GPS stands for Global Positioning System, and as the name suggests, it’s designed to cover nearly every inch of the Earth’s surface and near-space. At least, that’s what everything I’ve read online says.

  Yet right now, my phone couldn’t pick up any GPS signal from Alice’s bracelet.

  How was I supposed to interpret this? Had she gone somewhere with poor reception? Or was the device malfunctioning?

  First, battery life could be ruled out. The red GPS bracelet on her left wrist had a maximum standby time of three months, and it was fully charged when I put it on her. Second, water damage was unlikely—I’d specifically checked before buying: its waterproof rating was extremely high.

  Maybe she’d noticed something off about the bracelet and destroyed it immediately… But was that really possible? Judging from the gentle tone she’d used when we parted, it was hard to imagine she’d already seen through my true intentions.

  Every precaution I’d taken had failed. For the first time, I truly tasted helplessness.

  No—I couldn’t give up yet!

  I had to keep struggling until the very last second.

  With that thought, I shifted back into my fire elemental form and gathered a massive fireball in my palm before launching it skyward.

  The fireball detonated high above, shattering into thousands upon thousands of “Fireflies” that scattered outward like fireworks in every direction.

  Alice had vanished right in front of me, but she might not have left Xianshui City yet. My plan now was a carpet search of the entire city until I found her. It was a stupid, inefficient method—but at the moment, it was all I had.

  In fire elemental form, the more flame I condensed into my body, the stronger my performance became. Strength, speed, perception—even processing speed of consciousness could be counted as part of “physical performance” and boosted accordingly.

  That meant even thousands of incoming video feeds from the “Fireflies” were something I could handle now. Strictly speaking, though, it wasn’t truly “simultaneous and precise” processing. Perhaps because my mind still leaned fundamentally human, my attention still had a natural focal point.

  Anyone without superpowers could probably relate. Imagine someone holding up three sheets of differently colored paper, each with a line of text. You could instantly tell the colors apart with one glance. But to read the actual words, you’d have to look at them one by one.

  I could only gulp down the feeds in rough batches—quickly scanning for anything that matched “someone wearing similar colors or roughly Alice’s height and build”—then zoom in one by one to examine more closely.

  And Xianshui City was, after all, a full-scale urban area. Thousands of “Fireflies” might sound like a lot, but spreading them thin enough for true citywide coverage was barely scraping by. Worse still, the city wasn’t just outdoor spaces—there were endless tangled indoor zones, and searching those was exponentially harder.

  I kept going from afternoon into evening, then deep into the night under a silver moon, until my mind felt completely numb. Still, not a single clue.

  All the while, I kept checking for the GPS signal in case Alice had only moved to a dead zone… but it never reappeared. Hoping for that was pointless.

  Eventually, I had no choice but to drop out of fire elemental form and give my rigid consciousness a chance to recover some flexibility.

  When I looked around, it was already deep night. Cicadas chirped nearby; the streets glowed with the colorful lights of nightlife. The ruins of this unfinished building felt like another world entirely. For no particular reason, the wind here felt bitterly cold. I turned and descended the stairs.

  Passing through the lower corridor, I caught sight of the room where Alice and I had first met. The blood she’d left behind had dried into an unrecognizable black stain. Nearby lay a lone scaffolding pole, probably the one she’d accidentally knocked over, making the noise that drew me to her.

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  On the way home, I walked through the crowds and bought two portions of spicy grilled pig trotters along the way. Then I entered my neighborhood, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

  The apartment was dark. Alice had one bad habit: if I didn’t turn on the lights before leaving, she wouldn’t turn them on herself after dark. She’d just sit there in pitch blackness.

  I’d told her she could eat anything in the fridge whenever she wanted, but she never took anything herself—she waited for me to hand it to her. If I only bought one portion of food, she wouldn’t accept it. Either I had to get one for myself too, or we’d split it.

  At first she wouldn’t even turn on the TV by herself. Only after I explained that watching programs could help her understand how this era’s society worked did she start turning it on when alone—and even then, she only watched news and current affairs, never entertainment. She never watched for long; most of the time she read the books and magazines in my house, her expression deadly serious.

