The Lonely Island

The familiar sky, the familiar shallows.

A hazy mist drifted over his feet. The sky was clear yet unfamiliar, and the surroundings were so quiet that not even the slightest whisper of wind could be heard. There was only a pristine, pure pale blue as far as the eye could see, exactly like the scene he had seen in his dreams countless times.

He was still in the same spot where he had left off last time, as though a peaceful night in reality had been no more than a fleeting instant in this dream.

"Abu?"

Wuling raised a hand and called softly. His voice carried across the empty shallows, only to be quickly swallowed by the boundless silence.

He patiently called twice more, but his consciousness remained empty. There was no familiar voice and no system notification. He tried to bring up the system panel, only to find that he couldn't do that either.

"Even Abu can't get in here. What kind of place is this?"

In his spare time, he had read plenty of web novels and seen all kinds of settings involving secret realms, mental domains, and special spaces.

Going by the usual tropes, either the system bound to him was too low-level to enter this advanced mental domain, or the shallows themselves existed on a level far above the system.

Given the current situation, Wuling honestly couldn't tell which it was.

After all, he hadn't spent much time with Abu and didn't know him very well. What if that guy really was a mascot who did nothing but laze around? His round, plump figure already hinted at as much.

There was no point dwelling on how strong he was now. Exploring the place himself was the only answer.

Wuling gathered his thoughts and put those questions aside. Looking at the island now faintly visible ahead, he stopped lingering and walked steadily toward it.

The fine sand beneath his feet was smooth and slightly cool, soft and clean underfoot. It felt far too real, nothing like a false dream.

Each step fell silently, leaving no footprints and stirring no dust. The entire space remained constant, like a frozen image.

The farther he walked, the clearer the island's outline became.

Fine, short, pale gray grass covered the island, low and level, with even spacing throughout. No flowers adorned it, and no trees cast shade over it. Its cleanliness was monotonous, and its silence peaceful.

Several fragments of rock, all different sizes, floated above the shallows around the island. Free from gravity's hold, they drifted quietly at an extremely slow pace.

The island wasn't large. It was almost excessively small, only about a hundred meters across, with no significant rises. It was probably little more than a patch of ground that hadn't been submerged by seawater.

Along the boundary between the shallows and the island stood scattered clusters of translucent, coral-like crystals. Pale blue and clear, with delicate, orderly patterns, they looked like naturally carved ornaments. They were the only decorations on the barren island, adding touches of delicate beauty to the monotonous scene.

Only when he reached the very center of the island did he suddenly stop.

A pure white grand piano stood quietly in the center of the clearing. Its body gleamed with a warm, matte metallic sheen, without a speck of dust. Its lid was half closed, and its keys lay in neat rows, glowing softly with a cool white light beneath the rosy glow and starlike data lights. A pale blue butterfly ornament rested quietly on the upper left side of the piano, lending it a certain beauty.

Apart from a seat, there was nothing around the piano. The figure he had seen before was nowhere to be found. In the whole world, only the solitary piano and the boundless virtual shore remained.

The sea spread slowly behind the piano, stretching to the empty boundary at the edge of his vision. Mist curled gently around the piano like a thin veil.

The specks of data light floating in the air slowly descended, landing here and there on the keys without making a sound.

Wuling reached out and gently touched the cold piano. The sensation against his fingertips was frighteningly real, yet everything around him had the illusory quality of something constructed from data.

He slowly walked once around the piano. There was no wear on it at all; it was as pristine as though it had never been touched. Yet the lingering strains of a familiar piano piece seemed to remain faintly in the air, silently circling the instrument like a melody forever frozen in place.

Wuling remembered clearly that this was the very melody that had guided him here all along.

But when he looked around, he couldn't see so much as a living creature, let alone a person.

Wuling was certain he had seen someone up here before, sitting at this piano and playing. After all, a piano couldn't possibly play itself, could it? That would be far too unscientific.

Emmmm, then again, this place hadn't been scientific to begin with. It even defied gravity.

Just as his thoughts were churning, a slight stabbing pain suddenly burst between Wuling's brows.

He instinctively pressed a hand to his forehead as indistinct images flashed before his eyes.

Countless blurred, broken images flickered past at incredible speed. They were so fragmented that he couldn't make out any clear details.

The stabbing sensation vanished as quickly as it had come, disappearing after a second or two.

Once he recovered, Wuling looked at the piano before him and suddenly felt, for no apparent reason, that someone should be sitting in front of it. No, that wasn't right. There should be two people, sitting together at the piano.

But he couldn't remember who those two people were.

The images that had just flashed before his eyes had been too blurry and too fast. He hadn't been able to see them clearly at all, and by the time he reacted, they were already gone.

Wuling stood motionless before the piano, his fingertips hovering a few centimeters above the keys, but he didn't bring them down.

"Two people..."

He repeated the words under his breath. His voice drifted gently across the silent island, but still there was no echo.

Who?

Who exactly had once sat side by side with whom at this piano?

Strangers? Figures invented by his subconscious? Or... an old fragment of his own past, completely sealed away?

After all, it wasn't as though no one in the world had ever lost their memory after being hit by a car. Maybe the same had happened to him?

In that case, though, the timing didn't quite add up, unless he had already spent some time here before being hit by the car.

Wuling felt he was fairly close to the truth, but he couldn't for the life of him work out anything more specific. There were still too few clues.

Wuling took a deep breath and pushed aside the jumble of thoughts in his mind. At last, his fingertip gently landed on the white key at the very edge.

A hard, cool sensation reached him through his fingertip, real and somewhat cold.

He pressed down lightly.

The clear piano note he expected never sounded.

No sound, no vibration, no resonance.

Even though the key had fully descended and the mechanical parts had engaged completely, the entire space remained deathly silent, as though this world itself allowed no sound to be born.

"It doesn't make a sound?"

Wuling's gaze darkened slightly.

The piano was intact, and the keys moved smoothly and responsively, yet the melody remained forever locked away in the void. Only that lingering trace in the air, undispersed through the ages, proved that a long melody had truly once sounded here.

But if it couldn't make a sound, what had the piano music he heard before been?

Once or twice, he could have dismissed it as an auditory hallucination, but he had heard it every time for so long. There was no way it could have been anything like that.

Since it wasn't an auditory hallucination, there was one possibility left: playing this piano might require certain conditions.

After all, such things had long been recorded in novels. Wuling had read plenty about things like claiming ownership with a drop of blood.

Perhaps this piano had something like an artifact spirit.

As he pondered, Wuling suddenly felt his vision grow somewhat blurry.

Was it time to leave?

Wuling didn't resist, allowing his vision to slowly blur.

As for those questions, he still had time to think about them. He also had a feeling that he might encounter something different the next time he came.

After he left, the whole world fell silent once more.

The butterfly ornament on the piano suddenly fluttered its wings twice and took flight.

The butterfly flew into the air, and a faint blue light suddenly radiated from its body, obscuring what lay inside.

When the light vanished, the butterfly was gone. In its place stood a woman with short blue hair and a veil.

The woman simply gazed at the place where Wuling had just vanished, remaining motionless for a long time.