Star Eclipse: Lost in the Mortal World

By the time his third cigarette burned down to the filter, Zhou Yan finally realized something was wrong: the clock in this 24-hour convenience store was forever stuck at 3:17 a.m. Even stranger, every customer who came in to buy something had an identical mole at the outer corner of their left eye.

By the time his third cigarette burned down to the filter, the ember singed Zhou Yan's fingertip, making him flinch. The butt fell onto the convenience store's spotless floor with a faint sizzling sound. He bent to pick it up, but his gaze inadvertently swept over the clock above the checkout counter: 3:17 a.m.

He had already been inside for thirty minutes. When he'd bought cigarettes earlier, he'd clearly checked the time, and it had been 3:17 then, too. Zhou Yan frowned, tossed the butt into the trash, and went to the refrigerated case for a bottle of iced cola. The moment he popped the tab, the cold bubbles burst in his mouth, but he didn't feel any more alert. Instead, he was enveloped by an inexplicable chill.

The convenience store's fluorescent lights were dazzlingly bright. The goods on the shelves were arranged in perfect order: chips, cookies, instant noodles... Everything looked just like any ordinary 24-hour convenience store. And yet Zhou Yan couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. The air seemed to carry a faint smell of disinfectant, mixed with a trace of something rotten.

"Welcome." The clerk behind the counter looked up, revealing a completely expressionless face. Zhou Yan's eyes happened to pass over the outer corner of the clerk's left eye, and his heart suddenly clenched. There was a black mole there, neither large nor small, in a place that felt disturbingly familiar.

Suppressing his unease, he set the cola on the counter. "How much?"

"