“Hey, you alright, young man?”

“I’m fine.”

The talk happened in a guest room on the bar’s second floor, a swallow’s nest carved under the eaves, cramped as a box.

The space looked forcibly refit, tight as a clenched fist. It held a single bed and a wooden desk pinned between mattress and wall like a trapped crab.

“Sorry, kid, the room’s a bit small,” Uncle Sean said, guilt hanging like a damp towel. “There was a big one, but you saw it: the Demon Exorcist’s [Black Coffin] took it.”

“It’s alright. This room’s enough,” Ye Weibai answered, face pale as washed rice, breath thin as thread. “I should apologize for dirtying your bar.”

Just now, after the first retch, his gut tried to empty a month’s meals, waves crashing against a hollow shore. He clutched his belly and heaved for minutes.

He had nothing in him, only bile scraping out light like a knife on porcelain. The taste burned like copper, the body shivered like a thin reed.

It was hell to endure, a winter river through his bones. Yet, after that purge, the fog of terror thinned, like dawn pressing back night.

More crucially, as fear drained like rain from a gutter, memory rose from the silt. He remembered what he had lost, the missing pillar in his house.

It wasn’t someone’s name, nor a single event, nor a village’s face—it was an entire day, torn clean from the calendar like a fallen leaf.

It was yesterday, and it was today, the same sun mirrored on two lakes.

“Ah, that’s no big deal,” Uncle Sean laughed, voice warm as a hearth. “You rest first, I won’t bother you.”

Ye Weibai nodded. The door clicked shut like a shell closing, and Uncle Sean turned away.

“Tat-tat,” footsteps tapped down the stairs, fading like rain beads. Ye Weibai let out a long breath, adjusted his pillow like shaping clouds.

He found a comfortable angle, body moored like a boat, mind settling like silt, ready to sift through what happened in these two days.

Yes—two days.

After reclaiming the lost thread, he finally caught the key: today wasn’t his first time in this village. He had been in this World for two days.

Or, simpler and pointed like a needle—Ye Weibai had already died once. He had burned one [Time Rewind] and snapped back to his first time here.

That’s why the “first visit” felt like a road he’d walked, a lantern-lit lane in déjà vu. Strange streets, yet no confusion, his feet moved like water.

He’d thought the body’s previous owner had been here. Only now did he see it clearly—the memory from his First Day was steering the boat.

On Day One, the red-haired, red-eyed girl—Philia—woke him like a bell. He followed her into the village, cautious as a cat, and made his rounds.

He had walked the small place end to end, greeted villagers along the path, gathered bits of truth like pebbles—then forgot it all, as if snow covered it.

Now it returned, and with it the reason for forgetting. If his guess was right, that cause matched the fear that clung to him on Day Two.

That cause was a nightmare, a storm of blood and meat, the kind that leaves thunder in your bones.

The instant he remembered that mangled scene, Ye Weibai covered his mouth, color draining like ink in water.

“Brother Bai, are you okay…” A shy voice fluttered at the door, cutting the iron chain of his thoughts.

He looked up. A girl of eight or nine stood there, small as a sparrow. She wore a white cotton top and a pale-yellow skirt to her calves.

Her short flax hair framed a face round as an apple, eyes a soft dark, watching him with worry like dusk holding back night.

“Aiya.”

She held a bowl of rice porridge, steam lifting like white mist. Warmth touched his chest, and the shadow inside eased like clouds thinning.

He smiled. “Aiya, you brought me something to eat?”

“Mm-hmm!” Aiya nodded, set the hot porridge on the desk, then whooshed and plopped down beside him, sunlight in her grin.

“This isn’t Dad’s,” she announced, proud as a sparrow puffing its chest. “Aiya heard Brother Bai got sick, so Aiya made it herself!”

She tilted her little face up, waiting for praise like a flower opening to sun.

Ye Weibai smiled and ruffled her hair, his touch light as wind on wheat. “That’s amazing.”

Aiya squinted, swaying her tiny body, a giggle tinkling like silver bells.

“Okay! Brother Bai, you rest well! I gotta go, or Dad will start nagging.”

Right then, Uncle Sean’s voice boomed from downstairs like a drum—“Aiya! Where’d you go again? Don’t disturb Brother Bai!”

“Okay~”

Aiya hunched her shoulders, stuck out her tongue like a naughty kitten, then tiptoed out, closing the door like a little thief.

Soon, downstairs, came the sound of father and daughter “arguing,” voices weaving like sparrows. Uncle Sean started loud, then shrank to a mumble.

It sounded like the one getting scolded was the father, shoulders drooping like wilted leaves.

Ye Weibai couldn’t help a smile. He could picture Aiya, hands on hips like a tiny general, lecturing, while Uncle Sean shrank like a bear in rain.

He was lucky to meet Sean and Aiya, kindness like a small fire in winter. Without them, he might have drifted in fog until the cold took him.

He might have died unnoticed in this World, a pebble swallowed by the river.

“Okay… let’s sort the clues,” he whispered, voice steadying like a hand on a rudder.

He leaned sideways, opened the drawer, fingers fishing like minnows. He found the notebook and a pencil, the tools of a weary cartographer.

Afternoon light spilled through white curtains like milk, filling the little room. He didn’t get out of bed; he held the notebook like a prayer slab.

“First… [Day One].”

On the yellowed page he wrote: “X = 1,” then added “[Forgotten]” after it, the word a small tombstone.

He wrote “X = 2,” and marked it with “[Today],” circling it like a sun.

“So, from what we know: the number of [Time Rewind]s X ≥ 1. The first got spent. If I die again… I don’t know if it will rewind.”

A bad tide. Ye Weibai sighed, the sound like wind through reeds. “And… there’s worse.”

He drew a line from “[Forgotten]” after “X = 1,” a thread like a stream. Along it, he wrote: “[Philia], [Demon Exorcist], [Black Coffin], [that thing].”

That line stopped at “[My first cause of death],” like a road ending at a cliff.

The terror before death returned, an iron taste behind his teeth. Ye Weibai paled, drank a mouthful of water like snow melting, and steadied.

He set the cup down, then pulled a new line from “[My first cause of death]” to “[that thing],” hand trembling like grass in wind.

Along the line he carved four words, strokes nearly tearing the paper:

“[Was-Eaten-Alive].”

“My first cause of death” was being eaten by “that thing,” swallowed whole like a stone dropped into a black lake.

Yes—Ye Weibai’s first death had come from a monster, a mouth that closed like night.

…

…