turned very ugly.

“I…”

With a hint of guilt and apology in his tone Wang Cong hesitated, not knowing what to do.

“Chen Mo is real! I’m not crazy! You bastard!”

Before Wang Cong could respond, the other party hung up the phone. Because of this call, Wang Cong’s mental state was in a daze for the whole day.

Nightfall.

Wang Cong returned to his apartment alone, and his room was particularly quiet.

He took off his coat, turned on the desk lamp and sat quietly at the desk, his chin resting on his hands. With increasing guilt in his eyes, his expression gradually became painful.

“It’s been ten years. Because I didn’t want to be like you, being seen as a madman by everyone always telling others about Chen Mo who didn’t exist in their eyes, I didn’t tell anyone. I just wanted to live a normal life.”

The beginning of the story took place in a provincial city near the capital, in a full-time art vocational school.

It was March 12, 2011, 56 days before the college entrance examination, and it was Chen Mo’s birthday that day.

The reason why Wang Cong remembered it so clearly was because on March 11th that year, a magnitude 9 earthquake occurred in the waters near a certain island country, triggering a tsunami and classmates in the class celebrated fervently due to their patriotism.

As the school was under full-time closed management and the college entrance examination was approaching, everyone was under a lot of pressure. Wang Cong remember Chen Mo also said that day the next day was his birthday and he wanted to celebrate it with them.

Then there was the nuclear radiation leak and the salt scarcity incident.

As he recalled, Wang Cong’s thoughts became more and more distant, as if he had returned to that winter ten years ago, the day Chen Mo disappeared.

…

At that time, Wang Cong was very introverted with not many friends at school, usually only interacting frequently with two classmates.

One was my deskmate Wu Huiteng and the other was Chen Mo who had always lived with his grandmother in the neighboring house.

Chen Mo’s parents divorced and remarried, so he lived with his grandmother and became his neighbour. They were in the same class since junior high and later they were assigned to the same class in high school also, so their relationship naturally goes without saying.

To celebrate Chen Mo’s birthday, Wang Cong specially called his cousin to order a cake from outside to be delivered.

There was a low wall in the backyard of the school, outside of which was a dirt road under the railway and behind that was a breeding farm quite remote, so people often climbed over the wall here and teachers often came here to check on duty making him nervous for a long time when I received the cake.

Chen Mo also had only a few friends, but he was not unsociable. It was just that, because of his family situation he was not willing to take the initiative to communicate with others. But because he was very handsome and he studied very well, in the final exam of the second year of high school he scored 148 in mathematics ranking first in the class and eighth in the school for the total score, so they knew that many girls liked him.

That noon, the three of them agreed to go to the abandoned dormitory building behind the school to celebrate Chen Mo’s birthday privately.

This dormitory building was not abandoned before but was rented to another railway vocational school however because of the poor discipline of the school the lease was not renewed later so it became vacant.

The brick building looked very dilapidated, with the red bricks starting to darken and emitting a musty smell but it was one of the favourite places for some couples in the school. In the evening, some people would play badminton here, mostly freshmen.

Both Wu Huiteng and Wang Cong brought gifts.

Wang Cong’s gift was the cake and Wu Huiteng’s gift was a pair of Yonex badminton rackets, which cost a few hundred yuan which was a huge sum of money for them at that time.

Chen Mo also gave them gifts in return.

He gave Wu Huiteng the complete set of “Slam Dunk” comic books and he gave Wang Cong a Winnie the Pooh keychain which was bought by his parents from abroad before they divorced.

After celebrating and eating the cake there was still some time before class. Wu Huiteng suggested playing badminton to experience his Yonex racket again, with six balls each and the loser being the loser.

Although the weather in northern March was very cold, although the sunlight was a bit dazzling and there was wind which was not suitable for playing badminton. So when they were playing unconsciously they started to move closer to the abandoned dormitory building to avoid the wind until Wu Huiteng hit the shuttlecock too hard and it flew into the window of the second floor of the abandoned dormitory building.

All the windows of this building were sealed with broken wooden boards, and many of the glass behind the boards were already broken and the shuttlecock fell in through the cracks in one of the broken wooden boards.

Because there was only one shuttlecock Wu Huiteng suggested going in to pick it up.

Someone said that before the school was built this place was a graveyard and that there were some strange things happening before. Wang Cong was a little scared but Chen Mo said it was his gift so he climbed in with Wu Huiteng.

Wang Cong was responsible for keeping watch outside to watch out for any teachers on duty from coming over.

