Kind-Hearted Slaughterhouse​

Chapter Two: Silent Hopes: Father and Daughter Cross the Threshold​

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The frigid tang of hospital antiseptic and the acrid perfume of oxygen humidifiers clung stubbornly to the membranes of Chen Mo’s nose, each inhale a raw reminder of the catastrophe that had nearly claimed everything. Beneath the pitiless glare of fluorescent tubes in Yunjin City Second People’s Hospital ER, the corridor’s mosaic of human anxiety remained starkly visible, yet failed to pierce the profound shadow enshrouding Chen Mo’s soul.

At the ward’s deepest recess lay Chen Xiaoyu, her small frame adrift within the sterile expanse of oversized white linens, swallowed whole by an icy cloud. An IV line snaked from the back of her hand to the hanging solution bag. Sedation held her in thrall, yet even in slumber, her delicate brows remained faintly pleated, as if weighed down by phantom exhaustion. The oxygen mask had yielded to a lighter nasal cannula, its transparent tube lifting and falling with each shallow breath. The steady green trace and pulsing numerals on the monitor were the only life-signs cutting through the oppressive air.

Chen Mo perched rigidly on a hard plastic bedside chair, back ramrod straight. His temple wound, now dressed under a glaring square of gauze, throbbed faintly—a negligible sting against the glacial agony within. The doctor’s verdict echoed relentlessly:

The collision shock precipitated acute congestive exacerbation… Providentially, airway intervention was timely, minimizing hypoxic exposure… Absolute rest, strict avoidance of agitation, regular medication… Ideally within a setting possessing comprehensive medical support… Regarding expenses…

The word expenses hung like a Damoclean sword, crushing the breath from his lungs. Ambulance, emergency care, diagnostics… the thin sheaf of bills in his pocket had vanished, consumed by unseen flames. His mother’s sobbing voice on the phone, her meagre savings a futile drop in the ocean. And the Chevrolet Epica? Imprisoned now in some collision compound, its twisted hood a ruin of scrap metal, repairs or replacement an astronomical impossibility.

His gaze drifted, hollow, across his phone screen—3:40 PM. The registration deadline for Hope Deaf-Mute School mocked him like a sand timer draining its final, inexorable grains.

"Do not go to Hope School."

Wen Ying’s face—serene amidst cold mist, eyes like emotion-siphoning swamp pools, and that silent, crushing admonition—looped relentlessly in his mind, unleashing fresh waves of dread. Who was she? A social services investigator? A stranger unnervingly poised in crisis? What did her warning signify? Was the school truly…?

A violent schism tore at him. Not go? But Xiaoyu’s medical costs, ongoing care, their very survival—where could it be found? Shelter for the night seemed a distant dream. Go? The silent warning pierced like an icicle, skewering any fragile hope of refuge.

“Baba…” An almost imperceptible murmur drifted from the bed.

Chen Mo jerked to attention, nearly flinging himself to her side. Xiaoyu hadn’t roused, but her brow furrowed deeper, tiny fingers unconsciously tightening on the bedcover. Pain? Or… nightmare?

That small gesture was a rusted key forced into the lock of his despair. All doubt, fear, and turmoil shattered beneath an older, heavier force—a father’s irrevocable duty, the raw imperative of survival.

He must grasp this straw! His only hope!

Trembling, he opened the blood-spattered portfolio and retrieved the crumpled yellow envelope—Hope Deaf-Mute Special Education School Interview Notification. On its back, scrawled hastily during a prior call, was a number.

The line connected.

“Hello?” A voice slick with false charm, edged by irritation at the interruption.

“Hello? Hope Deaf-Mute School? Chen Mo speaking, the art teacher scheduled for registration this afternoon…” Chen Mo strained for steadiness.

A pause. Faintly, a heavy, rhythmic thud… thud… thud echoed before being stifled. “Ah! Teacher Chen! Director Li mentioned your situation! Delayed by the collision? Still haven’t arrived? Circumstances…”

“Deepest apologies!” Chen Mo interjected, words tumbling out. “I was in a collision! At the hospital! But I’m capable! The position is critical! Please…” His voice cracked, desperation sanding it raw. “I’m in ER Area Two, needing a moment to settle my daughter…”

“…In hospital?” The voice feigned concern, layering on false warmth. “Oh, misfortune upon misfortune! ER Area Two? Very well. Director Li is compassionate, understanding! Give me your exact location. I’ll dispatch a school service vehicle! The school is remote. Unfamiliar territory with a sick child… so inconvenient!”

