Chen Yaoting first saw the ad while eating a discounted rice ball outside a convenience store.
11:47 p.m.
A light rain fell over Taoyuan. A thin layer of water had collected in the motorcycle parking spaces, and under the streetlights it looked like a piece of glass smeared with dirt.
He sat on a plastic chair outside the convenience store, holding the rice ball in one hand and scrolling through his phone with the other.
Bank account balance: NT$3,722.
Credit card payment due this month: NT$48,600.
Rent was due the day after tomorrow.
He was already one payment behind on his motorcycle loan.
His former company kept telling him to wait for his severance pay.
A message from his landlord, sent that afternoon, was still sitting in LINE.
“Yaoting, don’t drag out the rent again this month, okay?”
He hadn’t replied.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. He simply had no idea what to say.
Twenty-nine years old.
No savings.
No house.
No car.
Just lost his job.
Some of the friends he used to hang out with had gotten married. Some had bought homes. Others were already discussing whether to send their second child to private kindergarten.
He was the only one still calculating whether he should just skip breakfast tomorrow.
He took a bite of the rice ball.
Tuna mayonnaise.
It was already a little dry.
That was when an ad suddenly popped up on his phone.
Black background.
No company logo.
No beautiful woman.
No tacky animation of flying bills.
There was only one line of white text.
“Would you be willing to rent out your life for seven days?”
Below it was a number.
NT$100,000,000.
Chen Yaoting stared at it for two seconds.
Then he laughed.
“Idiot.”
He swiped up immediately.
Online scammers were getting too lazy even to come up with ideas.
At least they used to talk about investing in cryptocurrency, overseas funds, or luxury-goods reselling. Now they just asked whether you wanted to sell your life.
He went back to scrolling through short videos.
He watched someone driving a Ferrari in Dubai.
He watched an influencer unbox a watch worth more than a million dollars.
Then he watched a couple go skiing in Hokkaido.
The ad appeared again on the fourth video.
Exactly the same.
“Would you be willing to rent out your life for seven days?”
NT$100,000,000.
This time, another line had appeared below it.
“No work required.”
“No investment required.”
“No repayment required.”
“Your life will be returned in full after seven days.”
Chen Yaoting’s finger stopped.
For some reason, he didn’t swipe away immediately.
Maybe it was because that NT$100 million was so glaring.
To someone truly rich, NT$100 million might be just another number.
Not to him.
What did NT$100 million mean?
No mortgage to carry.
He could buy a car outright.
No more watching his boss’s mood.
No more working late into the night.
No more doing the math at the end of every month.
As long as he didn’t spend recklessly, he might never have to work again for the rest of his life.
He suddenly realized he was actually imagining it.
Buy a house for around NT$20 million.
Then buy a car worth NT$3 million.
Put the rest into time deposits and stocks. The interest and dividends alone might be enough to live on.
NT$100 million.
Just seven days.
He gave a derisive laugh, thinking he must really have been driven crazy by poverty to seriously consider something like this.
He tapped the upper-right corner of the ad.
He wanted to see what kind of garbage website it was.
But it didn’t open a browser.
The screen went black instead.
A white circle appeared in the center.
It spun for three seconds.
Then an extremely simple page appeared.
“Life Experience Program”
There were only three questions below it.
Name.
Age.
Current debt.
Chen Yaoting froze for a moment.
“They really built the whole thing.”
He entered the information casually.
Chen Yaoting.
29.
He spent a few seconds calculating the debt field.
Credit cards, personal loans, and his motorcycle loan came to a little over NT$600,000.
He entered NT$650,000.
Then he submitted it.
The next second, a message appeared on the screen.
“Preliminary eligibility requirements met.”
He frowned.
A second page appeared.
“Please confirm the following conditions.”
“1. The experience term is seven days.”
“2. During the experience term, the user will temporarily lose control of their own actions.”
“3. Our company will be responsible for follow-up handling of all lawful actions performed during the experience term.”
“4. At the end of the experience, the user will regain full consciousness.”
