The Paralel World Doctor

The slap landed before Peter Davis had fully returned to his body.

Heat spread across his cheek as karaoke music pounded through the glass table, beer bottles, and the crowd gathering at the door. Purple neon rolled over the low ceiling. Cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, spilled liquor, and stale carpet pressed into his lungs.

For a breath, another place flickered behind his eyes: marble floors, a sandalwood medicine table, silver needles between his fingers, black blood dripping from the vein of a prince on the Zicari Continent. Then the woman in front of him dragged everything back to the cramped karaoke room.

“Still pretending you’re not awake?” she shouted, clutching her chest with both hands.

She wore the outfit of a karaoke hostess. Her makeup was thick, her lashes damp, her shoulders shaking as though she were terrified. But when Peter forced his vision to focus, her eyes did not stay on him. They flicked toward the door, toward the phones already raised, then toward a man half hidden behind the crowd.

Peter’s hand was in a terrible position, too close to her waist, as if he had just pulled her onto the sofa. But his fingers were limp, his body still sluggish from something pressing down on his nerves, and the glass near his knee carried a bitter smell beneath the alcohol. It was not ordinary drunkenness. In Zicari, even a palace servant learning poison for the first time would have been ashamed to use something so crude.

“He touched me!” the hostess screamed, raising her voice as the door opened wider. “Everyone saw it! I was only doing my job, and he harassed me!”

The hallway stirred at once. Some guests stopped with drinks in their hands. Others raised their phones faster than they asked questions. A man in a black T-shirt adjusted his camera with a hungry grin.

“Wow, this is hot. Record it. Don’t miss anything.”

A drunk man pointed at Peter with a half-empty bottle. “Men like him should be dragged out.”

A woman in a tight dress crossed her arms. “If he didn’t do anything wrong, why does he look like that? Guilty people are always silent.”

A karaoke employee in a black vest stepped in with an awkward smile. He looked at the crying hostess, the cameras, then Peter. His voice sounded like he was mediating, but his body blocked half the exit.

“Sir, you should apologize. In a public place like this, reputation matters.”

The word reputation almost made Peter laugh. The employee was not looking for truth. He only wanted the trouble to find the cheapest victim so the establishment would not be dragged into it. His body gave the cameras a clean angle while his mouth acted as if he were saving everyone.

The hostess lowered her head and pressed a hand to her shoulder. Her voice cracked just enough to sound wounded, yet stayed clear enough to enter the recordings. “I know I’m only a karaoke hostess. But I’m human too. I don’t deserve to be treated like this.”

Several people nodded, not because they had seen the beginning, but because tears arriving at the right moment were easier to trust than a man waking up with alcohol on his clothes.

“Peter.”

Amanda Bernadus’s voice was soft, but the hallway parted for her.

She entered in a white dress, her face pale with practiced hurt. Her tears had not fallen yet, as if she were holding them back so everyone could see how much shame she was enduring. The phone in her hand was already on, though she held it like someone recording only because she had no choice.

The body’s memory recognized her with bitterness. Fiancée. The Bernadus family. An engagement that had been cracked for a long time.

“I tried to close my eyes, Peter,” Amanda said, softly enough to sound injured and loudly enough for everyone to hear. “But tonight, too many people saw.”

She did not ask what had happened. She arrived, placed the verdict in the middle of the room, and let the crowd lift it like a flag.

“Poor Amanda,” the moral woman whispered. “Being engaged to a man like this must be humiliating.”

A thin man in a brown jacket immediately added, “The Bernadus family would never accept such a filthy son-in-law.”

Amanda lowered her eyes, and her thumb moved slightly over the screen, making sure the recording continued. “You may hate me, Peter, but don’t destroy my family’s reputation. Our engagement isn’t only between two people. There are parents, family names, and dignity to protect.”

They kept talking about dignity. Peter had only returned to this body a few minutes ago, and no one cared about the drugged drink or the way the hostess had glanced at the camera before crying.

Expensive shoes sounded from the hallway.

The next man who entered made the cheap karaoke room feel smaller. His shirt was neat, his watch gleamed, and his perfume was too expensive for a carpet that smelled of smoke. He stood beside Amanda with the ease of a man used to seeing others step aside before he spoke.

Richard looked Peter up and down. “I thought the rumors about you were exaggerated. It turns out a man like you doesn’t even deserve to be Amanda’s backup choice.”

The brown-jacketed flatterer laughed at once. “Mr. Richard is right. A man who reeks of alcohol should know his place.”

The drunk guest joined in. “Just kneel. Apologize to the woman and your fiancée.”

The karaoke employee grew bolder now that Richard was there. “Mr. Peter, it’s better not to make this bigger. If the police come, everyone will be troubled.”

Peter leaned back against the sofa and let his body settle. His pulse was chaotic, his stomach damaged by alcohol, his muscles weak, and the sedative still clung to his blood like mud. Five years in this world had apparently ruined Peter Davis so completely that people thought it was natural to treat him like trash.

Richard stepped closer, his smile thinning. “Right or wrong doesn’t matter if no one believes you.”

Peter looked at Amanda, then Richard, then the hostess still crying while peeking at the crowd through her fingers. “Are you done setting the stage?”

A thin silence swept through the room. Amanda blinked. The hostess forgot to raise her sobs for a moment. Richard narrowed his eyes, as if only now realizing that the man beneath his shoe could still look back.

Amanda lowered her head at once, letting one tear fall after the pause. “Peter, after all this, you still want to blame someone else?”

The hostess cried louder. “Look! He doesn’t regret anything!”

Richard turned to the karaoke employee. “Call the manager. Call the police if you have to.”

“Yes, Mr. Richard,” the employee replied quickly, bending as though the order had just descended from Richard’s expensive watch.

Peter did not answer. His gaze fell to the reflection of Amanda’s phone on the dark glass table. The video duration was too long for someone who claimed she had started recording after hearing the commotion. The recording had already been running while his body was still slumped, before he had truly woken, while the hostess pulled his wrist into the position now being used as evidence.

At the top of the screen, a message had not fully disappeared.

Richard: Wait until he’s drunk. Then start.

Peter rose slowly. His body swayed, and several people sneered, taking it as proof of guilt. His eyes, however, remained calm as they settled on Amanda.

“That video is interesting,” he said quietly. “Especially the part before I woke up.”