From his teenage years to becoming a father, he had never understood Wen Ya’s obsession.
She was always saying that she wanted a daughter, as though someone was missing from their family.
Unlike his wife, who could never let the matter go, Shen Sixing had never cared one way or the other.
What difference did it make whether they had one or not? Their life was already perfect, wasn’t it?
While looking through old videos, Shen Sixing heard her cheerfully refer to herself as a lone ghost.
She even told Shen Wenta outright that she was already dead.
Her tone remained airy and casual, the end of her words lifting slightly, as if she were making an insignificant joke.
For some reason, when Shen Sixing heard that, his heart suddenly clenched.
The pain was unfamiliar. His entire upper body trembled with it.
He instinctively pressed a hand to his chest, his knuckles digging into his ribs as he drew in a breath.
Dead?
That girl named Shen Yi had died a long time ago?
Why?
He tried to find the answer in the rest of the recordings, pressing the fast-forward button as images flashed by.
But the girl never seemed to mention why she had become like this—or what had caused her death.
Most of the recordings were nothing but trivial ramblings, and most of them concerned his family.
For example, Shen Zhizhao would often wake up crying sometime after nine at night. He was an incredibly troublesome child. “His voice is loud enough to tear the roof off. I carried him back and forth across the living room one hundred and twenty-three steps before he finally calmed down.”
And then there was Shen Ruxu, who was an idiot. He had been over a year old before he learned to stagger around on his own. “When he held on to the wall and took his first step, he landed hard on his butt and cried until his whole face scrunched up. I laughed so hard I rolled around on the floor.”
Shen Sixing clasped his tightly interlocked hands and desperately searched his memories.
Perhaps he really had seen this girl named Shen Yi somewhere.
But that shouldn’t have been possible. If she had been destined to be forgotten, Shen Sixing should not have retained any memory of her. So where had he seen her?
Shen Sixing couldn’t remember. He had always been somewhat face-blind. If a person or thing didn’t matter to him, his memory wouldn’t even make room for it.
The system sighed. 【He looks like he’s in a lot of pain.】
Shen Yi sighed as well, feeling a trace of sorrow for him.
She sat in the chair beside him, resting her chin on her folded arms.
The study’s lamplight fell across the girl’s semi-transparent silhouette. She watched him quietly, her expression carrying a tenderness tempered by something far beyond her years.
She felt that fate still enjoyed tormenting her father, who had always liked to run away from things. He was clearly the person least suited to opening the box, yet in the end, it had still fallen into his hands.
If she could speak to him again, Shen Yi would have told him that it was all right.
There was no need to dwell on it.
She was already dead.
“…”
Shen Sixing was in an extremely abnormal state.
He clenched his fingers tightly, his knuckles turning white as he fought to control their nervous trembling. Again and again, he dug through the corners of his memories, searching for any trace of Shen Yi.
Fragmentary images floated like shards buried beneath the water. Shen Sixing kept searching, running through every face he had seen over the past several years.
At last, he remembered a familiar frame from several months ago, buried in a corner of his memory.
A piece of social news.
Gossip about the richest family in the country.
Something countless netizens had been feasting on.
Song Guanyan’s daughter.
She had died three months ago.
Wen Ya had felt a little sad about her death, while he had merely glanced at the news and casually remarked that it was their family’s business and had nothing to do with them. People died every day in this world.
Shen Sixing couldn’t stop himself from drawing in a deep breath. The weight of it lodged in his throat, leaving him almost unable to breathe.
He covered his mouth and let out a short, strangled laugh.
“So it was you…”
“Shen Yi.”
Song Yi.
She was Song Guanyan’s daughter, and she had died three months ago.
And what had they been doing at the time?
He couldn’t remember.
Back then, he hadn’t even remembered her name.
The box’s sharp edge dug into his palm. The pain kept him painfully lucid, leaving him no way to retreat into that dull, numb shell he used for protection.
Shen Sixing repeatedly searched through his memories of that day, broken chuckles squeezing out of his throat.
By the end, the laughter had turned into coughing.
He doubled over and coughed several times, burying his face in the crook of his arm. His shoulders rose and fell in uneven jerks, impossible to distinguish whether he was laughing or simply trying to breathe.
“Haha…”
The sound broke apart against the fabric of his sleeve.
He didn’t know whether he was lamenting fate’s cruelty or thinking that, in the end, his own coldness and talent for avoidance had caused the blade to fall upon him.
He had never liked reflecting on things after the fact.
But his mind could not stop asking the same questions again and again.
If he had opened the box sooner, would there still have been time?
If he had opened it earlier, would the ending have been different?
But there were no ifs in this world.
He sat in a daze, then raised his head and saw his reflection in the window.
His features were blurred, split into light and shadow.
He tugged the corners of his mouth upward at the reflection, but his entire body seemed to collapse. His shoulders sagged, his spine curved, every ounce of strength seemingly drained from him.
Once again, Shen Sixing heard the sound of his own voice questioning him.
It rose from the depths of his memory, cold and clear, like a snake flicking its tongue as it coiled around his neck and whispered its warning.
—“It doesn’t matter. It’s already happened. It’s only a memory. Forget everything, and your life can go on as before. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Shen Sixing stared dazedly at the blurred, distorted face reflected in the glass.
That was right.
Think about it.
This was exactly what he had wanted.
A perfect family. A stable life.
As a teenager, he had drifted through life in a haze, unable to find a reason to keep living. Later, Wen Ya had given him a home.
This was the stability he had yearned for since childhood.
Shen Sixing was willing to trade anything for it.
And now, two choices lay before him—
From the recording and Shen Yi’s fragmented words, Shen Sixing could piece together a rough truth about this world.
The so-called protagonists were characters chosen by the world.
Those who opposed them were known as villains.
Anyone who crossed the protagonists was destined to die, often in ways that were tragic, absurd, and utterly devoid of dignity.
The protagonist was the core of this world.
And so long as the protagonist died, the world would collapse, allowing everything to begin again.