This abrupt “kindness” froze Chen Mo, a blinding light in utter darkness, staggering his senses. “No need for—”

“Nonsense!” The response welded shut any refusal. “Director Li insists! Special talent warrants special consideration! Send the ward number to this phone. Wait. Promptly! Very promptly!”

The line severed before he could protest. The dial tone screamed in the vacant ward.

This scalding, overbearing warmth only intensified the nameless dread coiling around his taut nerves. Wen Ying’s specter whispered anew. He gazed at Xiaoyu, asleep, his fingers icy around the phone.

One hour later.

A battered white Jinbei minivan, spectral in its silence, glided to a stop at the ER exit. No markings, save a peeling red “Service Pass” sticker on the windshield. Deeply tinted windows veiled the interior.

The side door scraped open. A man built like a siege engine unfolded himself—cropped hair, faded navy work jacket. His square face remained impassive as he scanned the throng of families. Chen Mo, clutching a document-stuffed portfolio and a pitiful plastic sack of toiletries, cradled Xiaoyu swaddled in her thick coat, rendered more frail by slumber. The gauze on his temple gleamed under the portico lights.

“Teacher Chen Mo?” The man’s bass voice held no inflection, merely confirming inventory.

“…Yes.” Chen Mo drew a fortifying breath.

A nod. No pleasantries. He stepped aside. “Board.” His hand reached instinctively for Xiaoyu.

Chen Mo recoiled, shielding his daughter. “I have her.” He ducked into the van with Xiaoyu in his arms.

Dimness. The air, thick with oil, dust, and cracked leather. Splitting upholstery spilled jaundiced foam from the front seats. Chen Mo settled into the rear with Xiaoyu. The door slammed shut. The engine roared. The van lurched forward, abandoning the hospital’s bright embrace, plunging headlong into Yunjin City’s deepening dusk, enshrouded by an eternal, cloying grey fog.

Silence. Oppressive. Only the engine’s drone and tires hissing on wet pavement. Xiaoyu’s fevered skin and faint heartbeat against his arm anchored him to harsh reality. Beyond the tinted windows, the city dissolved into a smeared, backward-flowing nightmare, fleeing into a sinking grey dreamscape. Faint, fog-bound streetlamps stared like vacant, fog-trapped eyes, dull witnesses to the ghostly van’s passage.

Distance devoured the city’s edge. The ascent began. Fog congealed like tepid milk, reducing vision to islands of headlight haze. Sheer cliffs emerged from the murk as slumbering black leviathans. The engine’s howl alone defied the suffocating silence. An invisible, glacial pressure seeped into the cramped van, heavy on his chest.

Xiaoyu stirred restlessly, a faint moan escaping, a film of cold sweat on her brow.

“Nearly there.” The driver’s announcement grated like rusted steel. “Endure it. The infirmary is on site.”

The words offered no solace, only deepening Chen Mo’s apprehension. The driver’s tone dripped with callous indifference to suffering.

Finally, rounding a sharp bend, the headlights clawed through the mist, illuminating a vast, oppressive silhouette.

Hope Deaf-Mute Special Education School materialized.

Not a school. A fortress. Ancient, brooding towers clawing free from the fog. High wrought-iron gates, rusted claws snarling skyward like bared fangs. Heavyset concrete gateposts choked by dead, mossy vines, brittle ghosts in the frigid autumn. The gates stood shut, only a small pedestrian access door open.

Beyond lay a desolate expanse—a front plaza paved in grim grey flagstones. Stark, treeless, barren. Only skeletal poles crowned by pallid lamps lined the sides. Their weak, cold light failed to illuminate, instead drowning the void in an eerie, spectral pallor.

Guarding the plaza’s end, massive classroom and dormitory blocks rose in staggered formation. Monolithic, archaic, oppressive. Soot-blackened walls, scarred by dark streaks where fog and damp had gnawed for years, resembled an old man’s blemished flesh. Deep-set windows mostly gaped black. Occasional wan yellow lights peered out like scattered, watchful predator eyes. The main building, most colossal of all, boasted a central clock tower, its face veiled by mist, time indecipherable.

The campus radiated a silence denser than stone—a vast, abandoned sarcophagus.

A unique “silence” pressed down. Physical silence was expected here, yet this was a deep, clinging stillness, absorbing every vibration, every nascent sound into its grey-white shroud, leaving no echo.

