Arthur dragged a hand down his face and stared at the monitor with the numb hostility of a man who had already been dead inside for at least three deadlines.
Rows of code. Three open documents. Two unanswered messages from his boss. One spreadsheet that looked like it had been designed by a psychopath.
And still more.
His apartment was dark except for the hard white glare of the screen and the tired blue light leaking through the curtains from the city outside. Empty coffee cans crowded one side of the desk. A half-eaten sandwich had been drying there long enough to qualify as an archaeological find. The clock in the corner of the monitor read 2:47 AM, which meant he had crossed out of productivity and entered the territory of spiritual punishment.
Arthur leaned back in his chair, rolled one sore shoulder, and let out a slow breath through his nose.
'Fuck, I still have this much work to do?'
His own voice sounded rough, like it had scraped its way out of a throat lined with dust and caffeine.
No answer came, unless he counted the mocking blink of the cursor.
He looked back at the task list. Half of it should have been finished yesterday. The other half had been dumped on him this evening with a cheerful message about "team flexibility" from a manager who deserved to be strangled with a charging cable.
Arthur cracked his fingers and reached for the keyboard again. The numbers on the screen swam for a heartbeat, blurred at the edges, then pulled apart into focus. He had felt off for most of the night. Tight chest. Sweat along the back of his neck. A strange heaviness in his left arm he had ignored because adults with rent did not have the luxury of collapsing on schedule.
He typed three lines.
Stopped.
A hot spike drove through his chest so hard his back arched away from the chair.
Arthur sucked in a breath that never properly came. The room tilted. His hand knocked over an empty can, and it clattered across the desk before falling to the floor. He grabbed the edge of the table, knuckles whitening, mouth opening around a curse that broke apart halfway out.
Pain folded through him, vicious and deep, grinding behind his ribs like something had reached into his chest and closed a fist around his heart.
The monitor light smeared into white.
His chair tipped.
The floor rushed up.
The last thing Arthur saw was the endless list of unfinished work still glowing on the screen.
And the first thing he smelled when he opened his eyes was stale air, old incense, and something far more offensive.
He did not move at once.
The ceiling above him was wrong.
No water stain in the left corner. No faint orange glow from the street outside.
Instead there were dark wooden beams overhead, carved with faded patterns, and thin silk drapes hanging from a square canopy bed like the room belonged to somebody with more money than sense.
Arthur blinked once. Twice.
His head felt as if someone had shoved a metal rod through it.
He pushed himself up on his elbows, and the blanket slid down to his lap.
The first clear detail his brain chose to process was the tissue.
There were crumpled cloths and paper handkerchiefs everywhere.
On the bed.
On the floor.
Under the chair by the window.
Stuffed carelessly beneath the side of a pillow as if the owner of the room had, at some point, looked at the mess and decided hiding a fraction of it counted as cleaning.
Arthur stared.
The smell hit him again.
His expression flattened into something beyond disgust, a kind of weary disbelief that belonged to a man who had died once already and had still not earned peace.
'No way.'
His voice came out younger.
Smoother.
He looked down at his hands.
Not his hands.
The fingers were longer, the skin finer, the palms softer, though there was the faint callus of training buried there. He touched his face. Sharper jaw. No stubble. Longer hair brushing his cheek.
His pulse kicked.
Arthur lurched off the bed, nearly tripped over a discarded robe, caught himself against a table, and found a bronze mirror propped beside a lacquered comb.
A stranger stared back at him.
Young. Handsome, annoyingly so. Black hair tied loosely behind his head, a face that carried the lazy arrogance of someone who had coasted through life on status and natural gifts. There was even a beauty mark near the eye, the sort of thing artists would add to make a male lead more irritatingly attractive.
Arthur looked at the stranger in the mirror.
The stranger looked horrified.
And then the memories came.
They did not arrive gently. They slammed into him like a flood breaking through rotten doors.
A name.
Jun Jie.
Iron Blood Body Sect.
Only son of the Sect Master.
The useless young master.
Lazy. Arrogant. Lustful. Spoiled.
A boy born with talent most disciples would have killed for, and the discipline of a drunk cat.
He had skipped training, wasted resources, harassed maids, chased after pretty disciples, embarrassed the sect at gatherings, picked fights he could not win, and wrapped every natural advantage into one grand act of self-destruction. Elders gritted their teeth every time they saw him. The inner disciples mocked him behind closed doors and smiled to his face. Outer disciples were less polite. Even nearby sects knew his name, and not for reasons any father would welcome.
There were enemies inside the sect. Enemies outside it. A cousin in another sect who enjoyed trampling his name every chance he got. Elders waiting for him to fail badly enough that his position could be stripped clean.
And beneath all that filth lay the ugliest part.
Jun Jie had not lacked talent.
He had simply wasted it.
Arthur braced himself on the table as the last thread of memory uncoiled.
Last night. This room. A hidden stash of erotic paintings. A body worn down by excess, neglect, and the sort of pathetic enthusiasm better left unrecorded by history.
Jun Jie, heir of a sect.
Dead from jerking himself into the grave.
Arthur closed his eyes.
He remembered his own final night. Coffee. Code. Chest pain. A floor rushing up.
Worked to death.
Jun Jie had, somehow, found a way to make that look dignified.
When Arthur opened his eyes again, the room had not changed. The tissues were still there. The smell was still there. The mirror still reflected a face that was his now whether he liked it or not.
He let out a long breath and straightened.
'So I died from work and woke up in the body of a useless pervert.'
No one answered.
Outside, somewhere beyond the carved doors, he could hear distant footsteps and the faint clang of metal from a training yard. Life moved on, indifferent as ever. A sect still stood. Enemies still waited. Debts still hung over this body like a noose.
Arthur—Jun Jie now, apparently—looked around the room once more, from the expensive furniture to the hidden indecency tucked badly under the pillows, and felt a bitter laugh rise in his throat.
This body had wealth, status, talent, and a direct path to power.
And the idiot who owned it before had used all of that to chase women and die in bed surrounded by evidence.
'Unbelievable.'
A low hum spread through the air.
Jun Jie froze.
Light gathered in front of him, pale and translucent, lines crossing into a rectangular screen that hung in the room as if reality had suddenly remembered it had other options.
Words began to form.
[Host detected.]
[Good morning, Jun Jie.]
[The Infinite Myriad Worlds Exchange System is available for use.]