"I know very well that my life is at its peak right now, but even then there are hardly moments of complete tranquility. I would die in that place under the dark lichen, and in my dreams there was often a greedy nose that kept sniffing around. (Kafka, The Cave)

My home is in the deepest part of the four basement floors, between steel and cement. Every night I crawled out of my burrow, following the shadows of the passageway, to the dark supermarket in search of food. Usually only go once a week and stock up on enough food each time. You know I don't need to eat much, I spend most of my time in a hole in the ground thinking about life.

April 1. Sunday. Night, 22:19.

Dizzy, why should I remember your human time?

The burrows are stuffed with food, and I'm building stronger fortifications - rats are my enemies.

That kind of restlessness has never been felt before. At one point, I wanted to get out of the hole, go through the sewer pipes, and find a new home under another building. But I have spent several years digging this hole with great painstaking efforts, every corner and step, every labyrinth of entrances and exits, contains my heart's work, how can I be willing to abandon my home?

Sure enough, disaster struck.

The situation is not as serious as I imagined, I am most familiar with the structure of the building, whether it is the foundation or the load-bearing walls, how can such a sturdy steel building collapse overnight?

A lot of people came to the fourth basement level, and near the exit of my cave, there were piles of human corpses. What's going on upstairs?

No, I will never leave the burrow, and if I leave here, I will be useless waste, exposed to humans and cats to be slaughtered.

I hate humans.

There is only one exception. The homeless man who lives on the third basement floor is also a neighbor upstairs and downstairs. He used to stare at me in a daze and speak my language—he told me about the girl he had a crush on, and I said don't waste your time, just like a male mouse can only find a female mouse to mate, and any species can only find its own kind, and you don't want to be in the middle of your life. For example, a poor creature like me, who lives in a hole in the ground all day long, should never think of finding a beloved opposite sex.

I envy my fellow in the wild, who are free to forage for food and choose their beloved objects – but also at great risk, such as the wild cats in the countryside, the eagles in the sky, the peasants' mousetraps, and the little children who love to destroy our burrows, and live a life of precariousness every day, who is as comfortable as I am now, as long as I guard the entrance to the cave, there is no danger.

What the? You say I'm a rat? Don't insult me!

Three days later, I saw a new corpse thrown down, a young man in a suit with holes all over it.

That night, as I slept in a cave in the ground, there was a raging sound above my head. I poked my head out of the hole and saw a man pressing on the girl's body and covering her eyes with a black cloth.

I'm an adult and I know what that means, but there's nothing I can do.

A few hours later, six new bodies were visible, four of them with bandages, another girl with blood all over her chest, and the last young man's chest almost flattened.

Two days later, someone brought in the body of a middle-aged woman who had been stabbed to death with a knife.

Soon after, a young man came down with the corpse of a girl on his back.

The generator on the fourth basement level stopped running, and the pungent smell of diesel was no longer necessary, but the stench of the corpses grew stronger. I lived in a cave all year round, had to deal with all kinds of rotting corpses, and gradually became immune to poison gas. It's just that the food hoarded is getting less and less, and I am afraid that one day I will starve to death.

The next morning—though there was no light, but my biological clock knew every hour on the ground—the corpse of a young man was laid before me, and his countenance was so handsome, with his fine black hair and the bridge of his nose that if he opened his eyes, he would have charmed many young girls.

Unfortunately, he became a corpse, with a wound on the back of his vest - he had been stabbed in the back.

On this other day, I saw a man dragging a corpse and throwing it into the pile of corpses. That dead man stinks, not rotten, but poop and urine - I don't even want to see how he died.

Finally, I saw a man in his fifties, wearing a mask, walking alone in front of the pile of corpses.

Unexpectedly, he walked directly into the pile of corpses, pushed away the corpses crawling with maggots, and got into the center of the pile of corpses.

Is he crazy?

Eventually, curiosity triumphed over conservatism, prompting me to burrow out of the ground. I just want to climb up to this living man, look into his eyes, see what he's thinking. Why burrow into the pile of dead people? Is there some ulterior conspiracy? Or are the great philosophers going to experience the afterlife? Wow! You're so awesome, I've got to get in front of you and know why you're doing this.

So, I climbed on top of him.

The man cried out in panic, and he couldn't regret his actions, it was really boring!

I crawled up to his face and his eyes couldn't close anymore.

He's dead.

Sorry, were you scared to death by me? Alas, do I look so scary? It's no wonder that many of the horror legends in the countryside have our shadow in them.

I went back to the cave and continued to endure hunger and the dreary air. I don't know how it is. Maybe the air will be better, there will be food to eat, and you may even be able to escape from this deadly building. But I don't want to do anything, I don't want to go anywhere, I just want to stay here, to guard my most beloved cave, until death or some greedy nose takes me away.

A swarm of rats ran down - damn it! Are they crazy hungry? I huddled in horror, these horrible creatures had more than enough to deal with me. I was about to plug the hole in the ground and suffocate myself to death when a man appeared in front of the pile of corpses.

The man was wearing a police uniform, covered with dust up and down, wearing a thick mask, revealing a pair of cold eyes.

He had the smell of the ground on his body, the smell of the earth that had not been seen for a long time.

However, he watched in horror at everything in front of him until he fell unconscious in front of the pile of dead people.

I had a dangerous premonition that more people would be behind him, and that those people would carefully clean up everything so that I would have nowhere to hide.

No, I must escape, and I will never be able to miss this beloved cave again. I don't want to be caught by those guys and become a specimen for them to show to the public, to satisfy the curiosity of those stupid people on the ground.

Before the policeman woke up, I hurried out of the hole. Sure enough, the mall was full of men dressed in red. I found a pipe, climbed to the ninth floor, and hid on the flat roof of a makeshift lift.

Hey! You'll never see me again!

I was free, but instead of fleeing from the land of right and wrong, I re-made a delicate hole around the collapsed flatland. Every day I get out and I can look up at the sky, and I can watch the people in and out of the elevator under the cover of the grass. They kept bringing out many corpses, each covered with a white cloth, some apparently half or even less. These people worked day and night, and I noticed that their expressions were unusually solemn, as if everyone who had ever gone underground was suffering from severe depression.

Finally, I saw the man.

The first time I saw him, he was still wearing a thick mask, but as long as he was still wearing a police uniform, and that cold gaze did not change, I could recognize him at a glance.

His cheeks were covered with beards, and everyone on site treated him with great respect. As he sat alone in the elevator and was about to go back underground, I saw the fear in his eyes.

What are you afraid of?