The van slipped through the side gate. Tires rolling over the barren plaza tiles echoed—a solitary, haunting intrusion upon a kingdom of silence.

Traversing the heart-stoppingly silent plaza, the van halted before a constricted path behind the main building, flanked by an equally grim three-story annex. Parked nearby, dazzlingly incongruous, glinted a brand-new, obsidian-black Mercedes E-Class sedan—a shard of polished onyx thrust into a barren swamp.

“Arrived.” The driver pulled the door open. “Director Li awaits in his office. The child can rest in a temporary lodging room on the annex’s ground floor, by the side. There’s a cot.”

Chen Mo carried the deeply slumbering, yet still-frowning Xiaoyu out. Cold, damp air, rank with decay, enveloped them instantly. He tightened Xiaoyu’s coat. The crew-cut driver showed no inclination to assist, merely snatching the shabby plastic sack of luggage, wedging it roughly under an arm, and trudging towards the annex’s stout, steel security door without a backward glance.

The annex entrance lurked sideways to the main building’s back. The door was a heavy slab of metal painted institutional green, inset with a wire-reinforced viewing slit. It groaned, resisting as it opened.

Inside: a cavernous hallway. Light-starved. Dated, dark green wainscoting topped by peeling beige plaster walls. Widely spaced, low-watt bulbs hung from the ceiling, casting feeble halos of jaundiced light that surrendered quickly to profound, ink-like darkness. The air reeked—disinfectant battling something deeper: the sour decay of mildew trapped in ancient fabrics, perhaps… and an underlying, almost imperceptible tang of spoiled food. Silence. Absolute. Footsteps striking the cold terrazzo floor echoed endlessly, cavernously, each step a jolt along taut nerves.

Closed doors lined both sides, painted the same sickly green, each bearing a narrow, frosted-glass peephole above. Passing one slightly ajar, Chen Mo caught a glimpse within—more by compulsion than intent.

Dim light. An office? A hulking man in blue workwear matching the driver’s grappled with a slight figure swamped in grey uniform. The child, thin as parchment, was jerked violently off balance, features obscured, a shock of straw-yellow hair whipping frantically. The workman snarled indistinct words, an iron grip on the child’s arm lifting the slight form. A jarring clang erupted as the smaller body slammed into a metal filing cabinet—a cry abruptly choked, instantly devoured by the corridor’s hunger for quiet.

The gap was narrow, Chen Mo moved quickly, Xiaoyu heavy in his arms. Only that suffocating tableau imprinted itself. Cold terror ripped up his spine! Xiaoyu stirred uneasily against his chest.

“Looking?” The driver halted abruptly as if eyes were in the back of his skull. His blocky face remained impassive, but his gaze scraped Chen Mo’s like a cold scalpel. “Know the rules! Mind your gaze!” The command, low yet thunderous in the silence, coincided with a rough jerk that nearly dropped the luggage.

Chen Mo instantly averted his eyes, pressing Xiaoyu closer, heart hammering. The scene screamed violation. Who was that child? Why the brutality? That workman’s eyes…

“Here.” The driver resumed his flat monotone, pushing open an adjacent yellow-painted door marked “101 - Temporary Lodging.” He entered briefly.

The room was tiny. A single, narrow window faced the mountain’s perpetual fog, admitting little light. Spartan: a cot (hard sheets), a flaking wooden stool, a minuscule, mirrorless washbasin. A chill carried the scent of undisturbed damp, though some effort had been made to clean.

“This is it.” The driver discarded the sack carelessly in a dusty corner. “Lock the door. Remain here outside mealtimes.” The pronouncement delivered, a burden shed, he departed. Heavy footfalls echoed, dwindling, finally swallowed by the corridor’s deeper maw.

Chen Mo stood alone, Xiaoyu in his arms, amidst the small room’s confines. Enveloping him was a profound, glacial desolation, a sense of irrevocable confinement, intertwined with the horror of what he’d witnessed. Xiaoyu’s fever was the sole ember of warmth in this frozen crypt, rendering the surrounding dread only more palpable.

Hope? Deaf-Mute School?

This place… felt like a vast prison cell, hermetically sealed by fog and silence, devoid of any exit!

He lowered Xiaoyu onto the unyielding cot, tucking the covers close, watching her sink deeper into exhausted, medicated sleep, her frame curled defensively even there.

“Registration. Back soon.” He murmured the lie to her sleeping form, voice like sandpaper on wood. His heart was leaden, the warning and the glimpsed horror warring inside.

