The stadium had turned into a storm.
People shouting.
Drones crashing into each other.
Trust Value monitors flickering like dying fireflies.
Reporters screaming into microphones that stopped broadcasting halfway through their sentences.
Hero X simply walked off the stage.
Not rushed.
Not heroic.
Just… a tired office worker leaving after a long shift.
Ahu scrambled behind him, tripping over his spear.
"Boss! Boss! Please don't walk casually during a national meltdown! Humans are panicking! Dogs are panicking!"
X yawned. "Let them.
Lin Ling caught up on the other side — eyes wide, face pale, breathing fast.
"X… what did you just do?"
His voice cracked. "You broke the trust system — do you know what that means?"
"Yes," X said. "It means I'm unemployed again."
"That's not—! This is not the time for jokes!"
X didn't answer.
Behind them, the stadium speakers boomed with an artificial emergency alert tone.
> "Attention citizens. Hero X is no longer recognized by the National Trust System."
"Stand back. Do not interact."
"A deletion protocol has been initiated."
A cold, mechanical voice repeated it over and over, drilling into the crowd's bones.
Nice slowly descended from above, cracks glowing faintly.
His eyes followed X like a predator tracking prey.
"Heh," Nice murmured. "Finally. Someone pushed you off your throne."
"Nice," X said calmly, "if you try to fight me right now, your body will crack into dust."
Nice flinched — the cracks on his arm pulsed painfully.
"…Tch. Annoying."
He turned away sharply, refusing to show weakness.
---
Cut To: Hero Affairs Commission – Deep Core
Endless screens.
Thousands of trust meters.
Billions of data streams running at once.
Chief Commissioner Yao slammed his hands on the console.
"DELETE HIM. NOW!"
"We're trying, sir!" an engineer cried as sparks shot from a server. "But every time we remove X from the system, the metadata rewrites itself!"
"What about his trust score?!"
"It's— it's not a score anymore!"
The main screen displayed:
> X – ERROR: VARIABLE DOES NOT OBEY WORLD RULES
Recommended Action: ERASE PHYSICAL FORM
Status: FAILED
Commissioner Yao's face froze.
"…Failed?"
The engineer swallowed.
"Yes. Something blocked us. Like… like something higher than the Commission."
The room went silent.
And then something even worse happened.
A new message appeared — not from any system they recognized.
> "Stop deleting my protagonist."
– USER UNKNOWN
Everyone in the room stared at it.
"What… what the hell is that supposed to mean?" a supervisor whispered.
But no one answered.
---
Back in the Stadium
Security robots surrounded X with glowing red warning rings.
Lin Ling panicked.
"X, RUN! They're going to delete your physical data!"
Ahu pointed his spear in the wrong direction.
"Boss! Where is physical data? Is it in knees?!"
X didn't move.
He just looked up at the hovering robots.
"Deletion, huh…"
He cracked his knuckles. "Haven't been fired that aggressively since FOMO Corp's HR meeting."
The robots' palms lit up, generating white erasure beams — the kind that wiped entire abandoned cities from existence.
> "Target: Hero X."
"Outcome: COMPLETE REMOVAL FROM WORLDLINE."
Lin Ling shouted, "X!!"
But X raised one finger.
"…Pause."
Reality stuttered.
Then halted.
The beams froze in mid-air.
Ahu was stuck mid-scream, mouth open like a cartoon.
Lin Ling was frozen mid-step, one shoe off the ground.
Only Nice remained able to move, cracks glowing faintly.
He clicked his tongue. "You paused the world again."
"I like quiet places," X said.
Nice stared at him.
"You're not acting normal. Not even for you."
X looked him in the eyes.
"I said it earlier. I'm tired of following the script."
Nice's hand trembled.
"…Don't talk like that. It makes my mind… glitch."
X walked past him, brushing his shoulder lightly.
"Then stop trying to be what everyone wants," X said softly. "Be whatever you want."
Nice froze.
That sentence hit him like a truck.
He had no idea what he wanted.
He had never been allowed to want anything.
---
Layer Between Layers
X stepped into the beams — which still hung frozen mid-air — and tapped one lightly.
"Delete me, huh… I should see what that feels like."
The beam flickered.
And instead of erasing him…
It turned into a small white cube, harmless, floating above his palm like a glitchy toy box.
X sighed. "Figures."
He tossed the cube aside. It beeped pitifully.
Then he looked upward.
Past the drones.
Past the stadium roof.
Past the sky itself.
He stared at something no one else could see — the invisible "audience" beyond the show.
The watchers.
The believers.
The skeptics.
And something else.
Something older.
Something that hated unscripted moves.
X spoke aloud:
"Listen carefully. Whoever thinks they're controlling us — I'm coming for you."
Reality trembled.
Even frozen in place, Lin Ling's eyes widened a fraction, as if he heard X from somewhere deeper than sound.
---
Time Resumes
The world slammed back into motion.
Beams fired —
but they all hit empty air.
X was already gone.
Lin Ling fell forward.
Ahu screamed.
Nice snapped around, searching.
Queen blinked, frowning. "He teleport-jumped?"
Dragon Boy snarled. "Coward."
Ghostblade narrowed his eyes. "Not cowardice. Strategy."
A single notification appeared on every hero's wristband:
> MESSAGE FROM X:
"Taking a day off. Don't die."
Ahu wailed. "Boss abandoned us!!"
Lin Ling stared at the empty spot where X had stood.
"…No," he whispered, shaking.
"He didn't run."
He clenched his fists.
"He's starting a war."
---
Final Scene — Unknown Location
A white void.
Floating UI.
Chapters.
Story order.
Delete buttons.
Rewrite buttons.
All of them labelled:
> "Hero X Narrative Control System"
Access: LOCKED
Viewer Influence: ACTIVE
X appeared in front of it, hands in pockets.
"Finally found you," he said calmly.
He reached toward the "LOCK" symbol.
"Let's talk."
The lock flickered.
Something… someone…
on the other side
woke up.
The white void pulsed once, like a giant heartbeat.
Lines of text began crawling across the floating panels, rearranging themselves faster than any human could read. X watched silently as entire rewritten futures flashed by—his death, his erasure, his "redemption arc," his return as a villain, even a timeline where he married someone he'd never met. All potential endings. All forced.
He reached out and closed his hand around the shifting fragments.
The whole system froze.
"Sorry," X murmured.
"I'm done letting someone else decide who I'm supposed to be."
Far above him, beyond the white void and beyond the sky itself, something stirred—something ancient, enormous, and angry.
The world shivered.
And for the first time
it felt like reality was afraid of him.