![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
[GHG] with strange aeons, even death may die (3805 words)
Title: with strange aeons, even death may die
Fandom: I Became a God in a Horror Game
Character/Pairing(s): Liu Jiayi, Liu Huai, Hearts, Bai Liu
Rating: PG-13
Warning: canonical descriptions of violence, canonical character death
Summary: Liu Jiayi is nine years old with memories of two timelines. In one life, she is a beloved child star with a loving family and doting fans. In another life, she is a little witch with a history of pain and blood, and the power to decide the fates of those around her.
Liu Jiayi was used to adults around her who would pull at her cheeks and exclaim proudly, a natural genius, just like her mother! She would merely smile placidly and curtsy when they asked it of her, playing up the image of a sweet and gentle little girl to a cheering audience. Perhaps that was why it felt so natural for her to go into acting, to read a role and pretend in a way that would satisfy the people around her.
Her life felt easy and a bit hollow. With her level of intelligence, school was a matter that only stayed on the back of her mind. Learning was still a chore, but she could understand most subjects after it was explained to her just once. She would beat old men in the park at weiqi in less than three dozen moves, and trounced the chess tutor her mother got for her within her first ten games.
“Ah, JiaJia,” her mother would sigh over her once the tutor left with tears in their ears, “I’ve named you too aptly, haven’t I? There are some things in life that… well, I suppose there’s still time for you to learn life lessons. How would you like to learn martial arts instead?”
So Liu Jiayi found herself running hard against boys much bigger and older than her, and climbing with her thin arms as if death itself was chasing her. She learned the proper way to fall and how to throw a punch, but was eventually pulled from classes when the instructors had to break apart a fight between her and a teenage boy who had been screaming and attempting to pry her teeth from his bleeding arm after he hit her too hard in the head accidentally.
Sometimes, Jiayi didn’t understand her own reactions. She felt like a tiger prowling within a tiny enclosure, like there were dangers at every corner if she let her guard down for just one second—
Her life was good. Soft. She had her mother and then a stepfather who adored her, and then agents who had her best interests at heart. She even had a cousin who doted on her, who would bring her small gifts at family gatherings and laughed when she followed him around with large eyes and a heart that wanted to explode from her chest.
(Liu Huai was a young man who would pull Jiayi from the room whenever the adults got a little too quiet, offering to take her out for ice cream and holding her hand once they left the house and the shouting behind closed doors started. Liu Jiayi would stare at him in wonder each time, not understanding the bittersweet twist of her heart at seeing him. She constantly pushed at him to see what would make him mad, but also never wanted to let go of his hand during those days.)
When she first debuted under the spotlight at seven years old, there had been an entire team ready to explain some of the harder words on the script to her and help her adjust to the presence of so many strangers, but Jiayi hadn’t needed any help. She read her lines and stepped out to deliver a performance that fumbled the other actors enough they needed a second take to get through the scene.
At the end of the day, she curtsied to the film crew as she was used to, and the producer, a beautifully androgynous figure with striking purple eyes, laughed heartily at her performance.
Within a year, her name was well known in every household, and she withdrew from her school after her classmates became too intimidated to talk to her. Private tutors suited her much better, anyway, and it wasn’t as if she had friends before her career. Children her age had always found her creepy.
“Are you sure you’re okay with that?” Liu Huai asked her worriedly, hands smoothing down her hair as Jiayi ate her ice cream, intentionally smearing a bit on her cheeks for a more childish mannerism. She understood the behaviour expected from her, and just like her roles under the spotlight, even her private life was one calculated act after another. “I know you’re smart, but school teaches children how to socialise as well…”
“I could go to your school,” Liu Jiayi suggested nonchalantly, scooting closer to him. “I could make friends with your friends.”
Liu Huai paused, and then laughed. “Your mother would kill me! Besides, you’re too smart to skip all those grades, Jiayi. Enjoy your childhood while you still can— even if you’re famous, the university exam is just a bundle of stress and deadlines.”
She bit her tongue to prevent her nonsensical words, but I’ve studied for it before! because that didn’t make any sense at all. She was only eight, almost nine, and no matter how vivid and creative her dreams were, they were not the truth.
One day she woke up to an explosive argument between her parents, and the noise of glass being thrown downstairs as she laid perfectly still in her bed, eyes focused on the digital clock glowing at her bedside. They yelled and they screamed and her mother cried, and Jiayi heard them mention the great-uncle that she was never allowed to meet. That was fine, though. From the exaggerated frowns and silence whenever his name was brought up, it was likely the man was a criminal, and she didn’t want to meet him unless she could spit on his face.