He had to see Director Li.

Securing the flimsy, inadequate door lock, Chen Mo inhaled deeply and plunged back into the sepulchral corridor’s dread embrace. He traced fading memories and faint sounds, navigating back towards the main building’s core. His footsteps were solitary percussions against the oppressive silence, reverberating cruelly in the confined space.

The main entrance was unexpectedly imposing—towering glass doors sealed tight. Crossing the threshold unleashed an olfactory assault: stale varnish, damp concrete dust… and a faint, nauseating whiff of stale urine that cheap chemical cleaners couldn’t wholly mask.

The lobby stretched, vast and intimidating. Slick terrazzo floors, polished to a cold gleam, only amplified the sterile emptiness. Bare walls lacked posters, slogans, student art. Only the opposite wall bore an immense inscription in jet-black metal characters:

​​SILENCE | HOPE​​

The letters, sharp-edged as cast iron, reflected the ceiling’s stark fluorescent glare with chilling indifference.

To the right, a broad staircase ascended. Leftward, the mouths of equally dimly lit corridors yawned darkly. At the staircase’s base, a heavy double fire door bore a small, precisely lettered sign: ​​Teacher Administration​​. Its paper seemed jaundiced, curling at the edges.

The entire space: sterile, cavernous, deathly quiet. A modern mausoleum.

“Teacher Chen Mo?” A voice—smooth, calibrated to warm interest—reverberated unexpectedly behind him.

Chen Mo whipped around, his heart seeming to stall mid-beat!

A woman stood poised near the shadowed junction where stairs met corridor. Immaculate in a tailored navy-blue skirt suit, hair scraped back with formidable precision, she offered a practiced smile. Its calculation, its measured warmth, was unnervingly precise. Her eyes crinkled with manufactured attention.

“Teacher Chen Mo! A trying journey! I am Li Enci, Human Resources Director of Hope,” she announced, advancing with practiced grace. Her heels struck the resonant floor—tap, tap, tap—each contact resonating against the silence’s very heart. She extended a hand. “Welcome to the Hope family!”

Her touch was cool, the handshake brief but encompassing, smooth as a serpent’s coil meeting skin before retreating.

Chen Mo managed a stiff shake, throat constricted. His gaze instinctively swept the expanse, seeking any student’s presence to banish this fatal stillness. Nothing. Only the hemispherical eyes of surveillance cameras, mounted high in the corners, swiveling silently on their mounts. They reflected icy points of light, fixing their unblinking, omniscient stare upon him—the lobby’s sole intruder. Their near-silent motors drove relentless pivots, the low, monotonous whirr unnervingly distinct in the vacuum, scraping like shards of ice along his eardrums.

A fresh wave of ice traced the ladder of his spine.

“Formalities can wait. Li Entai, the Director, awaits within—only just arrived himself.” Li Enci’s tone remained unruffled, treating the moment as mere bureaucracy. Her smile held firm. She gestured with elegant precision towards the fire door bearing its small sign. “This way, please.”

Chen Mo trailed Li Enci to the imposing fire door. Thick, painted institutional green, its metal handle felt like frozen iron. Near its upper corner, fixed into the doorframe wall, another rotating surveillance lens gleamed—a tireless, unfeeling voyeur.

Her flawless smile intact, Li Enci inserted a key. The lock snicked open, loud in the heavy stillness.

She pushed the door inward—

—and an unspeakable stench cascaded out! Ten times stronger than the lobby! Cloying cheap air freshener—citrus masking chemical rot—sweetness battling an underlying morass of decay: trapped dust, sour sweat, crumbling paper, a ghostly medicinal tang… and beneath it all, a sharp, deeply unsettling odor, like charred animal hair?!

Directly opposite, a floor-to-ceiling glass partition wall divided the space. Beyond it sprawled an open-plan office landscape fragmented by cubicles. Evening shadows stretched deep, though only scattered overhead lamps burned within the vast space, sculpting stark chiaroscuro across the mostly empty workstations, creating pools of shadow amidst islands of harsh illumination.

On the partition’s right, whiteboards clung. One held mundane directives: XX Class Reinforce ‘Silent Courtesy’ Protocols; XX Area Surveillance Maintenance Complete - Resuming Operation. Abhorrently, pinned with magnets beneath it, was an A4 printout titled:

​​“Notice Regarding Revised Procedure for ‘Career Development Security Deposit’ Submittal”​​

Career Development Security Deposit! The words seared Chen Mo’s retinas like hot pokers! Ten thousand yuan!

