Ju Kyongkyung's life goal was very simple.
He wanted to leave Snow Grain Town.
This goal is as easy to hear as it is difficult to achieve. Because Snow Grain Town is not just a small town—it was a place where people were afraid to dream. Being born here meant slowly developing a habit of silent acceptance.
Kyongkyong could never adopt that habit.
To him, leaving didn't mean suddenly leaving everything behind and running away. Leaving meant buying a new house. And that house had to be in the county town.
For a boy who grew up in a small town, buying a house in a county town with his parents was the ultimate dream of his life. Not luxury, not something to show off. Just a place where water wouldn't drip from the roof, and mold wouldn't grow on the corners of the walls. The house didn't have to be very big, 120 square meters would be enough.
Three bedrooms—one for parents, one for yourself, and one for guests or the future. A living room, where the lights will turn on in the evening and the room will feel like a real home. A kitchen, where the smell of smoke won't stick to the walls. A bathroom, where water won't spill outside when you close the door.
No moldy walls, no leaky roofs. And most importantly—no cockroaches or rats anywhere. That was enough.
To achieve this goal, Ju Kyongkyong did almost everything—except dream. He took on countless jobs. One job during the day, another at night. There were never weekends, never a set bedtime.
He practically chased his own brain to earn money. Wherever the money was, there it was. Romance had no place in this race.
For Kyungkyung, dating was a waste of time, energy, and money. The worst part was that if you unfortunately met the wrong person, you would lose not only your money but also your trust. In the end, you would have nothing.
Ju Qiongqiong never gets involved in unprofitable businesses—whether people or feelings. At the age of 26, his family finally managed to save 400,000 yuan for a down payment. This number is not very large, but for them it was the result of many years of hard work.
The day this money was paid, Kyongkyong truly breathed a sigh of relief for the first time.
That's when he started looking at property listings in the county town. The pictures of the houses looked so beautiful—clean floors, bright windows, white walls. And every time she looked at the picture, she thought, "This could be our home too."
- - - - -
Ju Jiang and Zhao Jingwen were standing inside the bank. Behind the counter, the clerk was slowly counting the notes—one by one, according to the rules. The air coming through the glass smelled of paper money—not new, not old, but real.
Four hundred thousand yuan. All the accumulated fatigue, calculations, and unspoken hopes over the years—all went into that money.
Ju Kyongkyong stood next to him, holding the bag tightly. A simple woven bag. Bought from the market. From the outside, no one would know that their future was inside.
Just then—the bank door opened. But the sound wasn't exactly like a door opening. There was a heavy thud. Then—the sound of something metal scraping against the wooden floor.
Ju Qiongqiong didn't look at first. He thought someone might be rushing in. People in such small towns live in a hurry.
Then he saw—no one was screaming, but the air had suddenly become tense. The sounds inside the bank stopped altogether. A masked man had entered.
His face was covered, his eyes open—unusually still. In his hand was a hunting gun. Not very modern, but real enough. This weapon was not a toy—he didn't have to tell anyone this truth.
Time seemed to suddenly stop, no one was talking and no one was moving. Only the man's voice—raspy, but clear.
"Everyone sit down."
It was not a scream, and that was precisely why it was so terrifying. Such an incident had never happened before in this small county town. Everyone present was shocked and did not dare to resist. They sat down on the ground and obediently gave all their money to the robber.
In addition to Ju Jiang and Zhao Jingwen, they used their bodies to protect the bag, and even with a gun pointed at their heads, they were unwilling to let go.
To outsiders, they were clearly incredibly stupid. Was money more important than their lives? Was it really worth it?
In the eyes of Ju Jiang and Zhao Jingwen, this was necessary. Zhao Jingwen's hand trembled. Ju Jiang subconsciously stepped forward in front of him—the body is not very strong at this age, but the habit remains.
That 400,000 yuan was all of their family's hard-earned savings; losing that money was like losing their lives.
So the robber first shot Ju Jiang in the hand, and then shot Zhao Jingwen a second time, as she fell and jumped towards him. In the end, the couple could not save anything.
Ju Kyongkyung was still holding the bag. He didn't know why, but his first reaction wasn't fear. Rather—a strange calculation. Why was this man here all of a sudden?
The four hundred thousand yuan were still on the counter. The clerk's hand had stopped, the notes in midstream. The masked man's eyes wandered. His gaze stopped on the bag.
For a moment. In that moment, Ju Kyongkyong understood—this was no coincidence.
"Bring it here." The muzzle of the gun moved slightly. This slight movement changed the situation.
Zhao Jingwen nodded vaguely. Her face was pale. Xu Jiang wanted to say something, but no words came out of his throat.
Ju Qingqiong slowly picked up the bag. He didn't know why, but a kind of calm silence suddenly descended inside his head. The fear around him seemed to recede a little.