(She didn’t know where that emotion came from, either.)
As she watched the numbers on her clock change, Liu Jiayi felt an inexplicable sense of loss that had nothing to do with her screaming parents downstairs.
What day was it? Wasn’t she supposed to… be somewhere else?
—
When Liu Jiayi was nine years old, on one cold spring morning with snow still on the ground and while waiting for her cue to enter a variety show promoting her latest movie, she remembered.
She collapsed to her knees with blank eyes, ruining the elaborate brand dress that the wardrobing team had fitted her into.
She remembered being thrown into a muddy lake to catch fish as an infant, the world dark around her as she raged against the waters that drowned both her sister and mother. She remembered the large hands of her father when he was angry, and his breath smelling of alcohol. She remembered learning places to hide in the dark against his violence, and then being lured out from her hiding spots by the sweet voice of her brother before their father started beating her again.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Liu Huai’s voice was tearful every time it happened, his hands shaking as he bandaged her wounds, “I’ll get us out of here. Please bear with it, Jiayi, your brother won’t let this happen again!”
She remembered it happening again and again, until she was numb and understood he was nothing more than a liar, before he finally bundled her into his arms one night and they left that dark home. She remembered briefly allowing herself to hope once more until he dumped her in front of an orphanage with tearful words, making excuses about how she would be happier there until he could find a way to support the both of them.
After that, she remembered the Game.
She remembered feeling a vicious satisfaction in finding the first place in her short lifetime where she was finally in control. Where her blindness, her frailness, and her age didn’t matter so long as she could solve the game to survive. In the Game, she was a queen while peasants squabble for her attention. In the Game… Liu Jiayi felt like a god. She could accumulate points, accumulate power, and then kill the man who dared call himself her father.
She remembered the King’s Crown guild that lured her in using her only weakness: her brother.
She remembered Hearts.
“You must remember, little witch,” the beautiful redheaded woman with fiercely purple eyes said with an enigmatic smile, “to never trust a man. He will always use and deceive you, because he is nothing but a liar. You are a little witch, and you will learn to deceive and use them in return.”
Liu Jiayi was eight years old when she rose to the top of the Game as the mysterious Little Witch, both a poisoner and a healer.
She was eight years old when Liu Huai died in the Game to save her.
Liu Huai, who discovered her deceptive nature, whose form had been twisted by the Game, who was covered in blood with both arms ripped off, could only apologise to her in the end.
“You are the world’s best sister, Jiayi.”
“But… I’m not the best brother in the world. I’m too stupid. So, I will entrust you to Bai Liu. He’s also very smart and will understand you.”
“You’ve been working hard to protect me, Jiayi.”
She remembered…
Bai Liu.
The man with a cold expression and black eyes that reflected nothing. A man who used and deceived people exactly like how Hearts warned her against, whose greed showed even against his cold exterior. He used and manipulated people to win games, and bartered for their souls with a false smile.
The man who stole her from King’s Crown and the orphanage, who bought her soul with several discounted red bean cakes and then gave her a choice and a loving family who would not restrict her movements.
He’s the devil, the devil! Liu Jiayi would gripe and complain to the other people who had been similarly duped by Bai Liu. She was nine years old and tearing up the lounge of the new Wandering Circus guild, frustrated to tears by the men on her new team who couldn’t even figure out how to braid a little girl’s hair. While she was glad they didn’t treat her like an ignorant child, she was still only nine years old and needed a bare minimum of care!
And then Bai Liu walked into the room and fixed her hair before she could say what was wrong.
He would understand her actions in games before she could explain them, and she could interpret his thoughts to the others without him needing to be there. It should be strange, Liu Jiayi once thought, for a nine year old blind girl and a twenty-four year old laid-off office worker to understand each other on that level.
But it wasn’t strange for a little witch and the devil to understand each other.
Liu Jiayi knew she was smart. Working alongside adult men, she knew she was a genius whose only drawback was her lack of experience. She spent months training under Hearts, one of the most brilliant strategists in the Game.
But Bai Liu’s brilliance was… unprecedented. His plans were a mixture of instinct and manipulation, his strategies entirely out-of-the-box thinking. Bai Liu had a handle on the Game the moment he stopped into one, before any clues and hints were ever given.
If Liu Jiayi was a genius, then Bai Liu was born to win the Game. She studied all his games, analysing every decision he made and action he took. Liu Jiayi couldn’t help herself— for all that Bai Liu presented himself as a villainous character, his games told a different story.
