Honestly, Zeno wondered what he could do with the time he had.
It was funny—before, he would’ve killed for even a day off. Now, with a wide expanse of unclaimed hours and untouched mornings, he didn’t know what to do with himself. There were plenty of offers flooding in. Interviews, appearances, a couple of brand deals, some magazine covers that looked more like thirst traps than fashion spreads. They were what you would classify as “easy money, no-brainer projects.”
But Zeno didn’t find anything he could enjoy.
It felt like a cash grab. A response to his sudden surge in relevance. Something they could milk before his name cooled off.
Zeno ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it aimlessly. He didn’t need the money. That wasn’t arrogance—it was just fact. He wasn’t swimming in wealth like those corrupt businessmen (you need to be evil to be that level of rich), but he could live comfortably for years without lifting a finger.
That wasn’t the problem.
He just wanted to do something because he wanted to.
Whoa. That sounded weird. It felt like he was actually allowed to pick things based on desire and not survival. What a strange, unfamiliar kind of freedom.
He rolled over on his couch and checked his system again. There were still no notifications. Ever since the last alert, when he had received the booster ’Instant Tears,’ everything had gone silent.
Why was that?
Zeno clicked his tongue. Of course, he wasn’t expecting an answer. It wasn’t like his system was sentient. It didn’t talk back. It just gave him what it gave him.
Still, the silence was disconcerting.
He sighed and reached for the script Moby had dropped off the day before. He hadn’t been offered the role. Moby said he got it from his friend, who works with Ari Bae. It was an unpolished script that she wanted to be beta-read. Zeno didn’t know why Moby sent it to him, but he didn’t have anything else to do.
Along with that, his fans were calling for him to rest, saying he had done enough for a while. That his name was getting oversaturated and that he was everywhere. That was a first.
Usually, fans loved it when their idols got worked to the brim.
With those thoughts swimming in his head, he flipped open to the first page of the script.
It was sci-fi, which was unexpected from the action/romance writer.
The story was about a young woman who had lived countless lives, never quite fitting into any of them. A thousand skins worn, a thousand names shed. She kept changing, kept trying to find the version of herself that felt right.
It involved transmigration, and the writing was a little brain-rotty. It was fast-paced, bordering on the chaotic. Zeno tilted his head.
Honestly, it didn’t sound like Ari Bae at all. But maybe she was experimenting with her style.
Still, despite the writing style, he found himself flipping through the rest of the pages.
The woman—Eliah—began to speak in quieter ways. Her dialogue turned inward, and her choices grew more desperate.
By page thirty-two, Zeno stopped.
His hands clenched the paper just slightly. His breath caught.
He scanned through a monologue, then again, slower this time.
It sounded eerily familiar.
He turned the page.
Then another.
And another.
He sat there, frowning.
What the hell was this script?
Unlike the other pages filled with system upgrades and situations that definitely insinuated a reverse harem, he came across a part that read like a letter.
“I know things. I learn things. I do things. But I don’t feel them.
I have danced in every rhythm, mimicked every accent, lived every version of myself I thought they needed.
I can bake bread. I can defuse a bomb. I can even fix a car if given the right tools and enough time.
But none of it… None of it ever felt like me.
They say a jack of all trades is a master of none.
But maybe I never wanted to master anything.
Maybe all I ever wanted was to wander.
Life is not about being good. Or perfect. Or even remembered.
Life, in its fleetingness, is already the rarest thing in the universe.
Earthlings are lucky in that way.
Their time is finite. Their moments have edges.
When your time is infinite, don’t you think…
Don’t you think it loses its meaning?
I want to burn my time. I want to love, then lose. I want to fail and cry and be terrible at things.
I want to meet people who only know one thing but know it well.
I want to spend hours doing nothing and call that a good day.
If I can live this life badly, but freely… then maybe this life isn’t too bad after all.”
Zeno stared at the paragraph.
His fingers lingered on the edge of the page, like he didn’t want to flip it.
His mind slowly tuned out the traffic noises outside his window, the soft hum of his air purifier, and the ticking of the clock.
He read it again. Then a third time.
There was something hauntingly familiar about it. A voice that felt… warm and hollow all at once. And then he realized why.
The scent.
That day at Lucy’s house, he found a familiar scent. He wondered if it was just a hallucination because it was gone too soon. He even suspected Bacon PD, but it wasn’t him.
Therefore, one of them, one of the finalists, had to be the Rennis.
It also wasn’t Billy, that’s for sure.
So, it could only be one person.
Ari Bae.
She’d been there. And more than that, this was her voice.
This wasn’t the voice of an acclaimed scriptwriter or an ambitious creative hoping for another hit. The script was too cleanly veiled to out her directly, but Zeno saw it now.
This was a coded diary.
And he had cracked the code.
He pressed the page back down and leaned back against his seat, exhaling through his nose.
Ari Bae was also a Rennis.