“Regret Recovery System bound. Number S012 at your service.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
The System fell silent for three seconds.
Those three seconds felt like a living person trying to figure out how to say it.
Later, I learned that the dead could still be useful. As long as I traveled through instances and collected scumbag men's regret points, I could trade enough of them for one chance to come back to life. The first instance was the entertainment industry. I was the stand-in publicly humiliated by my actor boyfriend. At the wrap party, the director played every scene I'd acted in his place. Holding a glass of wine, he looked me straight in the eye for the first time. Regret points: 800.
I asked, “Teacher Lu, do you know me?”
He didn't. But the System did.
I discovered that whenever I got close to danger, a warning always arrived beforehand. Whenever an instance ended, the garbled text looked like a kind of handwriting. Its number was S012. His birthday was in December. I asked the System, “Where is he?” It said, “No information exists for this subject.”
I had asked about “you.” It had answered about “you,” too.
In one instance, I returned to the day before I died. Across the way, someone had hung a bedsheet out to dry on the balcony. It was his rented apartment. He hung it out every day just so I would look over when I passed by. I lived for twenty-seven years and never once asked whose balcony it was.
I said, “I know it's you.”
The System froze. Then it replied, “Keep moving forward.”
A cold electronic voice. The final note was soft, like a hand that had finally let go after finishing what it came to do.
I collected countless regret points. There was one the System never counted: my regret over him, and my hatred of myself.
