Music

This sleep had been...

So deep, so groggy...

Fan Ning slowly awoke in the audience seats, his head lolling to one side until it was almost parallel with his shoulder.

--A typical bad posture after falling asleep while sitting.

The surroundings were unnaturally quiet. His heartbeat was slightly faster than usual, and he could hear it thudding.

His neck felt as though it had been sealed in cement; every fraction of an inch he lifted it hurt like hell.

It took quite some time before Fan Ning finally managed to raise his head and slowly open his eyes.

His vision was dim and blurry.

With difficulty, he could make out the stage directly ahead, illuminated by several faint green lights in the distance.

There was also a row of flowerpots and potted plants at the front of the stage, several chairs and music stands farther in, and a grand piano in the middle.

The black outlines of the objects were shrouded in a dim, eerie green glow.

Fan Ning finally came to his senses.

No way. The performance ended, and nobody woke me up?

Did the concert hall just close up and turn off the lights?

Don't the staff here clear the place and check it?

Fan Ning was a newly graduated office drone in the sciences and engineering field, as well as a hardcore classical-music enthusiast.

He had loved playing the piano, listening to records and concerts, and studying all kinds of composers and music theory since childhood.

With such traits, as long as one's looks were decent and one's emotional intelligence was up to par, it was easy to gather a group of like-minded friends and adoring fangirls during one's school years, and to enjoy a relatively rich love life.

Loaded down with all sorts of titles like "master," along with shining moments in clubs and arts events, he had once felt that he wasn't an ordinary person.

That was, until society began beating him into shape.

A chemical company on the outskirts where the city met the countryside, doing grunt work in the laboratory, an awkward salary, workplace bullshit, and vicious fights with the landlord.

In less than a few months, the entire set was complete. Everything was inevitably heading toward mediocrity.

Fortunately, he had this spiritual solace.

--Like tonight: a two-hour drive to the city center squeezed into a break from his 996 work schedule, to attend a concert of chamber works by Bach.

Fan Ning's last memory was of listening to the performance before everything cut out.

In the dim concert hall, his vision gradually adjusted, and the weakness in his body eased somewhat.

"I absolutely wasn't sleepy before. Fall asleep during a concert? No chance."

Doubtful though he was, he braced himself and stood up, preparing to take out his phone and check the time.

Sigh, I still have to keep doing grunt work tomorrow...

After fumbling around his body for a while, the feel of his clothes seemed somewhat unfamiliar, but he still managed to find his phone.

There was no signal, the battery was at 1%, and the time was 23:30. The concert's scheduled end time of ten o'clock had passed long ago.

A pile of DingTalk work messages showed that even on a single day off during his 996 schedule, his boss had not forgotten to gank his employees like crazy.

But the topmost message was--

A text message?

[Reproduce the music in your memory for the listeners of this world.]

[As quickly and as much as possible.]

[If you want to stay alive.]

[0/100]

The time was 21:30, and the number was a string of gibberish.

W-what was going on? What did it mean?

The time it had been received was precisely during the second half of the concert, perhaps even when he had blacked out.

Fan Ning looked around the concert hall, increasingly convinced that something was wrong.

Although he could not make out the walls in the distance, this concert hall was far too small compared to his memory. It could hold no more than a hundred audience members.

The dim green lights were not emergency-exit signs either. They came from several indistinct lamps high on the walls.

Fan Ning swiped down the control panel on his phone and turned on the flashlight.

Naturally, he shone it toward the stage first.

The moment he did, his heart seemed to be struck by a sledgehammer!

Two white figures sprang into view beneath the flashlight!

No--

More precisely, they were merely two humanoid outlines on the plane of the stage, their twisted heads, torsos, and limbs traced by indescribable pale, smoky marks that then diffused outward in a radiating pattern.　　They looked as though they had been dissolved, burned away, or evaporated by some unknown thing.

The phone ran out of power and shut down automatically, plunging his vision back into darkness.

Cold sweat instantly coated Fan Ning's back.

"Are these... the musicians who were onstage before?"

He felt that he had instinctively shouted the words and staggered backward several steps.

In reality, his throat was hoarse, and he had not moved an inch.

Only when he was nearly unable to feel his own body did he summon the courage to move his legs.

He did not dare turn around, much less run. Instead, he retreated step by step, backing off the stage and toward the wall, then to an opening resembling a corridor. Twisting around, he plunged headfirst into the darkness.