His feet kept moving forward. One step, two steps. Just then—a loud noise. Someone might have shouted, or broken glass.
Ju Kyongkyung wasn't sure. He just felt—a strong push, then a loss of balance. The bag fell out of his hand.
Time collapsed again. He was falling—but not towards the floor.
The light suddenly spread strangely before his eyes. The sounds faded away. The sound of guns, the screams of people—everything seemed to have gone underwater. This feeling was familiar to him.
For a moment he wondered—is this the end? But then—everything went silent.
No banks, no people, no money. Just a void that is pulling him down.
And in that tension, Ju Kyongkiong understood—this accident wasn't just a robbery, but rather, it was his last moment.
- - - -
The pain did not come suddenly, but rather grew as if it had been there before—he had just not felt it. At first it was vague, a kind of pressure deep in his head, as if the weight of something long-held had suddenly made itself felt.
Then, in an instant, the pressure became a sharp pain—in the middle of his forehead, just behind his eyes, at the center of his thoughts. The feeling was not that his chest was aching; rather, it was as if someone had taken something from his chest, as if the chest was not a closed room but an open space where trespassing was possible.^
He tried to open his mouth, to say at least a word, but nothing came out except his lips trembling. It was as if the power to make words had been taken from his body.
This silence made the pain more obvious, because now nothing but the pain was proving its existence. He realized that this pain was not ordinary—it was too obvious, too real, and yet it did not obey the laws of reality.
I am waking up,—this thought came naturally, because pain is the easiest way to wake a person. But before the thought could end, another realization struck him. When you wake up, your body responds, your muscles tense, your arms and legs want to move. Nothing was moving here.
The body was there, it had weight, even the feeling of breathing, but there was no control. It was as if the body was no longer yours—just borrowed, or temporarily trapped.
This state was not at all unfamiliar to him. He had had dreams before where he felt awake, but was actually stuck in a deeper level of sleep. Drawing on those experiences, he tried to convince himself that this was something like that.
If he could keep his mind still, if he could get his thoughts in line, then this strange level would break. This logic was his only hope at that time, because he had nothing else to stand against pain except logic.
But pain did not listen to logic. Rather, over time, it penetrated deeper, not just into his head—into his memory. The shattered scenes began to emerge, in no particular order, without warning.
The light inside the bank, the cold touch of the glass counter, the weight of the woven bag in his hand—all came together to overwhelm his thoughts. Then came the eyes of the masked man, the black face of the gun, and the cold feeling of that moment, which he could not understand then, but now he felt completely.
These memories were neither clear nor blurry—more like a picture put together incorrectly. It was here that fear arose within him. The pain was terrible, but bearable; the confusion of memories meant the foundation of his identity was shaking. He realized that the inner structure of his thoughts was no longer as solid as before. The thoughts were becoming separate, the connection between one and the other was becoming loose.
He tried to remember his name, because a name is the easiest anchor of existence. Ju Kyongkyong. The name came, but not completely. There was a gap in the word, as if the name was his but not entirely his. This incompleteness terrified him, because if the name was incomplete, then the person was incomplete.
His breathing suddenly became heavy, but he had not decided to breathe. His body was reacting on its own, as if he were just a spectator. At that moment, the pressure inside his head changed. The pain did not subside, but the feeling was different—this time it felt like someone was carving something deep into his being, making a new mark, the meaning of which he did not yet understand.
Suddenly a sound reached his ears. Very far away, so faint that at first he could not be sure whether it was real or another illusion of pain. But the sound came again—the light friction of wood against wood, then the feeling of the air moving away. There was no modern smell in this air. There was no hospital medicine in it, no city smoke.
It smelled of old wood, dust, and time—as if this air had been stuck in the same place for years, unable to escape. There was no familiar warmth in that smell, no natural sign of human presence. Rather, it seemed as if time had not stopped here, but had slowly decayed.
With this realization, light entered his eyelids—not bright, not sharp, but tired, gray, the kind of light that is characteristic of a place that has been used for a long time. He opened his eyes slowly, as if opening them too quickly would break the scene or his eyes would not be able to bear it.
The first thing he saw was not a familiar roof. There was no smoothness of concrete, no straight lines of electric light. Instead, there were thick wooden beams, heavy with age, cracked, where time itself had left its mark. Uneven lines between the beams, as if they had not been made perfectly, but had been erected out of necessity.
The corners were covered with cobwebs—not new, but old, so still that they did not move even in the wind. Together, these scenes convinced him that this was not a modern structure, not even a remote part of modern life.
Then he felt the air move, and he realized that this air was not modern. It did not contain hospital drugs, nor city smoke. It had the smell of old wood, dust, and time.
That smell had no familiar warmth, no natural sign of human presence. Rather, it seemed as if time had not stopped here, had slowly decayed. With this realization, light entered his eyelids.