Seven Days and Nights with the Werewolf

Night 1·02

Fang Daichuan lingered by the shore for a cigarette before finally sauntering back toward the villa. As he walked, he tore his role card to shreds and tossed them into the sea, then pried the two vials out of the box and slipped them into his pocket. The atmosphere in the hall was a little tense when he returned, and his first instinct was to look for Li Sinian.

Li Sinian caught his gaze and smiled. The box in his hand was gone, and he clutched a magnetic card in his palm—he’d clearly read his role card on the way back, too.

“Any progress with your discussions?” Fang Daichuan propped himself against the door, reluctant to step inside. The two corpses still lay there, and the room reeked of thick blood and a faint tang of decay, making his stomach turn.

Ding Zihui hurried over to him. “You’re back! We were just talking about what to do with the… the bodies.”

Fang Daichuan nodded. “Did you decide on anything?”

“Let’s dig a hole by the shore later and bury them,” Ding Zihui said, looking up at him.

Yang Song scoffed coldly from across the room. “You’d waste your time on that? You’d be better off figuring out how to chop down a tree and escape this island. They’re dead—this sudden kindness is a little late, isn’t it?”

Tears pricked Ding Zihui’s eyes at once. She was never good with words, and her retort came out weak and ineffectual. “How could you? How could you say that?!” The girl had never learned how to insult anyone, so she could only repeat the same line over and over, her voice trembling with anger.

“We should bury them,” Li Sinian said suddenly. His image as an accomplice was so deeply ingrained that everyone fell silent the second he spoke, turning to look at him on instinct. Fang Daichuan was also confused—nothing about Li Sinian suggested he was the kind of person who respected the dead or meddled in other people’s business.

Sure enough, Li Sinian explained his reasoning. “I’m sure you all read the rules—we have to gather here at eight every morning. It’s sweltering out here, and leaving the bodies isn’t just going to attract flies and a stench. If they rot and cause a disease, we’ll be in real trouble.”

With that, even the sarcastic Yang Song had no room to object. Everyone agreed to dig a grave by the shore and bury the two victims there on the spot.

It didn’t take a genius to guess who would end up carrying the bodies.

Fang Daichuan would have rather forgotten the entire walk to the shore with a corpse slung over his back. He’d played a corpse countless times in his acting career, but he’d never imagined that one day, he’d be on a desolate island, carrying real dead bodies to a sand pit dug by others to bury them—and two at that.

Corpses were far heavier than living people. Wasn’t there a saying that people lost 19 grams of weight when they died? So why did this one feel like it had gained 19 *jin*? Fang Daichuan’s mind wandered as he walked, forcing himself not to feel the stiff weight pressed against his back. The body was still warm, and its fingers kept brushing his calf with every step he took. He half-expected it to tap him on the shoulder at any moment and sink its teeth into his neck. Fang Daichuan shivered and quickened his pace.

Would I die? The others had already dug the sand pit, and as Fang Daichuan lowered Old Chen’s body into it, the thought unconsciously crossed his mind. Does everyone die? Will I? How many of us will be dead in seven days? He stood before the shabby grave, feeling no sadness—only an absurd urge to laugh.

While the others wallowed in a maudlin sadness of schadenfreude or frowned as they calculated their chances of survival, Fang Daichuan’s mind was a blank, static mess, his feet feeling light and unsteady on the sand. This surreal absurdity made him think bitterly: We might as well dig our own graves now and save the living the trouble later. One for each of us, no fighting, no scrambling—just dig a row here and lie down in it when our time comes.

The wind off the sea picked up, and the sky had turned pitch black. No moon was visible from this angle; the endless sea merged with the horizon into a single, terrifying expanse of dark blackness.

It was now the Werewolves’ Hour.

The sight of everyone standing by the shore, staring at each other, was almost comical. Fang Daichuan watched from a rock, thinking they looked like nervous first-time clients, too embarrassed to face a p********e who’d already undressed. They’d all come straight from civilized society, and the suddenness of this nightmare had left a flicker of morality in their hearts. No matter how desperate they were to survive, none could bring themselves to kill. So an awkward, unspoken truce settled over the shore—no one dared to be the first to say, “Alright, run or kill, let the game begin.”

