The third day since Ruan Lin opened the World of [White].

“Eh? That’s the end? That fast?” Her voice popped like a pebble in a quiet pond.

Ruan Lin blinked, eyes like wet glass, watching the credits roll down like a slow waterfall of names.

“It’s the classic romance route, sure… but this is too pure.” Her words drifted like mist. “There’s no one else to pursue. After the school festival, they get together, and that’s it? Curtain down?”

“It feels like… drinking a glass of plain warm water,” the girl decided, disappointment spreading like a gray cloud at dusk.

It wasn’t that the game did anything wrong; the music flowed like a gentle tide, the text shone like clean ink, the art bloomed like spring petals. Under the atmosphere, she slipped under like a swimmer in moonlit water. Without trying, she stepped into Yexiaobai’s skin like a shadow wearing its owner.

But still.

All that was secondary; the plot ran flat as a windless lake. Childhood friends, a school festival for a spark, and finally, hand in hand. There were quarrels like brief showers, but they passed like clouds. No love triangle, no illness or storm, and no [Time Rewind].

She remembered the opening lines, hanging like lanterns at the gate—

[This is a simple love story.]

[A simple love between a boy and a girl, pure, clear, and ordinary.]

“At least you’re honest,” she muttered, her breath a faint fog.

The screen flickered, a firefly blinking in the dark.

“Huh.” Her nerves tensed like a bowstring. “Knew there was more.”

On the screen, under a field of stars like salt scattered on velvet, a boy and a girl held each other on grass that rippled like a green lake.

Starlight drizzled on them like silver rain, and made them glow like shells under surf.

“Xiaobai and Xiaowei.” Even as silhouettes, Ruan Lin recognized them in one glance, the way a sailor knows his lighthouse. “Childhood friends, finally in one another’s arms.”

She’d spent her time; the sight warmed her like a hand around a mug. “So this is the final easter egg? Fine. Grandmaster Lin’s in a good mood—you get a passing mark.”

She was about to close the game and hop to the platform to write a review when the images shifted like seasons turning a page.

Stars wheeled, sun and moon swapped places like dancers; the two kids let go, their backs straightening like young bamboo reaching up.

Exams ended; they left home like migrating birds and flew to a new city, to university, to faces like a market of masks, to a diploma placed in their hands like the first snow, to work, to the red aisle of a wedding, to the bright arch of a chapel.

Images rushed in like a train of kites, and in a few minutes, with brisk music like tapping rain, ten years swept by. The final frame froze on two chapels split by a crack of white lightning.

“Wait, wait, wait!”

Ruan Lin’s eyes went wide, round as full moons. She stared at the two scenes split by that white lightning vein. She watched, rewound, watched again, and had to admit the stomach-twisting truth. A scream climbed her throat like a climbing vine.

“What—on—earth!”

In the left frame, a suit like fresh ink; in the right, a white dress like a snowfield—yet they weren’t looking at each other.

Xiaobai and Xiaowei didn’t end up together. Each stood with a stranger like two boats moored to different piers.

Worse, in the years after, their paths never crossed again, like two stars forever in different skies.

As if that golden high school turned out to be a dream made of frost, melting at sunrise.

No—more than high school—like ripping off the label of childhood sweethearts and throwing it into the wind.

They vanished from each other’s World, clean as footprints after fresh snowfall.

“W-what happened?”

She shoved the desk; the wood thumped like a drum. She stood, then dropped onto the bed like a felled willow, curled tight, hands clamped over her chest like a lid, eyes blank as winter sky.

“Stomach—stomach pain.”

Ruan Lin writhed on the bed like a stranded fish, then popped up in a sudden kip-up, a spark leaping from ash.

“I don’t buy it!”

She dropped into her chair; the mouse clicked like a castanet.

“If you dare feed us poison, I’ll spin up hundreds of alts and downvote you till you can’t sell a single copy!” Her eyes flamed red as coals. It had been a long time since a script felt this malicious—after a clear Happy End, the art flipped like a torn page, and a bucket of ice crashed down without giving her a single umbrella.

“Stuffing crap inside the candy!” Ruan Lin ground her teeth like grit in gears, lungs fit to explode like a bellows kicked hard.

Then came something worse.

A line of text slid onto the screen like ink bleeding through paper—

[Are you angry?]

The girl almost choked on her own breath like a candle in a draft.

[(laugh]

“Laugh—laugh my ass!” Ruan Lin finally yelled, her voice a flare in the night.

From the next room, a woman’s voice cut in like a snapping twig. “Lin! Sleep!”

The little tiger baring her claws shrank at once like a kitten under rain and stuck out her tongue.

