The first thing she noticed was the silence.
Not the comforting kind, heavy with sleep or peace but the taut, uneasy kind, stretched thin like the skin of a drum. It hummed beneath the floorboards, coiled behind the walls. Even the wind outside the paper-paneled window seemed reluctant to disturb it.
The second thing she noticed was that she couldn't move.
Her limbs felt stiff, not with pain, but with memory as though they had been still for too long, buried under days of breathless waiting.
Then came the System's voice, sharp and clean:
[Cycle 001 — Commencing.]
Code: Subject 413
Body: Bai Ningwei, 17 (deceased)
Mark: Cinnabar teardrop (left cheek)
Location: Bai Residence, Southern State
Goal: Clear injustice, survive, collect soul token
Tokens Collected: 0
Memory Access: Locked
The voice disappeared. No welcome. No instructions. Only rules.
A gust of wind creaked the wood above her, and the girl in the bed finally opened her eyes.
It was still early, just past dawn, judging from the faint gold curling across the floor. She stared at the ceiling for a moment, breath held, as if the world would shift again if she moved too fast.
It didn't.
She sat up slowly.
The room was small. Sparse. A lacquered screen in the corner. A basin by the wall. A low table with a single scroll on it, still rolled. There was no warmth here. No scent of someone's life.
The bed didn't creak when she rose. Her feet found slippers too tight. The robe she wore hung oddly on her shoulders, the sleeves slightly long.
Nothing fit.
Not the clothes.
Not the silence.
Not the body.
She crossed to the table and unrolled the scroll. Blank.
Of course.
"System," she said aloud. Her voice rasped- rough, underused. "Is there a guide?"
[Host Query Received. Clarifying: No tutorial available. Emotional Support Module locked until Cycle 003.]
[Reminder: This is a punishment cycle. Assistance will not be provided.]
"Right."
The girl - Subject 413 - sighed and rubbed her temples.
She still didn't remember her own name. The System hadn't offered one. Only the name of the body: Bai Ningwei.
Dead at seventeen.
Except, apparently, not anymore.
There was a washcloth folded neatly on the edge of the basin. She dipped it in the cold water and pressed it to her face. Her reflection in the copper mirror wavered, then sharpened.
The girl who looked back had a small mouth, a sharp chin, and pale skin that hadn't seen the sun in weeks. The cinnabar mark on her cheek, like a tear trapped mid-fall, pulsed faintly in the light.
"Great," she muttered. "A face made for mourning."
She didn't know what had killed Bai Ningwei, but the stiffness in her limbs, the bitter taste in her mouth, and the too-clean silence all pointed to one thing.
Poison.
A quiet kind. The kind used on girls like this, forgotten ones from quiet courtyards who annoyed the wrong person.
She would need to confirm it. But for now, there was a more pressing concern:
Where was she supposed to go?
⸻
The Bai residence was large, but the quiet in her wing felt intentional. Abandoned, even. No footsteps. No laughter. Not even the rustle of robes. Only the dry tap of her sandals as she walked past the paper screens.
She passed a small shrine on her left, unlit incense, cold ashes, and a plaque with the Bai family name. No one had prayed here in days.
[Reminder: Task Objective: Clear injustice. Identify the cause of death. Locate soul token.]
"I get it," she whispered. "You want me to solve a murder. My own."
[Clarifying: You are not Bai Ningwei.]
"Could've fooled me."
The System didn't answer.
She was about to give up.
The scrolls were still blank. The basin still dry. The air in her room had begun to feel like a trap, too clean, too quiet. And the System had gone silent again, offering no help, no map, no guidance. Nothing but her own instincts. Or worse, Ningwei's.
She turned to leave. But just as her hand brushed the edge of the low table, a corner of parchment lifted in the draft from the open window.
She froze.
There, stuck beneath the table leg , was a strip of paper, yellowed at the edges, folded over twice and sealed with wax, now broken. The edges were frayed, as though someone had clutched it too hard before hiding it.
