He flipped through the book again. Then again. Nothing. Not a single word. His brain short-circuited.


Did I actually jinx myself? he thought. Did I die of food poisoning before I could write anything?


I just wanted to make dinner. Is the universe punishing me that harshly?


"Wait. No." Max frowned. "If I died so suddenly that I couldn't leave a message, the book shouldn't exist at all. But the book is here. It's just the words that have gone AWOL."


Had the Temporal Bureau found out about his little contraband timeline and 404'ed the content?


Hold on. He was missing something.


He closed the book. The cover hadn't changed. It still read: The Chronicle.


"The Chronicle... The Chronicle..."


Max chewed on the words, and suddenly, a lightbulb went on.


If he could rewrite the future, it was because of this time-traveling journal. The exact moment the future changed was the moment he read the update and his thoughts shifted.


The Butterfly Effect. Maybe the butterfly originally planned to flap its left wing. But after reading the update, it decided to flap its right wing instead.


Suddenly, a storm that was supposed to hit the East Coast hits the West Coast. The world spins off onto a completely different track.


I think, therefore I am.


If his thoughts changed, the world changed.


It was a little arrogant, sure, but with the journal in his hand, Max was the world's only variable.


On a small scale, Max could flap his wings and change his own life. On a large scale? He could decide where the hurricanes hit.


So, if the future Max left the pages blank, the reason was obvious.


Future Max didn't want to change Present Max's mind.


Why?


Because he had already succeeded.


The Chronicle. The title usually sounded heavy, like the memoirs of a survivor trekking through a wasteland. But looked at from another angle?


It was the ultimate victory lap.




5:30 PM.


Lily lugged her grocery bags up the stairs and stopped. Max was leaning against the door of Apartment 3B, looking like a philosopher pondering the meaning of the universe.


"Good afternoon, sir!" Lily greeted him politely. "Watching the sunset?"


Max snapped out of his daze. "Oh, hey, Lily. Actually, I was waiting for you."


"Waiting for me?" Lily blinked.


"Yeah. A return gift for last time." Max smiled and nudged two bags at his feet toward her.


Lily took them, looking confused. Inside, she found fresh, lively shrimp and a sea bass that looked remarkably expensive.


"This is too much..."


She started to refuse, but Max cut her off with a sheepish grin.


"I was going to cook them myself and bring them over," he admitted. "But honestly? You could toss veggies into a cement mixer and it would taste better than my cooking. I figured I should let someone with actual talent handle it. If you don't take them, I'm just going to ruin perfectly good food or end up feeding the stray cats."


Lily couldn't help but laugh at that.


"Well, in that case..."


"Alright, fine. As soon as I'm done cooking, I'll bring some over for you too."


"Huh? You actually figured out my plan, Lily? Honestly, that food last time... I almost swallowed my tongue it was so good."


Lily beamed, her eyes crinkling into happy crescents. She looked like she'd just won the lottery.


"By the way, Mister," she chirped. "What happened with Hazel? I asked her about it, but she wouldn't say anything."


"Oh, we met," Max said. "Her office is seriously fancy."


"I'm asking what you thought of her."


"Huh?" Max blinked, his brain lagging.


"Is Hazel not pretty?" Lily gave him a weird look.


"Pre... pretty..." Max's laugh was drier than sandpaper.


"Mhm! For the sake of this fish, I'll help you out, Mister!" Lily winked, a mischievous grin spreading across her face.


Great. She thought his return gift was a bribe to get close to her sister.


Okay, fair enough. For a lonely bachelor like Max, seeing a high-powered lawyer with a supermodel physique and stunning looks... yeah, it was hard not to have some thoughts. It wasn't weird for Lily to assume that.


But considering their first meeting involved him basically looking like a criminal, the chances of him dating her sister were about as high as him not going to jail for ten years if he tried.


"Cough! Lily, you've got it wrong. I purely just—"


"Lily! What are you doing?" A cold voice sliced through the air from behind.


Max spun around, looking slightly guilty. "Ms. Lane. You're back."


"Lily, didn't I tell you not to talk to strangers?"


"Oh!" Lily didn't argue. She nodded obediently, shot Max a conspiratorial wink, said, "I'm going to cook," and darted into Apartment 302.


