Jiaqi’s eyes blinked open, dawnless as a sealed lake, and the first thing she saw was her living room ceiling.

The bulky cheap ceiling lamp hung like a low, dusty moon. It was off, but the shade held islands of gray you could see in the dark.

Where… am I…?

Confusion pressed like fog; she tried to sit. A dull bolt shot through her belly. She collapsed back, clutching her abdomen, breath snagging like torn cloth.

Pain burned away the sleep-haze like wind stripping leaves. Clarity settled—she’d come home and blacked out on the couch, again.

The sofa cushion under her head was scratchy, a thistle under the skull. She yanked it free, set it over her stomach like a warm brick, then slowly propped herself up.

Blind fingertips skimmed through shadow, fishing until they found her “foot-massage, long life” pebble slippers. She slid feet in, stones pressing like creekbeds.

Sleep had fled like a startled bird. What remained was the mud-thick fatigue, clinging to her lungs like silt that made every breath heavy.

She patted her face, then hooked her glasses on. The lenses caught a faint glint, and her world sharpened like frost on glass.

On the coffee table sat a succulent jammed into half a plastic water bottle, wilted from neglect—a small desert gone to dust. Beside it teetered a mug on the glass edge, a cliffside cup one nudge from falling.

On the floor beneath, a torn packet of instant mix lay like a shed snakeskin. Even in the dark she could make out the slogan: “Brown Sugar Lifeline for the Overworked.”

She remembered placing the half-finished mug before passing out. Compared to her usual debris field, that was progress—she thought, a dry ripple of self-mockery lifting the corner of her mouth like a thin tide.

The smile hadn’t finished unfurling when her phone lit up. The sudden screen was a lightning flash; she jolted, her heart missing a beat.

She grabbed the phone, terror prickling like ants. The lock screen showed a single notice: [Guangdong Unicom] 60G...

Ha…

She let out a breath, a leaf’s shiver in wind. Just an ad. Nothing to fear. Why was she this jumpy—

Thought cut like a rope. Her thumb unlocked by habit. The green chat app sat there, a familiar island; the red badge read “7,” and her pulse stumbled again.

For most people, that number means family greetings or friends joking. For Jiaqi, it meant neither. She knew that like winter knows ice.

She’d checked before coming home. There shouldn’t be new unread. A bad premonition climbed her spine like cold vines.

She opened it. At the top sat “Director,” and a gray line as sharp as glare: [Voice] 58".

Her finger trembled, opening the first clip—but she hit pause before sound could spill out. She held, then long-pressed and chose transcribe.

White letters bloomed on black like moths.

Engineer Jia, what’s with you? I said it’s raining, no working at height. Tell the crew the aluminum window install is delayed. Why did HVAC say they never got notice?

Do you know how hard it is to schedule them? They came today, saw windows not installed, and left. Next slot is next week. Then how do we get carpentry on the ceiling? The kitchen’s already dragged for so long.

Do you even get what we’re doing? This is the show unit; the schedule’s tight. The building’s on sale; clients will tour soon. Do you know how much the developer penalizes us for each day late? You paying?

How many times? You follow everything on site. Any issue, tell me immediately. I didn’t send you there to play. This is the second time the same mistake. Do you have a memory?

Jiaqi bit her lip, teeth a clamp. Transcription stripped the exclamation marks; the voices felt blunter, like knives wrapped in cloth. Still, the chain of questions was a storm she didn’t dare hear raw.

She scrolled down, then typed with shaking fingers, words like pebbles thrown into a still pool.

Sorry, Engineer Yang, but today you sent me to match panels with the supplier. That ran till midnight. I’m not Sun Wukong; I can’t split myself—site and supplier at once.

I called the site PM and told him to relay the delay. If he didn’t pass it down, that’s on him—

Her fingers sped up, each tap a drumbeat, anger rising like a red tide.

Isn’t dumping all this on me too much? Are you paying me double? I work these extra hours and still get scolded—what am I to you? A dog? A slave?

The developer set an impossible schedule. Everyone’s suffering. Why don’t you complain to them? You son of a—

She couldn’t finish. Arms strung tight like bowstrings, she highlighted everything and erased it, the way a wave smooths footprints.

She typed again.

I’m sorry, Director. I missed it. I’ll call HVAC first thing and try to get them in before the weekend.

In the dark, only the soft tat-tat of her thumbs was clear, like rain on a tin roof.

The sound lasted until the send chime chimed, a small bell at a shrine. Then the room sank back into quiet.

