‘We have to break up.’

Jade heard this as she opened her eyes.

She was sitting at a corner table, with a young man seated opposite her. He was holding a cup of coffee with both hands. Guilt, regret, and some other emotion Jade couldn’t identify chased each other across his face.

Jade scanned the surrounding. She was in a café with an area of no more than fifty square metres. The decoration style was clean and simple: white walls, white floors, and white coffee machines. Even the counter was painted a shade of alabaster white.

Other than three potential fire hazards, this appeared to be a safe environment. Jade relaxed.

A cup of steaming black coffee sat on the table in front of Jade, untouched. Except for a black logo, the porcelain cup was, as expected, pure white.

‘I know it’s unfair to you, but I have no choice. You understand, right?’ the man said.

It was more accurate to call him a boy instead of a man, on account of his extremely youthful face. He was no older than twenty-four or twenty-five, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. His T-shirt was Balenciaga, retail $3,900, and his jeans were Versace, $8,400. He wore a pair of Fendi white leather slip-ons, $4,700. Dangling in front of his T-shirt was a Hermès Amulette padlock pendant, $5,000.

‘I’m sorry it has to come to this, but I’ll never forget you,’ he continued.

When Jade did not respond, he reached out a hand to touch her. She moved her hand away. He looked hurt.

Jade looked around. She and the man seemed to be the only patrons at the café. There was no one else except for a barista behind the counter. She was about twenty-five years old, dressed in a preppy uniform and a pleated skirt, her long hair tied into two braids. She was absentmindedly wiping a coffee mug in her hand while casting surreptitious glances at Jade’s table.

‘... father is rich and powerful, and he adores her. If I don't break up with you, I'm afraid she’ll find some way to hurt you,’ the boy hadn’t stopped talking.

In her mind, Jade called her system, ‘Cillian.’

‘Yes, Jade.’

‘Is this man related to my task?’

‘Yes. One of the original Jade’s wishes is to make a clean break with her boyfriend Craig, the one sitting in front of you.’

‘Understood.’

‘You are breaking up with me?’ Jade finally said to Craig.

Craig clenched his hands and lowered his head. After a long while, he nodded imperceptibly.

‘Okay,’ Jade said simply.

‘Will you forgive me?’ Craig looked contrite.

Jade looked at him. His hair was cut short, his face still retaining a bit of baby fat. He had big, bright eyes. A straight nose. Thin lips. In most people’s eyes, he would be considered handsome. Like a K-pop idol.

Jade detected the aroma of something sweet. It wafted over from a kitchen somewhere at the back of the café. Cake. And fresh cream. She turned her head towards the kitchen.

‘Jade, Jade? Are you listening to me?’ Craig stood up and waved a hand in front of her face. ‘I know how you must be feeling. I’m really, really sorry. But you have to understand, I’m only doing this to protect you.’

Jade turned her attention back to him. He squirmed under her piercing gaze.

‘I know you must be extremely disappointed in me. If only I can make you feel better...’ Craig took out his phone and glanced at the screen. ‘I have to go. Shasha has just texted me.’

Jade did not reply.

‘No matter what happens, I’ll always love you,’ Craig said with a rueful smile as he left the café.

Jade drained the cup of coffee in front of her and dabbed her lips with a napkin. It tasted bitter. Tea would have been more preferable. Craig was the one who had ordered coffee for her. He’d known the original Jade for sixteen years and never knew what she really liked.

‘This is our new red velvet cake,’ the barista suddenly appeared at the table and set down a white plate and a white fork in front of Jade.

Jade looked up at her.

'The cake is made of cheese cream and apricots, and has a silky texture. Please try it. This is on the tasting menu and won’t be included in the bill,’ the barista said with a sympathetic smile.

Jade knew she had been eavesdropping on the conversation, and it was proven by what she said next.

‘There’s no need to shed tears for a scum. He’s not worth it,’ the barista patted Jade on her shoulder and smiled at her again.

‘Thank you,’ Jade said.

The barista nodded and returned to her position behind the counter. She started playing a game on her phone.

Jade tasted the cake. It was indeed silky smooth. Slightly moist. Soft and rich, like velvet.

‘Cillian, the plot,’ Jade said in her mind.

‘Coming up, Jade,’ Cillian started flipping through the novel. He shared the view with Jade so that she could read the novel in her mind.

Cillian claimed to be an artificial intelligence system designed to help Jade in her tasks. He’d accompanied Jade to six worlds and this was their seventh.

This was a world formed out of a novel. The title of the book was ‘The Billionaire CEO’s Runaway Bride Has Made A Killer Comeback!’

The male protagonist, Jonathan McLean, was, as the title suggested, a billionaire CEO in charge of a huge corporation, though the book did not mention what the company’s business was. It was only said that his company was multinational and hugely profitable. Jonathan never bothered with any deal whose value was less than ten million dollars. He travelled with a retinue of at least twenty bodyguards, two chauffeurs, four secretaries, four personal assistants, and at least one full-time nutritionist. Yes, this was a domineering CEO who also cared a great deal about his own health.

The heroine, Dorothy M. Henry, was nineteen years old. During an outing to a club with a bunch of friends, she was drugged and, while delirious, she barged into a private room by mistake. Jonathan was there alone, taking a nap on a sofa. The drug Dorothy had ingested was an aphrodisiac. Under its effects, she slept with Jonathan.

