_Flashback___
[Scene - Campus Courtyard]
Violet: "You ever notice people treat silence like a crime?"
Yè Yī: "People don't like being unreadable."
Violet: "They also don't like being irrelevant." She watched him, flat. "You're neither. Weird flex."> Violet: "You going to come? Or are you going to stare poetically at your life until somebody else writes the ending?"
He closed his eyes for a fraction. When he opened them, calm was back like a mask.
> Yè Yī: "I'm coming."
---
Outside, across the street in a black van whose windows didn't reflect light, a small terminal blinked green: TARGET ACQUIRED.
A voice over a quiet speaker said, clipped and businesslike:
> VOICE: "Proceed when the node lights."
[Cut to: Downtown, Industrial District — Abandoned Data Tower]
The smell of metal and dust hit first.
They stood before a rundown communication tower, long abandoned, its outer shell covered in graffiti and old satellite dishes. Faint neon hums buzzed from the distant streets below.
> Yè Yī: "You brought me here… to commit cybercrime."
Violet: "Relax. It's not cybercrime if they deserve it."
Yè Yī: "That's exactly what cybercriminals say."
Violet (snickering): "Fair."
She slid open a half-broken door with a creeeak and motioned him in.
Inside — a makeshift setup: half-dead monitors, old server racks still pulsing faint green, wires like vines tangled across the floor.
Yè Yī: "Do you live here?"
Violet:"Nope".
Yè Yī: "You… come here often?"
Violet: "Every Thursday."
He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
> Yè Yī: "Why am I here?"
-How It Should Have Been---_____
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"Not everything happens the way they are meant or designed, sometimes we're cutting fate like scissors to a cloth".
_______________-Violet-________________
[Cut: Across the city — Gaming Center, 4:42 PM]
The hum of computers. The clack-clack of keys.
Students and loners crowded around glowing monitors, battling through virtual arenas.
But Qiū Huà Bǐ sat in the farthest corner — hoodie up, expression cold, screen reflecting strings of code instead of a game.
He wasn't playing.
He was hunting.
> Qiū Huà Bǐ (muttering): "You think you can spam me and not get found…"
The screen flickered — a matrix of encryption patterns overlaying his usual feed. ET's messages weren't random; they pulsed in rhythm. Almost alive.
He cracked his knuckles, typing faster. His eyes, always sharp and guarded, narrowed as he ran another bypass. The pattern shifted — forming coordinates.
> Qiū Huà Bǐ: "Got you."
Then—
> Voice (leaning in, low): "Did you get it yet?"
Qiū Huà Bǐ turns.
Standing right behind him — an pale-skinned figure, lean, tall, maybe mid-20s. Piercing eyes, slight smirk. Too calm.
> Qiū Huà Bǐ: "Do I know you?"
Stranger (smiling faintly): "Not yet. But you've been reading the messages."
Qiū Huà Bǐ: "You sent them?"
Stranger: "Not exactly. Think of me as… the middleman."
The lights above flickered.
Every screen in the arcade glitched for half a second.
> Qiū Huà Bǐ (cold): "Get lost."
Stranger: "Can't. We've been looking for you."
He stood, slow and deliberate. The faint buzz of static curled around his fingertips.
Qiū Huà Bǐ's eyes hardened — that same strange quiet inside him flaring to life.
> Qiū Huà Bǐ: "You have five seconds."
Stranger: "For what?"
Qiū Huà Bǐ: "To stop talking."
The monitors around him suddenly shattered.
Glass, pixels, sound — everything warped under an invisible pulse.
When he looked up again — the stranger was gone.
At the same moment, somewhere downtown — a single message popped up on Qiū Huà Bǐ's half-broken screen.
> MESSAGE: 'Found you.'
He froze.
Outside, across the street in a black van whose windows didn't reflect light, a small terminal blinked green: TARGET ACQUIRED.
A voice over a quiet speaker said, clipped and businesslike:
> VOICE: "Proceed when the node lights."
---
Back at the tower — Yè Yī's phone vibrated.
Same message.
> Violet: "...Okay, maybe that was a little too loud."
Yè Yī: "You think?"
The power blew.
Blackout.
Only the echoes remained.