After a long silence, a man in his fifties spoke up, his voice trembling. “What if… what if we do what that young man said? Destroy the magnetic cards, and wait for the helicopter together.”

Everyone exchanged glances, no one rushing to reply.

This is the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Fang Daichuan thought, hanging his head and sighing quietly to himself.

“Li Sinian,” the man said, correcting himself. “Stop calling him ‘that young man’.”

Logically, with one person breaking the ice, everyone should have introduced themselves one by one—but no one else seemed inclined to share their names.

The man looked terrified, his voice rising. “What do we do? We have to make a decision! We can’t actually kill each other, can we?!”

Ding Zihui hurried to agree, her voice earnest. “He’s right! Let’s make a promise—none of the werewolves will kill anyone, and we won’t vote anyone off in the day. We’ll all survive until the end together!”

“Yeah! Together!” Everyone nodded, their words sincere or not, relief and a faint hope spreading across their faces.

Fang Daichuan spoke up. “If we’re all agreed, let’s head back to the villa for the night. The mastermind said there’s a volcano on this island, and who knows what kind of animals are in the woods. The villa’s the safest place for us.”

The island nights were chilly. Though summer had arrived, the ocean breeze stole away the heat, carrying a sharp, salty cold with it.

Fang Daichuan’s luggage and toiletries were all still at the airport with Xiao Zhou—he had no clean clothes to change into. He’d sweated through his shirt during the day, and his front and back were spattered with blood. He lowered his head and sniffed himself, wincing at the strange, foul stench clinging to his skin: a sickly mix of faint decay, blood, and sweat.

He wondered how Xiao Zhou was doing right now. Had she realized something was wrong yet? Had she called the police to look for him? He was a minor celebrity, after all—his sudden disappearance should stir up some public pressure, right? He sat on the villa’s front steps, lighting another cigarette and staring at the eerily shaped woods in the distance.

“Come inside and sit,” Li Sinian’s voice came from behind him. “The sea wind’s still cold out here.”

Fang Daichuan held up his cigarette, gesturing that he couldn’t go inside. Thanks to Manager Deng’s strict rules, Fang Daichuan was meticulous about such things: he never smoked indoors, never littered cigarette butts, and was always politer to service staff than necessary. As Manager Deng liked to say, “Slack off on these small things now, and they’ll all become dirt on your record when you’re famous.”

Li Sinian thought for a moment, then handed Fang Daichuan his black suit jacket—the fabric was high-quality and thick. Fang Daichuan reached out to put it on, then glanced down at his blood-soaked clothes and hesitated, finally just holding it in his hand instead.

Li Sinian noticed his hesitation and held out his right hand. “C’mon. Let’s look around the villa. They said we can’t bring luggage for seven days, so there must be clothes, food and water stocked here somewhere.”

Fang Daichuan stubbed out his cigarette and let Li Sinian pull him to his feet. Li Sinian’s fingers were cold and dry as they wrapped around his wrist.

The villa was deathly quiet. Everyone had gathered in the guest rooms on the second floor, so they could hear any movement and rush out together if needed. The two men walked up the dark corridor on the second floor, and Fang Daichuan couldn’t shake the feeling that a door would fly open at any moment, and a man with a wolf’s head would lunge at him to bite.

He touched the pocket at his waist, where the two vials were tucked safely, and felt a small measure of calm.

No one was staying on the third floor tonight. Unlike the faint sounds of breathing drifting from the rooms downstairs, the third floor was completely silent—not a single sound to be heard.

The villa’s layout was strange. The first floor had soaring ceilings and was a huge ballroom; the second floor was guest rooms; the third floor seemed to be set up as activity rooms. The doors lining the corridor were all closed, and Fang Daichuan tried pushing one— the iron door didn’t budge an inch.

“They’re electronic locks,” Li Sinian frowned, examining the doorknob. “We need a card to open them. Should we try our identity cards?”

Fang Daichuan ran his hand over the cold iron metal. There were four rooms in total, far fewer than the thirteen guest rooms on the second floor—each one was probably enormous.

“Better not,” Fang Daichuan said, flinching at the memory of the two gunshots earlier. “Do you remember what the rule book said? There are plenty of ‘surprises’ here. Who knows what’s behind those doors—maybe a machine g*n that fires the second you open it.”

