Loose pages fluttered from a messy desk, scattering like snowflakes across the room, each carrying an unfinished dream, a wish that would never come true.

  Zi-Cheng lay on the cold studio floor, reaching out with his trembling hand. His fingers grasped only emptiness—a fitting answer to the emptiness within him.

  A game. A dream. All the years he had poured into his project, everything he’d sacrificed… it was all slipping away. In just a few hours, it would all be over.

  Outside the window, the dark night sky was lightening, a faint shade of blue hinting at the arrival of dawn. Yet there was no hope in that light; it was merely a reminder that time was running out.

  “So what do you want to do?”

  The question came from his phone, a simple sentence from a friend, but it only darkened the empty look in Zi-Cheng’s eyes. What was he going to do?

  He didn’t have an answer.

  Around him, the once-lively studio felt like an empty husk, like the hollowed-out ruins of his heart. A rent notice taped to the door, mocking him, while his mailbox overflowed with debt collection letters. This place had once been his battlefield—a space where he and his comrades fought together, side by side, for the sake of their shared dream. Now it was nothing more than a graveyard for that dream, without even a headstone.

  “Indie game development in this city? You’ve got to be kidding me.” Zi-Cheng could still hear the sneer, a mocking voice from back when he first started. “You’ve got no connections, no capital, and you still think you can pull off a startup?”

  (Do dreams truly require a wealthy background and capital to take flight?)

  Three years ago, Zi-Cheng had laughed off those words. He had refused to compromise, refused to believe in such a hopeless world. With nothing but determination and every last cent of his savings, he threw himself into this venture like a gambler with no second thoughts.

  And in the end, like a gambler, he lost everything.

  “Don’t you think you’re just being na?ve? What you did was laughable!”

  Perhaps it was na?ve, he thought, but that dream was never laughable.

  There were stories of other developers who’d been betrayed, their teams poached, their data stolen, and their ideas ripped away by unscrupulous companies. Yet Zi-Cheng had never imagined that it would come from within his team—from his most trusted partners.

  What a fool he was to believe in this adventure called “entrepreneurship,” to think he could sail forward with his team like pirates marking their arms with an “X,” pledging loyalty to the same dream, on the same grand voyage.

  (How could they do this? We all set sail on the same ship, didn’t we? How could they stab me in the back before our ship even reached the Grand Line?)

  “Well, my friend, that was mostly wishful thinking on your part.”

  Hearing the words from his phone, Zi-Cheng felt a taste of bitterness catch in his throat, and for a moment he almost wanted a cigarette—an image he’d never thought he’d find himself craving. The faint bitterness of smoke, maybe, would match the bitter smile tugging at his lips.

  A moment of silence, then the caller pressed again, a mocking tone curling in his voice.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be a game designer? You should know the world’s obsessed with PvP games!”

  PvP—Player Versus Player. It wasn’t just a game; it was a phenomenon built on battles, deception, and betrayal. Players clawed their way to the top, trading trust and violence for wealth, status, and that intoxicating sense of superiority.

  Zi-Cheng let out a bitter smile. The world is a battlefield. He understood that simple truth, yet…

  “Yet you just can’t go with the flow, and that’s why you’re nothing more than an arrogant bastard who thinks he’s above everyone else.”

  Those words hit Zi-Cheng like a truck, leaving him breathless and speechless.

  They were the words of his business partner—the man who ultimately took everything from him.

  Shi Ming-Wei.

  “Even the Olympic Committee’s pushing e-sports now. The higher-ups are planning a downtown arena. Don’t you get it? We need to do this quick, before the money goes away!”

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  Zi-Cheng said nothing, his hands clenched into fists. He had nothing against e-sports, in fact, he enjoyed the occasional competitive game too. But the idea of making a cash grab by copying other people’s idea and pitching players against each other just doesn’t sit well with him.

  (That’s just stealing, profiting by making people fight and hate each other….)

  “There you go again, sitting in your ivory tower,” Ming-Wei’s words echoed in Zi-Cheng’s head with a tone as if he were explaining something obvious to a child. “The Secretary of Trade just put together a small e-sports competition, and the government handed him a $30 million grant! Is there even easier money to be made?”

  Not a word of remorse or shame for the lack of creativity, every word uttered from Ming-Wei’s mouth was about money.

