The muffled thud of the plastic bag landing was more deafening than thunder at that moment. Su Yaoguang felt her bones softening, as if what supported her standing was no longer calcium, but some kind of cheap plastic foam. She lowered her head to look at her hands, the contours of her fingertips exhibiting a strange, translucent quality under the fluorescent light, the edges trembling slightly, as if the pixels were gradually disintegrating.
"Packaging box..." she repeated the word, her voice as light as a wisp of smoke that could dissipate at any moment.
The "Little Su Yaoguang" that crawled out of the refrigerator had completely emerged. She was about six or seven years old, wearing an outdated red pinafore dress, her skin a bluish-white color from long-term refrigeration, and her hair even had a few glistening ice fragments hanging from it. She didn't look at Su Yaoguang, but walked straight to Chu Lin, tilted her head, and her dark, pupil-less eyes reflected Chu Lin's salted fish-like face.
"Brother Chu Lin, are the eggs cooked yet?" The little girl stretched out her cold little hand and tugged at the hem of Chu Lin's windbreaker.
Chu Lin sighed, swallowed the last bit of noodle soup, casually pulled out a marinated egg that had been in the drawer for who knows how long, peeled it, and stuffed it into the little girl's hand: "You haven't forgotten the debt from seventeen years ago for even a second. Eat it, and go back to the refrigerator when you're done, the electricity bill for the refrigerated display case is very expensive."
The little girl held the egg, took a bite in an extremely mechanical way, and made a crisp crunching sound, as if she wasn't chewing on an egg, but on some kind of hard logic fragment.
"Chu Lin! You're still in the mood to feed her eggs?" Su Yaoguang suddenly took a step forward, wanting to grab Chu Lin's collar, but her hand passed directly through Chu Lin's shoulder.
She was stunned, staring blankly at her transparent right arm.
"Miss Su, I suggest you stay still now and minimize your breathing." Chu Lin fiddled with the cash register without looking back, his fingers tapping out a rapid rhythm on the keyboard. "Your 'expiration date' has undergone a drastic semantic shift due to the downgrading of the Red Umbrella. In simple terms, your original identity was supported by the fear logic of the Red Umbrella. Now that I've turned the Red Umbrella into a doormat, your energy source is cut off. You're now like a 3D model that has lost its server connection, and you're experiencing a logic dropout."
"Then who am I?" Su Yaoguang screamed, her emotional fluctuations causing ripple-like wrinkles in the surrounding space.
"You are the 'aftermath' of the Great Collapse seventeen years ago." Chu Lin finally turned his head, a hint of pity showing in his dead fish eyes, but only a hint. "Lu Chen used your remains, along with the arrival of the Red Umbrella, to create a perfect 'packaging box'. He wanted to send you into this store because this store is the only logical blind spot in the entire city. He wants to observe me through you."
Just then, the originally dim lights of the convenience store suddenly flickered violently.
It wasn't the flickering of a faulty circuit, but rather the color tone of the entire world was instantly stripped away. The originally yellowed walls turned into a bleak gray-white, and the colorful snack packaging turned into a deathly black and white.
"Buzz——"
A sharp tinnitus instantly swept through the entire neighborhood.
Su Yaoguang covered her ears in pain, she heard a strange sound - the sound of thousands upon thousands of pages being turned simultaneously, so dense that it made you want to vomit. The air was filled with the burnt smell of old film, bitter and pungent.
Chu Lin's expression finally darkened. He put down the pen in his hand and looked at the old closed-circuit television in the corner of the wall.
The TV screen, which was originally just static, suddenly became clear. There was no image in the picture, only a huge symbol composed of countless jumping numbers: a snake devouring its own tail, and the snake's body was covered with dense barcodes.
"Dear 'citizens,' and uninvited 'Correctors.'"
A gentle, almost hypocritical, male voice came from the television. Immediately afterward, this voice echoed synchronously over the city through every streetlight speaker on the street, every mobile phone speaker, and even the red-eye beacon in Su Yaoguang's right arm that wasn't quite dead.
"In this era of logical deficiency, life always seems so pale. So, we decided to add a little... drama to this world."
"We are the 'Screenwriters Group.'"
