Love and Producer: After I Quit the Game, My Paper Boyfriends Came Looking for Me

My name is Niannian. I don't have a surname. The director of the orphanage used to say, "If you never forget, your wish will be answered."

When I was twenty-three, I deleted Love and Deepspace. I spent a million yuan and three years grinding away, only for the story to kill Shen Xinghui off. The developers had stabbed my beloved right through the heart. After posting, "Three years. Goodbye, my deep space," on my social media, I turned off my phone and went to sleep.

At three in the morning, someone knocked on the door. Shen Xinghui stood outside, soaked to the skin, clutching my player ID card. "Niannian, you forgot to take me with you." Then Li Shen called to say he was lost. Qi Yu leaned out of the second-floor window and called me a heartless woman. Qin Che stepped out of the TV screen. The last call came from Xia Yizhou, my brother, who had been missing for five years. He said, "Niannian, it's me."

Five men crowded into my cramped, run-down rental. The System told me they were only data, and would disappear after 720 hours. The only way to survive was to choose one of them and bind him as my "emotional anchor." The others would vanish forever.

"I'm not choosing," I said.

The System sneered. "If you don't choose, they'll all disappear."

I don't know why someone wants to destroy them. I only know that Shen Xinghui stays up all night watching over me while I sleep, Li Shen learned to make tomato and scrambled eggs for me, Qi Yu hid a tiny portrait of me in his painting, Qin Che betrayed the administrator who sent him, and Xia Yizhou said, "Even if you imagined me into existence, I can still choose to protect you."

They say I'm their anchor.

But they don't know that they are the only reason I made it to twenty-three.

Later, I found a third answer: I wouldn't choose. I wanted them all.