Before the shock could recede, his gaze snagged on a small, dark stain near the floor at the board’s base—spilled coffee? Trampled and dried, an indistinct blemish. Yet at its periphery... a hint of something far darker? Flecks of deep brown?

His heart clenched violently.

Then—the lights catastrophically shifted!

Every overhead panel plunged into darkness! The immense office plunged into near-absolute black! Simultaneously, dim emergency sconces mounted along the corridor wall near the door flickered to life, casting a weak, spectral green light!

The world contorted into ghastly, exaggerated shadows! The illuminated partition wall transformed into a monstrous mirror! And in that fractured glass reflection…

Chen Mo’s pupils shrank to pinpoints!

In the murky reflection conjured by the back wall’s sickly green emergency light… he glimpsed an utterly concealed device! High on the wall, just inside the door frame Li Enci had opened—a tiny, embedded monitor screen!

It displayed—in chilling monochrome—a live surveillance feed!

The viewpoint was cruelly voyeuristic: the dimly lit corridor outside the temporary room—the room where he’d left Xiaoyu! Dominating the frame, facing the camera—his back blocking the narrow passage—stood the iron-built figure in the navy work jacket—the very driver who’d brought him! One hand braced against the wall, his expressionless slab of a face tilted towards the lens (presumably concealed near the ceiling). His eyes scanned with mechanical intensity, locked with unwavering vigilance on the closed door bearing the number ‘101’—Xiaoyu’s cell!

The timelapse watermark burned in the corner: ​​17:38:20​​—the precise moment they’d entered the lobby! This silent, ruthless watch!

In the feed’s lower corner, the adjacent room’s door yawned wide—the room he’d seen conflict within earlier! And deep inside that darkness… a smaller, indistinct grey shape, curled on the floor… twitching?!

WHUMP—

The impact seemed physical! Terror and fury detonated within him, a supernova of blinding heat! No refuge! A monitored cage! That “workman” standing guard… to cage his daughter?! And what fresh horror lay in wait… next door?!

In those suffocating seconds of darkness and revelation, a booming voice shattered the ghastly tableau—deep, resonant, dripping with manufactured bonhomie:

“HA! Teacher Chen! Esteemed colleague! The long-awaited arrival! Li Enci! Why the dark?” Heavy footsteps approached, each impact amplified into an eerie, hollow drumbeat against the sudden, underworld gloom.

THWICK! THWICK! THWICK!

The powerful overheads blazed back to life! Like surgical lamps, they flooded the office space with pitiless brilliance! The shadows fled. The hidden mirror effect dissolved. The clandestine screen vanished utterly! Only blank glass and vacant cubicles remained under the pitiless glare.

Li Enci’s perfect smile revealed no fissure. She stepped aside smoothly. “Director Li arrives. Merely testing emergency lighting circuitry. My apologies for startling you.”

Appearing before them was a man impeccably tailored in charcoal grey. Hair swept into slick submission, complexion ruddy with practiced vitality, radiating a tycoon’s hearty welcome.

He was Li Entai—Vice Principal overseeing Administration and Student Affairs! The very voice from the phone! Chilling calculation wrapped in geniality!

Li Entai grinned expansively, seizing Chen Mo’s rigidly frozen hand in a viselike, enthusiastic shake. “Welcome! Teacher Chen! Ordeals endured! This way! To my office!” He slid an arm across Chen Mo’s stiff shoulders—a guiding pressure neither forceful nor negotiable—steering the man, still ice-cold with the residue of horror, towards his inner sanctum.

As Chen Mo passed the door frame, his eyes darted to where the screen had been revealed.

The wall was blank! Unblemished plaster! No screen! No wires! No hint of technology! As if those seconds of abomination amidst darkness were a desperate hallucination induced by frayed nerves!

Cold sweat sheeted down his back. A mirage? Impossible! That clarity—Xiaoyu surveilled, the contorted shape next door… That icy touch of truth couldn’t be phantasm!

Wen Ying’s eyes—brown depths swallowing the mist—and her silent, crushing command surged back into his consciousness:

​​*Do not go to Hope School.​​*

He had come. He’d brought his daughter into this fog-bound realm, this sovereignty of silence—where surface stillness masked profound, unseen terror. And the snare—that notice proclaiming “Career Development Security Deposit”—lay directly before him, behind Li Entai’s broad, welcoming smile, as the yawning mouth of an unforgiving abyss.