At the far end of the darkness, he groped around wildly until he finally touched something resembling a door latch, which he shoved open in one motion.

Blinding light poured into his eyes.

It was not sunlight from outside, but the beams of flashlights held by several people beyond the door.

"Police! Stop! Stay calm!"

Amid the painful glare and his inability to adjust, Fan Ning's vision came in broken, blurry patches.

First he saw black uniforms with three rows of buttons. Then he saw khaki epaulets and sleeve decorations with tassels. Finally, he saw the red-and-white checkered broad-brimmed hats on their heads, and the grave expressions beneath them.

"..." Fan Ning froze, not only because of their clothes and appearance, but also because of what they had said.

He had never heard this language before, yet now it was rapidly becoming familiar to him at a strange speed.

The sentence was like a giant spoon, stirring viciously through his mind and shattering something, bringing out a heap of chaotic fragments of memory:

This was Ufransel, the Theolan Empire's second-largest industrial city, in New Calendar Year 912.

Caloin Van Ning, a fourth-year student at Saint Leniya University, majoring in musicology.

His father had once been a fairly well-known folk artist in the city and the director of the Turner Museum. He had gone missing three years ago and had not been heard from since. His mother had died of illness many years earlier.

This era no longer had the rigid hierarchy of feudal times, but social classes still differed according to status, with upper-class resources belonging to nobles, academic warlords, major factory owners, and... the extraordinary group whose transcendent status was spoken of in mysterious rumors--the "Knowers."

With his middle-class background, it would normally have been very difficult for him to clear the threshold of this imperial aristocratic university.

But his father's identity as an artist seemed to grant him an enormous advantage in this world.

Of course, the moment his father disappeared, his status at the school swiftly plummeted from passerby level to sewer level.

If he had not paid the expensive four years of tuition in a single lump sum upon enrollment, he might already have been thrown out.

The museum's operations naturally became impossible to sustain as well.

At first, he sold some of his father's paintings to settle debts, maintain equipment, and pay the staff's wages.

Later, he had no choice but to dismiss the staff, close the museum, tighten his belt, and live alone in a small apartment.

I crossed over. I actually crossed over?

Pain throbbed through Fan Ning's head in wave after wave. The jumbled fragments of memory clogged together and shoved against one another, gradually turning into vexing howls and muttering in his ears. He went from standing to crouching, then from crouching to lying down, while the figures of the police in his vision grew increasingly blurred.

When he opened his eyes again, Fan Ning saw a ceiling.

And also...

Why is this thing still in front of my eyes?

The last line of the text message: [0/100]

Its faint pale-gold glow made Fan Ning wonder if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

It seemed to become more distinct only when he had that thought, fading to nearly transparent whenever he shifted his attention.

"Awake? Mr. Caloin Van Ning? If you feel well enough, please sit up first."

A voice from very close by interrupted his thoughts.

This was Hoffman, the official language of the Theolan Empire, spoken by the Hoffman people, who made up the largest proportion of the population.

Fan Ning rose and sat propped on the edge of a hard bed.

It was a small room with gray walls on all four sides and two mahogany desks.

The pale light of a carbonized lamp fell across the only pen and sheets of paper on the desk, as well as a vertically ridged glass.

The water inside the glass reflected a cold gleam.

Two police officers sat opposite him, their uniforms crisp, their builds burly, and their expressions stern.

One of them unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen. "Let me introduce myself. Newman Ellens, senior police superintendent with the Ufransel Public Security Office, responsible for public security in the Inelania District."

"Did I sleep through the entire night? Also, is this an interrogation?"

Fan Ning was somewhat flustered inside after just crossing over.

He did not know whether the humanoid outlines on the stage were a prank or the unnatural deaths of living people, nor was he sure whether he was an innocent party involved in the incident or... the perpetrator?

Calm down... At least, judging from the original owner's still fairly complete memories, I didn't do this myself, and there's nothing I need to hide. I should just answer truthfully for now.

Fan Ning steadied himself. "All right, Officer Ellens."

The officer took an object from the drawer and placed it on the desk. "First, explain this. What is it?"

Fan Ning looked at his brand-new touchscreen phone, then once again checked it against the original owner's memories of this world.

Then sweat began to bead on his forehead and back.

...In this Victorian-era-like steam-industrial world, I'm not quite sure how to explain this to you, you know?

...What if I say it's the Empire's latest flashlight? Would you believe me?

No, seriously, how can someone get exposed right after crossing over?