The first thing Lin Xiaowei became aware of was the smell. It was a thick, cloying cocktail of cheap floral air freshener and stale cigarette smoke. It was not the sterile, antiseptic scent of 0a hospital. It was definitely not the pear-blossom and sandalwood candle she'd been burning in her apartment the night before.
The night she'd died .
The memory came not as a flood, but as a series of brutal, clinical snapshots. The screech of tires. The shattering of glass. The sensation of weightlessness, followed by an impact that had felt less like a collision and more like the universe itself had folded in on her. Then, nothing.
This… this was something else.
She forced her eyes open. The ceiling was stained with a Rorschach test of water damage, the paint peeling at the edges. A single, fly-specked light bulb hung from a wire. She was lying on a thin, lumpy mattress that felt like it was stuffed with rocks and regret. The threadbare sheets scratched against her skin.
Okay, her brain supplied, the thought dry and dusted with the cynicism of her twenty-eight years. Either this is a uniquely terrible level of the afterlife, or my brain has some explaining to do.
She pushed herself up, her body protesting with aches in places she didn't know she had. She looked down at her hands. They were small. Delicate. The nails were bitten dry but the skin, while calloused in places, was young. She patted her own face. High cheekbones, a small mouth, a head of thick, tangled black hair that fell well past her shoulders.
This was not her face. This was not her body.
A wave of nausea, half-physical, half-existential, washed over her. She stumbled out of the bed, her legs wobbling, and made her way to a small, grimy mirror hanging on the wall. The face that stared back was a stranger's. Pretty, in a wild, underfed sort of way. Huge, dark eyes that held a combination of fear and confusion. She looked… twenty? Twenty-two?
"What the actual hell?" she whispered. The voice was different too—higher, softer, with a faint rural accent clinging to the syllables.
And then, the dam broke.
A torrent of memories that were not her own slammed into her consciousness. A girl named Lin Xiaowei. A village in the mountains. A greedy uncle. A gambling debt. A transaction. She had been sold. Sold to a man from the city to settle that debt. They'd brought her here, to Shenzhen city, to this love hotel that charged by the hour, and the man… the man was coming to collect.
The original owner of this body, this poor, terrified girl, had simply given up. Her spirit had fled, and Lin Xiaowei, the ghost of a modern office worker, had somehow taken up residence.
"Well, this is a significant downgrade," she said to her reflection, the new-old face looking pale and shocked. The humor was a defense mechanism, a life raft in a sea of sheer, unadulterated panic. Her past-life self had used sarcasm as a shield against idiot bosses and soul-crushing commutes. It seemed her new self would be using it as a shield against… well, being human trafficking adjacent.
A key rattled in the lock.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through her. The man. The buyer.
The original Xiaowei's fear was a phantom limb, aching and real. But her own core of steel, forged in a different life, held firm. She was not that girl. She would not be a commodity.
Her eyes darted around the room. There was a cheap, plastic water pitcher on the nightstand. Without a second thought, she grabbed it, hiding it behind her back just as the door swung open.
The man who entered was exactly as the memories had supplied: mid-forties, with a paunch straining against a cheap polyester shirt and a face that had seen one too many bad decisions. He leered at her, his breath smelling of garlic and baijiu.
"Ah, you're awake. Good. Saved me the trouble of waking you up." He took a step closer. "Your uncle got his money. Now, it's time for you to be a good girl and—"
He reached for her.
Time seemed to slow. In her past life, Lin Xiaowei had taken a self-defense class. It had been mostly for the Instagram post, but one piece of advice had stuck: The element of surprise is your best weapon. They never expect you to fight back.
She didn't fight back with her fists. She brought the plastic pitcher around in a wide, clumsy arc, smashing it into the side of his head with a dull, satisfying thwack.
He roared in more surprise than pain, stumbling back and clutching his ear. "You little bitch!"
"I'm a lot of things," Xiaowei said, her voice surprisingly steady. "But I am not your little anything."
She didn't wait for a response. She ducked under his flailing arm, shot out the door, and into the dim, narrow hallway. She could hear him bellowing behind her, his footsteps heavy and furious.
Run. Just run.
She hit the stairwell, her cheap sandals slapping against the concrete steps. She didn't look back. She burst out onto the street, the sudden cacophony of a modern Chinese metropolis assaulting her senses. The roar of traffic, the blare of horns, the dizzying neon signs, the press of a thousand bodies—it was overwhelming, terrifying, and utterly exhilarating. It was freedom.