He always managed to save more people than should be possible.
[Pass me tactician rights] Liu Jiayi messaged in a League game where she had been separated from the rest of the team.
By all rights, Bai Liu was their team tactician. He had never failed in getting the results he wanted in a game, whether it was a win or loss. He kept everyone alive. He was with the rest of the team, and it was only Jiayi who had been separated from them. He would win them the championships and get a wish granted. He was the one always in control.
Within seconds, the system notification informed Jiayi that she was now the assigned tactician of Wandering Circus.
In response, her grin was a wild, unfettered thing.
No matter what happened, Liu Jiayi was going to secure the win for them.
—
Liu Jiayi is nine years old when she bleeds out on a cold spaceship, her mind whirling at the series of events that lead her to that moment.
She should have known something was wrong the moment their team met up. She had been overconfident, too sure in their series of wins. She should have known when Bai Liu was too quiet, too still while they discussed their battle plan. He didn’t express much, but to her sharp eyes she was used to seeing him cocky, used to seeing his exasperation when the rest of the team couldn’t follow along his thought process.
Yet he had been terrifyingly still.
Hindsight brought along understanding: it was the first time, the only time, Liu Jiayi had ever seen Bai Liu scared.
He didn’t fear ghosts or monsters, nor curses or murderers targeting him. She had seen him calmly plot against a cannibal who promised to eat him, and scheme against a sharpshooter that had him within the crosshairs. She had seen Bai Liu injured, maimed, tortured, and on the brink of death— yet his reactions had always been one of minor annoyance rather than fear or panic.
The only time she had ever seen Bai Liu react emotionally to anything had been with Spades, but that made sense since Spades was his boyfriend.
Did he know? Jiayi wondered in her dimming thoughts. Did he foresee this outcome?
She should have stopped him the moment he started acting strange. She was their secondary tactician, after all, and she understood his thoughts the best.
Already, the bodies of Mu Sicheng and Mu Ke had disappeared, their souls shattered by the opponent team’s skill. Liu Jiayi knew she was next, she could feel the burning within the deepest part of her even as her eyes stayed on the unconscious figure within Tang Erda’s arms, skin slowly turning to stone as a physical manifestation of a stolen soul.
Bai Liu was supposed to be the devil. The devil wasn’t supposed to have a soul. She would have joked about it, but seeing him now, Jiayi only felt fear. If Bai Liu had a soul, then that meant it could be shattered as well by the opponent team if she didn’t take care of this situation right now.
She hadn’t been able to save Liu Huai.
She couldn’t save the rest of her team.
Liu Jiayi could log out and survive. The league wasn’t that important, and even if all of Wandering Circus died, she was talented enough that any guild would want her. She had a future.
But Bai Liu was unconscious with his soul stolen. He wouldn’t be able to log out, and Tang Erda would never leave the tactician behind. If Jiayi logged out now, she would be the only one to survive, if her soul remained intact enough to allow her to leave the game.
If she stayed, she would die. Not only die, but her soul would be shattered, unable to be revived even if their guild won the league. If she stayed, she could hold down the other team’s sharpshooter and buy Tang Erda a few precious seconds to save Bai Liu.
Liu Jiayi was a genius nine year old girl with a bright future ahead of her, but… she was so, so scared of the people she loved dying because of her.
She wondered how Bai Liu would feel when he woke again, when he discovered that he lost the souls of three of his team— after all, they had all sold their souls to him, and rather than abuse the power he had over them, he had kept their souls safe this entire time.
Would he cry for them? Jiayi couldn’t imagine it.
But she couldn’t fix what already happened— all she could do was prevent a total team wipe. She wanted Bai Liu to wake up again, to grieve, to survive.
(“Jiayi,” Hearts intoned as she calmly and methodically shuffled a stack of long cards. “Have you ever played Werewolf? As participants of the Game, we need to be educated in all forms of games. Your skills are very reminiscent of the Witch card in this game, with the ability to either heal or poison each turn.”
She held up a long card with the depiction of a black clad witch, her red lips pulling up into a smile. “It’s a very powerful card.”
“I’ve never played.” Jiayi responded, eying the card. “But I’ve heard of the rules. A person is killed each night, right? And you’re supposed to find the killers?”
“Unless you are a werewolf, yes,” Hearts confirmed. “In this game, death is inevitable. One death a night, maybe more. But the Witch has the ability to reverse that. If they choose the right action, then they can create nights of peace. Like Christmas Eve on a battlefield.
