* * *
It was a little past 11 p.m., and Jian’s footsteps along the deserted street were quite familiar.
Jian’s destination was a convenience store about a five-minute walk from his apartment.
He was craving a beer last night.
The refrigerator was already empty of the beer he had stocked up at home.
He couldn’t help but feel a little regretful for cheerfully crawling into the house without knowing that.
Sighing deeply, he decided to buy some snacks while he was out and had put on a zip-up hoodie and dragged his slippers out.
Walking in the night air, the convenience store soon came into view.
Jian entered the store, the only one lit up among the darkened shops, bought three cans of beer and some buttered grilled squid for a snack, and lightly exited the convenience store.
“Thank you.”
Jian nodded in response to the clerk’s greeting, humming as he cracked open his first can of beer and took a gulp.
With the convenience store bag containing the beer and squid hanging from his wrist, Jian held a beer in one hand and his phone in the other, and started walking again.
“Is there anything fun…?”
Jian drew out the end of his words and opened a web novel app.
As a gay man, Jian enjoyed sex without envy of others, but he also loved BL novels very much.
This was because many novels featured men who were Jian’s ideal type: handsome face, great body, capable, rich, and with a big cock.
Reality was different from novels; some handsome men had small cocks, and some who were handsome and had a big cock lacked technique.
Knowing this reality better than anyone, Jian sometimes enjoyed BL novels like this, gaining a small, unfulfilled satisfaction.
Jian tapped the screen a couple of times to find a new BL novel, and a newly posted novel caught his eye.
It seemed to have just been uploaded as the view count was still at 0. Unlike other covers, its black and red background with only the title clearly printed somehow grabbed his attention.
Jian felt compelled to click on the novel.
It seemed to have been uploaded all at once up to the ending.
Jian quickly scanned the synopsis.
It was a common BL novel set in a medieval fantasy world.
The imperial family governing the empire by offering bodies to the Seven Demon Lords was somewhat intriguing.
In fact, he might have been more drawn to the fact that there were seven male leads who weren’t even human.
The synopsis was roughly like this: The wayward Fourth Prince commits suicide to avoid offering his body, so his younger brother, the main submissive lead, has to offer his body instead, and as a result, he is loved by the Seven Demon Lords and lives happily ever after.
‘Should I read it properly?’
Jian clicked on the prologue.
As his eyes followed the text on the screen, his steps naturally slowed.
‘—The Fourth Prince, Hayden, held the dagger he had hidden on his body high. The blade, which flashed even in the dark forest, soon plunged deep into Hayden’s heart, and Hayden’s body collapsed helplessly to the ground. The eyes of the Seven Demon Lords, watching him through the crystal ball, were utterly emotionless and cold.’
It must hurt a lot to be stabbed by a knife.
Jian, who was already past the middle of the prologue, suddenly imagined what it would be like to be stabbed.
With his rich imagination, Jian always immersed himself in the characters.
Was he too focused today?
Strangely, he felt a faint, stinging pain in his back.
‘No, this isn’t my imagination…’
Thud.
Roll, roll.
The beer can Jian dropped rolled on the ground.
The spilled beer and foam soaked the uneven path.
His phone even slipped from his grasp, and as his arm fell limply, the bag on his wrist came loose, and the remaining beers clattered to the ground.
“Kuh-heok…”
A mouthful of blood gushed from Jian’s dazed lips.
His bloodshot eyes rolled as he turned around, the smell of blood filling his esophagus and mouth.
A man stood there, his face covered by a raised mask and his hoodie pulled up.
Jian couldn’t make out the man’s face.
“Why…”
The man calmly and smoothly pulled the knife that was stuck in Jian’s waist out.
“Keok…”
Swoosh.
Thump.
Jian, who had collapsed onto the cold pavement, tried to curl his body.
A pool of blood seemed to form beneath him.
Death was this cold and painful. In Jian’s clouded eyes, he saw the man who had stabbed him.
The man was using Jian’s blood to draw some kind of mark next to him.
Ah, he’s a psychopath.
Just a crazy murderer who kills random people.
He felt unjustly wronged, but he couldn’t lift his arm to hit him, stretch his leg to kick him, or even curse at him freely.
He didn’t know how that guy named Hayden could even think of stabbing his own heart when he himself was this hurt and scared from being stabbed.
‘If it were me, I would have just…’
Jian’s slowly closing eyes were wet with tears.
Amidst the world turning dark, a blue light seemed to burst forth.
The man who stabbed Jian was busy hurriedly muttering something on the ground.
‘That psychopath bastard…’
Watching the man who didn’t leave the spot, Jian closed his eyes.
That was the end of Shin Jian, twenty-nine years old.
Clatter.
“Ugh…”
When something clattered loudly, Jian, whose head had dropped, hit his head on something and woke up.
Fortunately, did someone find him and save him?
He held his throbbing forehead and blinked a couple of times to clear his vision, taking in an unfamiliar scene.
‘Where… is this?’
It was inside a carriage, a scene not at all common in modern times.
Jian’s eyes rolled around.
The ride in the carriage, decorated with velvet and leather, was quite cushioned but not entirely comfortable.
Still, it seemed to be a high-class carriage, but he felt his back and butt would soon start to ache after riding a little longer.
The clothes he was wearing were also strange.
The medieval-style white uniform with gold decorations was definitely not everyday wear to be wandering outside in.
Jian slightly lifted his head and raised a hand to pull back the small curtain next to him.
Come to think of it, this wasn’t his hand either.
Jian considered his hands to be quite fine, but this hand was thin and beautiful, one that had never done any rough work.
The slender fingers were delicate, and the pale pink nails were neatly manicured.
Fair and blemish-free skin was a bonus.
Jian narrowed his brow slightly, tilted his head, and pulled back the wine-red curtain again.
‘A forest?’
A carriage, a uniform, and now a forest.
Furthermore, the forest visible outside the window was dark and glowed a black-purplish color, making it ambiguous to even call it a forest.
Jian, who was moving his lips while looking outside for a long time, suddenly looked at the unfamiliar face reflected in the window.
It was a non-realistically beautiful person.
A beauty with long silver hair hanging down and round, pale purple eyes shining like beads.
Past the lush eyelashes, clear skin, and straight nose bridge, there were soft, shining red lips, and below that, a slender neck and shoulders stood out.
Jian traced the window with his fair, delicate hand.
Looking at the rapidly changing scenery, the person wasn’t outside.
And it certainly wasn’t Jian himself.
‘What… is this?’
Clatter.
Snort.
* * *
