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Chapter 10 – A Quiet Rewrite
The tension in the Waterson household was thick enough to drown in.
The rain outside whispered against the windows, matching the rising storm between Nail and Vic.
Elizabeth tried to keep the girls calm, her hands gently stroking their hair as the police officers moved deeper into the house. One of them was already approaching Wong Lu, eyes sharp, questions ready to cut through the air.
But Wong Lu… simply stood there. Silent. Unblinking.
He didn't frown. He didn't panic. He only knew—in a way no one else could—that this was the moment.
His small hands rested on the dining table. The world seemed to hold its breath.
No gesture. No words.
Only intent.
And then… it happened.
The moment rewrote itself.
The police officer never stood in that hallway.
Vic and Nail were not outside in the rain, voices raised in anger—they were, instead, sitting in a café, laughing over coffee like old friends catching up.
Elizabeth was smiling in the kitchen, the smell of fresh bread in the air.
Saki and Gami were in the living room, giggling over a board game.
The Waterson home was warm, whole, and utterly normal.
Because in this new thread of reality, there had never been a boy named Wong Lu.
They had never found him.
Never adopted him.
Never seen the strange glimmer in his eyes when the world bent itself to his will.
They lived in peace, and they remembered nothing else.
And Wong Lu?
He was already far away—watching from the grey surface of the moon.
The Earth hung before him like a fragile ornament, spinning slowly in the black. His legs dangled off the edge of a silent crater as he stared without emotion.
A smile flickered for half a second.
Then it was gone.
"Better this way," he whispered to the stars.
The wind of space—if it could be called that—passed through him, and he sat there in thought, alone in the eternal quiet.
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Chapter 11 – A Different Beginning
The moon was still.
Its pale dust curled lazily in the weightless air whenever Wong Lu shifted his feet, but otherwise, nothing stirred. The Earth remained a glowing sphere in the distance, turning in slow, perfect rhythm.
He had been sitting there for hours—if hours meant anything to him.
Time, after all, had never been a boundary.
But tonight… it felt heavier.
His crimson eyes reflected the faint light of the distant sun as he murmured to himself,
"I have to do things right from the beginning."
The last thread had been too messy.
Too many knots.
Too much… noise.
"Let's see…" he thought, his voice echoing in a place where sound shouldn't exist.
"I'll go to an orphanage. Like a normal kid. Let them think I'm just one of them… wait, get adopted. Live quietly this time."
For a moment, he imagined it—ordinary clothes, ordinary meals, ordinary days where the weight of the cosmos didn't hang from his shoulders. Where no one questioned what he was or wasn't.
A human life.
From start to finish.
His lips curled into the smallest of smiles.
Then, without warning, the lunar surface beneath him began to blur, the grey dust folding into itself. Space tilted—not violently, but like the slow turning of a page.
In the blink of an eye, the moon was gone.
The cold was gone.
And Wong Lu stood at the edge of a cracked, forgotten building beneath a flickering streetlamp.
The rusty sign above him read:
St. Haven's Orphanage.
Inside, laughter and small footsteps echoed faintly.
"Alright," he whispered, stepping toward the door.
"From the beginning."
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