“Little Witch, you must learn to deduce what will happen in a game. Only then can you create nights of peace and pass the games unscathed.”)
“I,” Liu Jiayi spat out a mouthful of blood and clung onto Daniel to prevent him from going after the rest of her team, even as the man attempted to aim at her remaining teammates with his soul-shattering gun. “--Am a Little Witch, and I declare— tonight is Christmas Eve!”
Even if her soul shattered, she would buy the time for the rest of her team to survive.
In the distance, she could see the blurry figure of Tang Erda draw his gun and aim it at her, intending on forcing her out of the game before her soul was completely destroyed.
No, she sputtered in her mind, body now too uncooperative to speak, don’t. It’s already too late. Just run!
The sound of a gunshot rang out before her world faded away entirely.
—
Liu Jiayi is nine years old when she bursts into tears in the filming studio, shocking the adults around her before she suddenly stood up and ran out into the streets, too fast to be caught.
In this lifetime, she didn’t have an abusive father and cowardly brother, but two loving parents and a variety of doting extended family. Liu Huai is alive and well, this time her cousin studying in a prestigious university hours away. She wasn’t blind, and had never been desperate enough or filled with enough hate to be drawn into the Game.
The winner of the League, Jiayi knew, would be granted a wish. But that wish had limits, and while it could revive a person normally, even a wish from god couldn’t reconstruct a shattered soul.
Bai Liu did it, Liu Jiayi thought as she raced through the streets with tears blurring her vision, Bai Liu won!
Her dreams always hinted at a different life, but not enough for her to take it seriously. For her to suddenly remember everything in a landslide, something must have happened!
She hailed a taxi and shoved a fistful of money at the driver, voice shaking as she told him the address. The old man startled, looking like he wanted to ask where her parents were, before eventually turning and driving to the destination while Jiayi sobbed in the back seat.
When she got out of the taxi in front of the modest house, her tears had dried and she was once again composed. Loitering in the tiny yard were three men who were anxiously talking to each other and checking their phones.
The first one to look up and notice her as she approached was Mu Sicheng, whose scowling expression switched to elation.
“Liu Jiayi!” He howled and then ran for her only to lift her entirely off the ground and twirl her in two circles before hugging her close until she smacked at him for attempting to suffocate her. “You’re here too!”
Jiayi turned her attention to the other two as Mu Sicheng babbled incoherently at her. “I take it he isn’t here, then?”
Mu Ke, dressed as if he had just escaped a high-class party and looking healthier than he ever had in his past life (just like how her own blindness was cured, she supposed), pushed up his glasses and said, “His phone number doesn’t connect. It’s possible that he’s only just returned and hasn’t had the time to procure a phone yet…”
“Then why are we all standing in front of his house?” Jiayi questioned, turning her narrowed gaze to Tang Erda. Mu Ke had always been one to try and decipher Bai Liu’s thoughts, but he could never do so to the extent that Jiayi so easily managed to. His theory was sound, but if that was the case, then Tang Erda wouldn’t be standing here with them.
The tall and grizzled man hesitated before admitting, “It’s Spades’s house. He works at the Heretics Authority and bought this place years ago, but I never assumed…”
“Spades definitely knows something more than us, that jerk!” Mu Sicheng declared. “He’s not answering his phone, either! He’s hiding Bai Liu from us!”
Their reactions were ridiculous. If this was Spades’s house, and Bai Liu was back, then they would have to come back here eventually. Jiayi was willing to wait it out. They had the time to wait it out now.
Jiayi shimmied out of Mu Sicheng’s embrace and pulled out her phone, tapping into the maps app.
“I can find them,” she said confidently.
She could. She always knew what Bai Liu was thinking.
—
It was snowing when Liu Jiayi ran behind her teammates toward the closest hot pot restaurant, and she panted as she heard Mu Sicheng yell, and Mu Ke speak in a calmer manner. While Tang Erda attempted to say something as well, Jiayi bent and gathered the fresh snow into as compact a ball as her red hands could manage, and then wound herself up to throw as hard as possible, putting all her rage and grief and virulent emotions into her throw as the snowball hit Bai Liu hard in the head.
Finally.
Liu Jiayi had memories of two timelines. In this timeline, she had a loving family and adoring fans, but in the previous timeline, she sold her soul to a man in exchange for discounted red bean cakes.
“Bai Liu!” Liu Jiayi hollered as loudly as she could manage, pointing an accusing finger as the snow covered man. She choked back tears and demanded, “Buy me a lifetime supply of red bean cakes!”
