Both Of Us Are Supposed To Be Dead

A/N: hihi i am the creator of this site! the site is a prototype/proof of concept. contact me at @greenstick1234 on twitter or u/foodiepower on reddit! my writing below: --- On Daien Zheng's monitor, a humanoid figure attempts to walk across a flat surface. It fails. Its legs buckle. Its torso pitches forward. It faceplants into the simulated ground, kissing the dirt-coloured pixels again and again with silent, repeating tenacity. The animation loops. The figure stands. The figure falls. The figure stands. The figure falls. This has been happening for ten hours; Daien only checks on it periodically to ensure it is making some improvement. "Don't say it," Daien says. "Don't you dare." "But—" "Parisa." "He just looks so sad! Do you honestly feel nothing?" Daien watches the little stickman fall over, again and again. The counter goes two thousand three hundred thirty-three, then two thousand three hundred thirty-four, then two thousand three hundred thirty-five, then... "Just look, he's trying so hard!" Daien turns to her acquaintance(?) of twenty years and gives her a dead stare. "Why should I? It's literally just a string of zeros and ones." "You're no fun." "I'm not as easily entertained as your toddler, Parisa." The figure is standing again. It will fall again. This is the nature of reinforcement learning. "What do you want me to say?" Daien asks. "Some sort of Sisyphus metaphor?" "Well, it might be marginally more meaningful than the game we're making. I mean, have you actually read the source material? I can physically feel my brain cells shrivelling." "I read the mandatory AI summary assigned by the boss." Courts of Flowers and Silk, brainchild of the daughter of the world's first trillionaire, spans five thousand, seven hundred and thirty-one chapters. The heroine, daughter of a minor official, is a classic "white lotus" character who instantly catches the tyrant emperor's eye and is forced into the treacherous imperial court. Every man loves her. This is not an exaggeration: the primary love interest, the cold crown prince, loves her; her childhood friend, the considerate grand marshal, loves her; the mysterious merchant loves her; the cunning strategist loves her; even the elderly eunuch probably loves her. They love her because she is kind, because she is pure, and because she looks very beautiful when she cries. She does approximately once every four chapters, always at a moment that makes someone else look bad. Every woman besides the heroine's loyal fangirl maid hates her. That is because every other woman exists solely to scheme against the heroine and then be publicly humiliated. The scheming consort gets exiled. The jealous princess gets disfigured. The ambitious noblewoman gets executed. The heroine weeps delicate tears at each of their downfalls and whispers I never wanted this, and the men love her even more for her merciful heart. "You—ugh!" Parisa nearly pulls her own hair out in frustration. "People like you are why we haven't had a decent adaptation in decades." "You're the one complaining about the source material..." "Well, at least the nepo baby wrote it herself! I respect her dedication to over five thousand chapters without ChatGPT. No AI could reach that level of contrivance. You know how that war criminal Cold Duke of the South dies? Eye strain! Eye strain! She's broken the Geneva Convention how many times and she gets offed by a—" "It's what the client wants." "The client is an eighteen-year-old nepo baby whose daddy could buy our entire company with pocket change. And she desperately needs an editor, in case that wasn't abundantly clear." Daien shrugs. "Just take the paycheck. It's not a bad project." "That's it? That's your entire philosophy?" Daien's voice is flat, recited, the verbal equivalent of a terms-and-conditions scroll. "XCorp offers competitive compensation, comprehensive benefits, and excellent retirement plans. The project utilizes cutting-edge world-model architecture in collaboration with a leading machine learning research lab, funded generously by a client with considerable financial assets. It's a valuable opportunity for cross-functional skill development." "...the hell? You sound like the recruitment brochure." "I wrote part of the recruitment brochure." "That's not the flex you think it is." The figure on the screen falls again. Daien's Slack chimes with a notification. The cooling system hums at a mildly irritating frequency. Parisa is quiet for a moment. This is unusual. Parisa is rarely quiet. Parisa emerged from the womb with opinions and has not stopped sharing them since. "What did I expect?" she says. "Always the perfect cog in the machine." Daien's fingers pause on the keyboard. "You know, Daien, I spent nearly two decades chasing after you." The words land strangely. Daien does not look up. She is suddenly very aware of the weight of her own hands. "Grades, math competitions, piano recitals... Remember Mrs. Huang's class?" She remembers. Parisa laughs, but it's not really a laugh. "You got a ninety-eight on the calculus final and I cried in the bathroom for the entire lunch break like some pathetic loser because I only got a ninety-six." Daien remembers the fluorescent lights of the bathroom, the sound of muffled sobbing through the stall door, the way she stood at the sink and washed her hands for a very long time because she did