He remembered very clearly that at least twenty minutes had passed and the two of them inside still hadn’t come out, so he couldn’t help but look around and follow them in.

The hallway was very dark with only a little light coming through the windows blocked by broken wooden boards. It was full of dust and had a rotting mildew smell.

He mustered up his courage lowered his voice and called out to Wu Huiteng and Chen Mo several times afraid of being heard by anyone passing by outside but there was no response.

Since the shuttlecock had fallen to the second floor he tried to go up to the staircase to take a look. The sound of wind blowing through the cracks in the window sounded like the cries of people. He walked a short distance for about two to three minutes, calling out to them several times but getting no response.

“Ahhh!!”

A piercing scream suddenly came from the eerie hallway.

His hair stood on end and he almost didn’t think as he turned and ran back to the window he came from scrambling to get out of it. Only after he was out and panting did he see Wu Huiteng also climbing out of the window.

“Where’s Chen Mo?”

He asked Wu Huiteng.

At that time, he still thought that the other two were trying to scare him.

“I don’t know!” Wu Huiteng gasped, “He said he lost the keychain, his key seemed to have fallen to where we just picked up the ball so he went back to look for the key. I was waiting for him, but that ghostly scream scared me. When I heard someone running, I followed, thinking it was Chen Mo.”

That’s when Wang Cong realized Wu Huiteng mistook him for Chen Mo.

“Why were you two inside for so long?”

“We weren’t in for even a minute, were we?”

Wu Huiteng’s words made me feel stunned, he had been clearly been waiting here for at least twenty minutes.

Next, the two of them waited outside panting for a long time,but Chen Mo didn’t come out. They reached thier heads into the hallway several times, calling out Chen Mo’s name, but got no response.

It wasn’t until the bell for class rang that Wu Huiteng noticed that the “Slam Dunk” comic book Chen Mo had given him was missing. It had been placed on that piece of cement ground just now.

Without much thought, they hurried back to the classroom.

When they arrived at the classroom the math teacher had been there for a while teaching. Seeing them panting, he didn’t say much and let them in.

they sat together in the back row and naturally passed by Chen Mo’s seat. But we found that his seat was actually taken by the math class representative, Rong Yeye.

After they sat down, they looked around the class for a while but didn’t see Chen Mo.

“Have you seen Chen Mo?”

Wang Cong quietly tapped the shoulder of Zhu Yidan in front of him and asked.

“Who’s Chen Mo?”

Zhu Yidan’s question stunned me.

She had secretly liked Chen Mo since her first year of high school.

Wu Huiteng seemed a little impatient and repeated, “Chen Mo! Ah!”

The math teacher threw a chalk head and asked Wu Huiteng to stand up and listen to the class. they could only suppress their doubts and wait until class was over.

As soon as class ended, Wu Huiteng began to ask one by one in the class about Chen Mo’s whereabouts but without exception everyone showed a puzzled look. Who was Chen Mo? Even Chen Mo’s previous deskmate looked puzzled, as if everyone had forgotten about him or this person had never appeared.

Wu Huiteng once thought that the whole class was playing a prank on him.

Then he started asking students from other classes and even asked the teachers but all got the same result. Chen Mo seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Everyone had forgotten about his existence including the grade board on the wall which no longer had Chen Mo’s name on it.

It felt like there was some kind of force that had taken Chen Mo to another univer or dimension and this universe was mysteriously restoring the almost negligible impact of Chen Mo’s disappearance.

Wu Huiteng later became somewhat obsessed telling everyone he met that Chen Mo had disappeared.

The head teacher noticed Wu Huiteng’s abnormality and called his parents saying that because of the pressure of the college entrance examination, he was constantly looking for a non-existent classmate and suggested psychological counseling and treatment.

At first, Wu Huiteng kept telling everyone in the QQ class group about Chen Mo’s past including his previous grades his relationship with others in the class and so on. But he was eventually kicked out of the class group by the annoyed class monitor.

During the college entrance examination Wu Huiteng came to the school once. He publicly questioned me why I didn’t tell others about Chen Mo.

I was very scared at the time because I didn’t want to be seen as a madman by others so I never spoke up.

“Chen Mo mistook you! I’m not crazy! I can’t believe I made friends with someone like you!”

He still remembers to this day the sight of Wu Huiteng surrounded by people with strange looks his painful and powerless arguments repeated over and over wanting me to come out and testify but his silence eventually turned Wu Huiteng’s gaze into anger.

He resented me for not defending him and the mysteriously disappeared Chen Mo. He wasn’t a madman.

(End of chapter 1)