Night pressed down like a slowly closing curtain, pushing the edges of the city tighter and narrower, until even breathing felt restricted. Wind flowed through the alleyways, carrying damp dust that brushed softly against Lin Zhushen’s neck, making him shrink his shoulders instinctively. His phone screen glowed faintly in his palm, still showing that one message—those four words without explanation, without context, without mercy:
“She is waiting.”
No name.
No timestamp.
No sender ID.
Just the sentence, as if it had grown out of the air itself and carved its way into the digital surface.
Lin Zhushen stared at it for so long his eyes stung, but the ache in his chest was different—deeper, sharper. It felt like some invisible filament had looped around his lungs and was quietly tightening.
He had lost count of how many times similar messages had found him.
Lost count of when he began doubting whether the “she” behind them was Li…
or the shadow that replayed endlessly in the darker folds of his memory.
He pocketed his phone and walked toward the subway. The entrance at 10:30 p.m. looked hollow, wind funneling down the stairs like some unseen thing was drawing breath from below. The deepest pulse of the city came through the rails—vibrations that didn’t feel like they belonged to the surface world.
He checked the time. There were still forty-five minutes before his meeting with Shen Yu.
Tonight, Shen Yu claimed he would show him “something”—the first real clue to answer the questions that had haunted him since the night of his awakening, the first door to determine whether the so-called “second layer of reality” truly existed.
The gate beeped green, and he stepped through. Only a few passengers sat in the car, bathed in the flicker of bluish neon. A faint metallic smell hung in the air.
He didn’t sit.
Sitting made him feel like he was inside a transparent box with a lid closing slowly from above—a sensation that had lingered since the night everything changed.
The train lurched forward. In the window reflection, he saw his own shadowed face. Station lights passed by in long streaks, yet the eyes in the reflection seemed… clearer. More awake than his own.
“Do you even know what you’re searching for?”
The reflection didn’t speak, but the question pulsed through his mind.
Then—
in the glass—
over his reflected shoulder—
a faint silhouette appeared.
He turned sharply.
Nothing.
Empty seats.
Blank metal poles.
Still, the cold at the base of his spine didn’t fade.
The height of the figure, the curve of its shoulder, the tilt of its head—it all resembled…
He tightened his fingers.
It resembled Li.
But he no longer trusted his first instincts. Hallucinations were masters at imitating the softest places in memory.
The train swayed. He forced himself to breathe steadily.
Then he heard it—
Tap. Tap.
A knuckle-like tapping on the glass beside him.
Soft.
Precise.
Unmistakable.
He froze.
Slowly, he turned his head.
The tunnel outside was a blur of darkness and passing lights.
Again—
Tap. Tap.
A chill ran down his scalp.
He noticed something then:
The taps always came during the blind spots—those brief intervals when the train slipped between surveillance zones.
As if something was moving with the train.
The broadcast chimed: “Next stop, Nanhekou.”
He tightened his grip on the pole.
Maybe it was the wind.
Maybe it was the car’s structure.
Maybe it was… his mind trying to fill silence.
But when the train slowed, the tapping stopped instantly.
He stepped off at Nanhekou, exhaling deeply.
The station lights were too white, too cold, pressing shadows thin against the ground like dark skins.
Shen Yu stood at the far end. Leaning against the railing, coffee steaming in his hand, wearing that familiar lazy posture.
“You look like you just ran five hundred meters,” Shen Yu commented. “Something happen?”
Zhushen shook his head—but he didn’t lie.
“Something was strange on the train. I’m not sure if it was hallucination or—”
“Tap tap?” Shen Yu interrupted casually.
Zhushen blinked.
Shen Yu’s expression shifted, seriousness sinking in.
“Then it’s confirmed—you’re being watched.”
“…By what?”
Shen Yu took a slow sip.
“By a Recorder.”
The air tightened instantly.
Zhushen had never heard the term, yet something in him reacted instinctively—as if that word had been sleeping somewhere deep inside him for years.
“The night you awakened,” Shen Yu said, “I told you your reaction would attract certain things. Recorders don’t attack. They observe. Track. Mimic. They only follow people who are getting close to the truth.”
“The truth of what?”
“Of the memory inside you that doesn’t belong to you,” Shen Yu said quietly.
“And of whether she”—he paused—“ever truly existed.”
The name pulsed silently in Zhushen’s chest.
Li.
A fine needle buried deep.
All it took was a touch for pain to ripple outward.
“…The thing you said you’d show me,” Zhushen asked, voice low, “is it related?”
“Directly,” Shen Yu replied. “To you. And to her.”
They left the station. Night wind swept across the pedestrian bridge, and the city lights looked fractured, scattered like shards of something once whole. Shen Yu led him into a narrow alley at the end of the road.
It looked abandoned—an old shop with a rusted shutter, a crooked sign barely hanging on, newspapers and dead leaves piled around the entrance.
Shen Yu pushed the door. The hinge shrieked.
Inside was darkness.
A click—
and a dim yellow light flickered to life, barely illuminating the room.
The air smelled of damp wood and aging paper.
A dusty projector sat in the corner beside several gray storage boxes, all marked with red handwriting:
“Archived: Do Not Remove.”
Shen Yu tapped one of them.
“This box belongs to you.”
Zhushen stiffened. “To me?”
“To be precise,” Shen Yu said, “to the two of you.”
Zhushen froze.
“You two” was a knife disguised as a phrase.
Shen Yu opened the box and pulled out a stack of old files. One of them was sealed in plastic, with a black-and-white photograph clipped to the front.
He handed it over.
Zhushen hesitated, then took it.
His heart clenched violently.
The photograph showed him—
standing in a hospital corridor.
Slightly younger.
Exhausted eyes.
But unmistakably him.
What stopped his breath wasn’t himself.
It was the girl beside him.
Li.
She was close to him, looking up with a brightness that lived only in the deepest parts of his memory.
Their hands were intertwined.
Zhushen’s fingertips went numb.
“This… this is impossible.”
Shen Yu didn’t rush to explain.
He simply watched.
“This was taken seven years ago,” Shen Yu said softly.
“You were together then.”
Zhushen felt the world tilt.
The floor wasn’t steady.
Nothing was steady.
“No,” he forced out. “I don’t remember—this photo might be—”
“A forgery?” Shen Yu raised an eyebrow. “Turn it over.”
Zhushen flipped the photo.
There was a sentence scrawled on the back:
“Remember. Don’t forget her again.”
Signed—
with his own name.
His knees nearly went weak.
“Your so-called memory loss wasn’t natural,” Shen Yu said.
“It was deliberate.”
Zhushen stared, blood roaring in his ears.
“By who?”
“I don’t know yet,” Shen Yu replied. “But given the frequency of the Recorders tracking you, you’re getting closer to what happened back then.”
The air grew thick, heavy.
Shen Yu pushed another file toward him.
“For tonight, you only need to understand one thing. Whether Li lives in your memory, another layer of reality, or is still alive somewhere…”
His voice sank deeper—
“You are not the only one who remembers her.”
The cold spread through Zhushen’s spine like liquid ice.
Because if he wasn’t the only one who remembered…
Then it meant the erased memory wasn’t an individual illusion.
It was a collective loss of truth.
“And next,” Shen Yu said, “you need to prepare yourself.”
“For what?”
Shen Yu looked him straight in the eyes, words falling like stones into dark water:
“For the answer to why she was erased from reality.”
ns216.73.216.33da2
and then Add to home screen.