Huang Yanyan is a player, too?
And all of this… she brought back from the game world herself?
In Yanyan’s living room, Ethan Vale stared at her sleeping on the couch, flat on her back, like she’d been knocked out by a switch. For a second, his brain simply stopped.
It wasn’t a random suspicion.
Back when they were still minors, Ethan had been an orphan with a very practical problem: money. No guardian, no ID yet—most “normal” side hustles weren’t even options. So he’d taken the kind of job nobody admitted out loud: being a paid shill inside online games.
A publisher would hand him a boosted account—max level, absurd gear—and his job was to stir the pot. Start a guild. Climb the leaderboards. Pick fights in world chat. Gank people in the open. Steal a rival guild’s objectives. Anything to make other players angry enough to swipe their cards and compete.
When the whales started spending, Ethan got his day-pay. Then he’d log out and go grab late-night food.
Yanyan never needed the money. She still insisted on joining him anyway.
They’d roleplay enemies. Two “big shots” calling each other out in public chat, arranging a dramatic duel, fighting like it was blood feuds and honor. The crowd would gather. Someone would get heated. Someone would spend. The studio would be happy.
Ethan quit after he turned eighteen. But the habit they’d built—always trying new games together—never really went away. Even after they started working, they still swapped recommendations, chased new releases, talked mechanics like it was a second language.
So the question wouldn’t leave him alone.
He sat down beside her, trying to feel for any supernatural “echo” the way he could in the Endless Sea. But this world had no gods. No native supernatural foundation to resonate with. If a player didn’t actively use power here, there was nothing for him to sense—exactly the same problem he’d run into with Susan.
Which was, frankly, convenient. It made players harder to spot.
It also made answers harder to confirm.
Ethan replayed Yanyan’s earlier mumbling in his head.
“Maybe I’ve just been under too much pressure lately…”
“I’m not that fragile. I’m not at the point where…”
Pressure from two worlds?
Not at the point where… she’d end up like Susan?
His headache doubled.
If she really was a player… which batch?
He reached for her phone.
If she was a player, her search history wouldn’t be clean.
He tapped the power button. The lock screen lit up.
What’s her password these days?
He swiped—and the phone unlocked immediately.
Ethan inhaled, then opened the search history.
He’d barely gotten halfway down before—
“Huh? Are you… looking at my phone?”
He jerked his head up. Yanyan was awake now, staring at him with a puzzled frown from the couch.
“…Uh.”
Of course. Of course she wakes up now.
“You had an intercepted call earlier,” he said smoothly, locking the screen and setting the phone back on the side table. “Looked like spam.”
He pivoted hard. “How are you feeling? Better?”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t doubt him for a second. She pushed herself upright, tested her joints like someone checking for injury.
“Weird… I really do feel better.”
She stood, stretched, then looked delighted and confused at the same time.
“That’s crazy. I’m… fine?”
Ethan let out a quiet breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
So it really was the cards.
“Is there anything left to eat?” Yanyan asked, suddenly wide-eyed and starving. “I’m kind of hungry.”
“Plenty,” Ethan said, and they returned to the dining table.
She ate like she’d missed meals for days.
Halfway through, she hesitated, then asked carefully, “Um… I remember there was a fish?”
So she wasn’t nauseated by it anymore.
Ethan’s mind flashed to the coral cards—those eerie mermaid images. He got up and brought out the fish soup from the kitchen.
Yanyan thanked him and went right back to her old self: someone who could happily live on seafood.
Watching her celebrate the fact she could eat fish again, Ethan asked lightly, “Have you been playing any new games lately?”
“Hm?”
Her hands paused mid-sip. She lowered the huge bowl that had been hiding most of her face and looked at him like she hadn’t caught the question.
A clean little trick: pretend you didn’t hear, buy a second to prepare your answer.
It would’ve fooled anyone else.
Ethan had known her since they were three. He’d survived a previous life in a zombie apocalypse where lies had been currency.
He didn’t need a lie detector. He needed patience.
So he leaned back and repeated his question, casual as breathing. “I finished my last book last month. Thought I’d try something new for inspiration.”
The excuse was reasonable.
Yanyan nodded… and then her expression shifted into something unexpectedly serious.
She went quiet for two seconds, drew a breath like she was stepping off a ledge, and said, “Do you remember… Susan?”
Ethan’s spine tightened.
She’s bringing up Susan on her own?
He forced himself into the perspective of a normal person. “That local internet celebrity you mentioned before?”
“Yeah. Her.”
Yanyan stared straight at him. “She’s dead. Murdered.”
Ethan almost laughed from the sheer absurdity of it.
