Ding-ling-ling~ Ding-ling-ling~ Ding-ling-ling~

A crisp landline ring chimed, like a breeze stirring silver bells in a ten-square-meter snowfield of a room.

Ceiling and walls were corpse-white, a blank winter sky with no window, no door, no bed, no chair, no TV—almost nothing at all.

Only a table of the same snow-white stood silent at the center, like an altar in fresh frost.

On its center, a plain black landline sang through the silence; in this sea of white, the phone was a lone crow on new snow, stark and impossible to ignore.

Its cord trailed from the back, white as chalk, but only an inch long before a clean cut—like a stream frozen at its source.

Ye Weibai, dressed in white, stood beside it, face grave, eyes still as deep water, watching the ringing phone like a hunter sizing a trap.

He didn’t reach out. He breathed quietly, counting like tapping beads in prayer.

“One second.”

“Two seconds.”

“Three seconds.”

“Four—”

Before the word could land—

Bzzzzzz—!

A swarm of wasps seemed to cross the sky, ten thousand blades shredding the air; in that small room, the sound cleaved like lightning in a summer squall.

It came too fast, like a storm hugging the skin; cold rushed over him like river-ice breaking.

Ye Weibai had no time to move. He drew tight as a bowstring, even his eyes held still, and he whispered, careful as a step on thin ice—

“—seconds.”

—Four seconds!

Pfft—

In the next heartbeat, blood burst like a smashed pomegranate; his body came apart with a boom, blowing into scraps of flesh, white bone, and scarlet rain.

They pattered across the room—floor, ceiling, walls—like a monsoon of viscera.

The pallid room became, in an instant, a sea of spatter and meat paste.

At the same moment, the ringing cut off, like a throat gripped in the dark.

…

Let’s wind the clock back, to the moment Ye Weibai was about to leave that Detective World.

Whoosh—

A sound like a TV flipping channels brushed his ear, a quick flick through realities.

He had fired into his own chest and tumbled from the seventh floor into the river, a broken leaf falling into winter water—yet he didn’t die.

The instant death’s chill and the river swept him, the instant Mu Ling’s tears fell like rain, he slipped free of the Detective World.

By the rhythm of past crossings, darkness should have shut like eyelids; a cool breath should have wrapped him; then the World Tunnel should have taken him.

After a long, familiar traverse, he should have returned to Little Ash’s room, that sunlit living room that never knew dusk.

Then would come a precious rest, like laying down a pack at dusk.

Truth was, he was spent.

This Detective World drained him like sand from an hourglass; no chase at his throat, yet the mind-duel with Bai Ye’s soul gnawed him for dozens of hours.

Another self—sharp as a blade—but still a blade that failed to cut the knot.

He thought without vanity, a stone in a still pond: across ten thousand parallels, the strongest must be the “I” that is me.

Not the Monstrosity with iron sinew. Not the S+ Detective with a caged hawk’s gaze. The strongest is the daily Ye Weibai.

More Worlds would come like seasons, but he felt no fear; if anything, anticipation rose like dawn fog.

He was an odd one who prized Fun above Life, a moth drawn to a stranger flame.

Thinking of home warmed him, too; what change would the Misfortune Droplet spark in Little Ash, like dye bleeding into silk?

That Deity called Misfortune—the one who tugged him from a dull World like a fish on a line.

The one who shattered his quiet days like glass.

Then, killed by an unknown It, she became Doll-sized—a timid, gray short-haired girl, a cloudlet adrift.

After sipping a Misfortune Droplet, she woke by accident; so tiny he could cup her in one hand like a fledgling.

Sitting in his palm, she looked up and called him, “Daddy,” a bell-bright call rising like a lark.

“Daddy… means Father, sir!” she said, head tilted, innocent as spring water, nothing like Little Ash’s usual wild-fire ways.

What happened within her tapestry? The question gleamed like a koi beneath ripples.

Fascinating.

His lips curved; expectation pooled in his chest like warm tea.

However—Misfortune always bites off-script.

It’s a forked tongue hiding in shadow, waiting for joy to loosen the guard; then it leaps and nips where the skin is thinnest.

The bite is shallow, but the venom is absolute.

Things did not go as Ye Weibai expected.

Following the rule, he kept his eyes shut, lest he meet the gaze of the Void Forgetter and feel his soul plucked like a thread.

So he didn’t see it—at the very moment his smile rose, above him drifted a vast, invisible hand, silent as falling snow.

The hand was so immense that Ye Weibai beneath it wasn’t even dust; it felt able to cradle a whole galaxy like a pearl.

It nearly matched that other hand which once snipped the link between the alpha and beta worldlines with two fingers, like cutting spider silk.

But this was not that hand. Their auras differed like fire and deep sea.

The hand moved fast, yet stirred no breeze; it seemed only to pass.

Then, from the Void, a puzzled murmur rippled, a pebble dropped in night water.

“Eh?”

In the next breath, time felt to bend back; the giant hand returned and paused above Ye Weibai.

“Isn’t this…?”

With that, the boundless hand began to close, a sky folding its wings.

It felt slow only because it was vast; as its five fingers curled and the palm drew in, time itself seemed to buckle.

While it closed, the hand shrank, a mountain shrinking to a fist.

At last, it fit just right to cup Ye Weibai in its palm.

Snap.

It enclosed him with ease, like picking up a seed.

The owner, about to inspect the catch, sensed something and laughed softly, a breeze through reeds.

“Borrow him for a bit.”

Hum.

Hand and Ye Weibai vanished from the Void like a candle pinched out.

The next instant, blue light laced with twisted black sigils exploded where they had been, a storm carving the sky.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom—

“You—court death—”

The warped voice rolled through the Void like a glacier cracking; its shock alone cut like a hidden blade across the World.

The countless Void Drifters nearby shrieked and shattered, dust blown off a dark plain.

“—give him back!”

“Give Bai—back to me!!”

“—Doll!!!”

Whoosh—!

“This time… so fast?”

He opened his eyes and froze, like a deer catching snowfall.

“Where is this?”

Pure white flooded his gaze, glaring as noon snow; he had to squint to pare it back.

A room ten meters square. Ceiling, floor, walls—bleached blank on all sides, a paper screen with no ink.

No window, no door, no bed, no chair, no TV.

Only the black landline on the white table at the center, a black stone on a frozen lake, stole his attention in a blink.

“Wei?”

Ye Weibai breathed the name of Time, asking the air what had shifted.

The reply wasn’t the familiar blue clock, that steady tide.

It was—

Ding-ling-ling~ Ding-ling-ling~ Ding-ling-ling~

The crisp, pleasant ring of a landline rising like a wind-bell.