The sound of Auntie Zhang’s TV next door came through the wall.
“Early this morning, a Level 2 Hui Shou appearance incident occurred in the northern district of our city. A Flower Envoy of the Seventh Sequence of Flower Crown has been dispatched to handle it. The City Flower Defense Office reminds all citizens—”
Hui Shou. It’s been a while since I heard that word.
I used to deal with those a lot.
Level 2 Hui Shou—inside the Flower Crown organization, it’s called a Class B Hui Shou. What does that mean roughly? In the past, I could finish one off in a night and still make it to school the next morning on time. As long as I didn’t get splattered with innards or blood. Otherwise, I’d need an extra shower and end up late.
Auntie Zhang’s TV continued: “—If you encounter a Hui Shou, do not take photos or approach it on your own. Please call the Flower Defense Hotline immediately, or place an online dispatch order through the food delivery platforms partnered with the Flower Defense Office—”
That level used to be my job.
Now it’s the food delivery platform’s job.
At least things are getting better… right?
Auntie Zhang changed the channel. The theme song of a prime-time drama drifted over, muffled, drowning out the news.
I stood in the middle of the living room. Facing the wall full of memorial photos, I spoke my first complete sentence:
“You know what? Two years of my acting got exposed in two minutes. That’s way more efficient than someone’s two years of showing up to work.”
No one played the straight man.
Obviously. In this room, besides twenty-four photos and a dejected wreck of me, there wasn’t a second living person.
I walked to the photo wall, raised my hand, and flicked one of the glass frames.
Snap.
A girl with silver-gray long hair smiled at me.
“Alright, stop staring at me. You got slammed, and I got slammed. We took each other down—call it even.”
The photo didn’t answer.
Photos never answer.
That’s why I built my persona using photos. Photos don’t let things slip, and they don’t talk when I need silence the most.
Photos are the perfect partner. Their only flaw is that once someone screenshots them and posts them online, they become a huge problem.
And Murphy’s Law says: if a photo can find a way to cause trouble, it will.
I pulled my hand back.
The Flower Crystal against my chest pressed into my skin.
I looked down. My fingers reached into my collar and fished the Flower Crystal out.
A silver-white crystal with a miniature projection of a Moon Orchid inside.
The petals were burned to ash-gray, the stamen scorched dark brown.
A single burn mark ran through the center of the crystal from top to bottom. Deep black cracks with silver-rimmed edges.
Like a piece of amber struck by lightning.
Three years ago, in that battle, a Hui Zhu descended without warning.
Half of the Flower Envoys on the sequence fell. I had only three people around me still standing, and backup was nine minutes away.
Nine minutes.
Against a Hui Zhu-level enemy, that was enough time to kill everyone on the scene twice.
So I made my choice—
“Burning Flower”
The Flower Envoy’s last resort. Force the Flower Core—the energy core inside us that maintains the transformation and the Flower Outfit—into overload.
The Flower Outfit’s output would skyrocket for a short time, and the cost—permanent Core Burnout.
When I was a kid, I read a manga where the protagonist burned with an inextinguishable flame.
He could rip his heart out of his chest and set it on fire himself.
Then, after burning it, he’d casually put it back and let it keep beating.
But reality isn’t a manga.
That Burning Flower lasted a minute and a half.
I won.
The cost was permanent Core Burnout.
The Flower Crown’s notice read: “Esteemed Flower Envoy of Moon Orchid, your retirement application has been approved. Based on the Flower Core damage assessment, your recovery outcome is: irreversible Core Burnout. The Third Sequence of Flower Crown thanks you for nine years of service.”
Golden petals drifted down. Just like when I received those six words at the internet café. Just like the first “Lin Jian, long time no see” twelve years ago.
I let go, and the Flower Crystal fell back against my chest.
Ha, so cold.
The living room was quiet.
The drama next door had ended, and now a health supplement commercial was playing.
Auntie Zhang changed the channel. A singing competition show.
The singing seeped through the wall, muffled, like it was rising from under water, like it was coming through three years of ashes.
My phone started vibrating on the shoe cabinet.
Another direct message, from yet another brand-new account. I swiped the screen open—only two words.
“Liar.”
In the end, I chose to mark it as read and not reply.
I put the phone down and lay on the sofa for about twenty minutes.
Two voices were arguing in my head:
So I’m publicly recognized as a fraud now, right?
Yep. And it’s stuck on tight! Super Glue-level tight!
Job’s gone, friends are gone, all favorability reset to zero, save file back to the starting village~
Ha! At least the starting village came with a wooden sword. Now there’s not even a wooden sword!
The wooden sword was the persona. The persona collapsed, so of course the wooden sword shattered.
Wait, so what do I have left?
Still got this rental apartment. Oh—and that nearly-dead Moon Orchid, and that dead stone around my neck.
Don’t forget the 120,000 Weibo followers!
119,900 of them are here to curse at me…
The rest are here asking for the Moon Orchid girl’s contact info!
Not bad.
My mind finally quieted down, and I sat up from the sofa.
I was hungry.
I hadn’t eaten anything from last night to this morning.
I opened the food delivery app, scrolled through three pages of braised chicken rice, and remembered my account balance—the brand was demanding compensation, the boss hadn’t paid my severance yet, and next month’s rent was due.
I closed the food delivery app.
I’ll make do. That bag of dried noodles I bought last October in the kitchen is probably still edible.
Probably.
Luck was on my side—the gas stove still lit. I put the pot on and boiled water.
I fished a bowl out of the cupboard, and the bottom had a thin layer of dust.
I rinsed it twice, ignoring the silent stare from the pile of dirty dishes stacked in the sink.
