Part 1: Then They Will Hear Your Plea...

There was an urban legend.
Write your troubles down on a note.
Hold it in your hand at midnight, and pray.
“God, please help me...”
Then God will hear your plea.
And change your fate.
It was only a legend though...
That has gone viral for a brief period of time.
-Excerpt from “Modern Urban Legends”

…

[BGM: A Family Matter]




…...

Ugh... my head hurts... Where... am I?

What... happened?



You finally woke up! I've been waiting for so long. I was beginning to worry that you might never wake up.

(It's a talking dog!)

Er... and are you... my pet?

[BGM: Cat Pound]


Must... stay... calm... How dare you call me a pet? Do I look like a pet?!

Well... yes?

I am your servant. Don't you remember?

(Servant? What is this talking dog going on about? Am I having a dream?)

Servant? As in... you could help me fetch the newspaper?

Have you... lost your memories?

Lost... my memories?

Yeah. You fell down the stairs yesterday. Then you passed out.

I thought you might have hit your head.

I fell?

But my head doesn't hurt anywhere, there's no bruising...

Anyway, let's both settle down a little. How about a quick test?

Now, look into my big, beautiful eyes, and tell me: what is my name?

Er... Fluffy?

Fluffy my ass!



Well... I guess you really did lose your memories.

My name is Will... Sometimes, I go by Willy.

Willy...?

Yes, Willy.

Willy... Wonka?

No! It's just Willy! I don't own a chocolate factory! Also, don't you know chocolate is dangerous for dogs?!

Wait... I'm not a dog! Oh boy. It seems worse than I thought.

Listen to me carefully... I'm not a dog, and you're not a human.

(That doesn't sound right...)



We are gods.

(WHAT?!)

Yes, that's right. We're gods.

How did you know what I was thinking just now?!

I'm a god. Of course I know. As gods, it is our job to change the fate of the humans who ask us for help.

Humans encounter all kinds of trouble in their lives and sometimes they pray to us, hoping for “miracles”, as they call them. We can help them and grant their wishes.

Or not.

It's all up to you, of course.

Wait, wait, wait... Stop babbling so fast. I don't understand what you're saying at all!



I'm not babbling... You're just too slow!

You know what, let's start with job orientation, shall we? Come over here. It's time to do some work.

Hold on... Are we starting already?

I still don't have a clue what is going on... Besides, didn't you just tell me that we're gods? Why do gods have to work? Don't lie to me just because I've lost my memories...

I was not lying.

In any case, if you don't finish today's work, we won't have any dinner tonight.

Fine...

…

[BGM: New Life]


See that small red box? That is a message from the human today. All right, let's see what she has got herself into this time.

[BGM: Air]


I Want to Go Home

My name is Li Wen. I am a senior at Yingnan High School.
Today I went to a nearby court to play tennis for the first time since I had moved to my new place.



It was a very poorly maintained court, so I guess hardly anyone ever uses it.
The light over the tennis court is maintained by some of the residents themselves; the dim light bulb kept making a buzzing noise.

One, two, three...
I had just hit all 30 of the balls that I had, so I picked up the now empty basket.
I walked to the other side of the court and collected the balls before hitting them all again.
No one else was on the tennis court. All I could hear was the sound of the balls hitting my racket and then bouncing off the ground.

The light bulb flickered twice, and went out.

I picked up most of the balls and left the court, walking towards a small alley. I had walked through it earlier on my way to the court.
The alley was always dark no matter what time of day it was. I kept humming to myself quietly in my head just to be less scared.



I arrived at my apartment and suddenly realized that my keys were not in my pocket!
I tried to think back... I must have left them at the tennis court.
If the light hadn't suddenly gone out I would have noticed that they were not on me.

Well, this sucked...
It was too late to go back to the court. Not to mention that I might not even be able to find the keys without any light.

A desk lamp was on in the manager's office, as was the radio, but nobody was in there.
I stood outside the window and waited for a long time but Uncle Sun, who was supposed to be on duty tonight, never showed up.
The motion sensor lights in the hallway kept turning on and off every few minutes. I was beginning to feel a little scared.

A late night talk show was on.
The hosts were talking about a popular urban legend that had also been making the rounds at school.
It said that if you wrote a note to God in the middle of the night, then God would solve all of your problems for you.
Jing was really into this stuff.



Well, if such a God really exists... maybe he or she could help unlock the door for me?
Or make Uncle Sun come back to his office soon!
Please, please!

