[Replay System Status: Unstable]
[Existence State: Lia × Critical]
[Permission: Self-Recording Mechanism · Initializing]
[Viewer Count: 1]
The city flickered between darkness and data streams.
Her outline glitched at the edges, distorted like a pixelated ghost—reality itself seemed to reject her.
The Replay system was trying to revoke her, just as it once did to E.
But this time, something had changed.
—She was not alone.
Following the cliffhanger from the last chapter, the cameraman dropped the line that made her nearly stop breathing:
"E tried too."
The wind still scraped across her skin like thin ice.
She turned to face him, eyes steady.
"How do you know?"
"I was with her," he said quietly. "Side camera. I recorded her last minute before she disappeared."
"I caught the full revocation... but no one remembered."
"Except you?" she whispered.
He nodded.
"It's not me who remembered. It was the footage.
And you're the one who played it."
Lia suddenly understood.
E had already activated the "self-recording mechanism."
But because no one watched, it didn't count.
The system declared: No witnesses, no existence.
Replay's backend flashed:
[Observation Tag E: Memory fragments syncing]
[Lia = Joint Successor × Perspective Holder]
[System Notice: Self-Recording Mechanism · Dual Activation]
[Reality Override: Preparing…]
—This wasn't just her fight.
It was the convergence of two generations of recorders.
She exhaled slowly, setting her phone beside the camera, syncing both perspectives.
"It's not about being seen anymore.
It's about recording—on purpose."
She turned the lens toward the core of Replay's main server—
A data heart hidden inside the central city tower.
The door had never been open to the public.
She was going to inject her recording into the system's core algorithm layer.
Not to destroy it, but to rewrite it—to write herself into its vision before it could erase her.
System alert blared:
[You are attempting to modify the Reality Validity Index distribution.]
[This action is irreversible × You may lose all read/write access to "existence."]
[Proceed?]
She didn't hesitate.
The moment she hit "Yes," the side cam glitched once, and the main server entered a brief vacuum.
Then she spoke—voice steady, slicing through the datastream:
"I'm not here to prove I exist.
I'm here to prove that you can't define who doesn't."
Cut to Replay's inner archives:
Old data auto-reactivated.
· The lost footage of Case #13—the missing child.
· Censored protest clips.
· Disaster records suppressed for being "emotionally destabilizing."
· Faces marked "insufficient validity" by the system.
Lia manually pushed them into the public feed.
Replay system update:
[Reality Override: In Progress]
[Joint Validation Triggered: Lia × E × Lost Node Cluster]
[Average Viewer Emotion Index: 3.96 / 4.0]
[Viewers: 1 → 3 → 11 → 57…]
It started with the one who never left—the cameraman.
Then came a dark web rebroadcaster.
A runaway radio host.
Others who, like Lia, had once doubted this system—the Lost.
[Existence Status: Rebuilding]
Replay's public feeds lit up with fragments of memory:
"Do you remember E?"
"I think I saw that child's story once."
"She's the reason we remember again."
"This version of reality—I accept it."
The Reality Validity Index spiked—
[RVI: Stability Threshold Broken]
[Data Confirmed: Case #13 × Valid × Irreversible]
[Tag Applied: Recorder Lia × Perspective Chain × Perma-Mode]
[Replay System Structure: Rebuilding…]
She stood before the server, her body now nearly transparent.
She knew she could no longer exist "fully" within human reality.
But she left behind something stronger—her record.
Before the system's final prompt, she whispered:
"Let me be their echo."
"If someone's watching—remember us."
The screen faded to black.
[Viewer Count: 1]
Replay System: Rebooting...
[Perspective: Recorder #0001]
[Former ID: E × Lia × Joint Validator]
[Access Level: Override Holder × Self-Recording Bearer]
[Note: Emotional Resonance Detected × Can Break Validity Loops × Potential System Reconstructor]
--End
---
Chapter 12 Mini Skit
[System: Attempting to revoke Lia…]
[Lia status: Pixelated girl on the edge of existence]
[Viewers: 1 (Loyal Side Cam Bro online)]
Suddenly, the cameraman drops a bomb:
"E tried too."
Lia has stopped breathing.
"How do you know?"
"I was there. Filming her last minute."
"No one remembered."
"But the footage did. And you played it."
Lia gets it: No one watches = System says it didn't happen.
So she does something bold:
Live stream + Side cam = Double record power!
"I'll write myself into the system's eyes. Make it remember me."