A single line marked the front, written in a hurried hand:
"If you're reading this, go to Old Scholar Lin."
No explanation. No title, no name, not even a seal. But the handwriting matched the other torn pages she'd been finding in this room. Small. Sharp. Careful, except here, where the ink trailed as if it had been written quickly, maybe even in fear.
She turned it over. Nothing else.
"Go to Old Scholar Lin," she repeated under her breath. "Who is Old Scholar Lin?"
The name sparked no memory of her own, not as Subject 413, but her fingers closed around the paper anyway. She studied it a moment longer before sliding it into her sleeve. There was something urgent in the lettering. Not poetic, not even kind but urgent. As if the writer didn't expect to be heard again.
The System flickered, then pulsed once:
[Clue Acquired: Civilian Reference — "Old Scholar Lin"]
[Investigation Progress: +1%]
Then nothing.
Useless.
Still, it was the first thread she had. And Subject 413 knew this instinctively: when someone who knows they're dying leaves you a name, you follow.
At the end of the corridor, a sharp turn revealed an open-air hallway lined with wooden beams. Morning mist clung to the garden stones below. A pair of servants passed at a distance, heads bowed, voices hushed.
They didn't see her. Or if they did, they pretended not to.
That was fine. She wasn't here to make friends.
⸻
Old Scholar Lin's shop was five streets down from the Bai estate, near the edge of the scholar quarter. It took her an hour to find it, thanks to a headache and a dozen wrong turns, but eventually she stood beneath the crooked sign carved with ink-stained characters.
The shop smelled like dust, tea, and mild despair.
"Ah," the man behind the counter said when he saw her. "A ghost."
She stopped in the doorway. He didn't blink.
"You're not Bai Ningwei," he said flatly. "But you wear her skin well enough."
She stepped forward. "You knew her?"
"I knew her expressions. Her questions. Her kindness, though she tried to hide it." He tilted his head. "You have none of those."
She said nothing.
"You're something else." He poured tea without being asked. "I don't know what you are, but I know enough not to ask."
"Then why let me in?"
"Because you want the truth," he said, sliding the cup over. "And I'm quite bored."
⸻
She stayed at the shop until the sun dipped low behind the scholar's roof tiles. Scholar Lin didn't say much, but he didn't ask her to leave either. That, she decided, was close enough to kindness.
Before she left, he handed her a wrapped bun and muttered, "Careful walking home. People get nervous when the dead don't stay in their graves."
She didn't laugh. But she took the bun.
The streets were dim now, wet with fog. Someone rang a temple bell in the distance, soft and slow, as if warning something unseen.
When she stepped through the Bai residence gates, it was like stepping into a sealed jar. The air was heavier. Quieter. As if the house had been waiting for her.
In her room, everything was untouched. The basin was dry. The scrolls were still blank.
She lit the oil lamp and spread out the half-burned notes Lin had given her. A few herbs. A name scratched out. A line that stopped mid-thought.
Not enough. But it was a thread.
She flipped the page over and began a new list:
Suspects:
– Household physician
– Senior maid
– Older female relative (?)
– Matriarch
(cold signature at the bottom of the prescription)
She left the names blank. She would fill them in later, once they revealed themselves.
In the corner of her vision, the System flickered.
[Investigation Progress: 3%]
[No token awarded.]
A faint glimmer pulsed above the scroll. Then it faded.
Still, something had shifted. She had touched the edge of Bai Ningwei's pain and now it clung to her like wet fabric.
She leaned back. The lamp hissed as the oil burned low. Her gaze drifted to the far wall, where the shadows looked a little too still.
Somewhere deep in her mind, a voice stirred. A memory without shape.
"I'll find you again."
Her eyes didn't close.
She wasn't Bai Ningwei.
Not yet herself.
Just a shadow with borrowed skin and unfinished work.
And the house was watching.