"If you were a bullet… I'd choose to keep you, even if it pierced through my heart."
It was once a joke between them.
Now, it echoed inside Lâm Khả Vũ's head as he pointed the gun straight at the one person he'd sworn never to hurt.
Six years ago, during a mission to expose a mole, he and An Thư had been stranded and wounded with only one weapon between them.
"If I were a bullet," she had asked under the cold wind of Hà Giang, "would you fire me?"
"No," he had answered. "I'd keep you."
"Fool." She smiled, forehead pressed to his. "Bullets are meant to be fired."
Back to now.
She had lied.
She knew Tống Dực was alive.
She might have helped him.
But why did her eyes still look like they were hurting just as much as his?
"If you really doubt me," she whispered, "then pull the trigger."
His heart raced.
You remember the girl who once blocked a hail of bullets to protect you.
But you also remember the reports. The signs. The silence.
She lied.
Or maybe… she never betrayed.
He lowered the gun.
The air smelled of rust and wet concrete.
"I don't trust you," he said.
"But I trust your eyes never learned to lie."
Her voice trembled.
"Lâm Khả Vũ… you're still that fool."
Then—
A thunderous blast from behind.
Both dropped instinctively, dust and heat filling the air.
Tống Dực was gone.
But left behind something else: a glowing digital map, floating in static above a flickering device.
A web of relay stations, connecting everything.
At the center — the origin point.
A single line glowed on the screen:
"If you want to end this — go back to where it all began."
The old base.
The place they once called home.
Sometimes, keeping the bullet…
Is the only way to find who loaded it in the first place.