not know what else to do. She did not say anything then. She does not say anything now. "Even here," Parisa says. "I'm a junior dev. Just got back from maternity leave. You're, what, senior solutions architect?" "Technical strategy lead for the world model department—" "Holy sh—" "For another two weeks. Then I'm being moved back to engineering." "Seriously? Didn't HR offer you that sponsored MBA thing?" "Mm. Fully paid." "...and?" "I said I'd prefer to return to an engineering role." Silence. "I don't like talking to people," Daien says. "You've been talking to people for six months!" "Yes." Daien's expression does not change. "That's how I know I don't like it." Parisa opens her mouth, closes it, and shakes her head slowly. "You're insane. You know what I would do for that kind of offer? You're making me want to quit on the spot and move across the ocean." "Don't do that. Who else will I talk to then?" "Oh, I don't know, the brats trying to get coffee chats with you on LinkedIn, your mother, the people you're supposed to talk to in your current position!" Parisa sighs. She is looking at Daien with an expression that cannot quite be categorized. It is not resentment, exactly. It is something softer. Something worse. "Look. I got over the competition thing years ago. I have a kid now. A husband. A mortgage. But sometimes I look at you and I think... you won, right? You got the grades, the job, the salary. So why do you look like that?" "Like what?" "Like the little stick figure." "Rude." She doesn't mean it. "Are you happy?" Daien considers it. She considers the apartment she goes home to, with its blank walls and mostly empty refrigerator and IKEA furniture. She considers the gym membership she uses six times a week because it is her only hobby, the one thing that makes her feel like she exists in a body. She considers her parents' texts, unanswered. She considers the figure on the screen, falling and standing and falling again, optimizing for a reward function it does not understand. "Probably." She's not sad, at least. "Daien—" "Slacking off is very unlike you, Miss Zheng." The voice comes from behind them, nasal and smug in the way of middle management everywhere. "And Mrs. Shin. Aren't you from a different department?" Parisa slams her laptop shut and stands. "Apologies, sir. It won't happen again." "Do I look like I need lip service?" He is already looking past her, scanning the open office for other violations to catalogue. "Remember, quarterly reviews are coming soon. The bottom ten percent will be let go, no exceptions." Parisa grimaces, clearly dreading the upcoming unpaid overtime. The middle manager lingers for a moment, savouring the brief taste of authority, then moves on to terrorize another cluster of cubicles. "I should go," Parisa says. "Text me if you wanna grab lunch, or something." She looks mildly irritated, her default expression around Daien, like she's forcing something out between her teeth. Daien does not know if they are friends. It would be nice, maybe, if she'd had the insight to fail an exam or interview on purpose. +++ Daien clocks out at 8:42 PM, twelve minutes before the official end of her shift, because she has learned that no one monitors badge swipes on Thursdays. The elevator takes forty-five seconds to arrive. Daien spends this time staring at the motivational poster someone has hung next to the call button. It says INNOVATION in large letters, beneath a stock photo of a lightbulb. Someone has drawn a small, anatomically detailed middle finger on the lightbulb in ballpoint pen. The ride down is seventeen floors of silence and the faint smell of someone's reheated fish lunch. Daien watches the numbers descend and thinks about nothing in particular. She exits into the parking garage. She gets in her secondhand car and sits in the driver's seat, blinking slowly. Her phone buzzes. She looks at it. She should not look at it. She looks at it anyway. Dad: Daien your companys stocks did well today morning Dad: [link] Dad: Your mother asked me to ask you if youre still single Dad: [emoji] Dad: A you eating well i read that they put bad chemicals in restraunt food these days Dad: Pls eat more organic Dad: [photo] Dad: Pls read this article for quitting smoking tips your mother and i are worried about your lungs. Dad: You remember your 5th great uncle right he recently passed away from lung cancer may he rest in peace Dad: Daien when a you coming home to visit Dad: Pls call us sometime She scrolls through a wall of unread texts. She closes her phone. She opens it again and looks at her mother's contact instead. There is a single message. Mom: Please come home for Lunar New Year and grow your hair out. We are organizing a party and have confirmed the attendance of several excellent young men. How many times have we had this discussion? She types: Grandma has the same hairstyle. Her mother responds almost instantly. Mom: That is not the same. You know what I'm referring to. She types: How? Why? Mom: You're almost thirty. That friend of yours, the Shin girl, she has a son already. When will your father and I hold our grandchild? Absurdly, Daien laughs. Back in high school, she'd been strictly forbidden to get "distracted by boys." And now she gets this weekly scolding, as if she were still a teenager. When do tiger parents stop being tiger parents? Mom: Call us. She types: Busy with work. Will call