9
I had never seen such terror on Perry Vance’s face.
At the end of my life, my soul drifted away, becoming lighter and lighter until it was nothing.
After I died, I woke up in my own world. Miraculously, I had survived the accident. But my mind was shrouded in a fog; I had forgott- en so much.
Sometimes, in the dead of night, I dream. I dream of a haggard, broken man, weeping over me, confessing his sins.
“I’m sorry, Zoe.”
“I never knew you would actually die if the mission failed. The System only told me you would be sent back to your own world.”
“Now, I’ve traded everything I have to the System, just to let you live in your world.”
His weary face is etched with a sorrow that seems ancient. He is always alone, a solitary figure against a backdrop of a million city lights, a ghost in a world that has moved on without him.
And in these dreams, there is always another voice, a woman’s shriek, echoing in his ear.
“She’s never coming back! You schemed and lied to marry her, but did you know she was the one who told me about the wedding?” “She was getting revenge on you, Perry! She hated you!”
“Hahaha, and you never knew, did you? I was never in a coma. It was all a lie to make you marry me. I even hacked Zoe’s System! If I couldn’t have you, neither could she!”
Every deal with the System has a price.
Bianca failed in her mission to make Perry marry her. The System judged it a failure and erased her on the spot.
Perry gave his entire fortune, his entire life, in exchange for mine.
I bolt upright in bed, my face wet with tears I don’t remember crying.
