Fantasy Novel: Paradise Hotel   

3
[2] The Concert Mural

4

In the evening, Lin Hsiao-yang pushed open the hotel’s front door. The afterglow of the sunset illuminated the surface of the lake, while a light mist hovered over the water like a thin veil draped across the golden ripples. He hurried upstairs, entered his room, locked the door from the inside, and then sat down at the desk facing the lake to organize his travel notes.

He opened his laptop and revised a route map of his journey, occasionally sliding his finger across the touchpad as he carefully selected the attractions he had visited along the way. As he revised the content, he would quietly read it aloud while sketching rough drawings in his notebook so that he could determine where to place illustrations later. Lost in thought, he raised his head and looked toward the lake. The last rays of sunlight shimmered across the water like a dancer’s costume woven from golden threads, as though an invisible dancer were gracefully performing upon the surface.

As he continued thinking, fatigue suddenly swept over him. He rubbed his brow and simply rested his head on the desk for a short nap. He did not know how much time had passed when a strange sensation suddenly startled him awake. There seemed to be another person in the room.

He slowly opened his eyes. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a shadow cast across the desk that did not belong to him, long and upright. His heart immediately began pounding faster. The light came from the floor-to-ceiling window, and the figure standing behind him was clearly reflected across the desktop.

But…the door had been locked from the inside.

Lin Hsiao-yang held his breath and slowly turned around.

A young man stood in the middle of the room. His expression was calm. He wore a dark navy changpao and mandarin jacket, with every button fastened neatly. A red flat wool cap sat on his head, and a pair of round-framed glasses rested on his face. His features had a distinctly East Asian appearance. He was refined and scholarly, and there was something about his manner that seemed to belong to another era.

Lin Hsiao-yang suddenly recoiled, his back pressing against the edge of the desk. Astonished, he asked, “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

The man gently pushed up his glasses and replied calmly, “I’m Huang Lihua. I’ve always lived in this room.”

The signature on the mural in the living room immediately flashed through Lin Hsiao-yang’s mind—“Huang Lihua.”

“You’re…the artist who painted the oil painting?”

“Yes.”

Before Lin Hsiao-yang could process this astonishing discovery, the man slowly added another sentence, as though he could hear what was going on inside his mind.

“Yes, I can hear your thoughts. I’m sorry.”

Huang Lihua gave him a faint smile. His expression was gentle, but that only sent a chill down Lin Hsiao-yang’s spine.

“How can you…” Lin Hsiao-yang’s voice trembled, and his scalp prickled.

“That isn’t important,” Huang Lihua said casually. His tone remained calm, but an inscrutable look flashed through his deep eyes. He raised his right hand and slowly pointed toward the living room. “I’ve always lived there.”

Lin Hsiao-yang followed his gesture and looked at the mural. The European-style living room depicted in the painting remained quiet and still. Its furnishings were classical, with a brass chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling and the lid of a grand piano partially closed, as though a concert had just ended.

“Live…inside the painting?”

“This is ridiculous,” Lin Hsiao-yang thought.

Lin Hsiao-yang suddenly stood up and hurried into the living room, carefully examining the mural. His fingertips slid along the frame. It felt cold to the touch, and the texture of the canvas was clear. There was nothing unusual about it.

Huang Lihua followed him and stood beside him. In an unhurried tone, he said, “In 1922, I completed my studies and came to Switzerland to travel. I stayed at this hotel, and I have been here ever since.”

“1922?!” Lin Hsiao-yang spun around and stared at him in disbelief. “You mean…you’ve already been alive for more than a hundred years?”

“If you look at the date signed on this painting, you’ll understand.”

Lin Hsiao-yang lowered his head and looked at the signature in the corner of the painting.

“April 13, 1925…”

He suddenly raised his head, his voice trembling.

“But you…you look younger than I do!”

Huang Lihua smiled faintly, his eyes deep and inscrutable.

“That is because people who stay in this hotel for a long time do not age.”

Lin Hsiao-yang drew in a sharp breath, his shock plainly visible on his face.

“How…how is that possible?”

“You don’t have to believe me, but this is the truth,” Huang Lihua said firmly, his expression calm.

Lin Hsiao-yang’s heart pounded wildly. He involuntarily took a step backward.

“So…are you a ghost?”

Huang Lihua shook his head and extended his right hand, palm facing upward.

“You can touch it. My hand is warm.”

Lin Hsiao-yang hesitated for a moment before finally extending his fingertips and touching the man’s palm.

…It was indeed warm.

At that instant, his mind nearly collapsed.

“For all these decades…you’ve been living here the entire time?” He swallowed hard and asked with difficulty.

“Yes.” Huang Lihua’s tone remained calm, but a faint sadness passed through his eyes. “I briefly returned to Paris once, but I soon came back here because…”

He paused and looked toward the forest outside the window. His voice became low.

“I can’t go anywhere.”

Lin Hsiao-yang frowned.

“Why?”

Huang Lihua said quietly, “Because this forest is called the ‘Forest of Forgetting.’”

Lin Hsiao-yang’s heart jolted. Just as he was about to ask another question, a melodious sound of music suddenly reached his ears.

He turned toward the sound. Inside the mural, the piano was actually trembling slightly. Its keys were moving on their own, and the music gradually became clearer.

“There’s no time to explain. The concert is about to begin.” Huang Lihua’s eyes suddenly lit up. He smiled gently and extended his hand. “Come. I’ll take you inside.”

Lin Hsiao-yang’s entire body stiffened. He cautiously stepped backward.

“Inside…inside where?”

“The painting.”

Huang Lihua gently took hold of his wrist.

The space around them began to tremble slightly. Ripples seemed to spread across the mural as though its surface were water. Lin Hsiao-yang’s heart raced wildly. He struggled to pull his hand free, but he felt an invisible force dragging him forward.

