Eighth Day: The Error Remains

The eighth day had no dawn.

At least, no dawn that was recorded.

When Lin Chuan opened his eyes, his first thought was—

He was still here.

There was no sensation of falling, no blankness before erasure. He stood on a street that was both familiar and unfamiliar. Solid ground beneath his feet, air flowing normally, the distant city running as usual.

The world had continued.

It was just that—
it no longer included him.

He lowered his head and looked at his hands.

Clear outlines. Real sensations.

But when he raised his head toward a shop window by the roadside, there was no reflection in the glass.

Not blurred.

Gone entirely.

Only then did Lin Chuan slowly realize—
he wasn’t invisible.
He wasn’t transparent.

Rather—

He was not being rendered.

The city was operating more smoothly than on any previous day.

Zero traffic accidents.
Zero signal delay.
Human emotions stabilized within an ideal range.

He stood at the intersection, watching the red light turn green as the crowd flowed forward naturally.

No one bumped into him.
No one avoided him either.

They simply—
passed through his position.

As if passing through a stretch of unloaded air.

He tried to speak.

“Hey.”

The sound existed.

But only for himself.

The sound waves never entered the world’s chain of propagation.

Lin Chuan smiled.

Not a bitter smile.

But the calm that comes after confirmation.

He still existed,
but he no longer had influence.

This was the most thorough “solution”
the system could provide.

He began to walk.

Without purpose.

Because purpose itself was a behavior acknowledged by the world.

Soon, however, he discovered something—

There were still places he could enter.

Not everywhere.

But—
places the system had ignored, abandoned, or judged to be of low value.

Back alleys of the old districts.
Dead zones where map updates had failed.
Blind spots in signal coverage.

That old building was still there.

Clearer than on any previous day.

The stairwell was quiet.

No vibrations.
No tremors.
No warnings before reclamation.

As if it had finally slipped free of surveillance.

Lin Chuan climbed step by step. For the first time, his footsteps had echoes.

On the rooftop, he saw that person.

The version of himself from before the sixth day.

The one who chose not to be retained,
and not to be reclaimed.

He leaned against the railing, as if he had been waiting for a long time.

“Welcome to the eighth day,” he said.

“What does this count as?” Lin Chuan asked.

“In system terminology,” the man thought for a moment, “it would probably be called—
a residual variable.”

“An error?”

“Yes.
But not the kind that needs fixing.”

The wind swept across the rooftop.

In the distance, the city gleamed—stable, correct, flawless.

“They kept the optimal solution,” the man said. “But they overlooked one thing.”

“What?”

“The world doesn’t survive on answers.
It survives on questions.”

Lin Chuan fell silent.

He suddenly remembered the prompt at the end of the seventh day—
Remaining variable: 1.

So it hadn’t referred to the retained “correct answer.”

It had been—
him.

“What happens after the eighth day?” Lin Chuan asked.

The man turned to look at him.

“The world will continue for a long time.
Maybe very stable. Maybe very safe.”

“And us?”

“We’ll exist in the gaps.”

He pointed toward the edges of the city, places the lights couldn’t fully cover.

“When one day the world becomes too ‘correct,’
so correct that it can no longer explain itself—
errors will be needed again.”

At that moment, Lin Chuan felt a change.

Not from the system.

But from humanity itself.

In the distance, a child stopped walking.

He looked up at the sky, frowning.

“Mom,” he said, “just now… wasn’t something missing here?”

The mother froze for a moment, then smiled and shook her head.

“Don’t overthink it.”

But the child didn’t leave immediately.

He looked at that patch of sky again.

Lin Chuan closed his eyes.

For the first time, he felt
that he was no longer alone.

Not because he was seen.

But because—
he was doubted.

And doubt
is the beginning of cracks forming in the world again.

The eighth day did not end.

Because the loop had already terminated.

Yet the error remained.

In every moment of “something feels off.”
In every hesitation that cannot be explained.
In every choice that goes unrecorded, yet truly exists.

And Lin Chuan—
was that variable no longer tracked by the system.

He was not an answer.
Nor was he resistance.

He was simply—
the part of the world that could never be completely deleted.