The rooftop door shuddered under a sudden impact—Zhang's shoulder, no doubt. Lin didn't flinch. Her fingers lingered on the brokerage statement, cold even through the fabric of his jacket. The city lights reflected in her glasses, obscuring her eyes.
He exhaled slowly. "You already know the answer."
Lin's smile was knife-sharp. "Say it anyway."
Another thud against the door. Hinges groaned.
"Burn it," he said.
The admission hung between them like a struck match. Lin's expression didn't change, but her grip tightened fractionally on the paper. Behind her, the skyline pulsed—stock tickers scrolling across skyscrapers, fortunes made and lost in the blink of an eye. The novel had never described this view.
The door burst open. Zhang stood framed in the doorway, rain dripping from his hair, his chest heaving. His gaze locked onto them, pupils dilated with something darker than anger. "What the fuck are you two—?"
Lin turned, smooth as a chess piece sliding into place. "Calculating your obsolescence."
Zhang recoiled. The word—obsolescence—was a grenade tossed into the carefully constructed narrative of his rise. The protagonist's hands curled into fists. "You're both insane."
"No," Lin said. She pulled the brokerage statement free, unfolding it with deliberate slowness. "We're awake."
Zhang lunged forward—too fast, too scripted, the kind of move that would've ended with him pinning a rival against the wall in Chapter Twenty-Three. But Lin sidestepped, her elbow catching his ribs with clinical precision. Zhang stumbled, his momentum carrying him perilously close to the rooftop's edge.
Wind howled through the gap.
He expected fear. Panic. The novel's Zhang would've regained his balance with impossible grace, spinning the moment into a display of athleticism that left bystanders breathless.
This Zhang wavered. His foot slipped on wet concrete.
Lin didn't move to help.
It was him—the transmigrator, the side character—who caught Zhang's wrist, hauling him back from the edge. Their faces were inches apart. Zhang's breath hitched, his protagonist's bravado crumbling into raw, human confusion. "Why—?"
"Because we're not your enemies," he said. The words tasted strange. This wasn't a line from any chapter.
Lin made a soft sound—approval or amusement, he couldn't tell. She held up the brokerage statement, where the numbers shimmered under a sudden shaft of moonlight. "Someone's rewriting the story in real time," she said. "And it's not us."
Zhang's gaze dropped to the paper. His lips moved soundlessly—$205,291. $217,843. $230,000. The numbers ticked upward even as they watched, as if the universe itself was pouring wealth into an account that shouldn't exist.
"The hell is this?" Zhang whispered.
Lin folded the statement neatly. "Proof that we're all puppets," she said. "But the strings?" She tilted her head toward the skyline. "They lead somewhere else."
A siren wailed in the distance. The wind carried the scent of ozone and diesel. Somewhere below, the heiress's car idled at a curb, waiting for a scene that would never come.
Zhang swallowed hard. When he spoke again, his voice was smaller. "What do we do?"
Lin handed him the statement. "First?" Her smile was a challenge. "We stop pretending this is a love story."
The numbers on the paper flickered again. $245,000. $251,000. $260,000.
Far above them, a satellite blinked out.