“5. Upon completion of the experience, the user will be paid NT$100 million.”
When he read the second item, the rice ball stopped halfway to his mouth.
Lose control of his own actions?
That wording seemed a little wrong.
He scrolled down.
There was also a section titled “Detailed Explanation.”
After he opened it, the content became even stranger.
The so-called “life experience” meant that a paying client would temporarily take control of a participant’s body through some kind of neural-interface technology.
During the takeover, the participant’s consciousness would enter a state resembling deep sleep.
The client could use the participant’s body to live their life.
Eat.
Talk.
Walk.
Use a phone.
Interact with other people.
Experience their work, family, and social relationships.
They could even access authorized basic personal memories.
After seven days, the system would terminate.
The original personality would regain control of the body.
The longer Chen Yaoting read, the fainter the smile on his face became.
This wasn’t ordinary scam copy.
It was too complete.
It even included legal provisions, medical risks, and neural-sync side effects.
Dizziness.
Temporary memory gaps.
Disordered dreams.
Abnormal time perception.
Most side effects would disappear within seventy-two hours.
He scrolled to the bottom.
“Before accepting the experience, the participant will first receive a security deposit equal to one percent of the total compensation.”
One percent of NT$100 million.
One million.
Chen Yaoting stared at those three characters.
His heartbeat suddenly quickened.
If this was a scam, they couldn’t possibly give him a million first, right?
He continued reading.
“The security deposit will be transferred to your personal account within three minutes of the formal signing of the contract.”
There was a button below it.
“Apply for an interview.”
He sat there staring at it for a full half-minute.
Rain drummed against the awning.
The convenience store’s automatic doors opened now and then, sending out a mix of air-conditioning and the smell of oden.
Chen Yaoting licked his lips.
In the end, he pressed the button.
He told himself he was only going to take a look.
It wasn’t as if he would really go through with it.
The page asked him to enable location access.
He tapped Allow.
Ten seconds later, an address appeared on his phone.
Xinyi District, Taipei.
Interview time.
Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.
The address was a building he knew.
Expensive.
Famous.
The monthly rent for one ping of office space inside—about 3.3 square meters—might be higher than his entire monthly rent at home.
That only made him more confused.
Had scam operations evolved to the point of renting offices in Xinyi District?
He took a screenshot.
Just as he was about to close the page, his phone suddenly rang.
Unknown number.
He stared at the screen.
He didn’t answer until the fifth ring.
“Hello?”
A woman was on the other end.
Her voice was very calm.
“Hello, Mr. Chen Yaoting.”
A chill ran down his back.
“Who is this?”
“The Eligibility Review Department of the Life Experience Program.”
Chen Yaoting was silent for two seconds.
“Just so we’re clear, you’re not scammers, are you?”
The woman didn’t laugh.
Nor did she rush to defend herself.
“You can confirm that in person at two tomorrow afternoon.”
“How did you get my phone number?”
“You just authorized the system to obtain the application information.”
He glanced at his phone.
That was true.
He hadn’t read those terms carefully at all.
“Just so you know, I don’t have any money.”
“We will not charge you any fees.”
“And the NT$100 million is real?”
“It is.”
The woman answered so quickly that Chen Yaoting didn’t know how to respond.
“What exactly are you doing?”
“We provide short-term life experiences for high-net-worth clients.”
“Rich people pay NT$100 million to be me for seven days?”
“Not necessarily NT$100 million.”
“What does that mean?”
“The NT$100 million you saw is the compensation you can receive after completing this experience. It is not the client’s total payment.”
That made him go quiet.
So the client paid even more?
The NT$100 million was just for him?
The whole thing suddenly seemed so absurd that it was almost beyond his imagination.
“Then why doesn’t the client just go on vacation? Why spend that kind of money to be someone else?”
The woman paused.
“Mr. Chen, some people possess things that most of the world’s population could never have in a lifetime.”
“So?”
“So what they want usually isn’t an ordinary product, either.”
Before hanging up, the woman said only one thing.
“If you’re not interested, you don’t have to come at two tomorrow afternoon.”
