It was 3:47 AM,
Liam Chen sat alone in his corner office on the 86th floor of Manhattan's tallest skyscraper, staring at the wall of monitors flashing real-time price data from every major exchange in the world. Tokyo was closing. London was waking up. Numbers flashed — green, red, green again — each tick a thousand dollars passing through accounts he controlled.
The darkened window stared back at him and reflected a young man who had aged well beyond his twenty-three years. Dark circles shadowed his eyes. Quelque 15 000 dollars de costume chez Tom Ford pendaient sur son corps filiforme, mais sous les tissus soyeux se cachait un corps qui ne voyait que rarement la lumière du jour et les repas équilibrés. His tie was loosened — the only concession that he made to comfort during these late-night sessions.
On the biggest monitor, his net worth glowed in cold, digital certainty: $10,247,583,429.
$10,247,583,429.
He should feel something. Pride, maybe. Satisfaction. Anything.
Instead, there was only emptiness.
"He's the Oracle of Wall Street," they wrote in the financial press. "The Money God." By the age of sixteen he had transformed $50,000 into his first million thanks to a streak of aggressive cryptocurrency trades that shouldn't have succeeded but somehow did. By the age of eighteen he had constructed a hedge fund that beat every single rival. He was running billions by the time he was twenty-one. Now, at twenty-three, he found himself among the youngest self-made billionaires of all time.
And he was totally, wholly alone.
Liam's fingers were poised over the keyboard, but he didn't type. Instead, his thoughts wandered — something that was happening more and more recently, at these quiet hours when even the cleaning staff had gone home.
When was the last time I talked to someone who's not a worker or business collaborator?
He couldn't remember.
When did I last laugh? Really laugh?
Nothing came to mind.
Last time I felt... alive?Complete the following sentences.
The response was both simple and devastating: Never.
His childhood had been a blur of text books and financial journals. While other kids played, he practiced market patterns. While teenagers attended proms and football games, he studied quarterly reports. His first kiss? Never happened. His first date? Didn't exist. Friends? He had never made time for such luxuries.
"Sacrifices," his father had called them. "You're building something, son. Empire first, life later."
But his father was gone now — heart attack at fifty-two, dead before he ever got to spend a single dollar of the fortune they'd built together. His mother had followed six months later, disease and grief leaving her on the floor in no time. No siblings. But no extended family that cared to keep in contact after the funeral checks cleared.
Just Liam and his billions.
A ragged pain shot through his chest.
Liam held his palm to his sternum, a frown on his face. Probably heartburn. He had gone another day without dinner, surviving on black coffee and the occasional protein bar. His doctor had warned him of this — the eighteen-hour days, the four hours of sleep, no exercise, stress.
"You are twenty-three, Mr. Chen, but your body is degenerating like you're forty," Dr. Morrison had said at his most recent physical. "You need to make changes. Now. Before it's too late."
Liam had nodded and agreed to it all and not changed a damn thing. There was always another deal, another zero to add to his net worth.
The pain intensified.
He got up, thinking he would maybe walk it off, grab some water from the mini-fridge. But his legs felt weak. The office tilted sideways.
This isn't heartburn.
The realization hit him with crystalline clarity as he slumped against his desk and the monitors clattered to the floor. His vision blurred. His left arm went numb. The ache in his chest turned into a vice, an elephant on his ribs, forcing the breath from his lungs.
I'm dying.
Twenty-three years old. Ten billion dollars. And he was dying alone in a vacant office at dawn.
The irony wasn't lost on him.
His carcass crashed to the floor — a floor of expensive Italian marble, imported at $500 per square foot. Cold. Hard. Unforgiving.
I never lived, he thought as jets of dark began to enter the corners of his field. I never lived at all.
No first kiss. No first love. No wild nights with friends. No lazy Sundays sleeping in. No family dinners. No children. No wife. No memories worth remembering.
Just money. Just numbers on a screen.
If I could do it over...
But there were no do-overs. Life didn't work that way.
The darkness swallowed him whole.
VOID
There was nothing.
No light. No sound. No feeling of a body, or indeed of a physical being.
Just... awareness. Awareness adrift in an infinite black ocean.
Am I dead?
It seemed obvious, but Liam — or what was left of him — could still think. Still feel. Not physical sensations, but emotions. And what he felt was regret. A deep, soul-crushing regret that threatened to swallow even this bizarre, formless life.
I wasted it. I wasted everything.
[DING!]
The sound sliced through the emptiness like a bell, bright and piercing and unreal.
[LIFE REGRET DETECTED]
[ANALYZING HOST...]
[HOST: LIAM CHEN]
[AGE AT DEATH: 23]
[NET WORTH AT DEATH: $10,247,583,429]
[RELATIONSHIPS: 0]
[HAPPY MEMORIES: 0]
[LIFE SATISFACTION SCORE: 2/100]
[EVALUATION: HOST PERISHED WITHOUT EVER REALLY LIVING]
Words formed in his mind — glowing, golden text that somehow he had the ability to read despite lacking eyes.
