When the solitary, one-of-a-kind [Misfortune Godhead] drifted like a gray ghost, it dragged a chalk-gray wake along [Void] rails between countless [World]s.
What did it feel in that windless cold, to end its long, lonely tour, rip through Little Ash’s [World], and drop into her body like falling ash?
What force, what mood, what hope—or that tighter knot called despair—on Little Ash’s skin could have called to the [Misfortune Godhead]?
Ye Weibai guessed it was a body—still warm, fresh from suicide, like embers gone dull under rain.
The method was wrist-slitting, a scarlet ribbon opened by a kitchen knife, quiet as snow at midnight.
The place was her bedroom at home, where old light pools and shadows cling like lichen.
The identity was Little Ash’s mother, a name held like a bead of frost at dawn.
The reason—no longer important, and full of fog—he read off Little Ash’s pale, sickly face once the gray particles peeled away.
Before this, Little Ash likely carried a grave illness, maybe a terminal verdict stamped like winter on her bones.
It could be one reason her mother chose the knife; there might be others, like a husband vanishing with money like wind.
We don’t know the full chain; Little Ash won’t speak; yet Ye Weibai’s sharp eye traced most of the pattern like footprints in dust.
What hurts worse than despair is this: you steel your faith, you burn all your fuel, you tell yourself not to quit.
You keep going, again and again, stumbling like a storm-tossed boat, dignity stripped like bark from a tree.
You finally smile, thinking the shadow thins and the blossom opens, and the chill lifts from your chest.
Then a larger despair waits ahead, silent as a predator, watching, mouth a red abyss, ready to swallow you whole.
Willows dark and flowers bright bring joy; willows bright and flowers dim break the heart like frost on spring petals.
The instant [Misfortune] entered Little Ash, her [Apotheosis] washed her sickness clean, as rain scours dust. How could a Deity be ill?
She lay on her bed, a lone figure waiting for Death like a crow at the sill, and life surged back.
It rose like a bud pushing through ice, tender green cracking the frost, stretching inside her ribs.
For no reason she could name, she was healed, and the room trembled with the hush before laughter.
Her first act might have been a laugh, or a sob, or a shout, or a curse tossed like a stone.
No one knows, but the person she most wanted to tell was certain: her mother, the lamp in her night.
So she jumped, a motion she hadn’t dared in years, like a bird remembering sky after a long winter.
She skipped the slippers, bare soles kissing the cold floor, ice that once burned like knives now dulled by joy.
She cradled an image: her mother’s smile blooming like sunrise, gentle enough to smooth every wrinkle of time.
She pushed her door, stumbled through the “strange” living room, heart pounding like drumbeats, and reached her mother’s bedroom.
She breathed in, face bright as a flower after rain, then pushed open the door named [Misfortune].
She saw, in that orange pool of lamplight, a body at the bedhead, the word “despair” written across its stillness.
Blood flowed like a thin river. It ran from wrist to forearm, from fingertips to floor, a red thread in wood grain.
It crept along those lines like ink through paper, and it reached the snow-pale feet of Little Ash.
What shade did her sunlit smile twist into, caught between light and dark like dusk on water?
Ye Weibai thought: that must be the color of [Misfortune], a bruise under the skin of joy.
Worse yet—the [Misfortune Godhead], when it shifted Little Ash into the [Inner World], carried her mother’s corpse along like a shadow.
Ye Weibai had noticed the [World] around Little Ash was fixed between 8:15 and 9:15, a clock pinned like a butterfly.
The wall clock, the TV program, the window’s sunlight—all hung in [Cycle], repeating like waves on a windless shore.
Why did the [Misfortune Godhead] lock only that single hour, a tight ring of iron on the day’s throat?
He guessed it set the key to the exact moment her mother died, a wick snuffed the breath instant it flickered.
Even if time rewound once, twice, three times—ten thousand—the scene stayed, cold as stone: the corpse, the blood, the hush.
It wasn’t that Little Ash ran too slow; it was that the hinge of time had been strangled, malicious and foul.
She could scream “Mom, don’t!” in a voice that cuts like broken glass, yet the door opened to only one tableau.
That single picture was a mirror of despair and [Misfortune], a feast that the [Misfortune Godhead] must savor.
If this trait comes from the first [Misfortune], then the original Deity had a temperament ugly as rust.
“Worse than me by countless measures,” Ye Weibai murmured, his voice like ash, the edge hidden under silk.
“It even stripped Little Ash’s expressions, and forced a [Smile] in the face of this [Misfortune]. This Deity’s taste is rotten.”
...
Two hours earlier.
“Getting you to cry—would be allowed, right?”
Ye Weibai smiled as he asked, voice calm as a lake under clouds.
Behind the whooshing gray particle storm, Little Ash hovered like a phantom, smiling with ice in her eyes.
Ye Weibai knew she wasn’t truly smiling; the cold shone like frost on steel.
“Little Ash.” She chose silence, so he spoke softly, warmth like tea steam rising between them.
“I read faces well. Shown or hidden, I catch them by threads, like pulling silk from a cocoon.”
“Psychology calls it empathy. I call it listening to the wind in the reeds.”
“So even if you keep [Smiling], I can see the real face behind it. Right now, you’re K—”
“Enough!!!”
Her shout cracked like thunder. Skirt and hair flew up like banners in a storm.
[Misfortune] surged skyward, a gray hawk leaping on a gust.
Boom!
The spinning gray storm exploded like a tidal wave and swept at Ye Weibai, a mountain of ash in motion.
It rolled, it roared, and at the edge of his smiling face, it folded back like a tide and vanished.
Little Ash hung in the air, posture regal, beauty cold as moonlight, looking down at Ye Weibai.
“You—”
She didn’t finish; Ye Weibai stepped lightly into the gap, voice a blade wrapped in velvet.
“I believe you dare to kill me.”
“...”
She stared, gray particles burning in her eyes like coals, reflecting his calm face like a still pond.
“Tsk.” After a long beat, she clicked her tongue, then closed the storm like a fist.
She was once more a high-school girl, fragile as paper lantern light, drifting down to the sofa.
“Xiaobai~” She rested her neck on the sofa arm, face tilted to the white ceiling like a lily.
“Mm.”
“We kind of regret hiring you. What should we do?”
“No problem. After we win this game, our contract ends.”
“...” She paused, then laughed, the sound thin as silk. “True. Still—listen.”
“Xiaobai, we really, really, really, really don’t like you~”
He laughed. “I get it.”
“Tsk.” She angled her face, eyes slanting like a knife’s glint.
“Alright~ sit tight for a bit. We need to visit [Trade] and settle a thing.”
“How long?”
“If nothing goes wrong, quick as summer rain.”
“Mm.”
...
However.
Something went wrong.
...
“Hello, boy. I am [Time].”
“[Misfortune] is dead.”