Chen Yaoting barely slept that night.
At first, he was certain he wouldn’t go.
It was ridiculous.
NT$100 million.
Lending someone his body for seven days.
Something like that had to be either a scam or some kind of illegal human experiment.
But he lay in bed scrolling until two in the morning, then looked up the address again.
It was real.
There really was a company called “LEV Corporation” in that building.
Its registration was in order.
Its registered capital was absurdly high.
But strangely, there was almost no business information about it online.
No social media page.
No official website introduction.
No news articles.
Only one extremely simple official page.
It contained a single English sentence.
“Life is the rarest luxury.”
Life was the rarest luxury.
Chen Yaoting stared at those words for a long time.
The next afternoon, at 1:57 p.m.,
he stood on the first floor of the building in Xinyi District.
In the end, he had come.
He was wearing the only black shirt he owned that looked halfway decent.
Jeans.
Sneakers.
When he entered the lobby, he even felt like turning around.
Everywhere he looked were people in perfectly tailored suits.
Some carried luxury briefcases.
Some wore watches that looked more expensive than all his debt combined.
He suddenly felt as if he had walked into the wrong place.
But the receptionist looked straight at him.
“Mr. Chen Yaoting?”
He froze.
“Yes.”
“Twenty-seventh floor. They’re waiting for you.”
As the elevator rose, he watched the numbers tick upward one floor at a time.
Nineteen.
Twenty.
Twenty-one.
The higher he went, the more he wanted to know what kind of person would spend NT$100 million to rent someone else’s life.
The elevator reached the twenty-seventh floor.
The doors opened.
It wasn’t an ordinary office outside.
There were no employee desks.
No copy machines.
No ringing phones.
Only broad expanses of gray-white stone, black glass, and a reception area so quiet it barely seemed like a company at all.
A woman in a dark gray suit walked over.
She was in her thirties, with short hair and very light makeup.
“Hello, Mr. Chen. My name is Shen.”
“Were you the one who called yesterday?”
“No.”
She held out her hand.
“Please come with me.”
Chen Yaoting was led into a conference room.
There was only a contract on the table.
A glass of water.
And a tablet.
Ms. Shen sat across from him.
“Before we begin, let me confirm that you may leave at any time.”
“So I’m not responsible for anything until I sign?”
“That’s right.”
“What about after I sign?”
“You will enter the formal process.”
She turned the tablet toward him.
A string of numbers appeared on the screen.
1000000.
“After you complete the first-stage medical evaluation and sign the contract, the NT$1 million security deposit will be transferred to your account immediately.”
Chen Yaoting stared at the number.
“What if I change my mind later?”
“The security deposit will be returned.”
“I don’t have to pay anything?”
“Not before the formal implantation procedure begins.”
The more he heard, the less reasonable it seemed.
“What are you really after?”
Ms. Shen looked at him.
“Mr. Chen, we’re not doing business with you.”
“Then what?”
“The real client isn’t you.”
The words were cold.
They were also accurate.
He was just a product.
Chen Yaoting lowered his head and looked at the contract.
“What can that person do with my body during the seven days?”
“Anything permitted under the contract.”
“For example?”
“Eat, shop, have fun, travel, socialize.”
“Sex too?”
Ms. Shen showed no embarrassment.
“If a third party is involved, it must comply with the relevant laws and informed-consent provisions.”
Chen Yaoting gave a short laugh.
“You make it sound so professional.”
“Because we’ve been doing this for many years.”
This was the first time he had heard her say anything resembling the company’s history.
“Many years?”
“Yes.”
“So people have really done this before?”
“Many.”
“And they got NT$100 million?”
Ms. Shen didn’t answer directly.
She simply reached out and tapped the tablet.
Several heavily blurred case files appeared on the screen.
Seven days.
Fourteen days.
Thirty days.
Compensation.
NT$100 million.
NT$300 million.
NT$800 million.
Chen Yaoting’s breathing gradually stopped.
Those weren’t advertising images.
Every entry included bank payment records.
Tax documents.