The two men wandered up to the fourth floor.

It was an empty, open space, seemingly unfinished, like a parking garage. This would be perfect for a name tag ripping game, Fang Daichuan thought bitterly. If he hadn’t gotten into the wrong car, he’d probably be in Qingdao right now, eating seafood, drinking beer, and playing silly games—not fighting for his life on this godforsaken island. He wondered if he’d ever get to taste seafood or drink beer again. Such simple, earthly pleasures felt infinitely far away from his blood-stained self. Frustrated, he slammed his fist against a concrete pillar.

A loud *bang* echoed through the empty space.

Fang Daichuan shot a quick glance at Li Sinian.

The pillar at the very back was larger than the rest. Li Sinian tapped the one beside it—it was solid, making no sound. The two men exchanged a look. Fang Daichuan took a deep breath, spun around, and lashed out with a kick. The pillar, covered in a thin metal panel, shattered with a sharp c***k.

Inside was a large crate, sealed tight with packing tape on all sides. Fang Daichuan attacked it with his hands and teeth, scratching at the tape with his nails and gnawing at it, breaking into a sweat without making a single dent.

Their commotion, however, had woken the people downstairs.

Ding Zihui was the first to rush up. She’d deliberately chosen the guest room next to Fang Daichuan’s, and when she’d heard the noise and found him gone, she’d panicked.

“What are you doing?! That noise scared me to death!” she exclaimed, her eyes wide.

Fang Daichuan looked up from the crate, spitting out bits of clear packing tape that had stuck to his lips, his face contorted in discomfort. “We found this crate and wanted to open it, but we don’t have a knife.”

As they spoke, the others came thundering up the stairs. A middle-aged man stumbled up, his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a beer belly, sweat dripping down his forehead. “What happened? Is someone dead again?!”

Yang Song was the last to arrive, sauntering up and adjusting the collar of her shawl as she walked.

She took in the scene, then stepped forward to stand in front of Fang Daichuan. She was wearing slippers, her insteps pale and striking, painted with wine-red nail polish—Fang Daichuan felt a flicker of awkwardness under her gaze.

“Let me,” Yang Song said casually, straightening her shawl. “Us girls are professionals at opening packages with our bare hands.”

Ding Zihui laughed, nodding eagerly. “That’s right! We’re total pros at unboxing without tools!” She squatted down to help.

The young couple had come up too, their eyes red-rimmed and clinging tightly to each other—no one knew what they’d been through, but the shared brush with death had clearly deepened their feelings. The girl glanced at her boyfriend, then knelt down to help as well.

“You’ve got insane luck, man!” the boy said, he couldn’t have been more than twenty, still in college. He leaned against his knees, looking down at Fang Daichuan. “Finding a loot box just like that—awesome.”

Fang Daichuan could only manage a bitter smile.

The three girls had the crate open in no time. Just as Li Sinian had guessed, it was filled with clothes, bottled water and non-perishable food. The clothes were simple in style, all in standard sizes.

Fang Daichuan grabbed a cotton T-shirt and pulled it on in three quick movements, his well-defined, toned muscles flashing in everyone’s eyes for a split second. Li Sinian had initially thought it unwise to reveal his combat strength and wanted to stop him, but then reconsidered—showing off his physique might act as a deterrent, making everyone too afraid to mess with him. So he’d let him be.

“This crate was stocked based on the number of people who’ll die each day,” Li Sinian said, bending down to lift the crate and carry it downstairs. “If we don’t play by the rules, the food and water will run out for sure. Everyone use them sparingly. If we run out, I’ll figure out another way.” He paused, calling over his shoulder, “Wake everyone up. Dawn’s almost here—we’ll split the supplies up.”

The others hurried down to rouse the rest of the group. Fang Daichuan followed Li Sinian, still clutching the man’s suit jacket in his hand.

“Can I trust you?” Fang Daichuan suddenly stopped walking, staring at Li Sinian’s back and asking the question that had been weighing on his mind.

Li Sinian turned around, his expression serious as he spoke a warning. “On this island, don’t trust anyone easily.”

Fang Daichuan’s eyes dropped to the floor. “Not even you?”

“Especially not me,” Li Sinian said, smiling at him before turning to carry the crate down the stairs.