Li Wen

…



Well... Do people always write to gods just because they forgot their keys?

Er... Not always, no.

But humans are exceptionally annoying. You'll see a lot more random nonsense of all kinds in the future. Forget about why she asked for our help for now. Let's take a look at how we may help her.

Now, use this pen I just gave you. We can slice this letter into several pieces.



Now see, some of these pieces are black, and some of them are white. To prevent logical chaos, some of these pieces cannot be moved. These pieces are designated in black.

Meanwhile, the white pieces can be moved anywhere with one exception. No white pieces can go past the first or the last piece.

Now that you understand the limitations in moving these pieces, you may feel free to move the white pieces around. After you rearrange the white pieces, these events will happen exactly as you want in the human world.

If your rearrangement has altered the previous causal links within the events, naturally the ending of the letter will be changed.

Well... that's about it.

What?! Are you telling me that I could change what has happened to the human by moving these sentences around?

Exactly. Isn't it straightforward?

Oh gosh! That is so awesome! Can you do it too?

Only the person who is holding the pen is capable of doing this. Go ahead. Give it a try.



As this is obviously an introduction to the mechanic, there's no puzzle here, it's just a matter of re-arranging the order of the white pieces.





It's hard to show in a text LP, but upon changing anything in the letter that will result in a new outcome, the bottom black piece begins flashing to show it's not the initial default order, and there's a Reset button if you want to start over or get yourself mixed up.

In any case, now that we've altered things so that a light goes out after Li Wen picked up her tennis balls and left the tennis court, let's hit the OK button and see how things play out from here...

…



The alley was always very dark to begin with, and with the light gone it had become pitch black. I couldn't even see my hands in front of my face.
I kept having a feeling that something was going to happen...
Scenes from horror movies and homicide shows I'd seen suddenly flashed through my head.

Since I was too scared, I turned around and picked another longer way home.

[BGM: Air Dance]


The detour was a crowded and lively street.
It was full of people hanging out and waiting in front of bars.
And a lot of arcades were still open.

I was planning to head straight home and go to bed, but I saw the latest version of the stuffed Ser Spotty through the window of an arcade!



Hey! There is some text highlighted in blue here!

That means it's a term archived in our Dictionary. The humans' letters often include some special terms related to their day-to-day lives. These terms will be highlighted. Since we are gods, there's nothing that we don't understand.

Therefore, whenever we encounter one of these strange terms, a definition for them will automatically appear in our Dictionary.

By the way, similar to the Dictionary, we also keep a record of the Profiles of everyone who has written to us.

Oh wow... being a god is so convenient...



Unfortunately, it was not for sale. I had to get it out of a claw machine.
And I'm not very good at those...
I spent almost all of the cash I had on me, but I didn't come close even once...

“Miss, we are about to close. Please check your belongings and don't leave anything behind.”

I lowered my head in disappointment. I noticed that there was a bottle of some kind of drink on the counter that had appeared out of nowhere.
Perhaps somebody had forgotten it there. I picked it up and threw it in the trash on my way out.

I got home and turned on the light.
All of the boxes I had moved in two days ago were still lying all over the floor.
Tomorrow. I'll unpack them tomorrow. I'm too exhausted now...

At least the shower felt great...
I got out of the shower, climbed into bed and immediately fell asleep.
Good night.



Look, because of what you did, now it's the alley that has a broken lightbulb, instead of the tennis court. Therefore, the girl would not have left her keys at the dark tennis court. Even though it was a tiny change, you have indeed changed her fate.

More importantly, you might have changed more than what we are seeing right now. The impact of this tiny event could last for a long time, maybe even influence her entire life. A chain reaction like this is called “the butterfly effect” in the human world.

We still can't be certain of how big the impact to her future is going to be. But keep in mind that our power has a potentially dangerous side to it. We must never abuse it.

Hmm... I understand.

Well, we are done with this letter. Let's go back and see if there are more!

…

[BGM: New Life]


Being a god is so easy!

Heh heh... Don't get too excited. You still have a lot to learn. I have fetched the letters for you up until now. From now on, you should be getting your own letters. I have placed a mailbox at the bottom left; if the flag is up by the mailbox, it means that there are new letters inside.

If you've processed all of the letters at hand, go and check the mailbox.

Got it!







NEW MESSAGE: The Last Words



NEW MESSAGE: Roses and A Doll



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Profiles have Updated.