Chapter Two: The Living

The employee directory contained a Zhou Jiming, yet he was a heavyset sales representative for a vendor, not Shen Zhou's backend teammate. Their university group chat held no trace of him. In four years of photographs, other students naturally occupied the space where he should have stood. Only the half-finished chips remained. On the back, in black marker, someone had written: `You owe me hot pot. —Zhou` The repository warning now read: `Reality dependencies: 8,731,204. Memory conflicts: 1.` A “difference bill” had appeared beside `main`. Shen Lan's survival had caused thousands of downstream changes. Because she lived, Shen Zhou had not gone to live with his aunt, had not transferred to Riverside High, and had never met Zhou Jiming there.