Lin Yuan woke with the uncomfortable certainty that the world had made a mistake.
It was not the sharp panic of a nightmare or the groggy confusion that followed an unexpected alarm. It was quieter than that, heavier, like the feeling that lingered when something important had been forgotten and could not be recalled no matter how hard one tried. He lay still, staring at the ceiling above him, waiting for familiarity to assert itself.
It did not.
The ceiling was warped and uneven, its wooden beams darkened by age and neglect. Hairline cracks ran along the planks like veins, and a faint stain near one corner suggested a leak that had long since been ignored. Dust floated lazily through the air, catching the weak morning light that filtered in from somewhere to his right.
This was not his room.
The realization settled slowly, sinking into him piece by piece. The bed beneath him was narrower than he was used to, the mattress thin and unforgiving. The sheets smelled faintly of damp wood and something metallic that made his stomach tighten. The air itself felt different, heavier, carrying the subtle scent of smoke, spices, and old stone.
Lin Yuan's heart began to beat faster.
He tried to remember the night before. He remembered going to sleep. He remembered the familiar weight of his own blanket, the muted sounds of a place he had known well enough to ignore. There had been no drinking, no late night wandering, no reckless decisions that might explain this.
"I'm still dreaming," he murmured, his voice hoarse and unfamiliar in his own ears. "That has to be it."
He waited for the dream to collapse.
It did not.
Carefully, he pushed himself upright, bracing instinctively for the stiffness or soreness that usually followed sleep. Instead, his body moved with unsettling ease, muscles responding smoothly as though they had been used recently and often. The absence of pain unsettled him more than its presence would have.
Lin Yuan swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there, breathing slowly, forcing his thoughts into order.
"Okay," he whispered. "Let's take this one step at a time."
He raised his hands into the pale light spilling through a narrow window.
They were not his.
The fingers were longer and leaner than he remembered, the skin roughened and calloused in places his own hands had never been. Thin scars crossed the knuckles and palms, old and faded, the sort left behind by repeated labor rather than a single accident. As he turned his hands over, flexing them cautiously, a cold knot formed in his chest.
"Nope," he said quietly. "Absolutely not."
He pressed his palms against his face, half expecting the sensation to break the illusion. The contours beneath his fingers were wrong. The jawline sharper. The cheekbones higher. When he dropped his hands and leaned forward, he caught sight of himself in a small, cracked mirror mounted on the wall opposite the bed.
The man staring back at him was a stranger.
The face was younger than he expected, thinner, marked by exhaustion rather than age. Dark hair fell into unfamiliar eyes that widened in mute disbelief as he leaned closer to the glass. There was no mistaking it. This body belonged to someone else.
Lin Yuan staggered back, his heel catching against the edge of the bed, and grabbed the nearby table to steady himself. His breathing grew shallow, his thoughts spiraling despite his best efforts to rein them in.
"Alright," he said, forcing a brittle smile that felt more like a grimace. "We are not panicking. Panicking is how you start screaming."
The room around him was small and bare, furnished with the minimum required for existence. A narrow bed. A rickety table. A wardrobe that leaned slightly to one side as if it had given up pretending to stand straight. The walls were unadorned save for the mirror, their paint faded and peeling in places.
It looked like a room someone lived in because they had no better option.
As Lin Yuan took it in, a pressure bloomed suddenly behind his eyes.
It was not pain, not exactly. More like a rush of sensation that did not belong to him, pressing against his awareness and then slipping away before he could grasp it. Numbers flashed through his mind without context. Coins counted and recounted. The dull weight of standing still while someone else spoke over him, decided for him.
He sucked in a sharp breath and bent forward, bracing himself again as his vision swam.
"Okay," he muttered. "That's new."
The impressions faded as abruptly as they had come, leaving behind only a vague sense of unease and a lingering heaviness in his chest. He straightened slowly, waiting to see if they would return.
They did not.
