The Road with No Return

A few days before the Lunar New Year, my mom called again to urge me to come home.

I hadn’t returned to the village for the holiday in three or four years.

On the phone, she complained endlessly. During the years I stayed away, the gossiping women in the village had been spreading all kinds of rumors about me — saying I had been arrested and thrown into prison, or that I had died from some illness while working in the city.

My mom was tired of being the subject of their whispers, so this year she practically forced me to come back, even if only for a short visit.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go home.

The truth was, after years of working outside, I still hadn’t made anything of myself. I didn’t want to disappoint my parents, and I definitely didn’t want the villagers talking behind my back about how the once “promising college student” had turned out worse than those who dropped out of high school to work.

But since my mom had already spoken, I had no choice.

To help my parents save face in front of relatives and neighbors, I went to a nearby supermarket to buy some expensive health supplements.

While I was shopping, I ran into my childhood friend Xu Kai and his soon-to-be wife, Wang Lili.

“Hey! Isn’t that Chen-ge?” Xu Kai slapped my shoulder from behind, grinning. “What are you doing here?”

“Xu Kai? Lili? What a coincidence.” I turned around, surprised. Ever since we started working, we rarely hung out anymore.

“We’re going back to the village for New Year too,” Xu Kai said, holding a shopping basket while Wang Lili clung to his another arm. “Our parents have been giving us pressure to go back. Besides, Lili and I are getting married soon, so I figured I should bring her home for the holiday.”

He glanced at my basket.

“What about you? Why are you here?”

I scratched my head awkwardly.

“To be honest… it’s not that I didn’t want to go back. I just haven’t done very well these past few years. The balance in my bank account barely covers next month’s rent. It’s not exactly the triumphant homecoming my mom imagined.”

Xu Kai looked at the boxes of supplements in my basket and burst out laughing.

“Come on, Chen-ge. We’ve known each other since we were still kids. Since we’re all heading back anyway, don’t bother squeezing onto the high-speed train. I just bought a new SUV this year—lots of space.”

He shook his shiny car key.

“The trunk is empty anyway.”

Wang Lili nodded. “Yeah, the drive takes several hours. The three of us can chat along the way. It’s much better than carrying bags through a crowded station.”

I hesitated for a moment, worried about intruding on the couple, but Xu Kai threw an arm around my shoulder.

“Settled! Tomorrow morning I’ll pick you up downstairs. We’ll head back to the village in style.”

The next morning, a little after eight, Xu Kai arrived at the building where I rented my tiny apartment. He helped me load my things into the trunk.

I sat in the passenger seat. Wang Lili took the back seat. She politely greeted me before putting on her headphones and scrolling through her phone.

Fifteen minutes later, we were already on the national highway.

Xu Kai and I talked about the past few years working in the city. Unlike me, his career was moving at an insane pace, he had truly made a name for himself. Within half a year after graduating from college, he joined a state-owned company. Less than a year later, thanks to his abilities, he had already become a department manager.

That was also where he met Wang Lili.

If my life had gone that smoothly, maybe I wouldn’t have avoided going home for four years.

At some point during our conversation, I fell asleep.

I don’t know how long I slept before Xu Kai shook me awake.

“Chen-ge… you’re finally awake.”

His voice trembled.

His hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his fingertips had turned pale.

“Take a look over there,” he said. “That broken road sign on the right… isn’t it the same one we passed earlier when we first got on the highway?”

I looked out the window.

There was indeed a road sign with half of it snapped off.

But there were countless road signs along highways.

“You’re overthinking it,” I said. “Maybe you’re just tired. There’s no way we’d pass the exact same one again. If you’re exhausted, we can switch drivers at the next rest stop.”

Xu Kai shook his head violently.

“No… I’m sure of it. We’ve passed the exact same sign twice.”

We continued driving.

Soon, I noticed something strange.

There wasn’t a single other car on the road.

Normally, around the Lunar New Year, highways were packed with vehicles—sometimes even jammed with traffic. But now the road stretched endlessly ahead of us, completely empty.

Suddenly, Wang Lili took off her headphones.

Her voice trembled.

“Kai-ge… Chen-ge… something’s wrong with my phone.”

“What do you mean?”

“The time,” she said, holding up the screen. “It’s stuck at 14:30. It keeps flickering between 14:30 and 14:30. It won’t move forward.”

My heart skipped.

I glanced at the navigation screen.

The arrow representing our car was spinning wildly in place.

Cold sweat formed on my palms.

“Xu Kai,” I said quietly, trying to stay calm. “Let’s turn around. Maybe we should get off the highway and take smaller roads instead.”

He nodded immediately.

We found a spot where we could turn the car around and started driving in the opposite direction.

Normally, ten minutes of driving would have taken us back toward the previous city.

But ten minutes later—

The same broken road sign appeared again.

Still on the right side of the road.

Xu Kai’s voice grew desperate.

“What do we do? Even after turning around, we’re back here again.”

He glanced at the fuel gauge.

“And the gas… it’s almost gone. I filled the tank before picking you up this morning.”

The mileage on the dashboard kept increasing wildly, far beyond the distance to our village.

Outside the window, the scenery began to look… wrong.

The mountains in the distance looked like overlapping textures from a poorly rendered video game.

Every tree along the roadside looked exactly the same.

“Next time we reach that broken sign,” I said slowly, “stop the car. Let’s get out and take a look.”

About ten minutes later, we stopped beside the sign.

I opened the door and stepped out.

As I walked toward the sign, I noticed something terrifying.

Behind it was not empty land—

but a wall of thick black fog.

The silence around us was absolute.

No wind.

No insects.

I couldn’t even hear my own heartbeat.

Xu Kai and Wang Lili stood behind me.

Neither of them spoke.

“I’m scared…” Wang Lili whispered, clutching Xu Kai’s arm. “What should we do?”

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I picked up a rusty soda can lying beside the road and threw it into the black fog.

We waited.

And waited.

There was no sound of it hitting the ground.

Just as we were about to return to the car, Wang Lili suddenly screamed.

Her trembling finger pointed at the back of the road sign.

We turned around.

The back of the sign was no longer blank.

Instead, it flickered with lines of green code—like something from a computer screen.

For a moment, it even looked like a blue screen from a crashed system.

At the same time, the black fog began to spread slowly toward the center of the highway.

Xu Kai jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed the accelerator.

The engine roared violently. The needle on the speedometer shot to its limit.

But we felt no acceleration.

Outside the windows, the black fog moved like a living creature, silently devouring the asphalt road and the metal guardrails.

“Faster! Faster!” Xu Kai shouted hysterically.

But the fog reached the windshield anyway.

It seeped into the car through the air vents like icy water.

Xu Kai finally stopped the car.

His arms fell limply beside the steering wheel.

Then he buried his face in his hands and began to sob.

“Is there really no way out…?”

Just as the darkness was about to swallow everything, the static from the car radio suddenly stopped.

A broken news broadcast crackled through the speakers.

“...Breaking news. Earlier today, on the section of National Highway XX leading to XX Village, a serious traffic accident occurred. An SUV collided head-on with an out-of-control truck. According to rescue workers at the scene, the three passengers inside the SUV… have all been confirmed deceased. None survived.”