Doomsday Wonderland

… She had considerably become much shorter.

Her sight lines had taken a nosedive, falling straight to an eye level as if she was in a hunker position.

The concierge desk not far away had become taller, and the ceiling was higher. Everything in the lobby was larger, almost triple in size compared to their original dimension. Had it not been for her blurred vision, Lin Sanjiu might have noticed these changes much earlier.

So, what happened?

After she calmed herself down, Lin Sanjiu lowered her head. The deep-colored marble floor under her claws had never been so close to her line of view before. It was as if she was squatting on the ground. The decor in the hall remained as it was, but—

Wait, hold on a sec.

Rewind a little bit.

Her mind ceased to function for two seconds. After those words were spoken, she lowered her head again.

In her eyes, there were two talons, beige in color, clawing firmly on the floor.

Moving up from the talons was a fluffy, well-endowed breast. From its location, it seemed to be just below her chin.

Well, that’s if… she still had her chin.

“Ah…” From behind came Qing Jiuliu’s voice, sounding a little bit surprised. The eye on her left side rolled around, and she saw everything behind her.

A reddish-brown red panda was crawling out from a pile of human clothes on the floor, standing behind her. It looked at her with its two beady shiny black eyes that embedded in its thick red and white furs. It opened its mouth which made Lin Sanjiu chastised for its silly look before talking with Qing Jiuliu’s voice, “…She said, the fact that once everybody is inside the hotel will change our species.”

“Do you think by saying those will do any good to our current situation?” Lin Sanjiu parted her beak in a fury, “Why can’t you remember just now?!”

“It must be that old lady’s doing. She didn’t want me to remember what she said before all of us were in the hotel,” the red panda said. Whenever it was speaking, the white whiskers would move in tandem with its mouth, “She must have had used her ability to meddle with my memories. By the way… why the hell are you a hen?”

“How should I know!” Lin Sanjiu’s brain was all over the place. She had lost her ability to articulate her thought into words, and all she could manage was to flap her wings madly, stirring up eddies of wind in the air.

Even though she couldn’t see herself, she did realize that compared to an ordinary domestic fowl, she was oversized. Leaving everything aside, her talons were as large as her feet when she was still a human.

“Fuck!” Lin Sanjiu cursed aloud as she tried to unclog her mind, “That old lady, why would she—I mean how—”

The red panda moved forward; his body still reeked of booze. It assaulted Lin Sanjiu’s nostril even though as a hen, she didn’t have much ability to smell. Qing Jiuliu swooshed his fluffy tail from left to right and said, “All in all, let’s go upstairs first. The old lady might come back and check on us. Perhaps, she’s hiding somewhere right now and laughing at us.”

“Stop saying that,” Lin Sanjiu calmed herself and darted towards the stairwell. “… I hope Ji Shanqing won’t eat me.”

“I think he won’t,” Qing Jiuliu spread his now four stumpy legs, “The old lady said ‘everybody’ and I guess Ji Shanqing has changed species as well.”

His words had caused Lin Sanjiu’s heart to go pit-a-pat. She dashed into the stairwell, releasing a serial of cackles and disappeared into the flight of stairs. “Wait for me!” Just as Qing Jiuliu yelled, Lin Sanjiu replied, “You should be able to run faster now since you’re on four feet rather than two feet!”

“I have no idea what kind of animal am I.” Listening to Lin Sanjiu’s voice reverberate in the stairwell, Qing Jiuliu mumbled and scorched up the flight of stairs. “…All I know is that I want to sleep on a tree now… Hey, I’m going up the stairs pretty fast.”

The structure of the stairs was closer to a red panda’s dwelling. After he had run for a few seconds, the figure of the large hen dashing up the stairs appeared in his vision. Lin Sanjiu still had her cloth on her body, but it had already shredded into pieces by her two flapping wings.

The footsteps of a hen and a panda created a monotonous echo in the stairs, so loud that it could be heard from any part of the edifice. Amongst the reverberation of pitter-patter, the large hen in front came to a sudden stop. She flapped her wings vigorously to regain her balance.

“Wh-What’s wrong?” The red panda huffed, throwing his body on the floor as if somebody had extracted his spine, “What—?”

“Shh,” the hen shushed. The red panda was surprised that she could produce such sound with its beak, “Stop talking. Listen.”

Qing Jiuliu flicked his fluffy ears.

After the sound of their footsteps dissipated into the air, a muffled thump wafted into their ears from upstairs. The footfalls were louder as if something massive was smacking its leg against the floor. After a few seconds, the same sound came again, scaring the red panda so much that it stood on its hind legs.

“What are you doing?” Lin Sanjiu asked, looking at the red panda as if she was looking at a brain-challenged person—Well, red panda.

“I can’t control it. It’s the animal instinct!” Qing Jiuliu replied as he placed his two forepaws on the floor. “What’s that sound? Wait. How could you hear sound when you don’t have ears?”

“I have ears!” Lin Sanjiu retorted in a low voice, “Besides, I can feel the vibration from the ground. Quiet! The big fellow is coming down!”

Another long and muffled “thump” came again, causing the handrail to vibrate vigorously. The two animals held their breaths and listened; the second “thump” was much nearer to them.

Lin Sanjiu thought for a moment and walked a few steps forward. She poked her head from the gap of the stairs and looked up.

She was currently on the twelfth floor, and the voice was not far away above her.

Qing Jiuliu crept in, laying under Lin Sanjiu’s wing.

Then, a frightened sobbing voice resounded from the stairs, “Sis?”

Lin Sanjiu’s heart shuddered—

“Sis, is that you? It is me, Ji Shanqing. I’m coming down now…”