It was then that something else occurred to him, something that should have terrified him more than unfamiliar hands or borrowed memories.
His body was uninjured.
There were scars, yes, old ones, but nothing fresh. No wounds. No lingering pain. The sheets beneath him were clean, unmarked by blood or signs of struggle. Whatever had happened to the man who owned this body had left no visible trace behind.
"How am I alive," Lin Yuan whispered.
He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. It was calm, stubbornly normal, as though nothing about his situation was unusual.
A hollow laugh escaped him.
"Fantastic," he said softly. "Alive somewhere I shouldn't be, in a body that isn't mine, with problems I definitely did not earn."
Drawn by instinct rather than logic, he crossed the room and pushed open the narrow window. Cool air rushed in, carrying with it the sounds of a city waking to life. Voices drifted upward from below, layered with the clatter of carts, the sizzle of cooking food, and the distant call of someone advertising their wares.
Lin Yuan leaned against the windowsill and looked down.
The street below was already busy. People moved with unhurried purpose, weaving around one another with practiced ease. Women in colorful robes laughed as they passed, their movements confident and relaxed. Men walked among them, quieter, more reserved, often carrying goods or tools.
The imbalance was subtle but present.
Lin Yuan frowned, the observation unsettling him more than he wanted to admit. He could not say why it stood out so sharply, only that it did.
He stepped back from the window, heart pounding now, and paced the length of the room. Humor had carried him this far, but it was thinning quickly beneath the weight of unanswered questions.
"This is the part where a rational person would sit down, breathe, and assess the situation," he said aloud.
He paused, staring at the ceiling again.
"And this is the part where I admit I have no idea how to do that."
Something stirred faintly within him.
It was not a voice. Not a thought. Just a brief, irritated sensation, like the shifting of weight or the scrape of metal against stone. It vanished before he could focus on it, leaving behind a chill that crept up his spine.
Lin Yuan shivered.
Returning to the bed, he sat heavily, rubbing his temples as he tried to piece together what little he knew. The fragments from earlier brushed against his awareness again, faint and indistinct. Debt. Numbers that never shrank. A sense of being cornered, of options quietly disappearing one by one.
The man who had lived here was gone.
Whatever had ended his life had not taken its consequences with it.
And now, for reasons Lin Yuan could not begin to unravel, those consequences had settled squarely on him.
He stood again, this time with more purpose, and opened the door to the narrow corridor beyond. The passage was dim, lined with similar doors, each one hiding a life he knew nothing about. Sounds filtered through the walls, muffled laughter, the clatter of dishes, snippets of conversation that made the space feel alive and strangely intimate.
Lin Yuan moved carefully, aware of how exposed he felt, and followed the corridor until it opened into a sunlit square.
The brightness made him squint.
The square was crowded and vibrant, filled with stalls selling food and goods, the air thick with competing scents and voices. Families gathered around tables, friends shared meals, children darted between adults with carefree laughter.
It should have been comforting.
Instead, Lin Yuan felt like an intruder.
He lingered at the edge of the square, listening, letting the flow of conversation wash over him as he tried to anchor himself in the moment.
Voices overlapped in a steady hum, familiar in rhythm if not in language, punctuated by laughter, bargaining, and the scrape of wooden stools against stone. Somewhere nearby, food sizzled over an open flame, the smell sharp and inviting enough to remind him that his body still had needs, regardless of how disoriented his mind felt.
Lin Yuan stood there longer than he realized, watching people pass without quite seeing them, letting the normalcy of it all press in from every side. No one spared him a second glance. No one questioned his presence. The world moved forward as though nothing about him was out of place.
That, somehow, unsettled him more than panic would have.
He exhaled slowly, forcing his shoulders to relax, and took a tentative step forward, then another, merging into the edge of the crowd. Whatever answers existed were not waiting for him in that small, forgotten room. If he wanted to understand where he was, or what had happened to the man whose life he now wore like borrowed clothes, he would have to start here.