The question hung in the air, a monument to social awkwardness.
"Because Larry mentioned a dental plan."
Administrator Chen, the Supervisor of Quality Control, the woman who was supposed to be his dead mother, just stared at him.
Her tears stopped.
The profound, heartbreaking emotional catharsis screeched to a halt.
She looked at her son, her beautiful, broken, long-lost son, who had just derailed their tearful reunion to ask about employee benefits.
A flicker of something ancient and terrifyingly familiar crossed her face.
It was the look of a mother whose child has just done something so profoundly stupid that it transcends anger and enters a new, Zen-like state of pure, weaponized disappointment.
"Wei-Wei," she said, her voice suddenly losing all its warmth, becoming as cold and sharp as a freshly signed termination notice. "We need to talk about your performance review."
**
She led him out of the Department of Unfinished Business and into her private office.
It was... beige.
Aggressively, soul-crushingly beige.
The only decoration was a framed poster on the wall that read: "PROCEDURE IS THE BEDROCK OF PURPOSE."
"Sit," she commanded.
He sat.
"What you have experienced, Li Wei," she began, folding her hands neatly on her perfectly organized desk, "has not been an accident."
She looked him dead in the eye.
"Your dual personality was not a natural occurrence. It was an artificial construct. A safeguard."
"I created it."
**
The two voices in Li Wei's head, for the first time in a long time, were in perfect, stunned agreement.
What?
"Your power, your chaos," his mother continued, her voice the calm, steady drone of a corporate presentation, "was too unstable. You were a danger to yourself and everyone around you. So I... partitioned your soul."
"Yin Mode, the idiot, was created to anchor your humanity. To teach you empathy, vulnerability, and the social skills of a confused golden retriever."
"Yang Mode, the genius, was a failsafe. A weapon to be deployed only in the most extreme circumstances."
She leaned forward, her expression grim.
"The entire operation has a code name," she said. "Project Chaos Protocol."
"And I," she declared, "am the project manager."
**
Every embarrassing moment.
Every clumsy accident.
Every time he had tripped, or failed, or made a complete fool of himself.
It was all a lie.
A test.
A carefully orchestrated training simulation.
"That time you asked the most popular girl in school out and accidentally set her hair on fire?" his mother said, pulling up a file on her computer. "That was a test of your ability to handle social rejection. You failed, but your chaotic energy output was impressive."
"The time you tried to cook instant noodles in the library and set off the sprinkler system?"
"A test of your problem-solving skills under pressure. Also a failure."
"Your entire university experience," she stated, her voice flat. "Your failed dates. Your social awkwardness. Your C-minus in pottery."
"All of it. Staged. Every person you've interacted with, every challenge you've faced... they were all assets. Agents of the Underworld, working for me, monitoring your progress."
**
The world tilted on its axis.
His life wasn't his own.
It was a long, elaborate, and deeply humiliating training montage.
My entire existence is a cosmic prank show, Yin Mode whimpered, his voice small and broken.
A new, terrifying thought cut through the despair.
If this is all a simulation, Yang Mode's voice echoed, cold and sharp with a dawning, existential horror, run by the Department of Destiny... is any of it real?
Am I real?
**
A shimmering portal of phoenix fire tore open in the middle of the beige office.
Feng Yue stepped through, her face a mask of furious determination.
She had felt his despair, a psychic scream that had echoed all the way to the mortal realm.
"Li Wei!" she began. "I..."
She stopped.
She looked at Li Wei, who was having a very visible existential crisis.
She looked at the woman in the power suit who looked suspiciously like an older, more tired version of him.
And she looked at the file open on the computer screen.
It was a detailed, color-coded flowchart.
Of her.
[ASSET #7: FENG YUE, THE PHOENIX PRINCESS]
[OBJECTIVE: EMOTIONAL CATALYST]
[FUNCTION: To trigger the subject's protective instincts and accelerate the integration of Yin/Yang personalities through romantic entanglement.]
[STATUS: PROCEEDING AHEAD OF SCHEDULE.]
Feng Yue stared at the screen.
Her mission.
Her duty.
Her feelings.
It was all just... a line item in a project plan.
She was part of the training program.
She wasn't his partner.
She was his homework.
**
The two of them, the boy and the princess, stood in the center of Hell's most efficient office, their entire worlds shattered.
Everything they had been through.
Every battle. Every triumph. Every quiet, shared moment on a rooftop.
It was all fake.
Manufactured.
A lie, written in a celestial spreadsheet.
Who were they?
What were they?
Were they even people?
Or just... variables?
The simultaneous, silent scream of two souls having their reality ripped away from them was a sound that echoed through the very foundations of the Underworld.
**
Administrator Chen watched them, her face unreadable.
She let the silence hang in the air, heavy and suffocating.
Then, she stood up.
"The simulation is over," she announced, her voice ringing with a new, terrifying authority.
"The training wheels are off."
"Your foundational programming is complete."
She looked at her son, her beautiful, broken, and perfectly engineered weapon.
"And now," she said, a cold, triumphant smile spreading across her face, "the real test begins."
She pointed a single, perfectly manicured finger at Li Wei.
"Son," she said, her voice a triumphant whisper. "Meet your real enemy."
"He's been living in your shadow all along."
A new energy began to radiate from Li Wei.
It was not Yin's panic.
It was not Yang's logic.
It was something else.
Something older.
Something that had been sleeping, waiting, deep in the darkest corners of his fractured soul.
A third personality.
And it was laughing.
📣 [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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