Another day, and still no real earnings. From morning till evening, I pickpocketed twenty people every one of them had just cards or a single 500-rupee note. All that effort, and I made only 700 rupees. Seriously, is everyone going broke these days? What kind of country is this…?"
Evan let out a frustrated sigh. He was a thief, but even crime wasn't paying anymore.
His parents had abandoned him when he was just two months old. He lost his sense of humanity early on his belief in people completely faded. The only thing he believed in was living a beautiful life without regrets.
He grew up eating from garbage bins, surviving day after day in poverty.
He beat people for money, and slowly, he became a contract killer. He never once regretted his actions. He took lives fathers, mothers… even those of children. He never looked back. He destroyed the lives of hundreds of children with his own hands.
And he justified it all with one sentence:
"Money is money. It doesn't matter where it comes from."
His twisted philosophy gave him peace until one day.
He was walking back to his tiny, broken-down home. The roof had already collapsed, the walls were cracked beyond repair. And on the way, someone stabbed him from behind.
"Who are you?" he managed to ask, his voice shaky.
The one who stabbed him… was a kid. A child who had seen Evan murder his father.
That child had watched all of Evan's sins from behind the door.
Before falling unconscious, Evan whispered just one sentence:
"Okay… my fault."
And then, darkness.
Some time later, his body lay on a dirty street where people threw their garbage. The smell of rotting vegetables lingered in the air—it smelled like death.
Huff… huff… huff…
Inside a coffin, a man gasped for breath suffocating, desperate for air.
He struggled to break the coffin from the inside.
And he did.
He shattered the wooden lid and gasped for oxygen like a man being born again.
If he hadn't… he might've died for real.
When he regained consciousness, he looked around in confusion.
"Where… am I? Is this hell?" he muttered to himself.
The sky above was stained blood-red, and jagged black mountains surrounded the landscape. Dozens of coffins lay scattered across the rocky ground.
His gaze stopped at one of them a coffin not far from him. A man lay inside, hands folded behind his head as if using them as a pillow, looking strangely relaxed.
The man noticed Evan staring and gave a casual glance.
"Oh, you're awake," he said, his tone calm. "Looks like you didn't know about the deal."
"Deal?" Evan narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
"A soul deal. Yours… with mine. Or rather not with me, but with fate."
"A deal about what?" Evan asked cautiously.
The man sat up slightly and smirked.
"You just have to finish what I couldn't. Solve my pending cases. In return, you get my body."
That's when it hit Evan he was dead. Killed by that kid.
And now… he had been reborn. In someone else's body.
"What kind of cases?" Evan asked, slowly getting up.
"Well," the man said, stretching his arms lazily, "I used to be a detective before I became a ghost. There are a few murder cases, thefts, and missing persons reports unfinished business, you could say."
Evan stared at his own hands no, this man's hands.
A new life. A new face.
And a price to pay.
I used to kill people… and now I'm a detective," Evan muttered.
But Richard heard him he was right beside Evan, though only visible to him.
They walked together through the street, surrounded by chaos. Men and women were busy buying things; it was a market but unlike anything Evan had seen before.
It looked ancient.
Everyone wore old-fashioned clothes. The women were dressed in long gowns, and the men wore traditional garments from a time long gone. Few man's was wore a hat, the horse crapt..
Evan had officially entered a strange, ancient world.
As they walked through the bustling market filled with unfamiliar sights and smells, Richard suddenly stopped in front of a stall.
"Sweet potatoes!" he said with wide, sparkling eyes. "Can you buy one for me?" he asked, giving Evan an exaggerated puppy-eyed look.
Evan rolled his eyes. "You're a ghost. You can't eat anything."
Richard crossed his arms, clearly annoyed. "Still, you could try. It's about the gesture, not the food."
Evan scoffed. "I'm not wasting money on air snacks."
Richard huffed and floated beside him, sulking like a child.