Her previous timeline’s family was finally back together.
Fandom: I Became a God in a Horror Game
Character/Pairing(s): Liu Jiayi, Liu Huai, Hearts, Bai Liu
Rating: PG-13
Warning: canonical descriptions of violence, canonical character death
Summary: Liu Jiayi is nine years old with memories of two timelines. In one life, she is a beloved child star with a loving family and doting fans. In another life, she is a little witch with a history of pain and blood, and the power to decide the fates of those around her.
Liu Jiayi was used to adults around her who would pull at her cheeks and exclaim proudly, a natural genius, just like her mother! She would merely smile placidly and curtsy when they asked it of her, playing up the image of a sweet and gentle little girl to a cheering audience. Perhaps that was why it felt so natural for her to go into acting, to read a role and pretend in a way that would satisfy the people around her.
Her life felt easy and a bit hollow. With her level of intelligence, school was a matter that only stayed on the back of her mind. Learning was still a chore, but she could understand most subjects after it was explained to her just once. She would beat old men in the park at weiqi in less than three dozen moves, and trounced the chess tutor her mother got for her within her first ten games.
“Ah, JiaJia,” her mother would sigh over her once the tutor left with tears in their ears, “I’ve named you too aptly, haven’t I? There are some things in life that… well, I suppose there’s still time for you to learn life lessons. How would you like to learn martial arts instead?”
So Liu Jiayi found herself running hard against boys much bigger and older than her, and climbing with her thin arms as if death itself was chasing her. She learned the proper way to fall and how to throw a punch, but was eventually pulled from classes when the instructors had to break apart a fight between her and a teenage boy who had been screaming and attempting to pry her teeth from his bleeding arm after he hit her too hard in the head accidentally.
Sometimes, Jiayi didn’t understand her own reactions. She felt like a tiger prowling within a tiny enclosure, like there were dangers at every corner if she let her guard down for just one second—
Her life was good. Soft. She had her mother and then a stepfather who adored her, and then agents who had her best interests at heart. She even had a cousin who doted on her, who would bring her small gifts at family gatherings and laughed when she followed him around with large eyes and a heart that wanted to explode from her chest.
(Liu Huai was a young man who would pull Jiayi from the room whenever the adults got a little too quiet, offering to take her out for ice cream and holding her hand once they left the house and the shouting behind closed doors started. Liu Jiayi would stare at him in wonder each time, not understanding the bittersweet twist of her heart at seeing him. She constantly pushed at him to see what would make him mad, but also never wanted to let go of his hand during those days.)
When she first debuted under the spotlight at seven years old, there had been an entire team ready to explain some of the harder words on the script to her and help her adjust to the presence of so many strangers, but Jiayi hadn’t needed any help. She read her lines and stepped out to deliver a performance that fumbled the other actors enough they needed a second take to get through the scene.
At the end of the day, she curtsied to the film crew as she was used to, and the producer, a beautifully androgynous figure with striking purple eyes, laughed heartily at her performance.
Within a year, her name was well known in every household, and she withdrew from her school after her classmates became too intimidated to talk to her. Private tutors suited her much better, anyway, and it wasn’t as if she had friends before her career. Children her age had always found her creepy.
“Are you sure you’re okay with that?” Liu Huai asked her worriedly, hands smoothing down her hair as Jiayi ate her ice cream, intentionally smearing a bit on her cheeks for a more childish mannerism. She understood the behaviour expected from her, and just like her roles under the spotlight, even her private life was one calculated act after another. “I know you’re smart, but school teaches children how to socialise as well…”
“I could go to your school,” Liu Jiayi suggested nonchalantly, scooting closer to him. “I could make friends with your friends.”
Liu Huai paused, and then laughed. “Your mother would kill me! Besides, you’re too smart to skip all those grades, Jiayi. Enjoy your childhood while you still can— even if you’re famous, the university exam is just a bundle of stress and deadlines.”
She bit her tongue to prevent her nonsensical words, but I’ve studied for it before! because that didn’t make any sense at all. She was only eight, almost nine, and no matter how vivid and creative her dreams were, they were not the truth.
One day she woke up to an explosive argument between her parents, and the noise of glass being thrown downstairs as she laid perfectly still in her bed, eyes focused on the digital clock glowing at her bedside. They yelled and they screamed and her mother cried, and Jiayi heard them mention the great-uncle that she was never allowed to meet. That was fine, though. From the exaggerated frowns and silence whenever his name was brought up, it was likely the man was a criminal, and she didn’t want to meet him unless she could spit on his face.