"Cough! Ms. Lane, we're neighbors and we've met multiple times. I wouldn't exactly call me a stranger, right?" Max laughed awkwardly.


Hazel stared at him for a beat, then reached past him and opened his door.


"Come inside."


Max stood there, dumbfounded.


The sentence itself was fine. A perfectly normal invitation to talk business.


Except... why was she inviting him into his own room?


That was a whole new level of making yourself at home.


Max hurried in after her and found Hazel already scanning his studio apartment like a crime scene investigator.


"Place is a bit messy. Sorry about that."


Max started sweating. He quickly snatched a pair of SpongeBob boxers off the bed and stuffed them out of sight.


Thank god his stash of "collectible" magazines was well hidden...


Why did he feel like he was being raided by the FBI?


Hazel patrolled the studio expressionlessly, showing absolutely zero embarrassment about barging into a single guy's man-cave. Her brow only furrowed when her gaze landed on the pot containing a pile of indescribable black goo.


"Cough! Not exactly a master chef. My bad," Max mumbled.


Hazel's mouth twitched. "Not a master chef" was the understatement of the century. You'd have to be blind to cook something that disastrous.


But after scrutinizing everything—his clothes, the cheap furniture, the clutter—she seemed to reach a verdict: This was the home of a lonely bachelor with barely enough money to scrape by and zero life skills.


"Who are you, really?" she demanded, turning on him. "I struggle to understand how an ordinary insurance agent could spot a stalker, or where you got confidential information regarding the 'Schuster-Gould Divorce Case.' Until you explain that, I can't trust you."


She stared daggers at him.


"In fact... I suspect you might be the stalker Schuster Corporation sent to get close to us! Your goal is to distract me and disrupt my litigation."


That was her conclusion?


The annoying part was, Hazel's logic actually made sense. Since no murder had happened yet, the worst she expected from her enemies was harassment. By actively approaching them and acting weird, Max had made himself the prime suspect.


Aside from her own legal team, the only people who knew about the case were the bad guys. By leaking intel to gain her trust, he'd accidentally convinced her he was working for the enemy.


Disaster. Total disaster.


And he couldn't even tell her the truth.


Hey, Lily  is in mortal danger.


Even if she believed him—which was unlikely—she'd panic and run. If Hazel took Lily and fled, Max would lose them. And with Schuster Corp's resources, finding them would be easy. They'd be sitting ducks without him.


He couldn't even name the killer because the murder hadn't happened yet. You know who the killer is before the crime? That's not detective work; that's witchcraft.


"Whoa, whoa! I lived here first, remember? You guys moved in after me. It's not like I arranged that," Max argued.


Hazel looked around the dumpy apartment again. "You look like you need money."


Great. Now she was implying he'd been bought off.


He couldn't blame her for being paranoid. He was missing the one thing she needed to see: Motive. Why was he being so "helpful"?


Seeing Max speechless, Hazel's suspicion deepened.


I'm really doing this for Lily...


In his desperation, a lightbulb went off in Max's head. He suddenly remembered a famous line from a certain pickup artist guru.


As the old saying goes, nothing is impossible if you're desperate enough. Or something like that.


Max decided to just go for it. He gritted his teeth and mentally threw himself off a cliff.


"Fine! I'll drop the act," Max blurted out, sounding like a man with nothing left to lose. "The truth is... I've been watching you guys since the day you moved in!"


"Hah!" Hazel's lip curled into a cold sneer. "Finally ready to spill it, are you?"


"Yes! And look, I know this isn't exactly the perfect time to bring this up, but..." Max squeezed his eyes shut and dropped the bomb. "I like you!"


The silence was deafening.


"Wha... What?!" Hazel stammered.


This was definitely not the plot twist she had been expecting. Her face flushed crimson before she snapped back to reality, glaring daggers at him.


"Do you have any idea what you're saying?"


"Of course I do," Max lied through his teeth, picking up speed. "I like you. That's why I approached Lily first. It was a strategy—you know, the indirect approach? Taking the scenic route to your heart? I only found that stalker by accident because I was trying to get close to you."


He kept going, fueled by pure panic. "I like you, which is why I just 'happen' to be on your subway car every morning. I like you, so I've been trying to find out everything about you. I like you, so I wanted to protect you and Lily from the bad guys!"


There, he thought. If that isn't a good enough reason, nothing is.