"Everybody fears death, even the mad."
The phone rang once.
There was no noise that could pierce the repeated cold ringing, a thin metallic, metallic sound, as if it wanted to squeeze out from the wall separating reality from nightmare.
He was not asleep, but neither was he alert: half-opened eyes, trembling fingers on the keyboard, slow pulse…
The phone rang for a third time.
A black screen.
No identity.
Someone who seemed not to belong to this world.
He looked at the black screen for more seconds and said, "Not now... this damned project is still unfinished..."
Rejecting the call, the lights went out.
Sudden chill.
As if the room had just inhaled from the chest of death itself.
The phone rang again. Longer and slower... closer.
The phone to him, instead of the other way around—or at least so he thought.
He answered.
Silence.
All he received was something unidentified—a kind of pulse but distorted—coming straight through the speakers to the inside of his skull.
He screamed. Collapsed.
His scream echoed far away, somewhere else, in a place unknown to him, beneath a room with a splintered moon gushing through the window, and a sword stuck in a motionless body.
Li Min Shang began to rise.
His body trembled.
His brain punched against his skull like a hollow drummer.
He looked up…
A huge room with walls covered with yellowing wallpaper, decaying as if it had tried to resist time and failed... Victorian-style furnishings... a tiny library... An old machine, and a bed.
On that bed lay an inert body of a man, with all stillness about him, with a sword sticking out of his stomach.
Yet no blood. Not a single drop.
As if not killed by the blade but the very existence of the body got wiped away.
"Impossible..."
The shaky voice sounded so foreign, somewhere along a realm of neither his nor anyone else's.
He stepped forward.
He suddenly took a step back as if his feet knew something he did not.
"Did... did I do this?"
The headache punctured his temple.
Memories poured out as black ink spilled in clear water.
Names, faces, symbols...
William Gideon.
Year One.
Academy of the Blind Blood Sword.
Sophia Scott.
"What is this information? What's going on? Who is William Gideon?"
He pressed his temples, but the memories kept flooding—keeping violent.
"Is... is that me?"
He stood up abruptly, looked at his hands and then at his reflection in glass...
But there was no Li Min Shang.
There was another young man with jet-black hair, green eyes, and a face that didn't even resemble him.
"I'm not in my world."
"I'm in the body of a man... who might be a killer."
"And there's a corpse in my bed."
Before he could finish the thought...
Knock... knock... knock.
He froze.
He looked at the door.
Soft-knocks, with a touch of weirdness, as if the hand knocking knew more about what was behind the door than he did about himself.
"William? Are you in there?"
The voice of a girl. Thin yet confident.
Li Min Shang glanced back at the body, then to the door.
His heart was beating faster than it ever had.
"Yes..."
It was a voice, and yet not in full.
He pulled the sword out of the dead man with no blood or smell of death.
The corpse was then covered with a thick blanket as he sat down on the chair and tried to calm his breath.
He opened the door.
And there she stood.
Short white hair grazing her neck.
Soul-piercing green eyes.
A long black coat.
Bag slung across her shoulder.
She was beautiful... and unnerving.
"Where were you? You missed all the fun. We caught two Level D criminals."
She smiled but already surveyed the room, as if it was a crime scene.
He returned the smile nervously while groping for some sort of convincing lie:
"Ah, yeah... sorry. I was just sorting out some stuff."
She glanced behind him to the bed, raising her eyebrows:
"Do you have a visitor?"
The answer came swiftly:
"No, no. That's just... clothes my brother Louis sent me. A bunch of old stuff--I haven't unpacked it yet."
She raised an eyebrow:
"Louis? Strange... He usually doesn't give anything to anyone. Bit of a miser, that one."
He laughed nervously, scratching the back of his head:
"Oh, don't worry. He only gave me his old clothes... They don't fit him anymore, so he said I could have them."
She stared at him for a moment... then smiled faintly:
"Alright. Well, when you're done, I'll be waiting in the grand garden by the gate."
She turned and departed.
He closed the door slowly behind her and leaned against it.
A new world, a new body... there is a corpse on the floor with a friend knocking on the door.
"Oh God, what have I fallen into?"
"I seem to have learned that the brother of the body is a miser. But maybe from the memories, and with the other one, it seems he was in his own way some kind of second-sequence sorcerer."
