Li Wei'an woke up to the sound of arguing.
That was how he knew he was alive.
In his previous life, the last thing he remembered was silence—deep, merciful silence—right after a thirty-six-hour work shift, three cups of burnt coffee, and an email titled "Urgent (Final)" that was, predictably, neither urgent nor final.
This, however, was worse.
"You can't sell the west warehouse!" someone hissed.
"We already sold it!"
"Then sell the river carts!"
"They were seized last month!"
Li Wei'an opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was wooden. Not the polished kind. The desperate kind. Cracks ran along the beam like scars, and a thin layer of dust drifted down, as if the building itself was coughing.
"…Ah," he said hoarsely.
His voice sounded unfamiliar—too young, too weak.
The arguing stopped.
A shadow loomed over him.
"Young Master!"
An old man rushed into his vision, face creased with panic and relief in equal measure. His robe was neat but worn thin at the sleeves. The hands gripping the bedframe trembled, knuckles white.
"Young Master, you're awake! Thank the heavens, truly thank the heavens—"
Li Wei'an blinked once.
Twice.
His head throbbed.
Memories that were not his poured in—not dramatically, not with thunder or visions of gods, but like a badly organized ledger being dumped straight into his brain.
Li family.
Merchants.
Once rich.
Now ruined.
Debts.
Mockery.
A useless heir who fainted while checking accounts.
"…Oh," Li Wei'an muttered.
So that was the situation.
He didn't scream. He didn't panic. He didn't ask where he was.
He simply stared at the old man and thought, So even death downgraded my socioeconomic status.
"Water," Li Wei'an said.
The old man nearly tripped over himself fetching a chipped cup. Li Wei'an took a sip. It tasted faintly metallic, like regret.
Not great. Still better than office coffee.
"Steward," Li Wei'an said slowly, testing the word as it surfaced naturally in his mind. "How long was I unconscious?"
"Half a day," the steward replied quickly. "The physician said exhaustion. Said… said if you continued like this, you wouldn't last the year."
Li Wei'an nodded.
Fair.
He shifted, and the bed creaked loudly, protesting the movement like an elderly employee being asked to work overtime.
The room was small. Bare. Functional in the way poverty pretended to be minimalism.
A desk sat against the wall. On it were stacks of account books—thin, messy, many crossed out with red ink. A faint smell of old paper and ink hung in the air, mixed with something sour.
Debt had a smell, it seemed.
Two other figures stood near the door. One was a young clerk with ink-stained fingers, eyes darting nervously. The other was a guard—thin, armor dented, hand resting on a sword that had seen better decades.
Everyone looked at him like he was about to die again.
Li Wei'an exhaled.
"Good news," he said. "I'm not dead."
No one laughed.
"That makes one of us," he added.
The clerk made a strangled noise that might have been a cough.
Li Wei'an pushed himself up into a sitting position. His body felt weak, but not unusable. The kind of weakness that came from malnutrition and stress—not illness.
Fixable.
He looked at the account books again.
"How bad?" he asked.
The steward hesitated.
Li Wei'an raised an eyebrow. "If you say 'manageable,' I'll assume we're bankrupt."
The steward swallowed. "…We're bankrupt."
"Ah." Li Wei'an nodded. "Honesty. I like that."
The clerk stepped forward nervously. "Young Master, the creditors will arrive by evening. The Chen Guild already seized the southern storehouse. The Xu family… well, they laughed."
Li Wei'an smiled faintly.
"Did they?" he said. "How energetic of them."
The guard shifted uncomfortably.
"Young Master," the steward said softly, "if there's anything you wish to arrange… any messages… we will obey."
Li Wei'an looked at him.
At the bent back.
The tired eyes.
The loyalty that hadn't been rewarded once in years.
Then he laughed.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't hysterical.
It was quiet, amused, and sharp enough to make everyone freeze.
"Arrange my funeral?" Li Wei'an asked. "Bit early, don't you think?"
The steward froze. "Young Master?"
Li Wei'an swung his legs off the bed. His feet touched the cold floor.
"Bring me the cleanest robe we have," he said. "And the full debt list. Not summaries. Everything."
The clerk stared. "E-Everything?"
"Yes," Li Wei'an replied. "If I'm going to drown, I'd like to know how deep the water is."
The guard frowned. "Young Master… you should rest."
Li Wei'an stood.
The room seemed smaller from this angle.
"I rested," he said. "I died, actually. Very refreshing. Would not recommend repeating it."
No one knew how to respond to that.
Li Wei'an walked to the desk and picked up one of the ledgers. The red ink bled across the page like wounds.
Debt. Debt. Debt.
He closed the book.
"Well," he said calmly, "on the bright side—"
Everyone leaned in, desperate.
"We have nothing left to lose."
Silence.
Then—
The steward laughed. A short, shocked sound, as if he hadn't done it in years.
Li Wei'an smiled faintly.
Outside the room, somewhere far away, the world continued turning—unaware that a fallen merchant heir had just decided he didn't particularly like losing.
And that was, perhaps, its first mistake.