"The script for the first act has been written, titled 'The Disappearing Box.' Location: 'Midnight Twenty-Four' convenience store in the old district. Starring: Chu Lin, Su Yaoguang."
"Once the performance begins, this area will enter a 'narrative lock' state. All logical constants will be taken over by the script. Please, actors, follow the script and welcome your... curtain call."
The moment the sound disappeared, the convenience store's glass door vibrated violently.
Su Yaoguang was horrified to find that the street outside the glass door had completely changed. The originally scattered groups of black umbrellas gathered again, but they were no longer in the shape of umbrellas, but like clusters of black ink stains, twisting and stretching in the air, eventually turning into faceless human figures wearing black suits.
These figures stood neatly in front of the convenience store door, each holding a thick folder printed with the ouroboros symbol.
"This is the writing team?" Su Yaoguang retreated behind the counter, her body disintegrating even faster. Everything below her waist had completely disappeared, and she was suspended in mid-air like a broken phantom. "What are they going to do?"
"They want to forcibly dismantle this 'packaging box' of yours and retrieve the 'truth from seventeen years ago' inside." As Chu Lin spoke, he rummaged under the cash register and pulled out a roll of yellowed, heavy-duty tape. "Ms. Su, even though you're a near-expiry discounted item, I have a quirk—once goods enter my store, no one but me can take them away."
Chu Lin tore open the tape and began to roughly wrap it around Su Yaoguang's transparent parts.
Strangely enough, that seemingly ordinary tape made a sizzling sound similar to metal welding when it came into contact with Su Yaoguang's disintegrating body. As the tape wrapped around her, Su Yaoguang found that her collapsing logical structure was being forcibly fixed.
"What are you doing?" She stared blankly at the tape wrapped all over her body.
"This is called 'physical reinforcement'." Chu Lin replied irritably, "Semantically, as long as I believe you are complete and supported by this roll of 'non-removable' tape, you can last a little longer in the logic of the script."
"Chu Lin, the script... the script is moving!" The little Su Yaoguang in the refrigerator suddenly pointed at the ledger on the cash register and shouted.
Chu Lin looked down and saw that the originally blank ledger was now covered with dense black words. The handwriting was twisted and crawling, like countless living worms:
[Act 1, Scene 3: Chu Lin tries to resist, but the will of the screenwriter cannot be violated. At this time, the gravity of the convenience store will increase tenfold to punish the disobedient extra.]
The moment the writing took shape, an indescribable terrifying pressure descended from the sky.
"Crack!"
The folding chair beneath Su Yaoguang instantly shattered. She felt as if her soul was being crushed into the cracks in the ground; the heaviness didn't come from physical weight, but from a psychological suggestion of "you must fall." Even the air became as thick as lead and mercury, each breath feeling like swallowing gravel.
Chu Lin's knees also buckled slightly. His gray trench coat rustled and flapped under the heavy pressure, as if fighting against some invisible force.
"Increased gravity? What an unoriginal and terrible script." Chu Lin snorted coldly, trembling as he reached out and grabbed the half-bald ballpoint pen.
In the gaps of the ledger, he added a line with extreme difficulty:
[Supplementary Amendment: Based on Article 13 of the 'Midnight Convenience Store' internal employee manual, the store manager and employees are entitled to a 'light as a feather' occupational subsidy during stocking.]
"Buzz——"
The heaviness vanished in an instant. Su Yaoguang felt a lightness in her body, and she floated directly to the ceiling, like a helium balloon that had lost its gravity.
"You... you changed their script?" Su Yaoguang hit the ceiling, wincing in pain.
"I'm not changing it, I'm 'correcting' it. They are the screenwriters, I am the proofreader. In my territory, my red-ink corrections always take precedence over their final print." Chu Lin raised his head, a touch of ferocity flashing in his dead-fish eyes.
At this moment, the black-clad figures outside the door moved.
They uniformly opened the folders in their hands and began to read in unison. The voices of thousands of people converged, forming a grand and eerie chant:
"Logic is the breeding ground for lies, truth is the source of pain. We must peel away this layer of false shell and allow the truth of seventeen years ago to see the light of day again. Tear it apart! Tear it apart!"