Hugging the cushion tight, she fixed her eyes on the screen, waiting like a night watchman on an empty street.

The Director had messaged at one a.m.—exactly when she’d fainted. Now it was four. He was probably asleep, a stone under water. Still, she waited, scared she’d miss a reply and pour oil on the fire.

Waiting without knowing an end is torture, a rope drawn across the chest. Her temples throbbed like drums; the dull ache in her belly gnawed like a wolf.

Her cramps had always been fierce, waves pounding a shore. Even with meds, relief was a thin veil; now it crested, and she buried her face in the cushion, holding her breath like a diver.

After a while, she raised her head, dazed. She lifted the cup and poured the last of the liquid into her mouth like a shot in the dark.

Awful.

Just like the packet’s promise, it was brown sugar water—the classic cramps fix for straight guys and un-fussy types like her. Theoretically it soothed the belly’s spasms.

The truth was colder. Heat helps, not sugar. The cold mouthful did nothing but paint her mouth with sticky sweetness, clinging like glue to the tongue, making her waking thirst harsher.

She swallowed. In the corner of her eye, the packet lay on the floor again, its slogan brighter under the phone’s glow.

“Brown Sugar Lifeline for the Overworked… heh.”

A small laugh slipped out, self-mockery like a cracked bell. She’d bought a whole box because the youth-targeted meme line felt clever. Now the words tasted like dust.

The first time she saw that phrase, she’d just joined the field. She carried a flame. She chose architecture against her parents’ protests, head full of the dean’s fiery speech at opening day.

She’d looked down on finance, those numbers that drift like clouds. She believed the republic was built brick by brick by doers like her, hands to stone.

On day one, at orientation, the design director clapped her shoulder and said, “You’ll take the site.” The weight of his palm felt solid, like a beam set true.

But now—

Her eyes found the slogan again. At last she understood: it wasn’t a joke, not a wink. It was a tombstone carved as a quip.

Understanding changes nothing, like knowing rain by name doesn’t stop the storm.

“Whatever…”

She killed the phone screen, pushed off the armrest, and stood on trembling legs, a sapling in the wind. She groped her way to the desk and stabbed the power button.

Two seconds later, the monitor bloomed like dawn on water and washed her face with pale light.

She was done—done with a job that takes and never gives respect, done with being ordered around like a servant, done with this dog-worse life.

She—she would…

She would play a game.

Yeah. Play a game and unclench, like loosening a tight fist.

Really? That’s all you’ve got? The last scrap of pride banged on her skull like a fist on a door. Lying-flat Jiaqi ignored it, slid the mouse, and opened Steam.

She meant to pick some time-killer she’d already sunk a hundred hours into, a windless pond to float in while waiting for the Director’s reply.

A sale banner popped up like a market stall. She went to close it—then the cover art caught her, a polished blonde lady, a sun-blade in the night.

She paused. On the same cover, three blonde princes ringed a silver-haired girl like falcons around a dove. Resistance pricked like cactus.

“Holywell Academy…?”

The name tasted two-dimensional, sugar spun to thread. She balked harder when she saw the reverse harem vibe, the silver-haired heroine hemmed by golden heads.

She didn’t hate romance sims; she liked them. But otome wasn’t her pasture. She played male-focused galgames more, the way a cat picks sunny windows.

Simple reason. Even if she’d never come out, in her heart she was a textbook yuri girl. She wanted to cuddle cute girls, flower to flower.

But good yuri games are rare as phoenix feathers. Quality is a patchy field, and some BG reskins feel worse than straight-up male gal scripts.

She rolled her eyes and did a one-woman rant in her head, venting until the steam hissed out like a kettle. Then she faced the screen again.

The art leaned otome. Her cursor drifted to the X like a leaf to the gutter. After a few seconds’ stall, she slid back and opened the store page.

Maybe. Maybe that blonde lady is a route. Why else put her on the cover, a banner flung high?

She knew she was fooling herself; the lady’s smug tilt screamed villainess, a rose with thorns. Still, the idea soothed her like warm tea.

From the first glance, something in her chest warmed, an ember stirred—like meeting someone she’d known across lifetimes.

Strange. The raised chin and cool eyes said, Don’t touch me. Yet Jiaqi felt a pull, a close current under ice.

Stop thinking. Buy. Scan. Download.

Three quick moves like knife-work, and minutes later a new icon sat on her desktop, a seed sprouting on soil.

She clicked. The familiar VN window bloomed, a collage of character sprites on the main menu, the look of a small-budget tale lit by hope.

