The crime was committed at 7:42 AM on a Wednesday morning, in full daylight, on a residential street in Tianmu City.
Yan Ye witnessed it.
He would never be the same.
The smell reached him first. Fresh popcorn, real kernels in hot oil, the scent cutting through morning air with the kind of precision that bypassed higher reasoning and went straight for the part of the brain that remembered being hungry. He tracked it to a street vendor on the corner. Small cart, popcorn machine working, a line of customers waiting with the patient expressions of people about to be fed properly.
Then the vendor, smiling like a man who believed he was providing a service, lifted a ladle from a simmering pot of caramel and poured the entire contents over a fresh batch.
Yan Ye stopped walking.
His stomach, independently of his brain, made a small sound of genuine protest.
No.
No no no no.
You don't do that. You don't do that to popcorn.
The caramel had already committed. The batch was beyond saving. Fourteen years of Big Ye's memories and every popcorn reference was either caramel or sugar glaze. An entire civilization had gotten popcorn fundamentally wrong, and not a single person on this street seemed to register the scope of the tragedy.
Not from dungeon breaks. Not from war. From bad seasoning choices. That's how civilizations fall.
He walked away, but the craving stayed. It settled into a specific shape, and the shape had a recipe attached.
Salt. Garlic powder. Onion powder. Black pepper. Paprika, sweet or smoked. Dried herbs, optional. MSG for the people brave enough to admit they liked MSG.
His mom's recipe, from back on Earth. The ingredients surfaced in exact order, with a precision his brain had never extended to anything academically relevant. Three years of law school and he couldn't name half his professors, but a popcorn seasoning list? Permanent storage. Priority access. No retrieval delay.
Priorities.
He could recall every ingredient, every ratio, the exact order she added them to the pot. He just couldn't feel what any of it had been like. The recipe was a fact. Everything from before was.
He was making it tonight. That was decided.
The school day passed in the usual rhythm of notes and lectures and trying not to think about garlic powder. By mid-morning the plan had developed a logistical problem: popcorn needed a screen. Eating it while reading didn't work. Hands occupied, pages turning, the whole system collapsed.
Big Ye had nothing. No streaming preferences, no saved playlists, no Awatube history worth the storage it occupied. Fourteen days in this world and Yan Ye hadn't built those habits either.
Frieren worked. He'd watched it with Jiayi at his apartment, and it had been one of the few evenings in this life that felt like something other than training and survival.
I could invite her.
The thought arrived the way most obvious thoughts do — late, and pretending it hadn't been circling for a while.
After classes, he found her classroom. The door was open, the room empty except for her, packing materials into her bag. She looked up when he stopped at the doorway.
I'm about to invite my teacher to my apartment for the second time in two weeks. On Earth this would've gotten me a disciplinary hearing. Here it's... Wednesday. Somehow that's worse.
"Do you have plans tonight?"
"No. Why?"
"I'm making popcorn. The real kind, not the local version. Come over, we can keep watching Frieren."
She set a stack of papers into the bag. The pause was small — she'd expected a question about classwork and needed a moment to file this one in a different category.
"Sure." A small smile. "What's wrong with the local version?"
"Everything. I'll explain when you taste the difference."
She closed the bag. "Give me two minutes."
He stepped back into the hallway to wait.
The market was a ten-minute walk from the school. Jiayi walked beside him at a pace that suggested she had never rushed anywhere in her life and saw no reason to start.
"What exactly is 'real popcorn'?"
"You'll find out when it's done."
"That's not reassuring."
"Wasn't meant to be."
They split inside. He went for the spice aisle. She went for kernels and the oil he'd listed.
He was reaching for the paprika on the third shelf when her hand arrived at the same jar from the other direction.
Her fingers touched the back of his hand. Half a second. The jar sat between them, unbothered by the situation.
He picked it up. She let him.
"Found the kernels," she said, holding up the bag.
"Good."
They met at checkout. She paid for half before he could object, waving off his protest with the quiet certainty of someone who'd already decided this wasn't a discussion. The gesture shifted the evening's shape. She wasn't coming over as a guest. She was coming over as someone who'd bought half the groceries.
The apartment was cleaner than the last time she'd been here. Jiayi registered it with a glance that absorbed the detail and filed it without comment.
Yan Ye went to the kitchen. Pot, oil, lid, kernels. The sequence was automatic, stored in whatever part of his brain handled procedures from a previous life. He'd done this more times than he could count on Earth. The sound of kernels hitting hot oil was the sound of a Sunday afternoon he could recall in exact detail and feel nothing about.
"You can prep the seasoning if you want." He slid the ingredients across the counter. "Salt, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, paprika. Mix them in that bowl."
She looked at the lineup. No sugar. No caramel. Nothing sweet.
She raised an eyebrow.
"Trust me," he said.
She picked up the salt and set up beside him at the counter, close enough that their elbows occasionally negotiated space when she reached for a new ingredient. The island across the kitchen sat empty.
