Lin You was a thirty-year-old amusement park on the verge of demolition. To stop the bulldozers, he took human form, put on a faded clown suit, and donned an exaggerated smiling mask.
Planner Jiang Zhiyu handed him the demolition contract, businesslike as ever. “Mr. Lin, the times have left you behind.”
Lin You suddenly grinned, his clown’s red nose bobbing absurdly. “Left behind? Then please, die in the glory days of my past.”
Later, eerie amusement park announcements rang out across the city every night. All the adults who tried to forget the past were dragged into an illusion that never ended. Everyone thought he was an irredeemable, deranged monster.
Only when Jiang Zhiyu pushed open the rusty iron gate and saw him in the empty ruins, selling one expired ticket after another to the air, did she suddenly realize: he was just a ruin, forgotten for thirty years, desperately trying to make humanity laugh again.
Deranged, obsessive clown landmark spirit (Lin You) × cool-headed, rational city planner (Jiang Zhiyu)
Tags: Urban fantasy | Light novel | Beautiful but tragic | Healing | Redemption | Madness lit
Theme: In fast-developing modern cities, we should call on people to slow down and pay attention to our shared urban memories and historic relics. The story explores how to ease modern people’s mental strain and crisis of forgetting, and conveys a healing, warm, and uplifting strength.