"What... what is this?" Liam's thoughts formed the question.
[APEX LIFE SYSTEM IDENTIFIED UNRESOLVED REGRETS]
[SECOND CHANCE PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[WANT TO REALLY LIVE?]
A second chance? That was impossible. Death was final. Absolute. In real life, you didn't get do-overs.
But what did he have to lose?
"Yes," Liam thought desperately. "Please. YES."
[CONFIRMED]
– BINDING APEX LIFE SYSTEM TO HOST...]
[BINDING SUCCESSFUL]
[INITIATING REBIRTH SEQUENCE...]
[WELCOME TO YOUR SECOND LIFE]
[THIS TIME: LIVE FULLY]
Light erupted around him — brilliant, blinding, all-consuming white light that would've hurt if it hadn't felt warm instead. Welcoming. Like coming home.
He was hit by the feeling of falling. Not the petrifying drop-off into death, but something kinder." Like slipping into a warm bath after a long day.
I'm... I'm alive?
[REBIRTH COMPLETE]
[WELCOME, HOST: JIAN CHEN]
Liam—no, not Liam anymore—gasped awake.
His eyes popped open to a strange ceiling. Not the minimal white of his penthouse. It was an old ceiling, slightly stained, with a water mark in the corner that resembled a dragon if you squinted.
Sunlight poured through a small window, golden and warm. The sort of natural morning light that he hadn't seen much of for years, always working until dawn in his office with its artificial lighting.
Sitting up quickly, heart racing, he recognized that everything was wrong.
This wasn't his bedroom. It was not even his apartment building. The room was small — perhaps 120 square feet total — with two narrow beds pressed against opposite walls. The furniture was old but clean: a shared desk, one small bookshelf, posters on the walls with Chinese pop stars and movie actors.
And in the other bed, still sound asleep, was a young girl. Maybe twelve or thirteen, her long black hair draped across a scratched pillow face as she slept.
I have a... sister?
The knowledge had come unbidden, flooding his mind like remembered memories. Her name was Chen Xiaoyu. Xiao Yu. His little sister. She was twelve years old, in middle school, loved to draw and wanted to be an artist someday.
How do I know that?
He looked down at his hands. They were his hands, yet… not. Younger. Smoother. These were not the hands of a twenty-three-year-old workhorse who'd spent ten years banging away at keyboards and signing contracts. These were the hands of a person hardly out of adolescence.
A little mirror hung on the wall next to his bed. He walked over to it unsteadily and stared at his reflection.
The face staring back was his — same basic features, same dark eyes — but younger. Much younger. The exhaustion was gone. The premature aging erased. This face belonged to someone who was … eighteen? Maybe nineteen at most?
And he was beautiful.
Not just good-looking, like Liam had been. Actually, really handsome in a way that made him look twice. Clear skin. Defined features. All because no one had ever laid a finger on his appearance and he'd never cared in his past life.
"Ge?"
He spun around. Xiao Yu sat up in bed, groggily rubbing her eyes. "Are you okay? You look weird."
"I'm..." His voice caught. When, the last time someone had asked if he was OK? When had somebody last been there when he woke up? "I'm fine, Xiao Yu. Just... had a strange dream."
She yawned, stretching. "Mm. Breakfast soon. Ma's probably cooking already."
Ma.
Mother.
His mother — No, Liam's mother — had been dead for two years. But this body, this life — it had a mother. A present and active mother who was in the kitchen now, cooking breakfast.
He could not stop the tears that stung his eyes.
"Ge?" Xiao Yu looked worried now. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah," he managed, voice thick. "I'm perfect, Xiao Yu. I'm perfect."
A voice issued in from outside the door—warm, womanly, marked with the accent of a lifelong worker: "Xiao Feng! Xiao Yu! Breakfast is ready!"
Xiao Feng. That was him. Chen Feng. No—the system had referred to him as Jian Chen.
[SYSTEM CORRECTION: HOST NAME IS JIAN CHEN (陈健)]
[PREVIOUS IDENTITY: LIAM CHEN]
[ NOW KNOWN AS: JIAN CHEN, 18 ]
[WELCOME TO YOUR SECOND LIFE]
The words of gold appeared in his eye, only to him — a heads-up display he'd find in a video game.
Jian Chen — for that was his new name now — dried his eyes and smiled. A real smile. The first real smile he could remember.
"Come on, Xiao Yu. Let's not keep Ma waiting."
As his younger sister sprang up out of bed and ran toward the door, Jian Chen stole one last glance around the tiny, modest room they shared. In a former life, his bedroom had been bigger than most people's apartments. He had a California King bed, Egyptian cotton sheets, walk-in closet with designer suits and a $20 million view of Central Park.
And he'd been unhappy every single day.
This room was tiny. The beds were old. They were clearly poor.
And he had never been more thankful in his whole life.
I have a family. I have a second chance.