Haneul stared at the "GO LIVE?" button.
It had been weeks.
Her chat—dormant, waiting—suddenly felt like an ocean behind a thin pane of glass.
She glanced at her shard.
[FRAGMENT: STATUS – CALM.][ATTITUDE: "OBSERVE."]
"Okay," she said to no one.
She pressed the button.
STREAM START
Title: BACK FROM THE DEAD (NOT CLICKBAIT)Category: Tower Commentary + Snacks
Chat exploded instantly.
[user123]: SHE'S ALIVE[SpicyDumpling]: QUEEN HANEUL RETURNS[floor2fan]: did u SEE the glitches last night???[TowerLawyer]: we demand your hot take
Haneul sipped her drink dramatically.
"Hot take: if the System ever ran on Windows, last night was its update reboot," she said.
Chat spammed LMAO, TRUE, PATCH JOKES.
"And yes," she said, "I'm okay. Mostly. My brother is alive. Annoying. Still single."
Chat spammed KAELOLONELY, SET HIM UP WITH MIRAAAAA.
Haneul froze.
"No," she said forcefully. "Do not ship my brother with his handler. That's illegal."
[user567]: not illegal[shipperlord]: canon soon
The shard hummed with amusement.
She rolled her eyes.
"Okay, serious topic," she said, leaning into the mic. "Everyone felt something last night, right? Like the System was… lagging?"
Thousands of yeses rolled in.
Haneul hesitated.
Then decided honesty (selective honesty) was safest.
"Look, I'm not going to say it was a 'Root glitch' because that would imply I know things I'm not supposed to know," she said. "But I will say this: the System is old. And sometimes old things misfire."
Chat quieted.
[curiouscat]: so is it dangerous?[worriedmom]: r my kids safe in tower school??[theorycrafter]: do u think fragments r involved?
She answered carefully.
"If something big ever happens again, the safest place to be is in the city, not deep in a Tower," she said. "City nodes have redundancies. Towers don't. They're built to shake, not support."
Her shard offered a small nudge.
[SUGGEST: "COMMUNITY > HEROICS" MESSAGE.]
She nodded.
"And remember," she added, "worth isn't just damage numbers. Street vendors. Transit workers. Kids. Elders. People who keep the city alive matter just as much as Hunters."
Chat flooded with heart emojis and COMMUNITY WORTH POG.
She blinked.
"Did I just accidentally start a feel-good movement," she muttered.
Her shard pulsed.
[FRAGMENT: "GOOD."]
"Oh no," she said aloud. "I'm becoming my shard."
Chat spammed LMAOOOO.
Then someone donated:
[RootReclaimer] — $50:What's your stance on restoring the original Root? All this mercy stuff is nice but inefficiency kills.
She froze.
The shard tensed.
"Who are you," she whispered.
She kept her expression neutral.
"Stance?" she said lightly. "I don't believe in going backwards. Systems evolve. People evolve. If something's broken, fix it better, not older."
Chat exploded with support.
[RootReclaimer]: interesting.
Haneul felt the hair on her arms stand.
She ended the stream early.