A cuckold! A cuckold!

When Zheng Zha first saw that Shuofang Si had created Lori, fierce anger surged through him, but Shuofang Si's shout left him dumbstruck.

He had been about to demand, "Why did you make a Lori too?"

But before he could speak, the other man had beaten him to it.

"She was my deskmate in middle school, the girl I could never forget!" Shuofang Si's voice carried deep hurt and sorrow.

He captured the feeling of having something precious stolen from him perfectly.

"We sat together from the time we were thirteen. We listened in class, studied, chatted, and joked together. We even shared our lunches. We promised we'd get into the same high school..."

He spoke quickly, but every word was perfectly clear.

As NZT-48 helped his brain fabricate these memories, it also precisely calculated the rises and falls of his voice and the shifts in his delivery.

Knowing when to choke up and cry, when to end a sentence with a tremor in his voice-that was real acting.

"But she died of an illness when she was fifteen."

Shuofang Si released Zheng Zha's collar and took a step back, the grief and anger on his face gradually giving way to a kind of anguish.

He glanced at the Lori he had created, then at the Lori Zheng Zha had created, his lips twisting into an unbearably bitter smile.

"I just found out about the Main God's human creation feature. I thought... I thought I could finally see her again."

"But what about you? Why did you make her too? What was she to you?"

"I..." Zheng Zha's mind went completely blank.

He still had countless questions he wanted to throw back at him. How did he know Lori?

How could he possibly have been her deskmate?

I was her childhood sweetheart. I was the one who grew up with her!

But faced with Shuofang Si's reddened eyes, he could not voice a single one of those questions.

"No... that's not right," Zheng Zha murmured. "Lori... she never mentioned you to me..."

"Why would she have to mention me to you? She never mentioned you to me either!" Shuofang Si shot back angrily.

"Everyone has all sorts of relationships in their past. I don't know who you were to her, but you must have seen one part of her life."

"But I was her deskmate. I saw another part of her life. What makes you think the part you saw was all there was?"

Those words pierced straight through Zheng Zha's defenses.

Yes, what right did he have to think Lori existed only in his memories?

He had only seen part of her life, the part he happened to be able to see.

But Lori had classmates of her own, a social circle of her own.

He had never looked deeply into any of that, nor had he ever known about it.

He had always thought he knew everything about Lori.

But thinking about it now, perhaps he had only known her from one perspective? Seen only one side of her?

At the same time, another question occurred to him for the first time.

The Main God had created Lori from his memories.

The Main God could create a body and implant memories, but who was this person it had created?

Was she really Lori? Or was she merely a projection of his memories?

If this person was the real Lori, then who was the deskmate Shuofang Si was talking about? If she was only a projection, what was the point of holding a projection in his arms?

The resolve he had regained upon seeing Lori instantly wavered, a trace of doubt creeping in.

Yet everything Shuofang Si had said and done lined up. He had started creating a person as soon as his treatment ended, finishing only a little later than Zheng Zha. He had also lost Lori when she was fifteen, so the timing matched too.

And Zheng Zha was certain he did not know this teammate at all. He did not even know his name.

Could this man simply have happened to know what Lori looked like?

For a moment, Zheng Zha was lost. A thought formed in his mind: unless everything the man had said was true.

Zheng Zha slapped himself.

The sharp crack startled both Loris beside them.

The Lori Shuofang Si had created shrank back a little.

The Lori Zheng Zha had created rushed straight over and hugged his arm, pressing her face against it as she looked at him with confusion and concern.

"Why are you hitting yourself?"

Zheng Zha looked down at her. His face was reflected in her misty eyes, and the sight was exactly like the Lori in his memories.

But as he looked at that face now, another scene kept surfacing in his mind. She was smiling in a middle school classroom, chatting with the boy beside her about where they should go have fun later.

That boy was not him, but the newcomer standing before him, who had entered the Main God Space at the same time he had.

It turned out he had never been the only person in Lori's life.

The thought brought him both pain and relief.

The pain came from realizing how presumptuous he had always been. All that talk of belonging only to each other had merely been wishful thinking on his part.

The relief came from knowing that if the Lori he had created truly was only a projection of his memories, then she was not the person who had actually existed in those memories.

"You're right." Zheng Zha seemed to have worked something out, and he raised his head to look at Shuofang Si.

"She wasn't someone who existed only in my memories. What I knew about her was just the part I happened to know."

He glanced down at the Lori hugging his arm, then at the other Lori standing behind Shuofang Si, timidly watching everything unfold. A complicated smile tugged at his lips.

"So this girl isn't the real Lori either. She's just someone the Main God created from my memories."

He stroked the hair of the Lori in his arms, his touch gentle, as though he feared shattering a dream.

"I understand now. I won't treat her as that Lori anymore. But since the Main God has created her, she's a new life in her own right."

"I'll cherish her and treat her well." But deep down, Zheng Zha knew that she was not Lori after all. Uncertainty had crept into his once-unshakable heart.

Hearing Zheng Zha's words, the Lori beside him raised her head to look at him, only half understanding.

She did not really understand all this talk of a real Lori and a fake Lori, but she could feel that the man holding her seemed to have made a very important decision.

Watching the scene, Shuofang Si swiftly analyzed and confirmed where this outcome would lead, guided by NZT-48's cold calculations.

Looks like Zheng Zha won't be copied into Team Devil this time. I've dismantled his obsession with this Lori. He knows she's only a product of his memories, not the real person, but he's still willing to protect her.

His affection remained, but the obsession strong enough for the Main God to judge him as having a binding attachment had clearly dissipated.

Shuofang Si stepped forward and held out a hand to Zheng Zha. "Hello, I'm Shuofang Si."

"Oh, hello. I'm Zheng Zha. You went off on your own earlier, so you weren't there when we introduced ourselves."

Sorry, Zheng Zha.

It's better not to let you lose yourself in these false memories-for the sake of the day you have to face Team Devil after I'm gone, and for the clones condemned to such miserable fates.

I'll pull something off for you in The Chronicles of Narnia later, if you manage to reach that world.