Notarized documents from lawyers.
One case even included a property purchase record.
The second month after completing the experience, the participant had bought a house in Taipei worth more than NT$40 million.
Chen Yaoting’s throat began to feel dry.
“Why me?”
Ms. Shen said, “We didn’t choose you.”
“Then who did?”
“The client.”
“Does he know me?”
“No.”
“Then how did he choose me?”
“Age, health, appearance, life background, and personality data are all taken into consideration.”
She paused.
“Your conditions happen to match the current needs of one of our clients.”
Chen Yaoting raised his head.
“What kind of client?”
“We can’t disclose that before the contract is signed.”
“Male or female?”
“Male.”
“How old?”
“Seventy-three.”
Chen Yaoting froze.
“A seventy-three-year-old is paying that much to be me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
This time, Ms. Shen didn’t answer immediately.
She just looked at him.
A few seconds later, she said:
“If you were seventy-three.”
“Your body was beginning to age.”
“You needed help walking.”
“You had dietary restrictions.”
“Every day you woke up knowing you had fewer days left than the day before.”
“And you had plenty of money.”
“So much that money no longer meant anything.”
She pushed the contract a little closer to him.
“How much would you be willing to spend to be twenty-nine again?”
Chen Yaoting said nothing.
For one moment, he actually understood.
Not the company.
The old man.
To him, being twenty-nine meant having nothing.
Poor.
In debt.
Unemployed.
But to a seventy-three-year-old, the things he considered most worthless right now—being young, healthy, able to run, jump, have sex, stay up all night—might be the most expensive commodities in the world.
Ms. Shen took out a pen.
She placed it in front of him.
“Take your time.”
Chen Yaoting opened the contract.
One page.
Two pages.
Three pages.
There were a lot of clauses.
He didn’t really absorb much of them.
His mind was filled with only one number.
NT$100 million.
Then his phone suddenly vibrated.
His landlord.
“Yaoting, remember the rent tomorrow.”
Then another message.
A bank collection notice.
Then another.
An invitation to a friend’s wedding.
“Bro, you have to come next month!”
He stared at the messages.
Suddenly, he found it a little funny.
Sometimes life didn’t come down to some grand choice.
Not dreams.
Not ideals.
Sometimes it was simply that, when you had a little over three thousand dollars left in your bank account, a pen that could be exchanged for NT$100 million happened to appear on the table.
Chen Yaoting picked up the pen.
“One last question.”
Ms. Shen looked up.
“Go ahead.”
“When the seven days are over, will I definitely wake up?”
She looked at him.
“According to the contract, yes.”
“What does ‘according to the contract’ mean?”
“No medical procedure is one hundred percent guaranteed.”
“What’s the success rate?”
“Ninety-nine point eight seven percent.”
Chen Yaoting laughed.
“Damn.”
He lowered his head.
The pen hovered above the signature line.
Three seconds.
Five seconds.
Ten seconds.
Finally, he wrote his name.
Chen Yaoting.
Ms. Shen collected the contract.
She didn’t congratulate him.
She didn’t smile, either.
She only glanced at the time.
“Please check your bank account.”
Chen Yaoting was still looking at his phone.
The banking app sent a notification.
A deposit.
NT$1,000,000.
He went completely still.
It wasn’t a test figure.
It wasn’t a visual effect.
He opened his account immediately.
The original NT$3,722
had become
1,003,722.
His fingers began to tremble slightly.
One million.
It had really arrived.
All for signing his name.
One million.
Ms. Shen stood.
“At nine tomorrow morning, please report to the designated medical center for a full examination.”
Chen Yaoting was still staring at his phone.
“What about the NT$100 million?”
“It will be transferred within twenty-four hours after the seven-day experience is completed.”
She walked to the door, then stopped.
“One more thing.”
Chen Yaoting looked up.
“What?”
Ms. Shen smiled faintly for the first time.
“From this moment on, try not to get hurt.”
“Why?”
She looked at him.
“Because from the moment you signed your name,”
“this body was already reserved by someone who paid for it.”