She ran. She weaved through food stalls steaming with the scent of baozi and spicy noodles, past shops blaring music, dodging businessmen and delivery drivers on electric scooters. She could still hear the man's shouts, growing fainter but still too close for comfort.
Her lungs burned. This new body was not as resilient as her old one. She risked a glance over her shoulder, and that was her mistake.
She didn't see the immaculately polished dress shoe stepping off the curb.
The collision was not dramatic. It was a tangle of limbs, a soft oof of expelled air, and the sensation of falling against something very solid and very, very expensive-smelling.
She landed in a heap on the hard pavement, the world spinning. The man she had run into, however, barely swayed. He looked down at her, and Lin Xiaowei's breath, already short, caught in her throat.
He was… statistically improbable. Tall, with a lean, powerful build encased in a suit that probably cost more than her old life's annual salary. His features were sharp and perfectly carved, from the blade of his nose to the severe line of his jaw. But it was his eyes that held her frozen. They were a cool, piercing gray, like a winter sky over the city, and they held no warmth whatsoever. They were currently looking at her as if she were a particularly unpleasant stain on the sidewalk.
And on the pristine, likely Italian, lapel of his suit jacket, was a bright, greasy smear. From the street-food pancake she'd been clutching in her panic.
"My apologies," he said, his voice as cold and smooth as polished jade. He made no move to help her up.
A man who had been walking a step behind him—a cheerful-looking fellow in a more approachable suit—sprang into action. "Miss! Are you alright?" Zhang Wei, the personal assistant, offered a hand.
Xiaowei ignored it, scrambling to her feet on her own. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. "No, it was my fault, I wasn't looking—" she began, her rural accent thickening in her distress.
Just then, her pursuer rounded the corner, his face purple with rage. "There you are! You're not getting away from me, you ungrateful shrew!"
The tall man's eyes flickered from the greasy stain on his jacket to the advancing, uncouth man, and then back to Xiaowei's terrified, defiant face. A micro-expression of distaste crossed his features. A public scene. The lowest form of human interaction.
"Is this man bothering you?" the tall man asked, his tone implying that he wished they would both go be a nuisance elsewhere.
"He thinks he owns me," Xiaowei spat out, the words tasting like bile. "My uncle sold me to him."
The statement, so blunt hung in the air. The cheerful assistant's smile vanished. The tall man's icy composure didn't crack, but his gaze intensified, analyzing her, the situation, the potential for further inconvenience.
The buyer finally reached them, puffing. "She's mine! I paid good money! This is none of your business, rich boy." He made a grab for Xiaowei's arm.
She flinched back, directly into the solid presence of the man in the expensive suit.
He didn't touch her, but he shifted slightly, placing his body between her and the buyer. It wasn't a gesture of chivalry; it was the same motion one might use to shield oneself from a splatter of mud.
"The sale of human beings is illegal under Article ¥¿# of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China," the man stated, his voice cutting through the street noise with the precision of a scalpel. "I suggest you leave before I have my lawyer recite the entire penal code to you. The ensuing lawsuit would be… tedious."
The buyer blinked, confused and outmatched. The language of the law was a universe away from his own. He sputtered, his bravado deflating under the man's unblinking, arctic gaze. With one last venomous look at Xiaowei, he turned and slunk away, muttering curses.
The relief was so profound it made Xiaowei's knees buckle. She leaned against the cold metal of a lamppost, trembling.
The tall man turned his attention back to her. He reached into his inner pocket, pulled out a platinum business card holder, and extracted a single, thick, ivory-colored card. He held it out not to her, but to his assistant.
"Zhang Wei," he said, his eyes still on Xiaowei, seeing not a person, but a problem that had temporarily intersected with his path. "Have her cleaned up. Then bring her to my office. It seems we may have a mutually beneficial problem to discuss."
And with that, he turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd without a backward glance, leaving Lin Xiaowei standing on the busy street, greasy, disheveled, and utterly bewildered, the business card now in the assistant's outstretched hand.
She stared at the spot where he had vanished, the city swirling around her. A mutually beneficial problem? Who was that man? And what on earth could a runaway village girl and a human ice sculpture possibly have in common?