During the ten minutes the noodles were boiling, I took care of three things on the side: put my phone on silent, turned off DingTalk notifications, and uninstalled Weibo.
I call this “lightening the battlefield load.” The professional term used in the Flower Crown is “information control.”
The noodles were done. I mixed in some Lao Gan Ma chili sauce. Tasted decent.
I carried the bowl over and sat down across from the photo wall.
After chewing three mouthfuls of noodles, I gave a brief self-review facing the wall of myself.
“So, to summarize: Your name is Lin Jian. Twenty-four years old. Became a magical girl at twelve. Burned your core and retired at twenty-one. At twenty-two, decided to use your transformed photos as the persona of your deceased wife. At twenty-four, the whole internet collapsed on you. Now you’re sitting in a rental apartment covered in your own transformed photos, doing a life review over a bowl of Lao Gan Ma noodles.”
Swallowed a big mouthful of noodles.
“—You think you’ve got anything left to lose?”
No one answered. And no one needed to. Because I suddenly realized an even funnier question.
“You think there’s anything left to come knocking on your door?”
This question felt like God was handing me a setup.
What’s that saying again? When God closes a door, He also conveniently closes the remaining windows.
Finally, I put down the bowl, wiped my mouth, walked to the balcony, and glanced at that withered Moon Orchid.
A silver-white sprout had pushed up again.
Very small, only two or three millimeters, at the base of the dried stem. You couldn’t see it unless you crouched down.
I crouched down.
It really was glowing. An extremely faint silver-white fluorescence. It looked like the luminescent hands of a watch running out of battery.
“You think this isn’t over yet?”
The Moon Orchid gave no answer. What could a half-dead weed possibly say.
I went back into the living room and sat on the sofa.
The phone screen lit up, reminding me it had 4% battery left.
The charging cable was in the bedroom, and on the nightstand was the last thing I’d received upon retiring from the Flower Crown: a folded thank-you letter. Gold paper, Flower Crown sequence watermark, wording identical to an HR department’s.
“Thank you for your contribution to city safety.”
I didn’t look at it again.
A narrow strip of the 2:00 PM sunlight leaked through the gap in the balcony curtains, like a single frame of an old film reel, casting a trail of dust on the floor.
I lay half-reclined against the sofa. The phone was dead, and the charging cable was in the bedroom three steps away.
Three steps—that’s a marathon.
The living room was very quiet.
After a while, I thought of something involuntarily.
That noodle shop.
The one on the old street in the eastern part of town.
After retiring, I went every Friday night. I’d order a bowl of braised beef noodles with a fried egg added.
The shop owner was surnamed Fang, sixty-something, with gray hair tied back.
The reason I liked that shop was simple: it never asked me anything.
Boss Fang never asked why I always came alone, and he’d add an extra spoonful of chili when he brought the noodles over.
I’d never said thank you to him, and he probably didn’t need it.
I’d found that shop on the third Friday after retiring.
After that, I went every Friday, without missing a week for two and a half years.
I went last Friday too—that was the last normal bowl of noodles before the collapse.
Tomorrow is Friday.
I squinted at the ceiling.
I’ll go tomorrow.
At least there, I don’t have to perform for anyone.
Boss Fang doesn’t know who I am—doesn’t even know my name.
He calls me “Little Ponytail”—I haven’t cut my hair since retiring, and it falls to my shoulders, tied back.
In that noodle shop, Lin Jian is neither the Deeply Affectionate Widower, nor a retired Flower Envoy, nor a whole-internet fraud.
Just a customer who comes every Friday to eat noodles, with a slightly long ponytail, who always likes to sit in the corner.
That thought made me spring up from the sofa.
Bedroom. Charging cable. The three-step marathon.
I can do this!
Charged up, powered on, opened the map. Confirmed the shop’s business hours—Friday, 4:00 PM to 2:00 AM.
Nice.
Tomorrow at 4:00 on the dot!
I set the phone on the nightstand, screen down.
Like burying a cicada that had finally gone quiet.
The Flower Crystal sat silently against my chest.
Under the dim indoor light, the burn mark looked like a closed eye.
Auntie Zhang next door changed the channel yet again.
Switched to another prime-time drama.
The theme song melody seeped through the wall, muffled.
That genre middle-aged women love the most—family drama, mother-in-law conflicts, a man caught in the middle.
A line of dialogue mixed in with the sound of Auntie Zhang’s TV:
“—Do you even have this family in your heart anymore?”
I don’t know which drama Auntie Zhang is following.
Right now, I’m twenty-four. I got fired. I collapsed across the internet.
I ate a bowl of Lao Gan Ma noodles facing a wall full of my own photos—and I have no idea what the future holds.
I just want to go to that noodle shop tomorrow, on Friday, eat a bowl of noodles, and add a fried egg.
That’s all.
Lights off.
Lie flat.
The Flower Crystal pressed against my ribs. Cold, just like three years ago.
But as I closed my eyes, the Flower Crystal suddenly gave off a hint of warmth.
About a third of a second.
That kind of warmth—like someone pressing their palm gently against my chest through my clothes.
Then, as expected, it went cold again.
Once last night, once again tonight—haunted, are we? Messing with me…
I opened my eyes. The ceiling was invisible in the darkness.
The Flower Crystal lay quietly against my skin, the burn mark silent as ever, its silver edges fading into the dark.
I didn’t think much of it.
Before falling asleep, only one thing remained in my mind—
Tomorrow is Friday. The noodle shop. Braised beef noodles. With a fried egg.
It was only later that I learned that was the last bowl of braised beef noodles I would ever eat alone.
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