Fine. Small budget is fine. Test the waters. If the lady isn’t romanceable, there’s the two-hour no-questions refund, a lifeline like a buoy.

She hit Start.

Instead of rolling, a prompt box popped up, lines of foreign text like birdsong she didn’t know.

She had a master’s, but only Chinese and English in her pack. Not a programmer; she didn’t chase foreign docs. Even her English was just passable, a bridge of rough planks.

Even so, the instant she saw those characters, frost skittered up her spine; she knew they weren’t English, nor any tongue on Earth.

Stranger still, as she stared at a script she’d never seen, its meaning poured into her mind like warm tea.

—Soul, unwilling and brimming with rage.

—Have you borne enough suffering, worn rusted chains that will never break?

—You gave everything, and the world repaid you with ash and injustice.

—So, if there were a chance to turn the river upstream, to choose differently, to live another life—

—Would you let go of everything, shed this body scarred by failure, and walk into a world of blade-light and shadow?

—Would you become the person you truly long to be?

“...”

Bitterness rose first, like swallowing cold brown‑sugar water. Jiaqi stared blankly at the line of text as the voice echoed in her skull like a hollow drum.

It felt like standing on a worksite and taking a developer’s storm of curses face on.

Tears slid down her cheeks like rain on glass; she didn’t notice. Her hand moved the mouse like a puppet on a string, toward Accept.

Then she clicked.

The next moment, the screen warped like heat haze—no, not just the screen. Her desk, the walls, everything bent and cracked like a shattered mirror.

Then came endless color, a flood of paint thrown across the sky.

An inhuman torrent of data drowned her vision; every point, every line, every plane held all pasts and all futures, like stars packed into a single grain of sand.

What she saw was… Truth.

Here, everything sat within reach, yet waited at the far horizon, like a moon cupped in the hand.

It wasn’t an ocean of knowledge; it was a vacuum. Information existed everywhere at once, like a universe at peak entropy. Chaos itself became the average, turning all things unreadable, into a restless, silent death.

Her eyes widened like lanterns in wind; her gaze finally pinned one place like a hawk pinning prey.

There, a scarlet line blazed, vivid as if tailored for her alone; it rose from the leveled chaos and burned into her eyes like a hot brand.

Then Jiaqi saw.

She saw a palace on fire, flames licking like hungry beasts. She saw a silver‑haired girl laughing like a storm split loose. She saw a black‑haired girl holding scissors, blades winking like cold moons.

She saw their pasts as tangled threads, and the endings they were supposed to meet like blades poised above a cord.

And she saw herself, and the god operating on her like a surgeon over glass.

A deluge rammed into her head like a bursting dam, though she didn’t want to know.

She had no choice. She watched the god perform a cruel, precise surgery, fusing two unrelated things like welding night to day.

Then she watched the pitiful stitchwork clutch its head, and cry the question like a bell cracked in winter: Who am I?

…

I… am Jiaqi…?

I am…

That useless one, who can’t protect anything, who doesn’t deserve any love… a failure?

Fear surged like a black tide. In that instant, she almost dissolved in it; her consciousness crumbled like a cliff of sand.

The tearing that had tormented her finally had an answer, but it wasn’t the blossom she’d hoped to see.

In this colorful yet empty world, she wanted to laugh like a mad wind and to sob like rain, but no one could hear her voice.

—No. That wasn’t right.

Someone else was here, like a second candle flickering in the same dark.

Her despair snapped like a taut string, because she felt a displaced ripple, a wavelength close to her own, like two strings humming together, yet subtly off.

One thing was certain. That ripple carried the same feeling she held now: fear, cold as iron.

But whose fear was it?

She reached out through the smoke, trying to near the source of that resonant ripple, to touch the root of that fear like a buried thorn.

But as she drew close, a force shoved her back like a sudden gust.

It was a stance of refusal. Something keened like a banshee, and the scene shattered like thin ice beneath a heel.

Before the wail destroyed everything, she saw a baby.

A blood‑red baby, like a rose dipped in dusk.

The next moment, she woke.

She opened her eyes. Her own long hair, smooth as fresh snow, slid across her vision, and a man’s alluring voice curled in like silk.

“Good morning, Jiaqi. You were sleeping so sweetly.”

A semi‑transparent, blood‑red conduit was plugged into her abdomen like a vein of glass. She lifted her head and followed that scarlet line to a blood‑red man, and the pleased curve of his mouth like a crescent.

“So, did you… have a nice dream?”