Seven Days and Nights with the Werewolf

Night 1·06

Li Sinian jiggled the doorknob a few times to confirm it was locked tight, then turned back. He grabbed two bottles of wine, handed one to Fang Daichuan, and they sat face-to-face on the windowsill, staring down at the sea outside.

“I don’t think I ever told you my role?” Fang Daichuan said, patting his pockets. But he’d disposed of everything related to his role card to avoid suspicion, leaving him with no proof at all. He groaned in frustration. “I’m the Witch. I bound my identity card and threw the role card into the sea. Wait, let me get the vials for you to see.”

Li Sinian smiled from the opposite windowsill. “No need. —I guessed it long ago. I trust you.” But Fang Daichuan shook his head firmly, pulling the two glass vials out of his pants pocket—one sealed with an hourglass-shaped stopper, the other with a skull.

He held them out for Li Sinian to see, insistent. “You guessing it is one thing. I don’t want any hidden doubts or rifts between us. We said we’d play with our cards on the table. Honesty is how you earn trust.”

Li Sinian froze, his smile fading. He stared at Fang Daichuan for a long, long time. Fang Daichuan raised an eyebrow at him, his dog-like eyes glinting like fireflies in a summer mountain forest. Li Sinian couldn’t deny the flutter in his chest—the walls he’d built around his heart for years had wavered, just for a moment.

He forced down the strange feeling, plastering his careless smile back on his face. “Are you accusing me of not being honest enough?”

Fang Daichuan laughed. “I know people like you are used to being alone, that it’s not easy to accept a partner. And I know you’ve got a lot of secrets. I’m laying myself bare because I hope to earn a little of your trust. As for you… well, I’ve got a goldfish bowl for a brain, remember? Whether you talk about your secrets or not, I trust you. It doesn’t matter how many icebergs you’re hiding inside.”

“I take back what I said earlier,” Li Sinian shook his head and smiled. “You’re wise in your own way. You see things clearly.”

Fang Daichuan preened, raising an eyebrow. “Of course I do. In my line of work, you don’t survive long if you can’t read the room. I’ve made it this far by keeping a cool head and seeing things for what they are.”

He twisted open the wine bottle Li Sinian had given him, swirled it, and glanced out at the sea. “I wish we’d met somewhere else. If we were in Qingdao right now, we could go scuba diving, surfing, drinking by the shore. The sequel to a movie franchise I’ve followed for over ten years is out today. Sigh.” He let out a long breath.

But Li Sinian climbed right off the windowsill. Fang Daichuan stared at him in confusion.

“You wanted to go to the sea, didn’t you?” Li Sinian said. “We can’t dive or surf on this godforsaken island, but we can drink and watch the waves. C’mon—let’s go right now.”

Maybe it was the reckless thrill of living on the edge, or maybe Li Sinian’s words were just too tempting, but Fang Daichuan was easily swayed. In this life-or-death moment, he actually grabbed the wine bottle and followed Li Sinian out the door.

The entire villa was deathly silent. The dead man still lay where he’d fallen in the first-floor hall.

Fang Daichuan tiptoed past the body, then suddenly froze. Li Sinian noticed his hesitation at once and turned back, looking at him in surprise.

“Do you think he didn’t have time to destroy his role card?” a thought flashed across Fang Daichuan’s mind. “He never left the villa. Unless he tore it up and flushed it down the toilet, there might be some clues on him.” It was a lesson he’d learned from years of playing single-player RPGs—key items from the living were often traps for high-level quests, but the dead never lied. Their items were always the key to the next step.

Li Sinian nodded, squatting down and prodding the corpse with his finger. “Dead men tell no tales. You’ve got a point. You search him.”

“Me?” Fang Daichuan’s face paled. “Isn’t this a little wrong…”

Li Sinian raised an eyebrow. “You carried a corpse to the shore earlier. Scared of this?”

Fang Daichuan knelt half beside the body, crossed himself on his forehead, chin, and shoulders, and muttered a quick apology under his breath—*I have no choice, forgive me*. Then he gritted his teeth and lifted the dead man’s shirt.