Sunday. Daien puts the phone face-down on the passenger seat. She considers her options. A) Go to the gym. The gym is her one hobby, her single point of resistance against the slow heat death of her personality. She has workout clothes in her bag. She can lift heavy objects and put heavy objects down for an hour on autopilot. B) Go home. Read that novel, maybe. She should go to the gym. She starts the car and drives home. Her body has made the choice for her, routing her toward the path of least resistance. She passes by a convenience store and wonders if she needs to replenish her cigarettes. She parks, gets out, and walks in through the propped-open door. The fluorescent lights flicker. The store is almost empty. There is a man with a raised gun. No one has noticed her. Daien takes a second to note the following: the man is wearing a hoodie and cheap ski mask, talking to the cashier; the cashier is backing away with his hands raised; there is a heavily pregnant woman holding the hand of a sniffling, trembling little girl with her free hand in the air; there are bullet holes in the counter; there is no one else in the lot; the nearest police station is... maybe fifteen minutes? She silently walks out the door. This is the only rational choice. She achieved taekwondo black belt at thirteen for university applications and hasn't touched self-defence since. She's a software engineer with a gym membership and nicotine addiction and absolutely no plan against a goddamn gun. She quietly calls 911, reports the robbery, and gets in the car. She is going to go home. She is going to microwave something. She is going to stare at the ceiling and feel vaguely guilty about not going to the gym. She is going to text Parisa, maybe. Would sorry be weird to say? Probably. This is the plan. This is— She pulls back into the lot. She gets out of the car. Later, she will not be able to explain why. There is no heroic impulse, no surge of moral clarity. There is only the dull, tired thought that someone should probably do something, and the even duller realization that she is, technically, someone. The half-formed plan is to buy time, maybe. Stall until the cops show up. Make sure the cashier and the pregnant woman and the little girl don't get hurt. She walks through the door. She can hear the man screaming at the cashier to hand over the cash, she can hear the cashier scream back that they don't keep cash overnight so the manager had taken it all an hour ago. The man points the gun at the cashier's forehead and starts counting. Then, he sees her as she walks toward him. "Wh-wha—" His voice is cracking. He sounds young — sixteen, maybe seventeen. The gun trembles in his grip like he's never held one before. He probably hasn't. He looks more scared than she feels, which is saying something, because Daien feels exactly nothing right now. Her brain has entered the calm, empty state reserved for putting out fires during production outages. "Put the gun away," Daien says. "No one needs to get hurt." The kid shouts a few threats and curse words, gun firmly raised. Daien looks at his stance. His grip. The way his weight is distributed wrong, like he learned this from a YouTube video. She steps toward him and grabs the gun. Her hand closes around the barrel and she wrenches it sideways. The kid yelps and lets go because he was holding it wrong, and she throws the gun over her shoulder. "Go home. It's late, your parents will be worried." While she wonders if she should call the cops off, she looks over at the cashier and the pregnant woman and the little girl to check if they're okay. She realizes belatedly that the kid did not, in fact, go home, that he's pulled out a knife. Ah. Backup weapon. That's responsible. The knife buries itself into her back. She whirls around and punches the kid in the face; the knife pulls free and he crashes into a shelf and slumps down. She leans down to make sure he's still breathing. The pregnant woman runs over to her, shaking, the little girl clearly on the verge of tears behind her. "M-Miss, are you— are you—" the cashier stammers. Blood exits her body with an enthusiasm she finds personally offensive. Disgustingly, it gets all over her white button-up, which will be a pain to clean. There's more than expected. But it's okay. In movies people get stabbed all the time. They get stabbed, they wince, they put some pressure, they keep going. This is probably fine. It's just one knife. The blood is rushing through her ears; it doesn't even hurt. Adrenaline is one hell of a drug. "I'm fine," Daien says. "Are you alright?" She looks at the cashier, who has started sobbing. "I called 911 earlier. None of you are hurt, right?" The dirty floor is suddenly very close to her face. She does not remember deciding to lie down, but here she is, cheek against the ground, looking at chips and gum and soda from a dramatically low angle. The fluorescent lights are still flickering. Someone should really fix that. She can hear sirens, she thinks. They are getting closer. She should've gone to the gym. Goddamnit. She feels tired. She has been tired for a long time. "Ma'am? Ma'am, stay awake—" The pregnant woman is trying to tie her scarf around the wound. The scarf is soft, made of fine silk, with flower prints. Ha. Courts of Flowers and Silk. Of course that's where her brain goes, of course her last thoughts are about work— Daien closes her