When I woke up, I was lying in my room with a fluffy teddy bear beside my pillow.

Warm sunlight streamed through the curtains, illuminating the whole room.

This is my home in the real world, with no alien monsters and no pitch-black storm outside the window.

“Nana, come downstairs for breakfast!” Mom's long-lost gentle voice came through.

My nose tingled, my eyes turned sour, and I almost cried.

It felt so good to leave the game and return to the real world!

I stepped downstairs wearing fluffy pink slippers. Mom was busy in the kitchen, and the table was set with cooked rice porridge, which smelled incredibly enticing.

Sitting at the table, I stretched contentedly. The nightmare of the game world was over, and I wouldn't have to eat that nauseating food again!

It's great to be alive!

As I picked up my chopsticks, I noticed a note under the bun. It was Dad's handwriting, left before he went to work.

The note read: “Mom hasn't been feeling well these past few days. Her temper isn't good. Remember not to make any noise while eating.”

A chill ran down my spine. I bit my chopsticks, my eyes turning red.

It was just a reminder from Dad, but after the rules game, I had residual trauma. The words on the note seemed like game rules.

Bad luck!

I crumpled the note forcefully and threw it into the trash can with a "bang."

Mom paused upon hearing the noise, her vegetable-picking movements slowed down.

The atmosphere in the house began to turn strange!

I lost my appetite for breakfast, irritably turned on the TV, and an unfamiliar program jumped out, with countless comments floating across the screen.

“Someone's about to die, right?”

“Who's first? I'm kind of looking forward to how she dies!”

The porridge in my mouth turned sticky, and I ran to the bathroom to vomit as if experiencing a trauma response.

After rinsing my mouth, I stared at the mirror, which reflected a clock.

No, no one places a clock in the bathroom.

This wasn't my home!

My brain worked rapidly, and a horrifying thought emerged. I had fallen into a trap and hadn't passed the rules game. I was still in the game!

Where was the problem?

“Nana...” Mom's gentle call came from outside the door, but her voice turned urgent and mechanical, “Nana, where are you? I made your favorite porridge.”

Cold sweat ran down my back. I stared at the mirror, thinking over the broken game rules.

It was my brother!

Something went wrong with the seventh rule!

I violated the seventh rule, but no one thought that a rule could be half right and half wrong. It's wrong to converse with my brother, but not trusting his words is right.

Thus, I still violated the seventh rule and remained in the game.

Outside the biochemical base, I was blasted to death together with the spaceship I shot down, because I broke the rules by believing my brother. Leaving the "home" with him within seven days meant losing the game and failing to return to the real world.

When I left the "home," "Mom" used her tentacle to write "You, lost!" on the glass window. My brother deliberately pulled me away, preventing me from seeing it.

More likely, the comments interacting with me on the TV and watch were fake, meant to confuse the participants' judgment.

Cthulhu feeds on human fear, so how could it let us “guinea pigs” leave?

All game losers won't truly "die." They remain here, in a death loop, in infinite games, generating fear for the aliens to consume.

I walked out of the bathroom, and my phone was on the dining table.

Sitting down, I picked up my phone and hid it in my sleeve. Mom smiled at me: “Nana, you're disobedient. Dad told you not to make noise while eating.”

She grinned, and her tongue morphed into a crimson tentacle, curling towards me.

Gripping my phone, I dared not look back and fled upstairs to the bedroom. Once inside, I toppled the wardrobe to block the door.

It could only hold her off for a few minutes, but that was enough time!

Quickly, I edited the message and sent it to the number I used to contact via my old watch.

If my hypothesis is correct, there are countless versions of “me” in this closed time loop, and when I leave the rules game, a new me will wake up inside and start over.

“Never look at the living room window; this rule is wrong!”

“Nana, come out, don't make Mom angry.” The thing outside the door spoke soothingly, yet it viciously banged on the door, causing the wardrobe to sway dangerously.

As I expected, a reply came: “Who are you? How do you know this rule is wrong?”

Wiping the cold sweat that blurred my vision, I had no time to answer her question.

As the crimson tentacle breached the door, I sent the final message: “Don’t believe anything your brother says!”

Mom, with a long tentacle protruding from her mouth, approached me and squinted her eyes gently:

“Nana violated Dad's note. She has to be punished.”

(End)