There was a thin card in his pants pocket—his fingerprint-bound identity card. Nothing else: no vials, no role cards, no instruction booklets. Fang Daichuan held up the identity card, twisting it in the light, but saw no marks at all.

“No vials means he’s definitely not a Werewolf or the Witch,” Li Sinian said.

The two searched for over ten minutes, but found nothing else.

Fang Daichuan thought for a moment. “Do you know the role distribution for the thirteen players? How many Witches and Seers are there?”

Li Sinian shook his head. “I didn’t prepare these boxes. I have no idea the exact setup. But going by the usual Werewolf Kill rules for thirteen players, there are three special roles, three or four Werewolves, and the rest are Villagers.”

As he spoke, Li Sinian straightened the dead man’s clothes. “C’mon. Let’s go drink. Live for the moment—tomorrow’s troubles can wait for tomorrow.”

The waves crashed against the shore as always. The two climbed up a tall rock and sat facing the sea.

Li Sinian stared into the distance. The black rocks were cut off abruptly by the water at one spot, a sheer drop of over three meters to the sea, standing like a cliff along the coastline. They sat atop this cliff, listening to the waves roar like an abyss calling. “Actually, you guessed a lot of things right, even if you got the conclusion wrong. Strictly speaking, I have a history with this island.” Li Sinian couldn’t hold back the words any longer.

Fang Daichuan hugged his knees and sat beside him.

“I suspect my father’s death is tied to this island.” Li Sinian dropped the bombshell. Even as he spoke, a faint smile lingered on his lips—as if after all these years, talking about this heart-wrenching past only filled him with endless regret and sorrow, and he’d made his peace with death itself. He smiled. “For years, I’ve been trying to get to the truth. What secret does this island hold? My father disappeared here—was he killed, or did he change his identity and leave? I can’t figure it out. I’ve snuck onto the island a few times over the years, but found nothing. Then someone bought the island for a fortune, and right after, the new owner announced this game. My father left some notes saying the volcanic eruption near the island is imminent. That’s why I disguised myself as a mercenary to get in—I hoped to find clues about him before the island is destroyed. —I just never thought it would happen like this. Thinking about it calmly today, maybe the boss noticed something and deliberately threw me into this game. It’s possible.”

Fang Daichuan took a big gulp of wine and clinked his bottle against Li Sinian’s. “So you getting into this game was planned too, huh?”

Li Sinian shook his head. “Everyone who came to this island was lured here on purpose. Do you really think they’re all here for the twenty million US dollars? I haven’t figured out who they really are yet, but every single one of them has some connection to this island, one way or another. You saw how things were tonight—some of them clearly know each other. Tomorrow’s vote is going to be fascinating. Just you wait.”

Fang Daichuan took another gulp of wine. The cry of a seabird echoed in the distance.

“Isn’t this the best way to drink?” Li Sinian set aside his troubles for a moment, popping the cork off another bottle. Pale golden liquid splashed into the air, thick and glistening like flowing gold leaf. He tilted his head back and took a big sip, feeling the sweet, warm liquid slide down his throat and into his heavy stomach.

Fang Daichuan nodded. “I’ve never really been good at drinking wine, though. Manager Deng hired a teacher to teach me all the etiquette—how to swirl the glass, how to smell it, how to spout a bunch of nonsense I don’t understand to compliment the wine. Supposedly it’s red wine etiquette. Right now, all I can say is screw etiquette.”

The wail of the sea wind sounded like the low hum of an organ, and the sparkling wine’s effervescent taste tricked them into a false sense of celebration.

They drank for a while, then stumbled down from the rocky outcrops in the dark, wine bottles in hand. The farther down they went, the louder the organ-like hum grew—its low, mournful notes mixed with occasional high trills, sending a spooky shiver down the spine.

“What’s that sound?” Fang Daichuan c****d his ear to listen.

Li Sinian stood at the base of the rocks, listening silently for a moment, then guessed. “Probably the tide pushing air into the cracks in the rocks.” He looked up at the three-meter-tall cliff-like rock face. “These rocks must be full of air holes, even large inner cavities. The rising and falling tide changes the air pressure in the holes—that’s how an organ works.”

