wake up
Lu Yin woke up with a start once again. The scent of Lan Yi still lingered on her pillow—the same perfume she had secretly sprayed on, trying to prolong the long-lost warmth in her dream. The system notification sounded precisely on time: "Emotional repair task completion 98%, real-world relationship about to be reset." She curled up in bed, her fingers unconsciously stroking her phone screen, as if she could hold onto that "about-to-be-reset" illusion.
"This time will be different," she told herself, her voice as soft as a sigh. Because she was somewhat devastated, perhaps she still didn't understand matters of the heart.
Her heart pounded in her chest. The moment she pressed the answer button, all she heard was a mechanical female voice: "The number you dialed is not in service." A tear fell onto the screen, blurring the familiar number. A warning suddenly popped up: "87% discrepancy between reality and dream detected. Please restart the mission immediately." She frantically clicked the screen, only to see Lan Yi's virtual image vanish before her eyes, leaving behind the final words: "You should wake up. My changes are because... I'm dying."
Lu Yin rushed into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. The woman in the mirror was pale, the dark circles under her eyes resembling two bruised feathers. She recalled her chance encounter with Lan Yishi at the coffee shop last week—he was wearing a camel coat, his hair was short, and he wore a silver brooch she'd never seen before at the collar. When she called his name, he turned around, his eyes as calm as still water. "Miss Lu," he said, "we've broken up."
Suddenly, a system task activated, pulling her into a virtual space. Here, the scene of their first encounter was recreated: sunlight filtering through the leaves and casting dappled shadows on Lan Yi's white shirt in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the university library. The task required her to "recreate the confession scene." As she trembled and uttered "I like you," Lan Yi's virtual image suddenly distorted, transforming into a photograph of a hospital bed—he lay there, covered in tubes, with the fountain pen Lu Yin had given him on the bedside table.
She rushed out of her house and headed straight for Lan Yi's old apartment. Her fingers trembled uncontrollably as she entered the password—it was the date they first met. The door opened; the furnishings were unchanged, but the air reeked of disinfectant. She rushed into the bedroom and found the closet filled with hospital gowns, and an unfinished will lying on the desk: "Please scatter my ashes under Lu Yin's favorite cherry blossom tree."
The bedside table drawer was half-open, inside was the fountain pen Lu Yin had given him, the cap engraved with "LY&BY 2021". But
The system suddenly issued an alarm: "Real-world memory conflict detected. Please delete or correct." Lu Yin slumped to the ground, discovering that her phone had received a voice message from Lan Yi at some point: "Lu Yin, don't cry. My change is a choice, not forgetting." She remembered last week at the coffee shop, when Lan Yi left, there was half a medical record sticking out of his coat pocket, with the words "ALS" faintly visible on it.
Upon waking from this dream, she finally saw the truth. The system wasn't salvation, but a cage; Lan Yi's change wasn't betrayal, but protection. She wiped away her tears, pinned the pen to her chest, and said to the mirror, "This time, I choose to feel the pain consciously."
Outside the window, cherry blossom trees swayed in the wind, petals falling like snow. Lu Yin knew that spring would eventually come, but this time, she would walk it alone.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