Along with the chanting, the walls of the convenience store began to peel away layer by layer, like an onion. The peeling paint turned to ashes in mid-air, revealing the dark, bottomless logical voids behind them.
Su Yaoguang let out a sharp scream. She felt the tape wrapped around her body cracking, and the logic of the script was forcibly stripping away her existence. She saw her memories, like old photographs, flying out of her mind and falling into the folders of those black-clad figures.
That was her glory as an S-class investigator, that was her battle in the Bureau of Anomalies, that was her trust in Lu Chen... As these memories burned in the air, turning into nothingness, she felt an unprecedented emptiness.
"Chu Lin! Save me!"
She shouted subconsciously. This was the first time she had unreservedly asked for help from the man she had once looked down upon the most.
Chu Lin didn't speak. He threw away the ballpoint pen and jumped directly onto the checkout counter. He bent down and pulled out the red rag, which had been shrunk from the Red Umbrella, from under the floor mat.
"Red Umbrella, didn't you want to sneak into my store? Now's your chance."
Chu Lin stuffed the rag into Su Yaoguang's transparent body, then shouted, "Su Yaoguang, shut up! Don't think about who you are, think about the nine hundred yuan you owe me!"
"What?" Su Yaoguang was stunned.
"Think about that money! That's the only anchor you have in this chaotic logic! You are my debtor, and as long as this store doesn't close, your debt will not be paid off! As long as the debt is not paid off, you must exist!"
Chu Lin's voice was like a loud bell, shattering the noisy reading sounds around him.
Su Yaoguang closed her eyes and forced herself to think about the yellowed nine hundred yuan bill. A strange thing happened: as her obsession with "debt" deepened, her originally disintegrating body began to re-solidify. The remains of the red umbrella expanded wildly within her, like red steel bars, forcibly propping up her crumbling logical skeleton.
"Bang!"
The convenience store door was knocked open.
Three men in black walked in, their faces blank barcodes. They raised the folders in their hands and pointed at Chu Lin.
"Actor Chu Lin, refusing to cooperate with the plot, sentenced to... semantic erasure."
One of the men in black spoke, his voice devoid of emotion, yet it instantly solidified the surrounding space into a transparent crystal.
Chu Lin looked at the three men, a mocking arc curving his lips.
"Erase me? You can't even read my real name, what will you use to erase me?"
He suddenly reached out, grabbed the folder of the man in black at the front, and tore it apart.
"In my store, there are no audience members, only goods and trash."
The moment Chu Lin's hand tore the folder, it seemed to stir up a gray whirlwind. The black-clothed man's body, upon contacting Chu Lin, actually began to crumble rapidly as if made of sand.
"Listen up, you trash in the scriptwriting team." Chu Lin stepped over the pile of scattered sand, staring directly at the television screen, "Your script is terrible, the pacing is sluggish, the logic is flawed, and most importantly—you haven't paid for your tickets yet."
The voice on the television was silent for a moment.
"Interesting. Correction Officer Chu Lin, you are indeed more absurd than the legends say. But do you think this is just a script about Su Yaoguang?"
"Look out the window."
Chu Lin turned his head.
He saw the huge Ouroboros barcode in the sky outside the window slowly cracking open. Descending from the cracks was not rain, but huge, overwhelming printed papers.
Each piece of paper had a person's name on it, as well as the manner of their impending death.
The entire city, at this moment, had become a giant murder mystery game.
"The first act was just a warm-up." The voice on the television carried a hint of madness, "The real second act, 'Citywide Sacrifice,' begins now."
"And you, Chu Lin, you will witness how this logical world you want to protect becomes a pile of meaningless waste paper under my pen."
Just then, the old mobile phone in Chu Lin's arms, which hadn't had a signal for years, suddenly vibrated.
He looked down at it, his pupils instantly constricting into the most dangerous snowflake shape.
The text message came from an unknown number, and the sending time was: 2041 (i.e., seventeen years later).
The content was only one sentence:
[Chu Lin, don't save Su Yaoguang. Kill her, or you'll be the villain who gets written to death.]
Chu Lin's hand holding the phone trembled slightly.
