There Are Words on the Back

At eleven at night, the glass door of the convenience store locked itself with a click. This city is always “losing pages” late at night, like a book with a few pages torn out. What falls out are horror stories that devour people: fog caught in a doorframe that never dissipates, shadows in the freezer that stand up on their own. Gu Nanyi is the kind of person who goes in just to make a living. Others use him as a “life-filler,” the one who dies first when they enter a dungeon. But he has a talent he can’t talk about: in every book, he can turn to a page no one else can see. That page tells him at what point in the ordeal someone will die. Until one day, he opens a book he has never seen before. On the back of that page are two words: his own name. Author of this page: ____ (blank).