This Time, I'll Be the Villain's Favorite Daughter novel Chapter 391

This Time, FiBe the Villain’s Favorite Daughter

Chapter 391 The Glitch

Finished

Maya’s consciousness was fading, but the last scraps of awareness wouldn’t stop circling the same thought.

What had gone wrong?

Why was Alfred there? How had he even found her?

After more than a hundred reloads, her sluggish brain kept returning on that question. Alfred had no way of knowing she’d snuck out.

The only time she’d seen him during a reset was on that very first reload, when she’d said two cryptic things to him, punched him in the shoulder, and walked off. Across the hundreds of restarts after that, she’d never gone looking for him again.

He had no reason to know where she was. No reason at all to show up at that abandoned construction site.

It was so strange.

All Maya could do was quietly tell him not to be sad. She’d get it right next time. She promised.

After she woke from the reload, Maya lay there for a long time.

During the first few hundred resets, she’d been tireless, opening her eyes and going straight after Snowfinch for another round. The system had assumed she’d gotten addicted to grinding the boss fight. Even later, her mood had stayed flat and steady.

Then Alfred showed up, and something inside her deflated like a punctured balloon.

Moonlight spilled through the window and pooled on her thin blanket. Maya stared at the ceiling, replaying the tremor in his voice when he’d called her name. She turned it over and over in her mind.

Finally, she asked the system softly, “What’s the deal with Snowfinch? Why did he ask me if I wasn’t tired of doing this so many times? And Alfred. Why did he come?”

The system sighed. Its tone carried a weight she’d never heard from it before.

“You’ve repeated this too many times, Maya. This isn’t a game. Maya, these people are feal. If you keep resetting like this, sooner or later, they’re going to notice.”

Maya was learning for the first time that too many reloads could cause something like this. It sounded like a ghost story.

The moonlight washed over the side of her face, softening her outline. She pulled her knees to her chest, lowered her head, and spoke to herself.

“There’s nothing I can do about it. What am I supposed to do?”

The system knew she didn’t have a choice. There really wasn’t one.

It sounded a little mournful. “This kind of thing destabilizes the timeline. Especially Alfred. I’ve never seen anyone break out of the constraints before.”

1/3

11:46 am PN

Chapter 394 The Glitch

Finished

This world was a comic book. Their endings were already written. No matter what choices they made, their destinations had been set in advance. A thousand efforts, ten thousand changes, none of them could outrun fate.

Maya was the first person to break out of that framework. At every fixed plot point in the story, only she could move.

But someone like Alfred, slipping free of the script and stepping outside it, that was something else. It was

rare.

“It’s probably a bug. You’ve looped so many times, the timeline’s getting tangled. It won’t happen again next time.”

Maya let out a soft sound of acknowledgment. The truth was, she been a little glad to see Alfred there. In the moment before she died, at least she hadn’t been alone.

Still, this kind of bug was better left alone. For someone who actually remembered, it was a cruelty of its

own.

Another reload. The clock snapped back to zero, the day starting over.

Maya and Snowfinch went at it again, and she’d long since stopped fighting fairly. The second the odds tipped against her, she pulled the reset and started over. Process didn’t matter. Only the outcome did.

This time, something went wrong on her way out.

By rights, her nighttime exits should never have disturbed anyone.

Her case was packed, guns and knives slotted neatly into their foam cutouts. She’d just turned the doorknob when she opened the door and saw Alfred standing in the hallway.

He’d been there for who knew how long. His dark curls were a mess, and his lifeless eyes were fixed straight on her.

The look in them was strange. It started dead and empty, then drifted into something almost lost, as if even he didn’t know why he was standing there, as if his body had moved before his mind caught up.

୮

Maya’s heart kicked into a hard rhythm.

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