(She didn’t know where that emotion came from, either.)
As she watched the numbers on her clock change, Liu Jiayi felt an inexplicable sense of loss that had nothing to do with her screaming parents downstairs.
What day was it? Wasn’t she supposed to… be somewhere else?
—
When Liu Jiayi was nine years old, on one cold spring morning with snow still on the ground and while waiting for her cue to enter a variety show promoting her latest movie, she remembered.
She collapsed to her knees with blank eyes, ruining the elaborate brand dress that the wardrobing team had fitted her into.
She remembered being thrown into a muddy lake to catch fish as an infant, the world dark around her as she raged against the waters that drowned both her sister and mother. She remembered the large hands of her father when he was angry, and his breath smelling of alcohol. She remembered learning places to hide in the dark against his violence, and then being lured out from her hiding spots by the sweet voice of her brother before their father started beating her again.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Liu Huai’s voice was tearful every time it happened, his hands shaking as he bandaged her wounds, “I’ll get us out of here. Please bear with it, Jiayi, your brother won’t let this happen again!”
She remembered it happening again and again, until she was numb and understood he was nothing more than a liar, before he finally bundled her into his arms one night and they left that dark home. She remembered briefly allowing herself to hope once more until he dumped her in front of an orphanage with tearful words, making excuses about how she would be happier there until he could find a way to support the both of them.
After that, she remembered the Game.
She remembered feeling a vicious satisfaction in finding the first place in her short lifetime where she was finally in control. Where her blindness, her frailness, and her age didn’t matter so long as she could solve the game to survive. In the Game, she was a queen while peasants squabble for her attention. In the Game… Liu Jiayi felt like a god. She could accumulate points, accumulate power, and then kill the man who dared call himself her father.
She remembered the King’s Crown guild that lured her in using her only weakness: her brother.
She remembered Hearts.
“You must remember, little witch,” the beautiful redheaded woman with fiercely purple eyes said with an enigmatic smile, “to never trust a man. He will always use and deceive you, because he is nothing but a liar. You are a little witch, and you will learn to deceive and use them in return.”
Liu Jiayi was eight years old when she rose to the top of the Game as the mysterious Little Witch, both a poisoner and a healer.
She was eight years old when Liu Huai died in the Game to save her.
Liu Huai, who discovered her deceptive nature, whose form had been twisted by the Game, who was covered in blood with both arms ripped off, could only apologise to her in the end.
“You are the world’s best sister, Jiayi.”
“But… I’m not the best brother in the world. I’m too stupid. So, I will entrust you to Bai Liu. He’s also very smart and will understand you.”
“You’ve been working hard to protect me, Jiayi.”
She remembered…
Bai Liu.
The man with a cold expression and black eyes that reflected nothing. A man who used and deceived people exactly like how Hearts warned her against, whose greed showed even against his cold exterior. He used and manipulated people to win games, and bartered for their souls with a false smile.
The man who stole her from King’s Crown and the orphanage, who bought her soul with several discounted red bean cakes and then gave her a choice and a loving family who would not restrict her movements.
He’s the devil, the devil! Liu Jiayi would gripe and complain to the other people who had been similarly duped by Bai Liu. She was nine years old and tearing up the lounge of the new Wandering Circus guild, frustrated to tears by the men on her new team who couldn’t even figure out how to braid a little girl’s hair. While she was glad they didn’t treat her like an ignorant child, she was still only nine years old and needed a bare minimum of care!
And then Bai Liu walked into the room and fixed her hair before she could say what was wrong.
He would understand her actions in games before she could explain them, and she could interpret his thoughts to the others without him needing to be there. It should be strange, Liu Jiayi once thought, for a nine year old blind girl and a twenty-four year old laid-off office worker to understand each other on that level.
But it wasn’t strange for a little witch and the devil to understand each other.
Liu Jiayi knew she was smart. Working alongside adult men, she knew she was a genius whose only drawback was her lack of experience. She spent months training under Hearts, one of the most brilliant strategists in the Game.
But Bai Liu’s brilliance was… unprecedented. His plans were a mixture of instinct and manipulation, his strategies entirely out-of-the-box thinking. Bai Liu had a handle on the Game the moment he stopped into one, before any clues and hints were ever given.
If Liu Jiayi was a genius, then Bai Liu was born to win the Game. She studied all his games, analysing every decision he made and action he took. Liu Jiayi couldn’t help herself— for all that Bai Liu presented himself as a villainous character, his games told a different story.