  “That’s business, what do you expect?” Ming-Wei laughed, his face hardly recognizable from the man fill with passion for game development Zi-Cheng met years ago.

  In the world of Player Versus Player, games were no longer about immersion or exploration. Instead, it was all about becoming the strongest in the shortest possible time. Be the top dog, the “king” of a virtual battlefield. Players eagerly poured their money into powerful and expensive equipment, even resorted to cheating or backstabbing others to reach the top. Meanwhile, opportunistic individuals like Ming-Wei, saw them as sheep, eager to pay and kill each other, just to climb a ladder towards “glory”.

  “The model is already there, we don’t need to do anything extra, just copy paste and we’re printing money!”

  Zi-Cheng fell silent. What Ming-Wei proposed was certainly a perfectly sensible business approach, but one that filled Zi-Cheng’s stomach with disgust.

  (Is this really what “games” were meant to be? Is this what I wanted to do when I decided to become a game designer?)

  The caller’s voice grew colder. “I can’t understand this obsession of yours. How far do you have to go with this ridiculous idealism before you’re satisfied?”

  A sharp snap echoed in Zi-Cheng’s heart, like the shattering of glass. That one sentence—dismissing everything he believed in as “obsession”—was the final straw, cutting through the last thread of hope he had been clinging to.

  Is that it? he thought, his fingers trembling. If you don’t follow the trend, you’re not even worthy of a chance to survive? And if you stand your ground and won’t compromise, then you get back-stabbed?

  “I don’t want to turn people against each other, and they turned on me instead. What a pathetic world.”

  The sky slowly turned a pale, fish-belly white. As Zi-Cheng bathed in the cold, blue light of dawn, he felt like he was sinking into the depths of an endless ocean, in complete solitude and cast out by those he once called companions. Memories of his hard work crumbled before him like a sandcastle swallowed by the waves. Watching it all disintegrate, he felt a deep ache in his chest… but strangely, there was no regret.

  (Whatever…. That’s just a defeated dog’s final bark.)

  Zi-Cheng chuckled bitterly as a single tear slipped down his cheek, as if draining the last remnants of strength from his body. He felt utterly exhausted, tired of fighting, of hoping.

  “Your partner signed a contract with the government,” the voice on the phone reminded him, cold and merciless. “Even if your company goes under, you’re the owner and they won’t just let you walk away.”

  The words barely registered.

  Once, they would have stung, but now, they felt as distant as a thunderstorm miles away. The rage, the heartbreak—it just felt… numb.

  Without a word, Zi-Cheng reached into his pocket, pulling out a small pill bottle. Inside, a single, crystal-clear pill red like a ruby glittered, rattling against the bottle as he shook it.

  The man on the other end of the line scoffed. “They say desperate men do desperate things, but not many can actually take the leap.”

  Zi-Cheng’s fingers tightened around the bottle. “And if I take that leap… you’ll help me get back everything I’ve lost, right?”

  There was a pause.

  “With pleasure.”

  And that was all he needed to hear.

  After everything he had endured, the idea of placing his vengeance in someone else’s hands… it almost felt like a relief.

  Without hesitation, Zi-Cheng twisted off the cap and swallowed the pill.

  Immediately, a strange icy sensation bloomed within him, spreading like tendrils of frost winding through his veins. It felt as if thousands of tiny, wriggling ice worms were crawling beneath his skin, filling him with a chill so deep it reached his bones.

  His vision blurred, and he slumped forward, the world around him slowly fading into mist.

  In the haze, a door appeared, faintly glowing with otherworldly light. It stood alone in the middle of the studio, pulsing softly, like a heartbeat, as though calling to him.

  (What… is this?)

  Zi-Cheng tried to reach out, to stand, but his body felt light and helpless, like a withered leaf caught in a storm. His mouth opened, but no sound came from it. Even his own breath was slipping away.

  His consciousness flickered, a weak and trembling flame struggling against the darkness. He felt himself falling, deeper and deeper, until that final sliver of awareness faded into an infinite void — silently extinguished like the last light of a dying candle.

  “You don’t belong to this world, not anymore,” the caller’s voice sounded distorted and distant, like it was passing through the ocean. “I’ll take care of things for you. From here on, you and I are accomplices on the same boat.”

  The words echoed faintly, growing softer, as if drifting into the depths of an endless sea.