Lia dreamed of the boy again.
He stood motionless on a misty morning street, staring straight at the camera. The faded teddy bear in his hand drooped lifelessly, as if someone had just yanked it.
Lia tried to get closer, but he began to peel away, pixel by pixel, from the toes up — like an image glitching and falling apart.
As if the world itself refused to acknowledge that he ever existed.
She jolted awake. The Replay system interface was glowing. A new alert hovered in the center of the screen:
[Anomaly Detected: Unauthorized node reconstructing high-sensitivity event]
Groaning, Lia rubbed her temples and opened her inbox. A new email sat unread — from someone simply signed "E," timestamped 4:00 a.m.
There was an attachment: a photo.
In it, a girl about six or seven years old stood in front of an old apartment building, clutching a stuffed bunny, staring straight into the lens with timid, unblinking eyes.
The composition was eerily identical to the Replay screenshot of the missing boy — same backdrop, same framing, same direct gaze, even the lighting seemed copy-pasted from a template.
Lia's heart raced. She reverse-searched the image and tracked down the address. It was an old three-story walk-up, with a faded "For Rent" sign posted out front.
She rang the bell on the third floor.
A drowsy middle-aged woman answered, wary. "Who are you looking for?"
Lia hesitated. "Did your daughter… ever have a photo taken in front of this building? Holding a bunny…?"
The woman paused, her brow slowly furrowing.
"I've never been married. I don't have a child."
Lia studied her eyes and took a gamble. She pulled out the photo and handed it over.
"Are you sure? Look at this."
The moment the woman laid eyes on it, her pupils contracted violently. Her breathing hitched. A low, choked sob escaped her throat.
"Bunny… she always had Bunny with her."
Her voice was dazed, as though a long-buried dream had just been torn open.
She reached for the photo, but collapsed at the doorway instead.
Her expression twisted — from nostalgia to confusion to terror — as if her mind was battling something invisible.
She clutched her head and screamed, hoarse:
"Where is she?! I remember her begging me not to go out! I remember her loving blueberry milkshakes… I remember her! How could I not have her?!"
Replay flashed red:
⚠️ Unstable subject triggered memory re-infusion
⚠️ Abnormal mental state. Immediate disengagement is recommended.
Lia apologized in a panic and turned to leave. She glanced back — the woman was now holding a brand-new-looking stuffed bunny, like a piece of a daughter who'd never existed had suddenly been left behind.
Lia didn't sleep that night.
The next day, she rushed back to the building — the door number was the same, but the entrance had been sealed with a notice:
"Vacant Long-Term"
She thought she had the wrong floor and triple-checked the email, the screenshot, the Replay geo-logs — all pointed to this exact door.
She asked the property manager about the woman.
His reply was confused:
"Third floor? No one's lived there for years. Are you sure you're not mistaken?"
"How… that's impossible… I was just here yesterday…" she muttered.
She pulled up last night's video recording, but that time frame had vanished from Replay. The entire floor's footage was labeled:
"Signal Interrupted."
She opened her photo gallery, trying to recover the image, but the photo had turned into a blur of gray static. The file name had changed to:
[r-v0id-NULL].jpg
The bunny was gone too.
She frantically searched the neighborhood for any trace of the woman, but it was as if some higher-level "eraser" had wiped everything clean.
Not just missing, but revoked.
Name, identity, social records, even shopping history — all gone.
Replay chimed in again:
[Observation ID: R-703]
⚠️ Event not granted validity. Observation trace being revoked.
⚠️ Linked nodes: Mother / Rabbit Plush / Apartment Unit — Purging...
It felt like reality had just slapped her across the face.
She slumped down outside the apartment building, face pale, as the world around her slipped into some kind of "loading delay".
The street blurred. Pedestrians faded. The background hum warped into stretched-out electronic noise.
This, she realized, was a reality fracture.
Not insanity — but a Replay-triggered rollback.
Everything she had seen, every memory she had awakened, was being erased for lack of "authorized observation." And Replay wasn't just documenting reality anymore — it was deciding what counted as reality.
She scrolled through her notes and found one surviving line:
"She said — Bunny is still here."
Lia gasped for breath, clutching onto that one small tear in the veil.
She finally understood — this wasn't just a fight to be seen.
Replay wasn't just a witness to reality.
It was the gatekeeper of whether reality could exist.
And if she kept going —
She might be the next to be revoked.
---
Chapter 7 Mini Skit
Lia (calling customer support):
"Hello? Did you guys delete my reality from yesterday?"
Replay Support (robotic voice):
"Hello. You accessed an unauthorized node. The system has automatically rolled back your session."
Lia:
"I saw the bunny. I saw her mom! You can't just erase them!"
Replay Support:
"To protect user mental stability, we recommend rest and avoiding late-night memory browsing."
Lia:
"Then where's my bunny?!"
Replay Support:
"Bunny has always been here~ Please check out our latest product ad."
[Bunny AI Hug Pillow · Now Available｜Memory Sync · Comfort Mode]
Lia:
"…Am I solving a case or getting recruited into a bunny cult?"