He always managed to save more people than should be possible.
[Pass me tactician rights] Liu Jiayi messaged in a League game where she had been separated from the rest of the team.
By all rights, Bai Liu was their team tactician. He had never failed in getting the results he wanted in a game, whether it was a win or loss. He kept everyone alive. He was with the rest of the team, and it was only Jiayi who had been separated from them. He would win them the championships and get a wish granted. He was the one always in control.
Within seconds, the system notification informed Jiayi that she was now the assigned tactician of Wandering Circus.
In response, her grin was a wild, unfettered thing.
No matter what happened, Liu Jiayi was going to secure the win for them.
—
Liu Jiayi is nine years old when she bleeds out on a cold spaceship, her mind whirling at the series of events that lead her to that moment.
She should have known something was wrong the moment their team met up. She had been overconfident, too sure in their series of wins. She should have known when Bai Liu was too quiet, too still while they discussed their battle plan. He didn’t express much, but to her sharp eyes she was used to seeing him cocky, used to seeing his exasperation when the rest of the team couldn’t follow along his thought process.
Yet he had been terrifyingly still.
Hindsight brought along understanding: it was the first time, the only time, Liu Jiayi had ever seen Bai Liu scared.
He didn’t fear ghosts or monsters, nor curses or murderers targeting him. She had seen him calmly plot against a cannibal who promised to eat him, and scheme against a sharpshooter that had him within the crosshairs. She had seen Bai Liu injured, maimed, tortured, and on the brink of death— yet his reactions had always been one of minor annoyance rather than fear or panic.
The only time she had ever seen Bai Liu react emotionally to anything had been with Spades, but that made sense since Spades was his boyfriend.
Did he know? Jiayi wondered in her dimming thoughts. Did he foresee this outcome?
She should have stopped him the moment he started acting strange. She was their secondary tactician, after all, and she understood his thoughts the best.
Already, the bodies of Mu Sicheng and Mu Ke had disappeared, their souls shattered by the opponent team’s skill. Liu Jiayi knew she was next, she could feel the burning within the deepest part of her even as her eyes stayed on the unconscious figure within Tang Erda’s arms, skin slowly turning to stone as a physical manifestation of a stolen soul.
Bai Liu was supposed to be the devil. The devil wasn’t supposed to have a soul. She would have joked about it, but seeing him now, Jiayi only felt fear. If Bai Liu had a soul, then that meant it could be shattered as well by the opponent team if she didn’t take care of this situation right now.
She hadn’t been able to save Liu Huai.
She couldn’t save the rest of her team.
Liu Jiayi could log out and survive. The league wasn’t that important, and even if all of Wandering Circus died, she was talented enough that any guild would want her. She had a future.
But Bai Liu was unconscious with his soul stolen. He wouldn’t be able to log out, and Tang Erda would never leave the tactician behind. If Jiayi logged out now, she would be the only one to survive, if her soul remained intact enough to allow her to leave the game.
If she stayed, she would die. Not only die, but her soul would be shattered, unable to be revived even if their guild won the league. If she stayed, she could hold down the other team’s sharpshooter and buy Tang Erda a few precious seconds to save Bai Liu.
Liu Jiayi was a genius nine year old girl with a bright future ahead of her, but… she was so, so scared of the people she loved dying because of her.
She wondered how Bai Liu would feel when he woke again, when he discovered that he lost the souls of three of his team— after all, they had all sold their souls to him, and rather than abuse the power he had over them, he had kept their souls safe this entire time.
Would he cry for them? Jiayi couldn’t imagine it.
But she couldn’t fix what already happened— all she could do was prevent a total team wipe. She wanted Bai Liu to wake up again, to grieve, to survive.
(“Jiayi,” Hearts intoned as she calmly and methodically shuffled a stack of long cards. “Have you ever played Werewolf? As participants of the Game, we need to be educated in all forms of games. Your skills are very reminiscent of the Witch card in this game, with the ability to either heal or poison each turn.”
She held up a long card with the depiction of a black clad witch, her red lips pulling up into a smile. “It’s a very powerful card.”
“I’ve never played.” Jiayi responded, eying the card. “But I’ve heard of the rules. A person is killed each night, right? And you’re supposed to find the killers?”
“Unless you are a werewolf, yes,” Hearts confirmed. “In this game, death is inevitable. One death a night, maybe more. But the Witch has the ability to reverse that. If they choose the right action, then they can create nights of peace. Like Christmas Eve on a battlefield.
