Morning – Shen Yue's Apartment, 6:02 AM
The system was silent.
No boot-up chime.No quest log.No sarcastic voice modulator.
Just… nothing.
She sat in bed, eyes locked on her phone.It had turned on by itself thirty minutes ago.
No notifications. No network. Just one new icon glowing:
[File: LS-001 — CAPTAIN LIU SHUN]
Shen Yue didn't press it right away.
Because she already knew the name.
The moment she'd woken, her muscles had ached, like they remembered movement from another life: pulling levers, diving through zero gravity, kissing someone in a cockpit seconds before death.
This isn't mine, she thought.
But her thumb trembled anyway as she tapped the file.
[FILE OPENED – AUDIO + IMAGE SEQUENCE]
A deep male voice spoke:
"Subject: Liu Shun, Interstellar Mecha Division Captain. KIA: Year 2710, Mission: Juno Gate Collapse.
Status: REMEMBERED BY HER, despite a full reset.System breach probability: HIGH."
An image followed.
His face.
Tired eyes. Strong jaw. A tiny scar under his left brow. And a pendant with her name etched in alien glyphs.
He had loved her.
Not the Shen Yue of this arc.Not the corporate heiress.But someone else.
Someone who died, or maybe didn't.
Then came the final message, his voice again.
"Yue, if you're hearing this…
…I failed to follow you through the reset.But I know you.You'll turn even vengeance into victory.
Don't trust the system.You were never supposed to be just one version of yourself."
*[System Alert: UNAUTHORIZED MEMORY STREAM]
You are accessing data beyond your programmed arc.
Integration suspended.
Reset in 3… 2…]*
Shen Yue screamed
"No!"
The phone shattered in her hand.
And then
Silence.
[10 Minutes Later – Same Room]
The system rebooted.
[Welcome back, Shen Yue.Questline: Regret Extraction – CEO ArcCurrent Target: Lu YichenReminder: Emotional distance is recommended.]
Like nothing had happened.
But Shen Yue now knew one unshakable truth:
She was bleeding through lives.And the system was lying.
[Elsewhere – A Glitch in the Code]
Inside the system, deep in unreachable code, a line blinked red:
LU SHUN – TRACE SIGNAL: ACTIVE
And someone whispered:
"Find me before the next world boots."