Chapter 1: THE GUY WHO SEES TOO MUCH
The box fell out of my hands.
Not because it was heavy—it wasn't. But because thirty seconds ago, I had been dying on a hospital bed in Philadelphia, watching my heart monitor flatline while nurses shouted codes that meant nothing to a man already halfway gone.
Pancreatic cancer. Stage four. Three months from diagnosis to this moment of darkness, and then—
Light. A moving truck. The smell of cardboard and diesel and something that might have been pizza from the cab.
I stared at my hands. Young hands. No liver spots. No IV bruises. Fingers that moved when I told them to, which was more than I could say for the last week of my previous life.
"Host detected. Physical integration complete. Red String of Fate System initializing."
The words appeared in my vision like subtitles on a foreign film. Blue text, translucent, floating about two feet in front of my face.
"Initializing... 47%... 68%... 91%... Complete."
I reached up to touch the text. My fingers passed through it.
"Sir? You okay back there?"
A face appeared at the truck's rear door. Moving company logo on his shirt. He looked concerned in the way people look at strangers who might be having a medical emergency—eager to help, but mostly hoping someone else would handle it.
"Fine." My voice came out rough. Wrong. Too young. "Just... dropped something."
He nodded and disappeared.
I found the rental agreement in my jacket pocket. Ethan James Cole. Apartment 4C. West 81st Street, Manhattan. The signature looked like mine, but wasn't. The hands that had signed it were dead now, just like the hands that had held mine in Philadelphia.
The memories came in fragments, like channel surfing on a TV with bad reception. This Ethan Cole had been driving home from a client meeting. Red light. Delivery truck. Impact. And then nothing until I woke up surrounded by boxes.
Transmigration. I'd read enough web novels to recognize what had happened. But those were stories. This was... this was a moving truck in New York City with system messages floating in my peripheral vision.
I picked up the fallen box and carried it to the curb. The movers had already stacked most of my—his—possessions on the sidewalk. A doorman was propping open the building entrance, looking bored.
"Proximity alert. Compatible individuals detected."
The system text flashed gold, then expanded into something that looked like a loading bar.
"Scanning... scan complete. Displaying romantic fate connections."
A tall man was walking toward the building. He had to be at least six-four, with a gentle face and the kind of shoulders that suggested he'd played sports in high school but had since discovered his true calling was probably eating large quantities of something. A redheaded woman walked beside him, carrying grocery bags, and they were—
Holy shit.
They were connected.
A thick cord of light stretched between them, wrapped around their torsos like a rope tying two ships together. It pulsed with color—deep red at the core, threads of gold woven through, pink edges that shimmered when they moved. The thing looked solid enough to touch, and when their hands brushed against each other, the light sang. Not a sound I could hear with my ears. But something in my chest resonated with it.
[Analyzing Romantic Connection...]
[DESTINED PAIR IDENTIFIED]
[Compatibility Rating: 94.7%]
[Bond Type: Primary Soulmate]
[Status: Engaged]
[Timeline to Marriage: 234 days]
[Timeline to First Child: 2,847 days]
[Warning: This pair's fate thread is classified as "Foundation-Level." Tampering not recommended.]
I dropped the second box on my foot.
"Hey, are you okay?"
The tall guy had noticed me. Of course he had. I was standing on the sidewalk, clutching my foot, staring at thin air like a man who'd just discovered his entire understanding of reality was fundamentally incorrect.
Which, to be fair, was exactly what had happened.
"I'm fine," I managed. "Just clumsy today."
"Moving in?" His smile was the kind of smile that made you feel like you'd known him for years. Pure, uncomplicated friendliness. "I'm Marshall. This is my fiancée, Lily. We're in 4A."
The redhead—Lily—gave me a look. Not hostile, exactly. But assessing. Like she was trying to figure out where I fit in the careful ecosystem she'd built around her life.
"Ethan Cole." The name came out easier than I expected. "4C, apparently."
"Across the hall!" Marshall's enthusiasm was almost aggressive. "That's awesome! The last guy in 4C was weird. Like, really weird. He collected fingernail clippings. Not even his own fingernail clippings—"
"Marshall." Lily's voice had the practiced tone of someone who'd been reining in this particular horse for years. "We don't know if he collected them. We just found the jar."
"A jar! Of fingernails! That weren't his!"
The string between them flared brighter. She reached over and squeezed his arm, and I watched the gold threads pulse.
"Host, compatibility analysis suggests intervention in this pair would yield negative results. Their bond has already achieved stability. Recommend observation only."
"Good to know," I muttered.
"What?" Lily's eyes narrowed.
"I said, good to know. About the fingernail guy. I'll make sure to... not do that."
Marshall laughed. Lily didn't. But something in her posture relaxed a fraction.
"Need help with boxes?" Marshall was already reaching for one. "I was a mover one summer in Minnesota. Well, I helped my uncle move. Well, I carried one box. But I've been practicing."
I should have said no. I should have established boundaries, maintained distance, figured out what the hell was happening to me before getting involved with the neighbors.
"Sure," I said instead. "Thanks."
We carried boxes. Marshall talked constantly—about the building, about the neighborhood, about his best friend Ted who lived in 4A with them and was apparently going through some kind of romantic crisis that required Marshall to be "emotionally available" at all times.
Lily watched me. Every time I glanced at her, those green eyes were cataloging something. My reactions. My word choices. The way I looked at her fiancé.
The string between them never dimmed.
By the time we finished, my apartment was full of someone else's belongings. A dead man's furniture. A dead man's clothes. A dead man's half-written business plan for a matchmaking company, which was either cosmic irony or the universe's idea of a joke.
"You should come to MacLaren's sometime," Marshall said from the doorway. "It's this bar downstairs. Our whole group hangs out there. You'd like it."
"Thanks."
He left. Lily lingered for a moment.
"So you're moving in alone?" She kept her tone light, but there was an edge underneath. "No girlfriend? At your age?"
The string between her and Marshall stretched across the hallway, leading back to him. I could see its entire length—the history woven into it, the future it promised.
"Just me," I said.
She nodded slowly. "That's... interesting."
The door closed behind her.
I stood alone in someone else's apartment, surrounded by someone else's life, with a system interface hovering in my vision that claimed to show me the fundamental forces of romantic fate.
My foot throbbed where I'd dropped the box on it.
"Tutorial Quest Available: Make Your First Match."
"Reward: 500 EXP, Skill: String Memory"
"Accept? Y/N"
I ordered Chinese food. Sat on a box. Ate lo mein straight from the container while the system blinked patiently, waiting for an answer.
The fortune cookie said: Love is closer than you think.
I laughed until it turned into something else. Something that made my chest hurt in ways that had nothing to do with this new, healthy body.
Thirty-two years in my old life. Dead at the end. A fiancée who'd left me six months before the diagnosis. No kids. No legacy. Just a marketing job and a retirement account that would go to my sister.
And now this. A second chance I hadn't asked for, in a body I didn't recognize, with the ability to see the very thing I'd failed at so spectacularly.
Love.
"Tutorial quest reminder: Make Your First Match."
"I don't even know my social security number yet," I told the empty room.
The system didn't respond.
Outside, somewhere, the city hummed. Traffic and voices and a thousand stories I couldn't see yet. But inside my chest, where the cancer had eaten me hollow, something new was growing.
It felt like purpose.
Or maybe it was just the MSG.
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