I had a pre-set speech prepared for that day.
The government and elite families were working together for the first time, marking the venue and assigning speakers to precise time slots.
When my turn came, I stepped forward, delivering my speech exactly as planned.
I spoke of the oppression I had endured and the suffering under the male act that had shaped me. Every word was designed to rattle the crowd emotionally, to make them invest in my story, despite none of it being true.
The audience itself had been carefully chosen. Pre-hired, strategically placed, and aware of their roles. Every chant, every gasp, every nod had been orchestrated.
Even the media coverage was controlled. Apart from the Piao family's own systems, global platforms had been rented, social media feeds synchronized, billboards hijacked. Everything broadcast the speech, everything amplified the narrative.
And then came the line I had been told to deliver:
"We must remove the protection of the Male Act. The male population has long stabilized."
The pre-hired men, all selected for their visibility, rose and began chanting those words. Their voices grew in unison, echoing my lines over and over. Surrounding them, others joined almost instinctively. Nobody wanted to appear as an outsider, as someone unwilling to conform.
I kept a strange, careful smile, nodding in approval before stepping back. The crowd's energy was immense, yet every aspect had been staged. It was a manufactured riot, a controlled frenzy—but that didn't make it feel any less real from the inside.
Once the chants subsided and my speech was complete, I expected the Piao family to either negotiate or outright ignore us.
We had requested a reply on very short notice. We had threatened that lack of response would signal indifference to the people.
I thought they might attempt negotiation. Or perhaps they would remain silent.
Even if the riot had just happened and the Piao family didn't respond, no one could truly blame them—they had always protected regular people.
But to my surprise, they did reply.
Not only that—they sent a hover limousine to pick me up.
Even more astonishing, they had arranged the same treatment for the two civilian lottery winners—the citizen representatives. I only confirmed this while watching Marcus's livestream, and the simultaneous verification left me genuinely unsettled.
For a moment, I couldn't reconcile what I was seeing. This was the same Piao family I had been warned about—the so-called "evil" family, the ones I had been trained to fear.
And yet, here they were, sending a limousine five hours early. Only I knew that. Only I bore that awareness.
Every step I took, every gesture I made, could be observed—not just by the Piao family, but by government agents or rival families. There was no room for error.
I had been awake since five in the morning, rehearsing every persona, every expression. A single slip could undo me.
I ran through every scenario: hidden cameras, listening devices, agents placed in plain sight.
I was grateful to manage only one persona—but even that demanded constant vigilance. Remembering who I had been before this manipulation felt like dredging up a buried self, a version of me I hadn't touched in years.
I looked out at the limousine. I could have arrived early, waited inside, and taken my time…
But Garfield had explicitly sanctioned me to arrive last.