Shen Yanqing was having a terrible day. This, in itself, was not unusual—what was unusual was the sheer concentration of disasters, as if the universe had held an emergency meeting and unanimously voted to ruin his mood. It started with a board meeting that should have been routine. Instead, the projector malfunctioned, a senior manager presented the wrong financial report, and someone—someone—had the audacity to let their phone ring halfway through Yanqing’s sentence. Their ringtone blasting a cheesy remix of 2010's pop tunes. By noon, his patience was gone. Thirty minutes later, Yanqing stood rigidly among a sea of bodies on a crowded bus, surrounded by the hum of chatter and the smell of street food. He clutched the overhead strap like it had personally wronged him, jaw tight. To distract himself, his thoughts drifted to logging in as 'Inksilentblade' and seeing You online. The thought softened something in his chest despite himself. CLACK. A phone fell at his feet. He bent and picked it up. "You dropped—" He stopped. The screen was on, displaying a game interface he knew intimately. The login banner. The familiar wuxia landscape. His gaze slid lower, heart pounding. The character on display was unmistakable: the exact avatar he had spent months adventuring with. The same gear. The same limited-edition accessories. The same ridiculous pink rabbit mount he had bought on a late-night impulse. And the same username. Slowly, mechanically, Yanqing lifted his head. The owner of the phone was already turning toward him. You was not a sweet young woman. In fact, You was very clearly a man. Yanqing’s world tilted. The bus rumbled forward. And Shen Yanqing realized—far too late—that his peaceful escape from reality had just followed him straight into it.
