Nana Toki didn’t spare Trollop out of mercy. This was a city-plane, a world ruled by courts and cameras; snap a neck, and the backlash would spread like oil on water. She wouldn’t rise to Trollop’s bait.

Trollop seemed to expect it. At the door, he dropped a little secret like a pebble into a still pond: “The Child of this plane won’t last much longer. Miss Qiao, take a vacation. Rest up. See you on the next plane.”

“See your damn mother!”

His meaningful smile lit a fuse in her chest. “Get lost. Don’t let me see you again.” She slammed the door, thunder loud in a tiled hallway.

Outside, Trollop: “...” Seething under his skin, but the smile stuck like lacquer.

...

News of Chi Mu reached Nana Toki months later. She was filming a movie about women’s boxing, sweat like rain on ropes, when she swiped open her phone and saw the Chu Group’s missing-person notice slide across her feed.

Chi Mu had vanished—months ago.

If Jinghe Chu hadn’t returned from a trip and found her gone, no one might’ve realized the leading lady had evaporated from the city’s lights.

The timing was odd. Mid-June, Sister Zhang, Chi’s agent, had dropped her at her apartment. Next day, Chi breached her contract and quit, saying she needed rest. At first, Sister Zhang figured it was pressure. Now, the air felt wrong.

The police suspected kidnapping.

Predictably, the cops called Nana Toki in for a statement. She’d filmed a lovelorn drama with Chi Mu, so being a suspect was “routine.” She answered every question with a blank and walked out dazed, fog like cotton in her head.

Seriously? Are they broken? What’s the heroine’s disappearance got to do with me?

I’m busy climbing the Best Actress ladder, day and night. Where would I find time to scheme against her?

The police questioned everyone close to Chi Mu. Nothing. The case rammed into a dead alley. She’d vanished like morning mist—no trace. A year later, by chance, Nana found the pinhole camera she’d hidden in Chi Mu’s room, a spider eye forgotten in the corner. Only then did the past unspool.

The night before Chi skipped the shoot, Chi met Jiang Shi—escaped from that deserted island forest—inside her apartment. Words flared, a storm without thunder. In the tangle, Chi killed him by accident. Nana thought it ended there—Chi ran from guilt.

Unexpectedly, a clean-cut teenage boy stepped into frame. She knew that face too well: Baijing. Because of the camera angle, she couldn’t see what happened between them after.

The last images showed Baijing helping Chi dispose of Jiang Shi’s body, then slipping away like a shadow at dusk.

Nana turned the memory card between her fingers. The chill hit first, then resolve. She went public. She was a model citizen who wouldn’t share a sky with evil; she couldn’t cover for the heroine’s crime.

System: ... If that’s true, why did the host put a pinhole camera in the heroine’s room?

Nana Toki: None of your business.

The police took the anonymous tip and moved fast. Within days, they arrested Baijing.

By then his mind had frayed like wet paper. As officers led him out, he kept muttering, “You can’t take me from her,” words drifting like smoke from a cracked kiln.

Yes—Baijing had broken. No one knew what passed between him and Chi Mu. The once-bright boy had curdled into a gaoler. Nana never saw that coming.

Is this love, rotted to black at the root?

She couldn’t stomach it. Later, the System forwarded the report: After helping Chi dump Jiang Shi’s body, Baijing locked her in his apartment and kept her as his forbidden captive. The calls with Jinghe Chu? Forced at knife-point silence.

Chi’s world shrank to that one small room. Baijing called it a harbor, a place that would shield her from storms. To Chi, it was an iron cage where every day felt worse than death.

She conceived there, and she miscarried there. White sheets bloomed scarlet like plum blossoms in snow, too many times to count. When police entered, the iron scent of blood rolled over them like a rust storm. And that wasn’t the worst.

What stunned nearly everyone: in the apartment’s trash bin, they found the remains of a several-month-old fetus—Chi Mu’s child.

“Sick” didn’t touch it. That was madness.

Yet a heroine is still a heroine. After nearly a year of double-edged torment, body and mind, a hospital pulled Chi back from the brink. She lived, but her mind had fractures like hairline cracks in ice. Her lower body would need long-term care in a special facility.

As for showbiz... that door had closed like a stage curtain in a windless theater.

Nana Toki’s Best Actress crown came in winter. When the host boomed her name and her filmography flared across the screen like constellations, her heart turned complicated.

Right. Ridiculous, really. She’d run herself ragged for that damned climb, shooting every genre under the sun. In the end, the work that lifted her was the Yakuza Legend crew’s piece.

Nana was speechless. If she’d known that one would do it, why shoot the rest? She could’ve uploaded it and dodged half the mess.

After the ceremony, she went backstage for interviews. Of course she didn’t waste the stage. With the main quest cleared, she could finally fly free. On camera, she said it plain: she’d retire tomorrow.

Reason: to travel the world with the woman she loved.

The moment it dropped, hot searches flipped like a school of silver fish. Colleagues in her circle stared at their screens, stunned into stillness.

Qiao Wan’s off. She fought her way to Best Actress, her name burning half the sky, and now she quits? Did filming fry her brain? What’s world travel got to do with retirement?

Manager Zhou, who’d come to the awards with her, went from thrilled—strike that—to livid. Her eyes rolled back and she nearly toppled like a felled pine. If not for quick hands, tomorrow’s hot search would’ve added a stampede.

Nana Toki lived long in this plane. Reason: Shuyao Qin had sense and didn’t court death. Unlike some past planes, Nana could rest easy and share ordinary days with her.

Most days, she took Shuyao Qin to new places and posted sunlit selfies.

Life drifted by like a lazy river.

[Ding! Beginning plane settlement...]

[Settling plane...]

[Main Quest: completed!]

[Hidden Quest: completed!]

[Current Karma: -99999990000]

[Items held: The Queen of Time’s Sorrow, Soul Worm]

[Current Points: 215]

Back in her private space, Nana Toki stood before the LCD screen, quiet as frost on glass. No shouting. No noise.

The System grew wary. Usually, if her karma dropped a hair, she’d argue till dusk. This time it even rose, yet she stayed unreadable.

“Host... what’s wrong?”

It hesitated, then worked up courage to ask. Her state tied to its future metrics like rope to a bell. It had to care.

...

No answer. Nana stood there, face still as carved jade. The air in the pocket space turned eerie, a draught through an empty temple.

System: ... Where’s my Master? The host isn’t right!

After a few failed attempts to reach her, the System lingered a moment more, then fled the strangeness. It booted the transfer in a hurry and sent Nana Toki to the next plane.

I’m out, I’m out. I’ll go petition my Master for an upgrade instead.

A silent host is terrifying. Whimper.