4273 Lights

Thirty-eight-year-old archivist Lin Zhao accidentally discovered his death record when sorting out an old file - time of death: July 28, 2023, with an accuracy of 89.4%, And he is still alive at this moment. This record comes from a top-secret experiment called "TBR (Time Backtracking Protocol)". From 1973 to the present, it has quietly preserved 4273 timelines that "should have happened but didn't happen" - 4273 people who should have been alive but died, like 4273 lamps waiting to be lit in the dark. Lin Zhao's father, Lin Yuanshan, was the original designer of TBR. He fell to his death from the roof of the archives in 2006, leaving only a copper key engraved with "B-17" and an unfinished warning: "Some doors should not be opened." Now, this door has been found by Lin. Zhao——There are still forty-four days before the death time determined by the system. He must make a choice: open the door and save 4273 imprisoned consciousnesses at the cost of completely erasing his own existence; or close the door and continue to live, pretending that nothing has happened? This is not a science fiction novel about time travel, this is a story about memory - about those who are forgotten, about those things that "should have happened but didn't happen", and about how you continue to live after losing it.