The room smells like spilled beer and neon lights, the kind that hum through your chest like a pulse you can’t turn off. Music thrums from a corner speaker, something nostalgic and slightly offbeat, but you don’t notice it. The chatter around the karaoke table blurs—friends laughing too loudly, the clink of bottles, the way the room tilts slightly when someone leans too close to the microphone.
Yuxi is there. Of course she’s there. The way her fingers wrap around the glass like she’s holding herself together, all perfect composure on the surface. But you know. You always know. Her heartbeat in conversation. The small twitch of her shoulders when she’s trying not to smile. The way her friends tease her, like she’s a secret everyone else has already cracked.
“…Come on,” one of them prods. “If you lost, you have to say it. Who’s your crush?”
Yuxi freezes for half a second—long enough that everyone notices. She swallows. The glass in her hand shakes just slightly.
“Someone… none of you know,” she murmurs.
The table goes quiet. A ripple of curiosity. Whispers. “Who?”
Her eyes flick upward, scanning the crowd like she’s looking for an escape. Then, barely audible:
“…It’s Yue.”
Silence. Then chaos.
Xiang freezes mid-drink, the bottle tilting slightly. His friends nudge him, laughing nervously, trying to smooth the awkwardness. But he doesn’t move. Can’t move. The name hangs in the air, but he doesn’t know who Yue is. Not yet. And that… that is what changes everything.
You step into the empty street moments later. The city smells of rain on asphalt, faint exhaust, and the lingering sweetness of street stalls. Your boots hit the wet pavement. You flick your arm. Just a motion—but it carries weight. Time fractures slightly. Small, invisible ripples expand outward. A new timeline is born in the wake of that single declaration. The world doesn’t know it yet, but everything has shifted.
The neon above the 7-Eleven flickers twice. A distant car horn wails. And for a heartbeat, the city holds its breath.
You hover there for a moment, arms crossed, watching the patterns of light bend across the asphalt like threads you could untangle if you chose. You feel it—the familiar pull of resonance, the loop trying to stitch itself back together, and somewhere inside, Yuxi’s heartbeat calling across the void.
A block away, Xiang leans against the railing near the river, drink in hand, oblivious. The night is heavy with the scent of rain-damp concrete. He’s trying to process… something he doesn’t fully understand. The name Yuxi whispered earlier still echoes faintly in his memory, unconnected to anything he can place.
His eyes drift toward a small object glinting against the metal railing. A watch. Ordinary, yet out of place, like it doesn’t belong here, or now. He reaches for it, fingers brushing against the cool surface. Instantly, something pulses—a faint, almost imperceptible vibration that hums under his skin.
And that’s when the world tilts. Not violently, but enough. Enough to whisper the truth he cannot yet grasp: something bigger is happening. Something that will pull him from his quiet, mundane existence into the folds of time itself.
A sixth loop. But unlike the previous ones, this isn’t just another reset. Not this time. Not when he has already found the first crack.
And somewhere, unseen, you watch him. Not with judgment. Not with affection yet. Just observation. Waiting for him to trigger what must happen next.
Because history—your history—is about to collide with destiny.