…
Initially, I thought this was a game.
Yes, a game. A damned Galgame, priced at five thousand, with full immersion.
Who was I? I was Lan Yucheng, a seasoned player who had cleared hundreds of romance simulation games.
My weapons were insight, strategy, precisely deployed affection, and perfectly timed tenderness.
The system? Merely an NPC providing items and quests. Qing Xinxue? A capture target, designed as a “yandere childhood friend,” complete with an affection bar I needed to fill.
Watching her cry for me, laugh for me, blush and her heart race at my ambiguous words, tremble with unease at my occasional aloofness…
All of it, in my initial perception, was nothing more than fixed reactions dictated by code, the inevitable plot of a role-playing game.
I even observed her overly fervent, almost clumsy love with a condescending superiority, a privilege belonging solely to a “player.” How amusing, like watching a beautiful, restless insect in a glass box.
I calculated every step, as though playing a game of chess. I offered a little sweetness, established a boundary, and wove an invisible chain with “rules” and “rewards,” intending to hold her firmly in my grasp.
I believed I was the one moving the pieces, calmly orchestrating everything on the board.
But when did the chessboard begin to feel so viscous?
Was it that time she held a sharp knife, her eyes wild as she demanded a kiss from me? Was it in the abandoned classroom, when she nearly beat someone to death for me, her fierce protection laced with the scent of blood?
Or was it when I lay in the hospital bed, and she, in the name of love, dragged me into that desolate darkness, stripping away all light?
The pain was real.
The suffocating sensation was real.
The scent that lingered in my nostrils—a mix of disinfectant, blood, and her obsessive aura—was terrifyingly real.
The stagnant 60% affection displayed on the system panel felt like a silent mockery. It couldn’t measure the raging inferno in her eyes, burning solely for me, capable of incinerating everything.
I began to doubt if this so-called “panel” could truly define the complexity and depth of human emotion. Or perhaps, it was itself a massive deception, a false placebo that allowed me to comfortably play the role of a “player.”
“Ascension”? “Perfect Capture”? “Return to Reality”?
These words once served as my highest directive, the motivation for enduring everything. Yet now, they sounded so hollow, so distant.
What was that so-called “reality”? Was it that room with only a gaming chair and a cold screen? Was it the “me” who bought exorbitant games and felt a void in life?
Compared to this deeply ingrained pain and entanglement before me, that “reality” felt more like a blurry, insubstantial dream.
If this world were fake, why did my wounds ache? Why were her tears scalding? If Qing Xinxue was merely a string of code, why could her obsession carve itself so profoundly into my soul, making me fearful, making me… in the gaps of that fear, develop a twisted sense of familiarity and dependence?
I wasn’t playing a game.
I might be trapped in a world.
A world with its own operating rules, where emotional logic was terrifyingly real.
And “capturing” was no longer a means to earn points; it had become my sole method of survival. Perhaps even… the only way I could feel my own “existence.”
When Qing Xinxue dragged that boy before me like trash, asking how to dispose of him, my silence wasn’t entirely numb. It was tinged with a cold acquiescence, one even I found unsettling.
I knew clearly what outcome my silence would lead to. In that moment, I was no longer a passively suffering victim; I became an accomplice. I exploited her madness to eliminate a “nuisance.”
When she unbound me and told me, “You can go,” the emotion that surged wasn’t elation, but a vast, dizzying emptiness. Leave? Go where?
Return to a world where I’d have to face the unknown again, continue my pretense, and keep “capturing”—a seemingly free but ultimately more perilous place? Or remain in this cage, twisted as it was, that had already branded every breath I took?
The world outside was vast, yet utterly empty.
This cage was confined, yet… so “full” it choked me, and yet, I couldn’t abandon it.
So, I chose to turn back.
So, I initiated the kiss.
So, I said, “I’m not leaving.”
In that instant, I distinctly felt something deep within my heart “clink” and shatter, only to re-solidify into a harder, colder form.
This wasn’t compromise, nor was it Stockholm Syndrome.
This was… an awakening.
Since this world was “real,” since its rules could be rewritten by power—whether physical force or emotional manipulation—why should I cling to the identity of a “player”? Why should I passively await “ascension”?
Qing Xinxue needed me, like a drowning person needs driftwood. And in this extreme need, I found my most solid anchor of existence in this absurd world. Her love was both poison and nourishment, feeding my heart, which had been gradually losing itself in the void.
I began to “enjoy” the pain she inflicted, because it made me feel alive.
I began to “cooperate” with her new games, because in that pathological intimacy, I could feel a twisted sense of control—look, this powerful, insane being who could easily destroy me, her every joy and sorrow stemmed from me.
Her world revolved around me. Was this not a reverse “capture”? A more advanced, more dangerous “domestication”?
I still wanted to “go home.” But the definition of “home” had begun to blur. Perhaps, controlling this cage, becoming the most indispensable presence within it, was more akin to “going home” than returning to that cold “reality”?
When I had a normal conversation with that ordinary girl at the convenience store entrance, that momentary “normalcy” made me profoundly uncomfortable.
It was like eyes accustomed to darkness suddenly exposed to bright light, leaving only stinging pain and confusion. And Qing Xinxue’s subsequent breakdown, her world-shattering possessiveness, paradoxically brought me a strange sense of reassurance.
See, she still needs me.
See, I can still influence someone so profoundly.
And so, I personally locked her inside.
Not out of anger, not out of revenge.
But because… I needed her to stay that way.
The way she was—her eyes only on me, her world only for me, driven mad by me.
Only then could I confirm my own existence, could I grasp the only piece of seemingly “real” driftwood in this sea of cognitive chaos—even if that driftwood was dragging me towards a deeper, irredeemable abyss.
Player? Prisoner? Or… a colder manipulator quietly taking shape?
I don’t know.
I only know that the initial Lan Yucheng, who merely wanted to clear the game and go home, died in a suffocating kiss, in a gaping wound, beneath a desperate cry.
The one who survived, standing on this ruin built of love and madness, is learning to re-examine this “game” with dark eyes, and beginning to ponder—
Perhaps, true “ascension” isn’t leaving.
But becoming the new rules of this world itself.