She hesitated and took a few steps forward, wanting to get closer to the food on the second tier. After a few steps, she nervously glanced at the red cocoon, then knelt down properly, just like worshipping Buddha in a temple, and carefully bowed to this "god."

The large red peach in her hand was cold, exuding the unique fresh fragrance of fruit. The pastries were small and delicate, giving off a sweet aroma. Ethan Clark sat by the drapes, eating the food bite by bite, all the while keeping an eye on the red cocoon for any movement.

She was not a brave woman. Before that incident, she was always kind and tolerant to everyone, disliked arguing, and was easy to talk to, so she often suffered losses.

The boldest thing she had ever done in her life, the only time she insisted on standing her ground, was that time she killed someone. But even after killing, she was still the same timid person as before, living on in ordinary struggle.

With her stomach full, she finally felt relaxed.

The red candle burned quietly, yet the candle itself did not seem to diminish. After getting used to it, Ethan Clark felt that the red glow was not so frightening after all. She stretched her body and walked out. Even though the cocoon showed no sign of movement, she still didn’t dare to stay inside for too long.

Outside, it wasn’t completely shrouded in darkness. The round moon, half hidden behind the clouds, allowed her to see everything in the courtyard clearly. She had just arrived here at dusk yesterday, and because she was nervous, she hadn’t dared to look around much. Who would have thought that after all those terrifying things had happened, she would instead be able to quietly observe every corner of the courtyard here.

She suddenly noticed that there was a row of plants growing on one side of the shrine, with red flowers faintly visible among the leaves. They were a dozen or so single-petaled red camellias planted in a row. When she got closer, she could smell their faint fragrance. So it turned out that the scent she had noticed since last night was coming from these red camellias.

Ethan Clark lay down on the corridor on this side. She was too tired, and as soon as she lay down, she drifted off to sleep.

People’s dreams are always elusive, and when dreaming, one cannot realize they are dreaming. In her dream, Ethan Clark forgot she was in danger, forgot the terrifying night, and returned to the home she had lived in for more than twenty years. The house was an old residential building decades old, and the one with pots of small flowers on the third-floor balcony was her home.

Her teenage younger sister had just come back from school, helping her pick vegetables and chatting about things that happened at school.

“Jie, when I start working in the future and earn lots of money, let’s move somewhere else, get a villa, and plant flowers and grass in the yard.”

“Okay.”

“Jie, what do you think about me becoming an actress in the future?”

“Sure, Little Grace is very pretty.”

Her sister laughed, her beautiful face full of youthful radiance.

Later, that brilliant light disappeared. She left a suicide note and jumped from the rooftop. From then on, the sister she had depended on was forever frozen in a black-and-white photo with a smiling face.

The dream shifted from happiness to despair in the blink of an eye. Ethan Clark woke up shivering, realizing it was still dark, her whole body stiff with cold. She also found herself sobbing quietly, her cheeks wet with tears—she had cried herself awake.

It had been a long time since she had woken up crying from a dream at night, probably because her nerves had been stretched too tight these past two days.

It was very cold outside. Shivering, she went back into the shrine. Just separated by a curtain, the inside of the shrine and the outside felt like two different worlds. Inside, it was as warm as spring, and as soon as she entered, she felt as if she were bathed in warm sunlight. Ethan Clark looked at the red candle and realized that the warmth in the room seemed to come from that strange red candle.

She lay down on the warm floor, trying to rest again, but no matter what, she couldn’t fall asleep. From where she lay, she could see the red cocoon, which hung there motionless. She began to imagine what might come out of it. Normally, a cocoon should produce a butterfly.

Then she started to wonder what she should do next. She couldn’t hide here forever, nor could she go outside. But no matter how she thought about it, the only fate awaiting her was death—she couldn’t think of any way to survive, and couldn’t help but sink into a dazed despair. With the road ahead so uncertain, all she could do was live one day at a time.

On the second day hiding in the shrine, she ate some of the offerings from the second tier.

On the third day, it was the same.

During this time, the gate to the courtyard was never opened again. She tried approaching the door and heard faint footsteps outside. There was nothing in the courtyard she could climb on, and even if she could climb out, she could already imagine that outside the courtyard, people must be waiting for her to walk right into their trap.

She looked at the red cocoon, knowing very well that when that “god” emerged from the cocoon, her time would be up.

But she hadn’t expected that the god would “break out of the cocoon” so quickly. On the third night, she woke from her sleep again, and in a daze, saw the red cocoon had fallen onto the mat. On the surface of the cocoon, wrapped in red silk, a patch of white appeared—it was a white sleeve.

Ethan Clark jolted awake, and just like that, stared with open eyes until dawn, watching as long black hair emerged from the silk cocoon.