Chapter Four: Death Certificate

She had fulfilled it. That was why he survived and became unreadable, a man already “fulfilled.” That was why the world erased not only the accident but every relationship connecting her to its victims. Jianwei looked at her bare finger. “What were we?” “It isn't fair to ask you now.” “Let me decide what's fair.” After a silence, he said, “We were going to marry.” The dehumidifier hummed. The claim should have sounded absurd, yet her body hurt ahead of memory, as if someone had waited behind a door for three years while she passed without knowing to knock. An alarm sounded upstairs. Every screen lit with the Wishing Pool page. Seventeen gray portraits appeared around a question: WISHER ZERO, DO YOU REGRET SAVING HIM?