Fang Daichuan tilted his head back for another sip of wine, then flipped the bottle to check the origin and vintage. “Semi-sweet sparkling wine from Burgundy. High residual sugar, a subtle muscat aroma. It’s supposed to pair with foie gras or seafood. Drinking it like this is amazing, but it feels like a waste.”

“Is this you spouting nonsense you don’t understand to compliment the wine?” Li Sinian turned back and smiled.

Fang Daichuan nodded, taking another sip. “Too bad the owner of this wine cellar isn’t here to hear my compliments. What a shame.”

Li Sinian threw his head back and laughed. After a big gulp of wine, he tore open his shirt in one quick move. His skin was deathly pale, glowing like ice jade under the faint pale blue moonlight—cold, hard, unfeeling, yet somehow stirring a strange urge to hold him close.

“Foie gras is out of the question, but wait for your brother to get you some seafood.” He stepped back with a smile, then dove headfirst into the sea before Fang Daichuan could react.

“f**k!” The drunken haze cleared from Fang Daichuan’s mind in an instant. Even though they’d climbed down from the highest rocks, this was no shallow shoal. The dark sea merged with the shadows of the rocks, its depths invisible. Fang Daichuan rushed to the shore, wiping the spray from his face, and stared blankly at the black expanse of water.

The organ-like hum continued, one note after another. In the distance, there was a faint glimmer—maybe a lighthouse, or a star on the horizon. The sea was still.

“Li Sinian?!” Fang Daichuan’s heart raced with an inexplicable panic, amplified a hundredfold by the dark, unfathomable sea. He shouted into the empty water. “Li Sinian! ”

No answer. Only the crash of the waves and the twinkle of starlight.

Fang Daichuan took a huge gulp of wine, tore off his T-shirt, unbuckled his belt, and struggled to yank his legs out of his pants.

“What are you doing?” Li Sinian surfaced from the water, his slightly long hair dripping, a wide smile on his face.

Fang Daichuan stared dumbfounded as Li Sinian treaded water and climbed back onto the rocks. He shook the water from his bangs and held out a handful of something to Fang Daichuan. Fang Daichuan’s hands sank under the weight. Li Sinian wiped the water from his body with his shirt, and Fang Daichuan stared down at his palm—three oysters, trembling and spitting out foam, their pale, tender flesh peeking out shyly from their shells.

Fang Daichuan was speechless. Ever since he’d met Li Sinian, he’d found himself in this state of stunned silence more times than he could count.

“Do you have some kind of superpower?” Fang Daichuan stared at the oysters in his palm, then up at Li Sinian. “You just dive in and pry up oysters like it’s nothing?”

Li Sinian pried open a shell with a stone he’d picked up, rinsed the pale oyster meat with wine, and smiled up at him. “I told you—I snuck onto this island many times when it was still a deserted place. I know this area like the back of my hand. The rocks here are covered in oysters.” He handed the rinsed oyster to Fang Daichuan and nodded his chin at it.

Fang Daichuan was a born and bred Chinese man. He’d eaten plenty of oysters with garlic and grilled oysters, but never seafood like this—raw, fresh from the sea. He glanced at the water; this was private waters, far from the border, the water clean and unpolluted, no heavy metal contamination to worry about. He hesitated for a second, then copied Li Sinian and popped the oyster straight into his mouth.

It burst with sweet, briny juice, its texture as smooth as cream, the wine rinsing leaving a faint fruity aroma on the flesh. It was delicious. He nodded as he chewed. Li Sinian smiled and handed him the last one.

Fang Daichuan would look back on this misty night for years to come and wish with all his heart that the next seven days and nights were just a dream. That when he woke up, he’d still be sitting by the sea with Li Sinian, drinking sparkling wine and eating fresh oysters, talking about their childhoods, their fathers, the faint, unspoken connection between them. No thrills, no twists, no blood, no fear. Just this.

He wished his memories could freeze this moment, or even go back further. That fate had turned a corner before they met, that they’d met in a quiet, bright place, and that their feelings were simple and calm, unmarred by death and despair.