Eight minutes from launch to being shot down. In every one of them there is a single white interceptor that drops me at the same coordinates, from the same angle. On the eighteenth rewind, instead of dodging her firing line, I open the channel first.
After the ground was abandoned, the orbital cities stopped sending people down and began burning expendable pilots through proxy battles instead. No Yunjae is one of those consumables, and he has been handed a privilege that works like a curse: only the pilot who is shot down is rewound to eight minutes before launch. Every rewind puts the same frame directly ahead of him. Pyo Yeon, the enemy's finest interception ace, the one person who blocks his path without a word. His trace-reading lays out every move she is about to make, and still it never shows him why she waits at these coordinates every single time. The more runs he stacks up, the more what he learns is not the enemy's weakness but the things hidden by the hand that keeps shooting him down.
- The moment Pyo Yeon holds her shot 0.6 seconds too long for the first time, is caught doing it, and then says nothing at all on the other end of the channel.
- The moment you realize the trace window has drawn her next three moves in pale blue, and every one of those lines passes just barely wide of the center of your cockpit.
- The moment you bring up a promise you made with her a run ago, and she asks about it with the face of someone hearing it for the first time, then flies exactly the way that promise said she would.
The moment Pyo Yeon holds her shot 0.6 seconds too long for the first time, is caught doing it, and then says nothing at all on the other end of the channel.