‘Doesn’t the book say that Jonathan is always accompanied by no less than twenty bodyguards? Why was there no one else in the room when Dorothy went inside? Were all the bodyguards slacking off?’ Jade savoured another forkful of the sponge cake as she raised questions about the plot and talked to Cillian in her mind.

‘Also, Jonathan is supposed to be extremely concerned for his health and sticks to a strict regimen prescribed by his personal nutritionist. This page here says he drinks tea with wolfberries and red dates and carries a thermos cup with him everywhere he goes. He goes to bed at 10.30pm on the dot, and never sleeps anywhere else except on his bed handmade with layers of natural materials, with his memory foam pillow and custom-made satin sheets. Why would he go to a club late at night, and why would he fall asleep on a sofa?’

Cillian, ‘…’

‘And what kind of deep sleep must he be having that he didn’t wake up during the entire process? Not even with the full weight of an adult sitting on top of him? Was he drugged as well? From my understanding, an average session in bed lasts anywhere from five minutes to thirty. He just slept through it all?’

It took Cillian a while to find a reply. ‘This is just a world formed out of a book. Some details do not bear close examination.’

‘But plots have to be logical, right? Even the previous world you sent me to, the one with flying unicorns and castles in mid-air, had more logic than this.’

Cillian pretended not to hear this and continued flipping through the pages.

The effects of the drug gradually wore off. Dorothy became clear-headed and realised that she’d lost her virginity to a stranger.

As a girl raised with conservative values, she had planned to save her first time for her future husband. The sleeping man had a face she liked, and she didn’t object to the idea of starting a relationship with him. Maybe she would grow to love him and they would get married.

But before she could wake him up, footsteps came from the corridor outside. They were coming towards this room. Dorothy was afraid of being caught in her current dishevelled state. And it would be difficult to explain the scene, with an unconscious man underneath her, his pants zipper undone. So Dorothy got up quickly and ran out of the room and escaped.

‘With “just his zipper undone,” does that mean Dorothy didn’t take off Jonathan’s clothes and just … sat on it?’ Jade asked, astonished. ‘The previous world you sent me to was a fairy tale. Why is this world so … different? Are you sure this is a romance story, not a crime novel?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. The book is categorised as Modern Romance.’

Cillian often downloaded new voices to his system and changed the way he talked. Right now, he spoke like an old professor, but somehow, Jade felt he sounded evasive.

‘Did she take an aphrodisiac or a personality-altering drug? In one paragraph, the author describes Dorothy as being raised with tradition values. In the next, she is unzipping a stranger’s pants and using him as a dildo.’

Cillian, ‘Let’s not get bogged down in details.’

As Cillian skipped over the many, many pages of the novel, he couldn’t help but think back to the experience in the previous six worlds. As an artificial superintelligence programme capable of self-learning, Cillian thought he could understand most types of human behaviour and human thoughts, but he’d never met anyone like Jade before.

She paid careful attention to all kinds of details, to the point of being pedantic. And she was inquisitive. Incredibly so.

The previous world she’d travelled to had been formed based on a fairy tale. Such stories, of course, were not known for their impeccable logic. Animals that could talk. Blankets that could fly and self-navigate. Hats that could turn people invisible.

Jade’s identity in that world was a princess. While she didn’t neglect her task, she did way more than that. She built a laboratory on the second floor of her huge castle. She studied the diets and living environments of talking rabbits, and even had control groups. Cillian suspected that if she could get her hands on a DNA sequencer, she would not have hesitated in using it on the rabbits.

She combined several rooms into an indoor test facility, where she measured and recorded the speed of the flying carpet, checked their ability to navigate different terrains, and even conducted crash tests. Her research results were applied on the battlefield.

Cillian was only too glad that there was no mermaid whose tears could turn into pearls. He could totally see Jade putting a washbasin in front of the delicate mermaid and urging her to cry every day.

He would have thought that by sending her to a modern world, Jade would not be able to pick so many holes in the plot. Boy, was he wrong.

Jade skimmed the next hundred pages of the novel. After Dorothy escaped, Jonathan woke up, went home, went to bed, and slept, entirely unaware that he’d just had sex with someone.

Jade, ‘…’

Cillian, correctly sensing that she was about to say something again, quickly turned the pages.

Dorothy ran back home and eventually calmed down. She’d changed her mind. She was only nineteen years old, below the legal age for marriage. And she had just been admitted into a university overseas. She was reluctant to give up this opportunity.

So she packed her bags and left the country.

During the second semester of freshman year, Dorothy gave birth to a baby boy. She took on a ‘strong-woman’ persona, and split her time attending class, working part-time, and raising a child. Meanwhile, she met several men who had supporting roles in the romance story. With their help, Dorothy led a pretty comfortable life overseas.

Back home, Jonathan, who paid a great deal of attention to his health, finally found out during a routine physical examination that he was no longer a virgin. He was dumbstruck.

‘What kind of routine physical exam can check if a man’s a virgin?’ Jade couldn’t help raising the question.

Cillian, ‘…’

The more holes Jade picked with the plot, the more Cillian was reluctant to tell her that the book was his creation.

No, he was not the author. He’d simply bought the rights of six of the bestselling books on the intergalactic web and combined them into one.

Now he finally understood the look on Alexander’s face when Cillian told him about this brilliant idea.

Since the male protagonist was an amalgamation of six different characters, he often acted as if he was suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder. In the boardroom, he could be bold and domineering and decisive. But in the bedroom, he was just as conservative as Dorothy. Once he found out he’d lost his virginity, he vowed to find the woman who took it.