He didn't point that out.
"Can I put something on?" she asked, walking toward the living room.
"Go ahead."
The TV clicked on. Default news channel.
"—the death toll in the Ashen Corridor has reached thirty-one million, with emergency measures declared across the border provinces. International Coalition forces are mobilizing, with multiple federations contributing high-tier awakeners to the frontier defense—"
Jiayi's hand paused halfway to the remote. In the kitchen, Yan Ye paused halfway to the pot. Neither of them looked at each other. The anchor kept talking — projected casualty zones, refugee interviews, footage of something pressing against the frontier that the camera couldn't quite hold steady on. After a moment, Jiayi changed the channel. Deep-sea bioluminescence. Something with no words and no death toll. She set the remote down.
Yan Ye shook the pot. The kernels started popping.
He seasoned the batch in the pot, tossing it the way someone does when they've done the same motion hundreds of times in another life. Jiayi took a piece from the top. Skeptical expression intact.
Her face changed.
"...This is good."
"I know."
"No, this is actually good. How does no one here know about this?"
"Family recipe. Some things don't cross borders."
They settled on the couch with the bowl between them and Frieren on the screen, picking up where they'd left off. Comfortable silence broken by the occasional comment that didn't need a response but got one anyway.
Halfway through the second episode, his phone buzzed.
He picked up. "Hello?"
"This is Iron Gate. You booked an archery session with Instructor Shen for next Thursday? We had a cancellation — she's available tomorrow evening at seven. You want it?"
"Yes. I'll be there."
"Noted."
He hung up. Set the phone on the armrest.
On the screen, Frieren was walking through a meadow. Jiayi's attention was not on the meadow.
She didn't ask about the call.
She's not going to ask. But she's waiting for context.
She doesn't know it yet, but she's waiting for context.
"Training club," he said. "Receptionist calling about a schedule change. I've been going to a place called Iron Gate for combat training."
"Since when?"
"Few days ago. Mostly getting thrown around so far, but it's helping."
A pause. "How's that going?"
"I've learned a lot between impacts."
That got a small exhale through her nose. Close enough to a laugh.
The conversation opened from there. She asked what kind of training, how he'd found the place, whether it was connected to the physical changes she'd noticed.
"You look different," she said. Not elaborating. Not needing to.
"I decided to make some changes." He looked at her. "Remember? That first night you came over. I told you that."
Her expression shifted. She remembered. That exact phrase, from that night when she'd shown up at his door with grocery bags because she'd been worried about him.
He continued before the moment could settle into something heavy. Special class in the third year. Top 100 students in the combat exam. That was the goal.
"I was bottom ten last year. Last time I took the exam, they put me in the 'did not seriously attempt' tier. I want top 100 this time."
"Top 100." She said it slowly, like testing the weight of it. "You were bottom ten two weeks ago."
"I'm aware."
"In two and a half weeks."
"Also aware."
She considered him for a long moment. Long enough that he started wondering if she thought he was being stupid.
Then she set the popcorn bowl aside.
"Okay. If you make top 100... I'll give you something."
He waited. "Something."
"A present. But only if you make it."
"You're not going to tell me what it is?"
"No."
Great. Now I have to make top 100 AND spend the next two weeks wondering what the present is.
"Deal."
The conversation softened. They finished the episode, started the next. The popcorn bowl was almost empty and the present mystery was going to bother him for at least the next forty-eight hours.
Somewhere during the third episode, Jiayi laughed. A real one, the kind she hadn't prepared for. It came out slightly louder than she expected, and she covered her mouth half a second too late, as if her own laugh had caught her off guard.
Yan Ye caught himself watching her instead of the screen. The laugh was still in the corners of her expression, not fully gone, making her look like someone who had forgotten to be careful for a moment.
He turned back to Frieren before she noticed.
I'm going to remember this.
I don't know why. But I am.
The third episode ended. Close to 10 PM. Jiayi looked at the time on her phone.
She didn't move.
He didn't either.
For about ten seconds the room held nothing but credits rolling and silence.
Then Jiayi stood up, smoothed her shirt, and picked up the empty popcorn bowl.
"I should probably head out."
"Yeah."
Neither of them moved toward the door.
For another moment they stood in the living room, both aware that the evening was ending, neither one actively ending it.
Finally Jiayi took the bowl to the kitchen. Washed it. Dried it. Set it on the counter with more care than a bowl needed.
"Goodnight, Yan."
"Goodnight."
She walked to the door. Put on her jacket. Pulled up her phone to call an ETT.
At the doorway, she paused. Turned halfway back.
"Yan."
"Yeah?"
She looked at him for a second. Opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"...Get some sleep."
The door closed behind her.
Yan Ye stood in the middle of his living room for a while after she left. The empty couch. The bowl on the counter. The silent TV.
Something shifted tonight.
I don't know what exactly.
But I know it did.