The next second—

He was no longer in the hotel living room. Instead, he found himself standing in a brilliantly illuminated courtyard.

Music echoed continuously through the air, graceful and mysterious.

Lin Hsiao-yang looked around in terror. Huang Lihua stood beside him, the corners of his mouth slightly raised as he whispered,

“Welcome to the world inside the painting.”

5

An hour later, Lin Hsiao-yang followed Huang Lihua to his studio. When he pushed open the intricately carved wooden door, a faint mixture of pinewood and paint filled the air. The studio was spacious and quiet. All three walls were covered with various works of art—delicate and flowing watercolor paintings, finely layered traditional East Asian color paintings, crisp and powerful prints, and sketches whose pencil strokes alternated between sharpness and softness. Oil paintings were the most numerous. Their canvases were heavy and richly colored, each one resembling a story frozen in time.

Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, falling diagonally across the easel in front of the courtyard. On the easel, a partially completed oil painting faintly revealed the silhouettes of figures, as though their souls had not yet fully descended into the painting.

Huang Lihua walked to the easel and gently brushed away the dust on it. He smiled faintly.

“This is my world.”

Lin Hsiao-yang’s eyes moved from one painting to another, surprise evident in his expression.

“These paintings…did you paint all of them?”

Huang Lihua turned around and casually waved his hand, with a hint of pride in his voice.

“That’s right.”

Hsiao-yang walked toward the wall and gently ran his fingers along the edges of the frames, his eyes flickering with astonishment.

“There sure are a lot of them…”

Huang Lihua nodded slightly. His tone was calm, yet it carried a profound weight.

“More than three thousand pieces. What you see now is only one-tenth of them. The rest are still lying in the storage rooms, waiting for the moment when they are meant to be awakened.”

Lin Hsiao-yang stared at him in astonishment and drew in a sharp breath.

“More than three thousand? This…you could practically open a private museum!”

The corners of Huang Lihua’s mouth lifted slightly, and a trace of nostalgia flashed through his eyes.

“For ninety years, my life has consisted of little more than painting. These paintings are the record of my life.”

He turned and led Lin Hsiao-yang to a corner of the studio. An ancient full-length mirror stood there. Its silver frame was carved with intricate patterns, and the surface of the mirror shimmered as though it concealed countless untold stories.

Huang Lihua turned slightly, and his tone became unusually serious.

“Walk through it, and you’ll be able to return to your room. But remember—without me accompanying you, you must never come in here by yourself. The paths here are more complicated than you can imagine. I don’t want you to get lost.”

Lin Hsiao-yang stood before the mirror, hesitated for a moment, and then turned toward Huang Lihua.

“Can I come back tomorrow?”

Huang Lihua smiled gently, his tone carrying a hint of mystery.

“Tomorrow evening, wait for me in the lobby downstairs, little brother.”

Lin Hsiao-yang nodded and took a deep breath before stepping into the mirror. Just as his body was about to disappear, Huang Lihua gently raised his hand and waved to him.

The surface of the mirror rippled, then returned to silence, as though nothing had ever happened.

6

Lin Hsiao-yang returned to his room in a state of bewilderment. When he pushed open the door to the living room, silence immediately surrounded him. The sounds that had come from inside the painting only moments earlier now seemed as though they had never existed. All that remained in the room was the deep darkness of night and the faint scent of oil paint lingering in the air.

His eyes involuntarily fell upon the mural on the wall. The scene inside the painting remained silent and still, but when he recalled the mysterious music he had just heard, a strange chill rose within him.

Hsiao-yang slowly walked forward, raised his hand, and gently touched the canvas with his fingertips. A cool sensation traveled through his fingertips, making his heart jolt. He tried pressing inward, only to discover that the wall behind the painting was solid.

“What’s going on?” Hsiao-yang frowned. The moment when he had heard the sound coming from the painting replayed repeatedly in his mind. “There was clearly a sound coming from inside the painting…but there’s no hidden door here, and there aren’t even any cracks…”

His fingertips moved along the edge of the frame, as though searching for some kind of mechanism, but he found nothing.

The questions in his mind refused to go away. What exactly was Huang Lihua? Was his existence merely a coincidence, or was it part of some kind of deliberate arrangement?

Hsiao-yang sighed and returned to the bed with a mind full of questions. He collapsed onto the soft pillow, but sleep refused to come. He tossed and turned, staring directly at the ceiling, his thoughts in complete turmoil.

“Huang Lihua definitely isn’t a ghost…” he murmured to himself. He recalled Huang Lihua’s confident, composed voice, his slightly weathered smile, and those eyes that seemed capable of seeing straight through people’s hearts. But if he wasn’t a ghost, then what was he?

“Could he be a vampire from the legends?”

The thought suddenly occurred to Lin Hsiao-yang, and even he was stunned for a moment. He remembered that, according to legend, vampires were immortal, loved art, and were skilled at manipulating people’s minds…

Huang Lihua had lived in this building for ninety years, and he had said that his life had consisted of little more than painting.

Ninety years—could an ordinary person really do such a thing?

“Why did he approach me voluntarily?” Hsiao-yang frowned uneasily. Huang Lihua’s final words echoed in his mind:

“Tomorrow evening, wait for me in the lobby downstairs, little brother.”

“What exactly does he want to do?”

The only sound in the room was the tick-tock of the pendulum clock, urging the night to grow deeper. Hsiao-yang turned over and tightly closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. But the doubts in his heart surged like a tide, pushing his thoughts toward an unknown darkness.

After an unknown amount of time, a faint light entered through the window. Dawn had arrived.

In a dazed state, Lin Hsiao-yang finally fell asleep. Yet even in his dreams, the painting, that mysterious voice, and that enigmatic man continued to haunt him.