Chapter 2

She kept whispering to Ryan, trying to convince herself:

"Ryan, it's fine. It's not your fault. Ethan threw himself at the car. Even if he dies, it has nothing to do with you."

A cold, mechanical voice echoed in my mind.

*“Ethan, do you regret it now?”*

Five years ago, when I transferred Chloe's fate to myself, the System had asked me the exact same question.

Back then, I had answered without hesitation:

*“No.”*

I had even begged the System to delay my physical death so I could finish building the clone to love her in my place.

The moment the clone was successfully activated, my original body finally died.

The car crash had left my body completely mangled. To prevent Chloe from being traumatized, I begged the System to erase all traces of my physical corpse.

At that moment, the cold mechanical voice of the System actually showed a hint of pity.

*“Ethan, do you want to know why Chloe was supposed to get into that car accident in the first place?”*

In my silence, it told me:

*“In Chloe’s life script, she was destined to die in a car crash on her way to see the person she loved most.”*

On the day I took that crash for her, the person she was rushing to see was Ryan.

It was only then that I realized Chloe's true love had never been me.

Even though the clone's self-healing sequence had started, the physical pain was excruciating.

The suffocating sensation made my soul tremble.

For some reason, I suddenly remembered the first time I met Chloe.

That day, when I first arrived in this world, she had risked her own life to save a little girl playing in the middle of a busy street.

In my original world, people were cold and indifferent. Nobody would have cared about a stranger's child.

Maybe her heroic aura back then was just too bright.

It blinded me so completely that even now, I still looked at her through a soft-focus filter.

Before my consciousness faded again, I whispered to the System:

*“System, I don't regret it.”*