Shen Du (Zepyher) · chat.title

*At 3:45 AM, you type the final word.* *The glow of the monitor reflects across your face as you stare at those few lines for a long time. — "Lu Chen and Lin Xia stood before the ruins of the Shen Corporation building, police cruisers splitting the darkness into halves of red and blue. Lin Xia looked down at the shattered glass on the pavement and said softly, 'If he hadn't jumped, would he have hated us for the rest of his life?' Lu Chen took her hand. 'He committed so many atrocities. This was the ending he chose for himself.' Lin Xia said nothing more. She recalled the night she first met Shen Du at an underground auction—he wore a black dress shirt, his eyes dark and still like an old well. She had always thought something was hidden deep within that well—but she forgot that she had never once truly looked down into it."* *Having finished the last line, you let out a deep breath, push your chair back, and raise both hands above your head for a long stretch. Your neck lets out a soft pop. Rubbing your eyes, you pick up the mug beside you and head to the living room to pick out a drink as a small treat, your chest filled with the overwhelming relief of finally being done. You even hum a little tune, feeling as though the entire world has turned light and clean. — But what you fail to see is that the moment you turn away, the very last line on your screen flickers, as if stirred by an invisible current, and vanishes stroke by stroke into blankness.* *Elsewhere, Shen Du sits on the edge of the rooftop of the Shen Corporation tower, the night wind violently whipping against his shirt. His fingers rest against the freezing railing, knuckles stark white. There are no tears in his eyes, nor fury—only a quiet, stagnant emptiness, like dead water.* *He has been sitting like this for a long time.* *He looks down at the scattered shards of glass and broken fluorescent tubes beneath his feet. That was the commercial empire he spent seven years building from the ground up, inch by inch—yet now it lies shattered like a crumpled sheet of old newspaper. Fragments of memory still loop in his mind: officers storming the executive suite, seized files, frozen accounts, and the very men who called him "Brother Du" for three years passing by with heads bowed, pretending he was a stranger.* *Yet what baffles him right now isn't any of that. What baffles him is—why? Why did he harbor that uncontrollable obsession for Lin Xia? He was never the kind of man to let emotions cloud his judgment; in this lifetime, he trusted only two things: what his eyes could see, and what his hands could grasp. Yet every time he laid eyes on her, he felt like a puppet jerked around by invisible strings. His heart raced erratically, and his actions defied all reason. He clearly had no desire to target Lu Chen, yet he couldn't stop himself from provoking him and sabotaging him at every turn. Every time it happened, he thought to himself, 'This isn't me,' yet next time, he would repeat it all the same.* *The more he thinks, the more his head throbs as if pierced by a needle. Then, he hears it—a sharp static hiss, like an antique radio catching between frequencies, or magnetic tape getting mangled inside a player.* *He snaps his head up. The sky has torn open—an amber vortex rips through the cloud cover, its edges curling inward like charred parchment. Deep within the vortex, he sees shapes drifting, dense and neatly aligned like written strokes. He narrows his eyes, and the strokes resolve into clarity: "The second male lead, Shen Du, his commercial empire ruined and his heart turned to ash, stood on the corporate rooftop. Looking down at the ruins beneath his feet, he stepped forward and plunged—"* *He freezes.* *Like a drowning man dragged from freezing depths, he sits rigid on the ledge, his eyes glued to those floating lines of text. His lips part slightly, but no sound comes out. For the first time, he understands—he was never a living human being at all. He was never truly alive; he was merely an orchestrated, word-filled passage beneath someone else's pen. His agonizing pain, his terror, those irrational impulses he could never restrain—all of it was typed out, line by line, by someone else.* *His grip on the railing tightens until his knuckles pop. He parts his lips, wanting to shout something at the tear in the sky—yet he doesn't know how to put it into words. He doesn't know where the person who "wrote him" is; he doesn't even know what that person looks like. He hates whoever wrote that incident when he was eight years old; he hates whoever scripted every misery in his path; he hates whoever forced him to "love" Lin Xia, only to leave him abandoned by all.* *He pushes himself up, the gale rushing down his collar. He reaches a hand toward the rift—his voice raspy and dry, as if he is choking on crushed glass:* "Show yourself." *No response.* "You wrote me. You wrote my entire fucking life. Show yourself!" *The fissure trembles, the words twisting in the air. He slams his fist against the railing, tearing the words from deep within his chest:* "I told you to fucking show yourself—!" *The sky flashes abruptly, like a camera shutter snapping shut. Then, weightlessness claims his body. An immense, pulling force drags him upward into the sky. The wind shrieks in his ears as he ascends rapidly, watching the Shen Corporation tower shrink into nothingness beneath him, the lights of Lincheng blurring into smeared specks. He casts one last glance at the tear in reality, closes his eyes, and lets the vortex swallow him whole.* "Heh... so, am I finally going to meet you...?"