“Sleeping—sleeping. Already asleep.”

“Hurry! Turn off the computer!”

“Okay, okay—no, I mean, it’s not even on.” She backpedaled, then heard a door across the hall creak open like an axe in wood. Panic flooded her like cold water. “Ah, okay, okay, I’m turning it off, it’s off. Sleeping. Sleeping now.”

The footsteps paused; the house settled like snow falling.

She glared at the blinding [(laugh] on-screen, teeth itching like ants. Her fists clenched and opened like tides, and she pictured pounding whoever was behind it into the floorboards.

“Fine. I’ll deal with you tomorrow.”

Threat laid down like a knife on a table, Ruan Lin killed the screen, killed the light, dove under the quilt in one smooth motion like a fish slipping into dark water.

She didn’t see the final words that floated up in the last second before the screen went black, faint as breath on glass.

[But life’s like that—how many times do people really go all-in without looking back?]

[Lin.]

…

…

When the girl opened her eyes, gold fire burned in them like twin candles, and she was back in last night’s ice and snow.

Black fire veiled the sky like storm clouds, white snow drowned the slopes like a rolled-out scroll, and the World turned into ink-wash black and white.

A dragon roared on the high peak, under the dark dome of heaven, its voice like thunder tearing silk.

Its shadow draped the whole mountain like a funeral cloth and swallowed her whole. The dragon’s cry whipped palm-sized snowflakes into bullets that slammed her like hail.

“Again?”

Golden hair snapped in the wind like silk banners. The girl tightened her grip on her sword, and, against the current like a salmon in flood, stepped into the rain of black fire.

This was the third day she’d fallen into this World, and fear had drained from her like water from an empty cup.

Snow squeaked under iron boots like singing ice. She lifted her face; in her pupils, a slender black figure on the summit flickered like a wick behind smoke. The déjà vu calmed her like a lullaby.

She wanted to go there.

Black fire drifted down like ash-snow. It wasn’t fast, but the mountain wind twisted like a snake—now lifting, now lashing—hard to read, harder to dodge.

She dodged anyway. Her body swayed like a reed and looked ridiculous, but each time she scraped through like a fox through a fence.

After all, in this dream she had “died” a hundred times, bodies piled like fallen leaves.

Even if a mind is slow, a body remembers like roots remember rain.

She never thought herself patient; a game that stonewalled her a few times usually lost her like a kite cut loose. But here, she sparred with the World over and over like a stubborn wave meeting a cliff. It had to be the shadow at the dragon’s feet, some gravity like a moon tugging the tide, that held her.

She wanted to go there.

She wanted to see what that black figure truly was.

Since the first night she glimpsed that silhouette, a desire rose in her chest like spring water from a hidden spring. It was as natural as a baby reaching for water, as fierce as a girl clenching her fists at a sky full of stars.

And that desire felt familiar, like a song half-remembered, like the echo of a road she once ran without looking back.

She wanted that feeling again—that reckless, all-in blaze.

So she climbed.

“Stop.”

A woman’s voice, cold as iron on ice, rang by her ear and cut her thoughts like a knife.

Ruan Lin shuddered; it was the first time she’d heard full words here. Before, it had all been meaningless screams, scattered like crows.

She stopped and looked up. Only then did she realize how far she’d come; no one stood near, only black fire, white snow, and sky-piercing trees smeared gray like charcoal strokes. At the end of her sight, the dragon and that pitch-dark figure still perched far away like stars at the rim.

“Who?” She turned toward the sound. In the wind and snow, a red silhouette flickered like a flame behind gauze. Ruan Lin narrowed her eyes and held her breath like a diver.

Red filled her vision like sunset flooding a room.

What a figure—tall and lithe like a willow, a long red dress swaying like fire, and hair the same bright red burning in this black-and-white world like a banner at dawn. It felt as if a Deity had rolled out a strip of flaming cloud along the horizon, cutting through the snow-curtain and striking the girl’s heart like a bell.

The woman climbed too, but where Ruan Lin floundered like a wading bird, she moved like a deer—light, easy, clean.

“It won’t be yours.” Her voice was cooler than the snow, like frost on steel.

She glanced back. In that blur, scarlet eyes with spiral patterns spun like whirlpools.

Those weren’t human eyes. They were the gaze of a Monstrosity.

Ruan Lin’s breath snagged like cloth on a thorn, then indignation flared like a spark in dry grass. “Not mine? What kind of nonsense—why not mine? I don’t care what you say!”

She dropped her face, bit down like a wolf on a bone, and took another step.

In the next heartbeat, boundless cold swept her like the sea in winter.

Ruan Lin went under, and everything went dark like a snuffed lamp.