Jungho stared at the etched message in the cracked mirror.
"Real clowns wear knives behind their backs."
The lettering was shallow, etched with precision—just enough to suggest stealth, but not rage. Whoever had done this wasn't trying to scare him.
They were testing him.
[Passive Triggered: Paranoia's Curtain I]
You are being watched. Trust no reflection.
He touched the mirror. His fingers came back cold, but clean.
The System didn't object.
That was what disturbed him most.
The next morning, the court was quieter than usual. Dervan hadn't shown up. His seat remained conspicuously empty at the feast, though no one dared mention it.
Jungho made no show of it. No jokes about pies or nobility. He simply served drinks, slipped once on a peeled grape (to loud laughter), and bowed out when the King grew bored.
He returned to the inner servant's hallway—but stopped.
Someone was there.
Not in front of him. Behind.
His shadow.
It twitched.
[Warning: Visual Disparity Detected][Environmental Glitch - Code 17-UX]
He spun.
Nothing.
But the shadow was wrong. The hand moved half a second later than his own.
[System Correction in Progress][Sync Restored.]
Jungho turned away, forcing calm into his breath.
But his pulse thundered.
He didn't sleep that night. Instead, he revisited the back garden where he'd first mocked Dervan. The grass was trampled. Pie crusts still lingered in the corners.
He bent down and found a folded card.
Plain paper. Smudged with dirt.
It read:
You passed. Barely.
Next time, speak in silence.
There was no signature. No seal. Just a red ink stamp of a smiling mask with a crack across the left eye.
[Quest Triggered: A Whisper of Velvet]Objective: Deliver a performance with no laughter. Failure to move the heart is death.
Jungho closed his fist around the card.
"A silent act?" he whispered.
He returned to his room just before dawn.
There was a servant girl there—cleaning. She shouldn't have been. He never saw staff enter before sunrise.
She paused as he entered.
"Sorry," she said softly. "I thought you were still at the feast."
He nodded, watching her.
Her hands were gloved.
Unusual for laundry servants.
She moved like someone who didn't want to be remembered.
He glanced at the mirror.
Her reflection wasn't there.
She turned to leave.
"Wait."
She paused. Looked over her shoulder.
He smiled like a fool.
But his eyes were cold.
"Do you like jokes?"
She stared at him.
Then she grinned—tight, almost sad.
"Only the ones that hurt."
Then she was gone.
That night, in the secret theatre beneath the city, a cracked mask was placed on a pedestal. It was blank—no color, no paint.
"Shall we give it to him?"
"Not yet," another voice whispered. "Let's see how he performs... in silence."