Hours of Eternity

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like dying insects as Han Ji wiped down the convenience store counter, each circular motion of his rag smearing rather than cleaning the decades of grime embedded in the laminate. 寒寂 - his name meant "Lonely Silence," a cruel joke from the universe for a boy who had never known anything else. The orphanage director had named him that when he was left there as a baby, wrapped in nothing but a bloodstained blanket and a note that simply read "Don't look for us." The other children had called him Han the Ghost, not just for his pale complexion but for how he could disappear into the background of any room, any situation. Lonely. That much was true. Silent. Only because he'd learned words rarely helped, not when the system chewed you up and spat you out like gristle from cheap meat. The digital clock read 11:43 PM, its red numbers burning into his retinas like cigarette burns as he glanced at the security monitor showing the empty parking lot, the static flickering like his fraying nerves. The scent of stale coffee and spoiled milk clung to everything, a perfume of urban decay that had long since stopped bothering him. Something prickled at the back of his neck - that animal instinct that had kept him alive through seventeen foster homes, through the streets, through the nights when the hunger gnawed at his ribs like a living thing. He rubbed at the spot absently, his calloused fingers catching on the raised scar from when Mrs. Liang's favorite had pushed him down the stairs in the third home.

Then the bell chimed, too cheerful for what came next, the sound like a nursery rhyme played backward.

Han Ji looked up as four men in black tactical gear entered, their boots squeaking on the linoleum with the same wet sound his sneakers had made running through that alley behind the fish market last winter. Not thieves. Professionals. Their movements were synchronized like a dance troupe, gloved hands already drawing weapons with the ease of men who had done this a hundred times before. The leader's eyes were the color of the sky just before a typhoon hit - that unnatural calm that promised violence. "Don't move," the leader said, raising a pistol with a suppressor already screwed into the barrel, and Han Ji's mind worked coldly, analyzing: no masks (they didn't care about being seen), suppressors (they planned to shoot), formation (covering all exits like they'd studied the blueprints). The gun fired, a soft phut that shouldn't sound so harmless, like a child's toy, and then—

Darkness.

First Rebirth

Han Ji gasped as time rewound, his hands slamming against the counter hard enough to rattle the cash register. The sudden assault of light after nothingness made his eyes water, tears cutting clean tracks through the perpetual layer of convenience store grease on his face. The clock now showed 11:33 PM. Ten minutes earlier. His hands trembled - not from fear, but revelation, because this was impossible which meant it was real, really real, and the laugh that bubbled up his throat was sharp enough to cut, jagged like the piece of mirror he'd kept hidden under his mattress at the group home. He checked his phone. Same time. The security monitor showed an empty parking lot, the image occasionally breaking into fractal patterns like his splintering sanity. But he knew. At 11:43, death would come again, and the numbers ticked down like a bomb he couldn't defuse, each minute passing with the weight of a coffin nail being hammered home. He pressed his palms flat against the counter, focusing on the sticky texture beneath them, the only anchor in a world that had just proven itself fundamentally unreliable.

Second Death

This time he ran for the back door the moment he saw headlights approach, his breath coming in ragged gasps that tasted of copper and the ramen he'd eaten for dinner three hours ago. The emergency exit bar was cold under his hands, the shock of it traveling up his arms like electricity as he burst into the alley, only to freeze. Six more operatives waited in perfect ambush formation, their rifles already raised with the casual precision of men who had done this a thousand times in a thousand different alleys. The scent of rotting garbage and wet concrete filled his nose, suddenly overwhelming. "Target acquired," one murmured into his comms, the words distorted by static, and the bullets tore through his chest before he could even scream, each impact like a punch from his old boxing coach back when someone had still bothered trying to rehabilitate him. The last thing he saw was a rat scurrying into a storm drain, its freedom mocking him as...

Darkness.

Third Death

Han Ji tried barricading the door with shelves, with his own body, the metal racks screeching as he toppled them like dominoes. The sound reminded him of the trains that used to pass by the orphanage, their wheels screaming against the tracks in the dead of night. He piled up bags of rice and canned goods, creating a pathetic fort that wouldn't have stopped a determined toddler, let alone professionals. His hands shook as he worked, not from fear but from something worse - the dawning understanding that this was inevitable. They came through the ceiling vents like ghosts, like they'd always known where he'd be, their boots scattering the dropped cans of tuna in a grotesque parody of the games he used to play with bottle caps in the orphanage courtyard. One of them smelled faintly of sandalwood and gun oil, the combination so specific it would haunt him in whatever came after.

Darkness.

Fourth Death

He called the police, his voice eerily calm as he gave the address, each number rolling off his tongue with the practiced ease of someone who had memorized emergency contacts before he'd learned multiplication tables. The dispatcher sounded young, her voice tinged with the same false cheer as the store's door chime. He could picture her - fresh out of training, still believing she could make a difference. The responding officers were part of the team, their badges gleaming under the fluorescents like the medals his social worker used to wear to court appearances. They shot him point-blank, the muzzle flash illuminating their faces for the first time - utterly ordinary, the kind of men you'd pass on the street without a second glance. As he slumped against the lottery ticket display, his blood making the glossy paper stick to his cheek, he thought absurdly of the time he'd won twenty dollars on a scratch-off and how that had been the best day of his fifteenth year.

Darkness.

Fifth Death

In the bathroom, the flickering bathroom light caught on something that made Han Ji's breath stop. He clawed at his shirt buttons, fabric tearing as he exposed his chest, and the impossible geometry now fused to his skin. A three-dimensional cube structure, its angles too precise, too manufactured

But it was the crimson liquid seeping upward that made his vision tunnel. The clock's lower half had filled to the 15-minute mark, a thick, viscous red that shimmered like mercury under the fluorescents.

A hysterical grin split his face as he imagined the clock brimming with red, overflowing, drowning him in whatever cosmic judgment this represented. His reflection in the cracked mirror grinned back, teeth too white, eyes too wide—a rictus of madness as his fingertips pressed into the tattoo. The liquid rippled under his touch, warm as fresh blood, "How full would it be when the clock filled completely".

The bell chimed out front.

Right on time.