With thoughts chasing him, Li Min Shang stepped up while trying to move with a spirit, unsure if what was going on was real or just a long-breathed nightmare. Something inside him resisted understanding. Something inside his mind was whispering this was not just an accident; it might be a curse.
"This world is on one page... and that corpse is on a completely different one... And I'm stuck between the two lines."
He whispered it while glancing around, expecting the sky to fall.
He approached the body as his feet protested in hesitation.
The eyes of the man were partly open, seemingly frozen there by fear. No smell emanated from the corpse of death or of any sort of decay,. Nothing at all. As though it were the corpse of an idea, not those of a man.
"This is the first corpse I've ever seen... but it's nothing like what I read about. It does not resemble death; it resembles forgetting."
He grabbed his head by his temples, pressing on them as if trying to squeeze out the chaos. He walked anxiously and wasn't sure whether he should avoid the corpse or run away from himself.
"Should I burn it? Cut it up? Or... leave it to swallow me just like it did to the one who was here before me?"
Suddenly...
Everything stopped.
The clock's hands stopped.
The air disappeared.
And the birds outside the window turned into still shadows that no longer flapped.
Li Min Shang panicked.
His breath caught in his throat.
His world froze.
Then came the voice.
"Hello, Li Min Shang."
The voice was soft, but carried a coldness like it came from the depths of an abandoned cellar.
He turned quickly.
And there, on a worn-out chair, sat a man who didn't belong to time.
He wore a formal outfit as if he had just returned from a funeral that hadn't happened yet, and a black scarf covered his head, hiding more than it revealed.
"Who… are you?"
The words came out strangled, as if the question itself was trying to retreat.
"Who I am doesn't matter. What matters is that I know you more than you know yourself."
The man stared at him, his voice slicing through the silence like a knife in still water.
"You are lost. Confused. Your mind is screaming, but it doesn't know the direction."
Li Min Shang lowered his head, the stranger's voice sinking into him without permission.
"I want to go back… to my world, my family… anything that resembles me."
But deep down, he knew. There was no going back.
"I understand now… this is my place. This is my body. This is my new world—even if I didn't ask for it."
The stranger smiled, a smile without warmth.
"Clever… That's why we chose you. But you are afraid. And fear is your real enemy. Not the corpse. Not this world."
Then he added, in a voice that trembled as if spelling out truths:
"Don't look for fire to hide a body… look for the door you came through. It might not open—but at least, you'll know how far you've come."
"What are you trying to say?" Li Min Shang spoke with an exhausted tone.
"You have several tasks in this vast world ruled by ancient progress. All you need to do is become William Gideon… and forget Li Min Shang."
The man extended his hand as he spoke, his voice cold and detached.
"You mean to give up everything… to start from zero in this world?"
Li Min Shang's voice trembled with uncertainty.
"Yes. And your first mission is to find out who killed this person," he replied, his tone icy.
"How do you expect me to investigate someone I don't even know? He's not even part of my memories!"
Li Min Shang questioned, his confusion thickening.
"It's simple, Li Min Shang. All you need to do is take the body outside and place it in the garden. Once someone sees it, the Academy will go into full panic mode, and then the investigation will begin. All you have to do is listen… and gather the threads of the solution."
He chuckled softly, his voice still laced with that unsettling coldness.
"So what you're really saying is… you want me to become a detective, and solve the case myself," Li Min Shang replied.
"That's exactly right, Li Min Shang. Take your time uncovering the truth—whether it's within the Academy or beyond it. Now then… until we meet again, Sir William Gideon."
Li Min Shang sat down on the chair, clasping his fingers tightly together.
The exhaustion weighed on him, as if fate had just been sealed.
There was no going back to that quiet life he once belonged to.
He was trapped here—in a time that did not welcome him.
He lifted his head toward the pale moon, staring at his hands as if trying to confirm he was still real.
Then he smiled—a bitter, exaggerated smile, like a mask of madness stretched across a broken face.
"Looks like I'll be staying here… This will be my other world now.
I must finally accept… that I am William Gideon, from this moment on."
Then, slowly, he turned toward the bed—where the corpse had been.
But the bed was empty.
His eyes widened instantly.
His smile vanished as if it had never existed.
Even his breath stopped for a moment.
"D-Didn't it just… didn't it just lie there a second ago?"
He took one step forward… and then saw something small where the body had been.
A black feather.
Stained with a drop of ink.
Next to the feather lay a folded piece of paper, its title written in careful, haunting ink:
'The Jester.'