  Only during meals would she unconsciously let slip a childlike, innocent, happy smile—treating the perfectly ordinary food I made as something precious and eating every bite with care. Every time I saw her enjoy it so much, those moments felt like they were sparkling. I always wished time would slow down.

  Without a word, I pressed the light switch by the entryway. Alice used to stay in the living room. When the darkness was washed away by white light, it almost felt like she should appear with it—hopping off the sofa, pattering over to me in small steps. I’d hand her one portion of the pig trotters; she’d grumble that I was treating her like a kid while obediently taking it anyway.

  But that scene didn’t happen. The living room was empty. No one on the sofa. Silence filled the space.

  I walked slowly into the living room, tossed the plastic bag of food onto the dining table, and sat on the sofa—just like Alice used to do—staring blankly into space. I wasn’t deliberately reminiscing or thinking about anything in particular; I just wanted my mind to stay empty for a while.

  Less than a minute passed before I couldn’t sit still anymore. I got up and checked the bedroom. Of course she wasn’t there—I was just looking. After that, I wandered aimlessly around the apartment, fragments of our time living together surfacing one after another.

  Eventually I ended up in front of the fridge again. On top of it sat an old backpack, tucked far back against the wall—impossible to spot unless you already knew it was there. Inside were various things, including the tattered hospital gown Alice had worn when we met, and the real handgun still loaded with four rounds.

  I carried the backpack back to the sofa and opened it. The gown and gun were still inside, exactly as I’d left them. I took out the gown and unfolded it.

  Unlike the blood-soaked state it had been in at first, the gown had been roughly washed. Not by me—probably by Alice herself during her first bath here. She clearly hadn’t been able to get it completely clean, though. I never re-washed it afterward; I just used my powers to dry and sterilize it before storing it away.

  Would I ever see her again?

  What would happen to me now? Would I just slip back into days without anomalies?

  Was she doing alright out there? She didn’t even understand mobile payments, had no money, no phone, no ID. What would she do when she got hungry? Where would she sleep?

  Carrying that heavy, unresolved feeling, I folded the gown and put it back into the backpack.

  That was when I noticed something wrong.

  The backpack didn’t just contain the gown and gun—there were other secret items too. One of them was Agent Kong’s charred finger, which I’d sealed inside an empty glass jar and placed at the very bottom of the main compartment.

  The jar was still there. But true to its name, it was now genuinely empty.

  There was nothing inside!

  I immediately pulled the jar out and rummaged through the entire backpack—turning it upside down and shaking it—yet the charred finger was nowhere to be found.

  Impossible. I remembered clearly putting it in the jar and sealing the lid tightly. It couldn’t have fallen out. And after that, I’d never taken the finger out again—hadn’t even touched the backpack on top of the fridge since then. There was no way it could have disappeared on its own.

  Unless someone took it!

  Who?

  In the past few days, the only other person in this apartment besides me was Alice. If it wasn’t me, then it had to be her.

  It couldn’t have been a burglar—otherwise valuables would be missing too, and I hadn’t noticed any signs of that while wandering around earlier.

  Even stretching the imagination: suppose a thief found the backpack on top of the fridge, discovered the real gun inside, but only took the charred finger—which to any normal person would mean absolutely nothing—and then carefully put the empty jar back exactly where it was… Was that even remotely plausible?

  If Alice had found the backpack, that was my fault for not hiding it well enough. But the real question now was… why would she take the charred finger?

  Had she somehow recognized that it came from something extraordinary?

  But why leave the gun behind? Just a few days ago she’d wanted it back… Wait—she’d said that even after leaving, her influence on me would linger for several more days… Was she leaving the weapon for my protection?

  Could I use the charred finger as a clue to track where she might go next?

  I stared at the empty jar, thinking and analyzing nonstop.

  Perhaps the earlier exhaustive search through thousands of “Fireflies” had exhausted me more than I realized, or maybe it was the high-speed thinking now—either way, fatigue hit fast. Before long I felt drowsy and, without realizing it, fell asleep.

  Later, I had a dream.

  A dream filled with gray mist…