Death Card: The Reincarnation Game

I’m a criminal investigation consultant with hyperthymesia who can remember everything, yet I can’t recall why I keep showing up at every crime scene.

Fifty-two icicles in a convenience store’s walk-in freezer, a roulette table at a casino with its cards sealed in all seven orifices: every victim wears a baffling, eerie smile.

When forensic pathologist Song Wan pulls a joker bearing a photo of me as a child from a corpse,

another “me” starts appearing in the mirror, wearing a 1994 school uniform and holding a bloodstained playing card.

“Welcome to the inheritance ceremony of the Twin Jokers.”

He smiles in the mirror. “This card game, which has lasted three hundred years, will reach its final round tonight.”

And when I finally stand before the Original Card, I discover the cruelest truth of all:

Everyone who draws the Death Card must smile,

because the stakes in this cycle have never been life or death, but who has the courage to break free of fate.