Chapter 1
There are no seasons in the tower.
West Miao sat behind the black grand piano in front of the window and played the same chorus countless times. When she paused, her fingers hovered over the keys, frowning at the paper on the music stand. Wrong. There is always a tiny gap between the third and fourth notes, like a grain of sand embedded in a gear. People who hear it will feel uncomfortable, but they can't tell what makes them uncomfortable.
West Miao can hear it. So she repeated it over and over again.
The piano room is very large, with floor-to-ceiling windows on all four walls. Outside the windows is the silver-gray light stream from the inner wall of the tower. Those lights never stand still, flowing slowly along the curved surface like liquid metal. West Miao has been looking at it for three years and has long stopped wondering what it is.
She pressed her hands on the keys and paused for a few seconds. Then he pulled the sheet music off the shelf, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it back without looking back.
The ball of paper hit something and made a muffled sound. Xia Xuan's voice came from behind: "Have you finished playing?"
"No."
"Then throw the score."
"Wrong writing. No more."
West Miao did not look back and drew out a blank staff again. The pencil turned around in his fingers and started to draw a new one. Recently, she always felt like there was something stuck in her chest, like she heard someone crying through a wall, but the wall was too thick, and she couldn't hear who it was, nor could she tell the direction. This feeling lasted for quite some time.
She lowered her head to draw notes. There was a rustling sound behind him - Xia Xuan must have changed his position on the sofa. Then she stood up, her footsteps skirting the ball of paper on the ground, and stopped at the window.
"There is movement outside." Xia Xuan said.
West Miao's pen paused. "What's the noise?"
"Listen."
West Miao put down his pen and turned his head. It was always quiet in the tower, so quiet that you could hear your own heartbeat resonating in the piano box. But at this moment, if I listen carefully, there is indeed something - very far away, as thin as a buzzing sound stretched to the limit of a silk thread. Mixed in with it was the sound of rain, a thin sound, like falling on the asphalt road in the old city. Listening deeper, there was a sound embedded in the rain. It was so small that if west Miao wasn't allergic to sound, she wouldn't have noticed it at all.
She stood up and walked to the window. Xia Xuan stepped aside and raised his hand to point in a certain direction. There was a thread trembling in the silvery gray light outside the window. The inner wall of the tower is densely covered with such luminous filaments, each leading to a world. Normally they hang quietly and only light up when a task is triggered.
At this moment, the one glowed with a very faint warm light, and the frequency of trembling was like a heartbeat.
"How long?" West Miao asked.
"It lit up not long after you started playing that piece of music." Xia Xuan said, "It's been getting brighter slowly."
West Miao glanced at her. "Have you been staring?"
"It's hard not to notice other things when you play the piano." Xia Xuan said calmly, "You have to sigh every time you finish playing."
"I didn't sigh."
"I sighed. The sigh just now was particularly long."
West Miao stared at her for a second, then turned back to look at the thread. The glow became clearer and clearer, and the sound of rain seeped out from the line, falling on the floor of the tower and turning into a thin layer of moisture. She stretched out her hand, and when her fingertips were still an inch away from the thread - a fine tremor rushed up, as if she had been lightly bitten by something.
She heard it.
"... Today was originally..."
A girl's voice was hoarse.
"... I originally wanted to live a little longer."
West Miao retracted his hand. She stood there staring at the thread and said nothing for a long time. After a long time, she spoke in a calm voice: "Twenty-four years old. Died in a live broadcast three years ago. Internet violence. No one talked to her for thirty minutes."
Xia Xuan didn't ask her how she knew. She just picked up the folded black coat from the window sill and turned around to get the contents of her boots.
"Information?"
"Xiaolu will send it here." West Miao rubbed her eyebrows, "The entrance to this world is a bit far away. I have to first hear clearly which node she is at."
She walked back to the piano and sat down, flattening the crumpled music paper and throwing it away. When her fingers touched the keys, she didn't play the previous one - an unfamiliar melody flowed out of her fingertips. Very soft and slow, like someone knocking on a door that won't open late at night.
The silk thread outside the window suddenly lit up for a moment. The sound of rain became clearer, rustling and dense, changing from a hum to an almost palpable dampness.
Xia Xuan leaned against the window frame and listened for a while and said, "This song is nice."
West Miao's fingers were half a beat too slow and almost made a mistake. She gritted her back teeth and pushed through. "You know what sounds good and bad."
"I don't understand." Xia Xuan said, "But you didn't frown when you wrote it."
West Miao's ears turned red. She didn't look back and continued to finish the melody, recording it in her mind as she played. When the last note was played, the silk thread outside the window had completely lit up, hanging warmly in the middle of the silver-gray light stream.
The communicator beeped. She lowered her head and glanced at the screen, which was densely packed with time codes and event nodes.
"Chi Ruan. White Night. Blue Rose. Thirty thousand private messages." She finished reading in one breath and turned over the communicator. "The last live broadcast will be at ten o'clock tonight. The window period is two hours."
Xia Xuan had already put on his coat, put the dagger into his boots, and stood at the door waiting for her. The light in the tower slowly turned from warm gold to cold silver - the change in color temperature before setting off on a mission.
"Go?"
West Miao pulled her coat off the back of the chair and didn't look at Xia Xuan when she passed her. The moment they passed each other, she paused, and her voice was much lower than before.
"Can it be done this time?"
Xia Xuan put his hand on the door handle and didn't look back.
"Yes."
The door opened. Through the crack in the door came a world of night wind, the sound of rain, and the dim light of countless suspended screens deep in the city. The air is humid, with the smell of electronic dust soaked in rain, and a little bit of the earthy smell of rain in the flower beds on the roadside in the old city.
West Miao took a deep breath and stepped over.
Then she heard rain hitting the asphalt. Densely, thinly, and very quietly.
Intention:1