Chapter Five: Nine Loves

They found the real Cheng at the corridor's end. The server in his arms held footage the distributor had remotely erased. Twelve years earlier, Xu Yingzhen asked eight-year-old Ye Lan what to do if every ending hurt someone. “Then don't keep only one ending,” the girl replied. Wen Que had replaced it with: “Give the world a happy ending.” Bai stared at the cut in the audio waveform. His evidence bore the same splice. “My proof came from Wen Que.” In the last frame, Xu looked toward a hidden camera. “Find Zero. She preserved the original sound.” The auditorium screen ignited. The white figure extended Ye Lan's scarred hand. “In twelve hours,” it said in her father's voice, “come to the Nameless Platform. Alone.”