The Otherworld's Theater Fanatic

Ye Ji, a registered performer for the cross-temporal entertainment network, travels between countless worlds, playing countless roles. She laughs amid the ruins of the Seventh City, saves a girl named Lin Wan in the rain at a mirror-image school, makes the Mad King remember the rose he killed in his banquet hall, and touches the source of all fragments beneath the bitterly cold ice.

Every world is a mirror, and every role is a fragment. She thought she was acting, escaping the eternal lights of that pure-white transit space. But she was wrong. She was searching for herself: the child in a white dress, barefoot in a garden, holding a craft knife. The girl who asked, "Who are you?" in front of the mirror.

She walked through wheat fields, across rivers and overpasses, through rooms without mirrors and darkness carpeted with old newspapers. She met a porridge-cooking human figure, an old man harvesting wheat, and a barefoot vagabond. Everyone was the same person. Everyone was herself.

She collected countless coins, each engraved with a single word: you, me, home, road, one, mirror, lost, found. She put them in her pocket with fish scales, fruit pits, feathers, and sesame seeds. Her pocket was empty and warm, like cotton. But that emptiness was not true emptiness. It was a mirror.

At last, she stood before the mirror and saw herself: a flower-print dress, bare feet, messy hair, a rabbit in her arms. The girl in the mirror looked back at her, not mimicking her, but guiding her. She reached out and touched the glass. There were no ripples, no cracks.