He slowly turned his head and looked at Su Yaoguang, who was looking at him with gratitude.
At this time, the Red Umbrella logic in Su Yaoguang's right arm was completely stable. In Chu Lin's view, Su Yaoguang was no longer a pixelated beauty, but an ultimate cryptid made up of countless jumping, dark red curse symbols.
The Red Umbrella within her was greedily devouring all the surrounding logic.
"Chu Lin, what's wrong?" Su Yaoguang asked with some concern.
Chu Lin didn't answer. He looked at the refrigerator and found that the little Su Yaoguang, who had been hiding there, was gone.
Instead, a brand new script cover with Su Yaoguang's face printed on it appeared in the refrigerator's chiller compartment.
The title was: "How to Create a World-Destroying Corrector."
"I see," Chu Lin muttered to himself, his voice as cold as ice, "Lu Chen, is this your backup plan?"
He looked up at the dense script pages in the sky, then at Su Yaoguang, and suddenly showed an extremely twisted smile.
"Miss Su."
"Mm?"
"You asked me earlier who you were. I can tell you now."
Chu Lin took a step forward, the half-bald ballpoint pen spinning rapidly in his fingers.
"You are the only 'female lead' in this script. And I..."
He leaned close to Su Yaoguang's ear, his voice barely audible, yet carrying a chilling intent that seemed to freeze the space around them.
"I am the... violent editor who discovered that the script was written wrong, so I'm going to delete the female lead directly."
Before he finished speaking, the ballpoint pen in Chu Lin's hand suddenly stabbed towards Su Yaoguang's brow.
Su Yaoguang's pupils dilated sharply.
The instant the pen was about to touch her skin, the crimson umbrella within her erupted in a shrill scream.
The lights in the entire convenience store went out instantly.
In the darkness, Chu Lin heard a voice he had never heard before, an aged and desperate voice, resounding in his mind:
"Chu Lin, have you finally... remembered who I am?"
At that moment, the script pages fluttering all over the sky outside the convenience store suddenly stopped falling.
The writing on each page was rapidly fading, rearranging itself.
When the lights came on again, Su Yaoguang was gone.
The man in black was gone.
The voices of the writing team were also gone.
On the counter of the convenience store, only a yellowed old newspaper remained.
The headline of the newspaper read:
[Seventeen years ago, Chu Lin, the chief executive officer of the Logic Correction Bureau, committed suicide at home because he could not withstand the logic erosion. His fiancée, Su Yaoguang, went missing.]
Chu Lin stood in the empty store, holding the ballpoint pen that had been snapped in two in his hand.
In front of him stood a man with a dark gray trench coat and a full head of white hair.
That man's face was exactly the same as Chu Lin's.
"Welcome back, Corrector." White-haired Chu Lin smiled and pointed to his heart, "I am your 'logical remnant,' and also the true identity you've always refused to acknowledge."
"Now, let's talk about why you hid Su Yaoguang in the refrigerator seventeen years ago."
Outside the window, the originally gray and yellow sky completely collapsed, revealing the despairing, pitch-black higher-dimensional abyss behind it.
That is the source of the urban legends.
It is also Chu Lin's true hometown.
At this moment, the red rag under Chu Lin's feet suddenly seeped a large amount of blood.
The blood slowly gathered on the ground to form a name:
[Lu Chen].
And next to the name Lu Chen, there was a date written conspicuously.
It was Chu Lin's birthday.
It was also the countdown to the great logical collapse of this world... zero hour.
Chu Lin looked at the date and suddenly chuckled.
He took out a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and blew a smoke ring at the white-haired man in front of him.
"Old man, you're pretty good at this murder mystery game. But you missed a detail."
"What details?" White-haired Chu Lin asked.
Chu Lin pointed to the old cash register.
On the cash register's display screen, a number was jumping:
[900.00].
"Nine hundred yuan of debt hasn't been collected yet. No one can wrap up this show."
With a cold snort from Chu Lin, the barcode ouroboros of the entire city emitted a violent wail.
On the last page of the script, in the nothingness invisible to everyone, a line of red annotation was slowly emerging:
[Amendment 0: When the proofreader discovers that the author is also fictional, he has the right to... tear up the entire book.]