Silhouette in a Cocoon

[2025 Fifth Qimao Realistic Fiction Writing Contest, Best Plot Award in the Short Story Category]

Five strangers who seem to have nothing in common are each locked in a corner of an unknown sealed room, all wearing animal masks.

Blood writing on the walls, blood spreading everywhere, and a girl's corpse falling in the chaos: every bizarre event that follows declares to them that this is a long-planned struggle between trapped beasts.

As they work through the carefully laid-out puzzles, they gradually realize that this is not merely a deadly contest of wits and endurance, but also a psychological experiment closely tied to every one of them... What does the manipulator, hiding behind the banner of treatment, hope to do with this "soft weapon"? Where will they lead humanity, trapped in its information cocoon?