"Hey, young man—hey, young man?"

A rough voice, drum-loud over still water, jolted Ye Weibai awake.

He surfaced from a blackout like breaking a cold pond, and blinked at the burly man with eyes like bronze bells.

Blank inside, Ye mumbled, "…What?"

"I said—thank you!" The man looked early forties, scratched needle-stiff stubble hair, and grinned like sunlight splitting cloud. He clapped Ye’s shoulder, laughter bright as a bell. "Thanks for teaching my daughter! You’ve been at it all morning. It’s noon. You’ve gotta be hungry. Don’t be shy—eat."

Thud.

He slammed down a heaping plate of noodle-like strips and meat, a little mountain that almost topped Ye’s head.

"Oh… you shouldn’t have."

Ye answered in a fog, voice thin as smoke. "Teach" and "daughter" tugged a blurred reel in his head, a silent film spliced to tatters.

He’d followed a red-haired, red-eyed little girl out of the forest into this village, with a stormcloud of fear pressing on his chest. The closer he drew, the heavier it sank, until at the gate it swelled like a flood and nearly swept him away.

But he kept the purpose that brought him to this World etched in bone. He had to obtain [a girl’s despairing, earnest tears].

If he failed and broke his promise to [Time], [Time] would cut the thread that bound his life—clean as a knife—and kill him.

Ye Weibai didn’t want to die. That raw will to live beat back the nameless dread like a lantern against night. Trembling, face bloodless, he still stepped into this peaceful village like walking into a painted scroll.

At the same time, his mind went hollow as winter fields.

He didn’t remember how he parted from the red-haired, red-eyed girl. She seemed to invite him home, but he refused at once for no clear reason, fleeing under the dimming light in her eyes.

He didn’t remember how he wandered this old village that felt medieval, drifting like a leaf, and ended up here.

Ye looked around. He was at the counter of a timbered tavern, beams and old-wood scent like a stacked forest.

Memory stirred like embers. The man across the bar owned the place. He had a girl of eight or nine, flax short hair, a round face—so pretty you’d doubt the blood tie.

At dawn, as Ye drifted down the lanes, a breath of ice stabbed his spine as he passed this tavern, a winter needle in spring. He startled and stepped inside.

He saw a dead-silent room, no customers at all—only a father and daughter circling a workbook like moths around a lamp, scratching heads, on the brink of tearing pages. Ye glanced and casually spoke the answer to an elementary problem.

"Hey! All correct!"

The girl squealed with a sunrise grin, shooed her mournful dad away, and tugged Ye’s hand with kitten-soft pleading.

So Ye stayed as if it were natural, and taught her all morning. By noon she’d dropped her homework and bolted out to play, while he sat in the tavern, mind drifting like fog, until the man—Sean—called him back. Hence the scene just now.

Damn.

Ye bit his lip—frustration first, then thought. In this state, he couldn’t even think straight, let alone hunt down [a girl’s despairing, earnest tears].

To say nothing of the [Game Objective]—the girl wrapped in Misfortune. He hadn’t even found her; no place to start, like casting a net on dry land.

The only mercy was the village’s calm. He’d seen no orcs, no elves—no storybook folk—just an ordinary medieval hamlet. Maybe no ghouls or Monstrosities he couldn’t handle lurked here.

No need to rush. First, settle myself. Then clear the quest. Who knows how long I’ll be stuck in this World? [Time] has stayed silent—maybe shut out by this World entirely.

Having decided, Ye started with the man in front of him. "Sir, are you hiring?"

"We’re short, but short on patrons," Sean said with a wry smile, like rain on old stone. "It’s already noon. Not a single customer this morning. You see how it is."

Ye cursed himself idiot in his heart. A detail this loud shouldn’t have slipped him—blame the shadow clamped over his mind.

"No place to stay, young man? Don’t stand on ceremony. You can lodge here for now. I’ll cover three meals. I just have one request…" Sean flushed, as if ashamed of the ask. "Could you keep teaching my girl, like this morning?"

Ye blinked, a little stunned. That was all?

Seeing his silence, Sean panicked. "I know for learned folk like you this feels like an insult. But you saw how bad business is. Once ‘that matter’ blows over, things will pick up. I’ll make it up to you, I swear."

So scholars rank high here. The thought landed like a feather.

"I don’t mind," Ye said quickly. "Room and board is enough. But—may I ask—what is ‘that matter’?"

Sean had circled that phrase again and again. The tavern must’ve bustled once; ever since ‘that matter,’ it had emptied like a well gone dry.

"Uh—" Sean opened his mouth, wrestled with it, then sighed. "No use hiding it. I just hope you won’t run too. Turn around."

Turn around?

Ye looked back and saw only plank and shadow.

"Up. The ceiling," Sean said, voice low as a draft.

Ye raised his head—and his face changed.

There, half-buried in the ceiling, lay a coffin black as thick ink, dark as a moonless night.

It was jammed in parallel, wedged tight. Half showed; the other half must’ve punched through to the second floor.

By rights, a coffin ramming timber should’ve spiderwebbed the ceiling with cracks. Instead, the seam where wood met coffin was ringed with scorch, char-black like a fire’s kiss.

As if, when driven in, the coffin burned with a fierce, high flame.

If so, the wood should be ash. Yet the coffin wasn’t burned at all—not even singed. It was flawless, a single slab of black, as if some dark tree had grown itself into a coffin.

How could that be?

A weight pressed on Ye’s chest, rolling off it like a deep-sea tide. It wasn’t the earlier nameless fear. It was raw and direct, the primal loathing a creature feels when it sights a natural enemy.

Sean sighed. "You get it? The Demon Exorcist’s Black Coffin was left here. Who’d dare drink under that?"

Demon Exorcist? Black Coffin?

The strange names bled color from Ye’s face. This World wasn’t the ordinary place he’d hoped for, clean of weirdness.

It was a dangerous land where [Monstrosity] and those who hunted it both walked.

He couldn’t help asking, "A Demon Exorcist…"

Sean took it for a prompt and went on. "Yeah. No one expected ‘that thing’ to show up in a small village. It even drew a Demon Exorcist."

He sighed again, wind through bare branches. "Bitter story. The Demon Exorcist came too late. The Weng family were kind folks. ‘That thing’ fancied them all. In the end, only Philia and her brother were left… Poor Philia—such a pretty child—and now she stutters. Well, who wouldn’t? They say she hid under the bed and watched her parents… get eaten. Thank heaven her brother was out, or else—"

Sean kept talking, words like rain on slate, but Ye’s face grew whiter, corpse-pale.

The voice went thin and far, like sound underwater.

That thing. Philia. Red hair, red eyes. Stutter. Eaten.

Each word struck his mind like lightning, cracking the fear wide and lighting the shattered film of memory.

Shards whirled, then locked together, forming a brutal, blood-slick horror scene that began to play, silent and merciless, inside his skull.

Color drained, pupils pinched to points, Ye began to shake. First his hands. Then his feet. Then his eyes. Then all of him, a leaf in a gale. Cold sweat poured down his back like a waterfall, soaking him in an instant.

"Hey, young man! You alright? You’re white as chalk!" Sean finally noticed, and thrust a cup of water into Ye’s hand.

"N-no, I’m… fine…"

Ye reached for the cup. His gaze brushed the plate—pale noodles streaked with red meat sauce. The red overlapped the blood in his mind.

He couldn’t hold it.

"Hrk—"

Ye retched and vomited.