“Little Witch, you must learn to deduce what will happen in a game. Only then can you create nights of peace and pass the games unscathed.”)
“I,” Liu Jiayi spat out a mouthful of blood and clung onto Daniel to prevent him from going after the rest of her team, even as the man attempted to aim at her remaining teammates with his soul-shattering gun. “--Am a Little Witch, and I declare— tonight is Christmas Eve!”
Even if her soul shattered, she would buy the time for the rest of her team to survive.
In the distance, she could see the blurry figure of Tang Erda draw his gun and aim it at her, intending on forcing her out of the game before her soul was completely destroyed.
No, she sputtered in her mind, body now too uncooperative to speak, don’t. It’s already too late. Just run!
The sound of a gunshot rang out before her world faded away entirely.
—
Liu Jiayi is nine years old when she bursts into tears in the filming studio, shocking the adults around her before she suddenly stood up and ran out into the streets, too fast to be caught.
In this lifetime, she didn’t have an abusive father and cowardly brother, but two loving parents and a variety of doting extended family. Liu Huai is alive and well, this time her cousin studying in a prestigious university hours away. She wasn’t blind, and had never been desperate enough or filled with enough hate to be drawn into the Game.
The winner of the League, Jiayi knew, would be granted a wish. But that wish had limits, and while it could revive a person normally, even a wish from god couldn’t reconstruct a shattered soul.
Bai Liu did it, Liu Jiayi thought as she raced through the streets with tears blurring her vision, Bai Liu won!
Her dreams always hinted at a different life, but not enough for her to take it seriously. For her to suddenly remember everything in a landslide, something must have happened!
She hailed a taxi and shoved a fistful of money at the driver, voice shaking as she told him the address. The old man startled, looking like he wanted to ask where her parents were, before eventually turning and driving to the destination while Jiayi sobbed in the back seat.
When she got out of the taxi in front of the modest house, her tears had dried and she was once again composed. Loitering in the tiny yard were three men who were anxiously talking to each other and checking their phones.
The first one to look up and notice her as she approached was Mu Sicheng, whose scowling expression switched to elation.
“Liu Jiayi!” He howled and then ran for her only to lift her entirely off the ground and twirl her in two circles before hugging her close until she smacked at him for attempting to suffocate her. “You’re here too!”
Jiayi turned her attention to the other two as Mu Sicheng babbled incoherently at her. “I take it he isn’t here, then?”
Mu Ke, dressed as if he had just escaped a high-class party and looking healthier than he ever had in his past life (just like how her own blindness was cured, she supposed), pushed up his glasses and said, “His phone number doesn’t connect. It’s possible that he’s only just returned and hasn’t had the time to procure a phone yet…”
“Then why are we all standing in front of his house?” Jiayi questioned, turning her narrowed gaze to Tang Erda. Mu Ke had always been one to try and decipher Bai Liu’s thoughts, but he could never do so to the extent that Jiayi so easily managed to. His theory was sound, but if that was the case, then Tang Erda wouldn’t be standing here with them.
The tall and grizzled man hesitated before admitting, “It’s Spades’s house. He works at the Heretics Authority and bought this place years ago, but I never assumed…”
“Spades definitely knows something more than us, that jerk!” Mu Sicheng declared. “He’s not answering his phone, either! He’s hiding Bai Liu from us!”
Their reactions were ridiculous. If this was Spades’s house, and Bai Liu was back, then they would have to come back here eventually. Jiayi was willing to wait it out. They had the time to wait it out now.
Jiayi shimmied out of Mu Sicheng’s embrace and pulled out her phone, tapping into the maps app.
“I can find them,” she said confidently.
She could. She always knew what Bai Liu was thinking.
—
It was snowing when Liu Jiayi ran behind her teammates toward the closest hot pot restaurant, and she panted as she heard Mu Sicheng yell, and Mu Ke speak in a calmer manner. While Tang Erda attempted to say something as well, Jiayi bent and gathered the fresh snow into as compact a ball as her red hands could manage, and then wound herself up to throw as hard as possible, putting all her rage and grief and virulent emotions into her throw as the snowball hit Bai Liu hard in the head.
Finally.
Liu Jiayi had memories of two timelines. In this timeline, she had a loving family and adoring fans, but in the previous timeline, she sold her soul to a man in exchange for discounted red bean cakes.
“Bai Liu!” Liu Jiayi hollered as loudly as she could manage, pointing an accusing finger as the snow covered man. She choked back tears and demanded, “Buy me a lifetime supply of red bean cakes!”
Her previous timeline’s family was finally back together.