Mysteries Resurrected: Liu San the Paper Doll

I am Liu San. By the time you read this, I will already be dead.

This is the twelfth time.

The thirteenth me stepped off the supernatural bus with nothing in my pocket but a charred sheet of human skin, covered in the last words of the previous twelve Liu Sans. I have no memories, no past, and I don't even know if I'm really "alive." My paper heart beats only a dozen or so times a minute, and what leaks out isn't blood but pulp.

Dachang City is empty. The dead have returned. Their names surfaced on their faces, and they can't be removed, so they wear them. Old Zhou sits outside the breakfast shop every day with a bowl of soy milk. He says, "I've been dead for thirty years. At last, I don't have to look for anyone anymore."

The artist crawled out of the well. He said he'd used his life to paint more than a hundred thousand names, until he painted himself out of existence. The first Liu San reached through a crack in the painted world and asked if there was a place for him outside.

There's also a child on the wall of the well, calling me Dad.

They say paper people can't die. They can only forget. Names never disappear; they just move to another sheet of paper and keep being written.

What about me?

I'm the thirteenth. At last, I have my own words on my face.

Will this be the last time?