eyes. +++ Daien wakes up mildly annoyed. She doesn't know what she should be feeling, what a normal person should be feeling. Fear? Sorrow? Regret? In any case, she finds her head throbbing and her throat parched and her nose bleeding. Funny, you'd think that headaches would go away in the... afterlife? She opens her eyes with monumental effort. Her head protests the bright light. And then— Holy shit, an angel. This is the most beautiful creature she has ever seen in her miserable twenty-seven years of life. Not like the game model characters; not that clinical, every-hair-in-place, uncanny-valley perfection her team has agonized over for months. There are shadows under his weary eyes, freckles dotting his wind-bitten face. He looks human. Except he can't be human, because she's dead. So: angel. Definitely an angel. Has she seen him somewhere before? He seems familiar— "My liege?" he whispers. She hadn't expected angels to look quite so frail and startled. Maybe they've been overworked recently. Are they being underpaid? She ponders this while a choir begins to sing in the back of her mind. The angel is on a knee in front of her, frozen in a posture of agonized indecision. He looks like he's trying to hand-feed a tiger that's already torn apart three other zookeepers. She vaguely takes in their surroundings: something out of one of her grandmother's C-Dramas, it seems. Hm. She supposes Western designers don't have a monopoly on the afterlife. "Should this servant summon a physician?" "No." What would a physician do for her? She's already dead. She wipes at her bloody nose and tries to ignore the worsening headache. These seem like strange complaints to bring up in the afterlife to a beautiful angel who talks like he's in a period drama. Isn't she supposed to be beyond physical suffering? Maybe there's a processing period. Maybe the afterlife has an intake queue. "My liege..." "I feel fine." The angel hesitates, then gets to his feet. "Of course, my liege. This servant will give you space." He bows. It's low and formal. Then he backs down the hallway, slowly, carefully, and Daien is alone. She sits there for a moment, stunned. The room smells vaguely herbal, like a tea her grandmother made when she was a child. What kind of customer service— She looks around while pinching at the bridge of her nose. The blood doesn't stop, and her hands come away red. She stares at them for a moment because they are not her hands. What the hell? There are more callouses; the knuckles slightly misaligned from old fractures that healed without proper setting. These are hands that have hit things. Many things. Frequently. She flexes the fingers. The fingers flex. They respond to her, which is both reassuring and deeply unsettling, because they should not be her fingers and yet they are doing what she tells them to do. She looks down. The rest of the body is similarly wrong. She is sitting on the floor in heavy robes, more fabric than she has ever worn in her life; several layers, from the feel of it, the kind of elaborate textile engineering that exists only in period dramas and musical theatre costumes. The body inside the robes feels more or less the same, but denser and a little taller than what she's used to. A mirror. There has to be a mirror somewhere— She gets to her feet. This takes two attempts because the body's proportions are wrong — her legs are longer than she expects, the knees bend at a slightly different angle, and the heavy robes don't help. Polished bronze. Not glass; there is no glass, because of course there isn't, because the afterlife apparently operates on pre-industrial technology. The bronze is dark and slightly convex and the reflection it produces is not the high-definition selfie-camera clarity she's used to. The afterlife has strange C-Drama props. She looks. The face is not hers. Daien tilts her head. The reflection's head tilts with her. Impossibly, involuntarily, the reflection's features twitch. She is feeling more emotion than she has in years, and a strange expression is twisting the borrowed features, and it looks wrong on this face, the way a party hat would look wrong on a military statue. This face, too, seems familiar. Like the angel, the same nagging pull of recognition, the same I've seen you before itch that she can't quite scratch. She's seen this face. Not in real life. On a screen, maybe. In a file, a render, a— She studies the reflection. The jaw. The scar. The severe, intense angles of a face built for intimidation. Wait. This looks like— She has seen this face. She has seen this face on her monitor, in the character model files she approved weeks ago. This is the face of the Cold Duke of the South...? Dayan Uzun. War criminal. The villain who breaks the Geneva Convention eighteen times across five thousand chapters and leads the noble family derogatorily called "the dogs of the tyrant Emperor." The character Parisa ranted about a few hours ago— SYSTEM: SYSTEM INITIALIZING... SYSTEM: 3... 2... 1... SYSTEM: Welcome, Esteemed Host! Congratulations on your successful transmigration! You have been bound to the body of Duke Dayan Uzun: Lord Commander of the Emperor's Vanguard, Steward of the South, Head of House Uzun. Please enjoy your stay in the world of Courts of Flowers and Silk! As the Esteemed Host, you will receive guidance, quests, and achievements as you navigate the plot! Do you wish to continue?