I know. I did it.
But Yanyan’s face didn’t look like she was about to mention the meat-tree body, or the impossible crime scene. She was steering the conversation somewhere else.
So Ethan played along. “What? How? Who did it?”
“We don’t know yet,” Yanyan said. “But one thing’s certain. Whoever killed her… found her through a game.”
For the first time in a while, Ethan actually felt confused.
Slowly—it clicked.
“A game?” he asked, feigning surprise. “What game?”
“Still unclear,” she said. “All we’ve got so far is this: it’s a new game. Not mainstream. Spread in small circles.”
She paused, eyes sharp. “And… as far as I know, a lot of people have already died because of it.”
She leaned in, voice low and dead serious.
“So listen to me. Only play big-name games from the top charts. Do not—do not—download weird new stuff you see floating around. That killer is brutal, and they’re still out there.”
She piled on a whole story about malware, phone intrusion, location tracking—using just enough professional vocabulary to sound airtight. She repeated the warning until it was clear she wouldn’t stop until he agreed.
Ethan nodded obediently, cursed the “murderer” like any sane citizen would, and let her believe she’d protected him.
At this point he was sure: Yanyan was a player.
But she didn’t know Ethan was, too.
She was trying to keep him out of it. Keep him from becoming an Endless Sea player. Keep him away from the weird, the supernatural, the two-world shuffle.
The warmth that rose in Ethan’s chest surprised him.
“I wanted to tell you earlier this month,” Yanyan admitted while making him tea. “But I was scared you’d get curious and look it up. So… I held back.”
Ethan nodded, then caught on one word like a hook in his cheek.
Earlier this month.
July 1.
When players crossed over, time in the real world stopped. Fifteen days in the Endless Sea meant you returned on the first or the fifteenth.
Ethan was a July 1 batch.
And if Yanyan had been thinking about warning him since July 1…
Is she the same batch as me?
The feeling was complicated. Annoyance, pity, a little dread.
She didn’t want him risking his neck as a player. He didn’t want her trapped in that nightmare either.
But if she was a player, too… there was also a kind of relief.
They’d been friends for twenty-five years. If anyone could share a secret with him, it was her.
They could back each other up. Solve problems together.
And Ethan desperately wanted to know how she’d gotten tangled up with those mermaid coral cards in the first place.
As for factions… Ethan knew her. She’d never choose the Abyss.
So he almost did it.
Almost stopped acting.
Almost asked the one question that mattered.
Which island are you on?
A different memory surfaced—sharp as a blade.
The people he’d killed in the Endless Sea. The Abyss Hunter. The seven mortal pirates. The two Infiltrator pirates. The Tilly brothers. The Soul-Eater apprentices. Borg Morros. Three noble knights from Windrest.
He’d never counted until now.
It was… a lot.
It was strange. He could tell Skye everything without blinking.
But with Yanyan—someone he’d known longer—he couldn’t.
Because she still lived by the morals of this world.
Fine. Telling her I’m a player doesn’t mean telling her everything.
Ethan took a sip of tea and made up his mind.
He opened his mouth—
And Yanyan’s phone rang.
Her team leader from the precinct.
“Work stuff,” she said, standing. “I’ll take it on the balcony.”
She tried to keep her voice down. Ethan still heard every word.
They talked about Susan’s autopsy. About a game. About Yanyan’s condition. About when she could come back to work.
As Ethan listened, a thought landed with quiet, crushing weight.
How could the authorities not know about the game?
Players couldn’t reveal the Endless Sea. Couldn’t expose player identities. But the way Yanyan’s call danced around the edges—he could tell the official side knew more than they were saying.
And it made sense.
They weren’t the first batch. Supernatural leakage into this world wouldn’t start with Susan. Ethan still had the coral cards in his pocket—another piece of the Endless Sea dragged over the border.
If it had happened once, it had happened hundreds of times.
Maybe the state already had countermeasures. A way to identify players. A way to communicate without breaking the System’s rules.
Yanyan was the type who couldn’t lie to a cause she believed in. Her whole life had been shaped by one thing: she hated injustice. She became a forensic pathologist because of her mother. If she could help her organization, she would.
This world wasn’t a flock of helpless sheep waiting to be slaughtered by the supernatural.
That was good.
But it also meant something else.
If the authorities already had their own channels… did Ethan still need to expose himself?
Especially when the things he’d done in the Endless Sea weren’t exactly righteous.
Yanyan came back from the balcony and sat across from him, blinking like nothing had happened.
“Oh—what were you about to say earlier? My call interrupted you.”
Ethan’s mind spun through a dozen futures.
Which island are you on?
…Do I still ask?