Soft Reset

[0:00] – Nothingness

The sound began like rain on a car roof.

Then vanished.

Then came again—this time slower, heavier. Like rain mimicking footsteps.

Lin opened his eyes to a ceiling he didn't recognize.

White, textured, sterile.

A wall-mounted television played muted children's programming.

He sat up—no idea where he was.

His phone, wallet, bag—gone.

He wore a linen shirt he didn't own, and someone had neatly folded his clothes on a chair across the room.

On the nightstand was a note:

"Welcome home. You asked for time away."

Signed: The Care Office

⸻

[0:06] – Gap

His last memory was…

Tang Yuyan.

Mirrors. Recursion. The chapel dream fracturing.

Then—

Nothing.

A blackout where something should've been.

He stood, heart pounding. Looked out the window.

He was in Lushan City.

Thousands of kilometers south. A place he hadn't visited in a decade.

The skyline was unfamiliar. His reflection in the glass was too calm.

Too still.

⸻

[0:11] – The Inserted Memory

A diary sat open on the table.

The handwriting was his.

"Decided to take a break. Tired of ghosts and codes.

Signed off the Ledger. Finally at peace."

Below that entry was a Polaroid photo.

Him, smiling. Coffee in hand. A woman next to him—face turned away, but familiar.

A caption in pen:

"Yuyan says hello."

He dropped the notebook.

No memory of this moment. No memory of ever holding that mug, or that version of himself.

The system had rewritten his narrative.

And yet—something was leaking back through.

⸻

[0:17] – Awake in the Dream

That night, the mirror in his hotel room fogged unnaturally.

In the condensation, numbers formed slowly:

31.2099°N

121.4325°E

He blinked—and they vanished.

The same coordinates reappeared later that night—

•on the surface of a puddle outside, shimmering in reflected neon;

•burned faintly onto the corner of a receipt in his wallet;

•even printed in ghost-ink across the inside of his eyelid when he blinked too long.

They pulsed, like a frequency refusing to be overwritten.

⸻

[0:26] – Fragmentation

At breakfast, the waitress called him by name.

"Mr. Lin, would you like the usual?"

He nodded numbly.

But the voice in his head screamed:

"You've never been here before."

The coffee tasted artificial.

The sugar packet had a logo—∞, etched faintly into the fold.

And in the reflection of the coffee's surface, he saw Tang Yuyan's silhouette—standing behind him.

But when he turned, nothing.

He dropped the cup. It shattered.

The café patrons didn't flinch.

⸻

[0:39] – False Closure

At noon, a man visited him.

Polite. Wearing a gray badge without a name.

"You've completed reintegration," the man said. "The Ledger thanks you for your service."

"What service?" Lin asked.

"Emotional load testing. Stage 3 recursive friction.

Your deviation profile was within acceptable loss margins."

Lin stared, heart sinking.

"You wiped me."

"No. You requested restoration."

The man handed him a folder.

Inside: therapy notes. Recovered dreams "resolved through symbolic reframing." Medication logs.

None of it was real.

He knew because he would never have chosen peace.

Not like this.

⸻

[0:53] – Conscious Sabotage

That night, he tried to write down what he remembered.

But the pen wouldn't obey.

Every sentence about Tang Yuyan dissolved into generic words.

"She is at peace now."

"You are healed."

"Forget the recursion. Forget the mirror."

But then, against the margins, his hand began writing without control:

"GO BACK."

"THE COORDINATES ARE REAL."

"SHE ISN'T DONE."

His hand trembled. He dropped the pen.

On the table: the coordinates again, now glowing faintly.

The dream had found a crack.

⸻

[1:05] – Interrupt

He fell asleep again.

Woke up in a subway station. Concrete, dim, humming.

His hands had blood on them.

No ID. No wallet. Just a napkin in his back pocket, soaked from rain.

On the napkin—handwritten numbers:

31.2099

121.4325

He wept.

He didn't know why.

But something inside him refused to forget.

⸻

[1:17] – Di Zi's Echo

A phone—payphone, rusted—began ringing in the hallway above.

He answered.

"They failed," Di Zi's voice said. Faint. Lagged.

"You kept the seed."

"The dream held. You broke the soft reset."

"But they're sending the curators now."

"You need to get to the coordinates. That's where she is."

"That's where you still exist."

"Everything else is placeholder logic."

Then static.

⸻

[1:25] – Departure

He took a train. South.

No ticket. No luggage. Just the numbers burned into the back of his hand.

He didn't remember boarding.

Didn't remember buying the ticket.

But the train conductor looked at him, smiled, and said:

"Back to the center, huh?"

The window reflected not his face—

—but hers.

⸻

[1:39] – Recursion Pulse

At the midpoint of the journey, he fell asleep again.

Dreamed of the chapel.

This time he stood facing away, and she approached from behind.

"You did well," she said.

"They tried to end you softly."

"But you refused the script."

"So now, they'll come harder."

"No more simulations. Just collapse."

"Are you ready for real damage?"

He turned to face her.

But she no longer had a face.

Only a blank mirror.

And in the reflection—

Lin was smiling.