Has Aemeath Disappeared?

The sunlight in early April already carried the warmth of spring, shining through a gap in the curtains.

A beam of light fell across Lu Yan's eyelids. He rolled over and buried his face in his pillow, a tuft of hair sticking up at the back of his head.

After thinking for a while, he rolled over and sat up, staring blankly at the white wall.

He rubbed his eyes and went into the bathroom. As he squeezed out some toothpaste, he glanced in the mirror and saw that his hair was a mess like a bird's nest.

He splashed cold water on his face and hastily wiped it with a towel, finally waking up completely.

After coming out of the bathroom, he walked over to his computer desk out of habit, sat down, and pressed the power button.

The screen lit up, revealing a clean desktop.

"Huh? Why did my wallpaper change back to the default?" Lu Yan muttered to himself, his face full of confusion.

The thumbnails of a few drawings were neatly arranged on the desktop.

He moved the mouse and opened the folder named "Aemeath."

"Empty?"

Lu Yan clicked refresh. The folder icon flickered, but there was still nothing inside.

He opened his list of recently used files. The pictures that should have been there, even the screenshots of his drafts, were all gone.

"Am I still half asleep?" Lu Yan rubbed his eyes and stared at the screen for a few more seconds.

The folder was still empty.

"Where are the Aemeath pictures I drew?!" His voice rose.

"They were still there last night. How could they suddenly be gone today?"

He scratched his head and searched through every folder again.

There was still nothing.

"I couldn't have deleted them in my sleep, could I?" He gave an awkward laugh, then leaned back in his chair and stared blankly at the ceiling for a while.

"Forget it, I won't think about it for now. Maybe something's wrong with the hard drive. I'll find some recovery software and give it a try later."

He moved the mouse and clicked the familiar Wuthering Waves icon on his desktop.

His account logged in automatically, and after he entered the game,

his hand hovered over the mouse and suddenly froze.

One slot in his party was empty.

Aemeath was gone. He had spent who knew how long building her, farming Echoes countless times and maxing out all her skills.

Cartethyia now occupied the first slot, where Aemeath should have been.

Lu Yan stared at the party in a daze for a long moment. When he came to his senses, he abruptly sat up straight.

"What the hell is going on?!"

He quickly opened the character list and scrolled rapidly from top to bottom.

Nothing! No Aemeath.

Every other character was there.

Only Aemeath was missing, as if she had never existed.

"Fuck!" His voice echoed through the empty room.

"Am I really still half asleep?" He rubbed his eyes hard and looked over the screen again.

Still nothing.

He pinched the back of his hand. It hurt.

"So I'm not dreaming?"

"This isn't right..." he murmured, a trace of an indistinct unease entering his voice.

His finger hovered over the mouse for a few seconds before he opened the story interface.

The main story's chapter list was neatly arranged.

The chapters before and after were intact and right next to each other, without even the slightest gap between them.

Lu Yan stared at them for a long time.

"What on earth is going on?"

He quit the game, opened Coin Station, and searched for Aemeath.

All that remained in the search results was a pile of unrelated content.

The Aemeath guides, fan creations, and video edits had all vanished.

It was as if the character Aemeath had never existed in Wuthering Waves.

Lu Yan closed the webpage and opened the game again.

He stared at the empty third slot for a while, feeling a painful tightness in his chest.

He sighed and stood up. "Since things have come to this, I'd better eat first."

Lu Yan pulled the door shut behind him and turned the key twice in the lock.

The corridor of the old apartment building was long. He pushed open the building's entrance door.

At eight-thirty on a spring morning, sunlight spread lazily across the concrete ground.

The sweet osmanthus tree downstairs was still in bloom, its fragrance faint and intermittent.

He sniffed and sneezed.

"Little Lu!" Uncle Wang came over with a grocery basket, his face creased with a smile.

"Morning, Uncle Wang." Lu Yan managed a smile.

"Stayed up late again, didn't you? Look how puffy your eyes are." Uncle Wang shook his head. "Young people need to take better care of themselves too."

Lu Yan said, "I know, Uncle."

As soon as he finished speaking, Auntie Chen came over, pushing her grocery cart.

"Little Lu, I still haven't thanked you for fixing my computer last time." Auntie Chen pulled two oranges out of her cloth bag and pressed them into his hands. "We grew these ourselves. They're really sweet."

"Auntie, you're too kind." Lu Yan tried to refuse a couple of times, but eventually accepted them.

After a few more pleasantries, Uncle Wang and Auntie Chen headed to the market together.

Lu Yan tucked the oranges into his pocket and continued toward the breakfast stall.

A faded red canopy stood over the breakfast stall on the street corner. Steam billowed from the bamboo steamers, mingling with the aroma of chopped scallions.

"A bowl of tofu pudding and two flatbreads, please." Lu Yan found a seat.

"Coming right up."

The tofu pudding and flatbreads were brought over.

He took a bite of flatbread first, then scooped up a spoonful of tofu pudding.

The savory flavor of the tofu pudding spread across his tongue, but it could do nothing to suppress that thought.

He absentmindedly finished breakfast, felt the two oranges Auntie Chen had given him in his pocket, and headed back along the path.

The walls of the old apartment building were somewhat mottled, and fresh ivy leaves had already spread across them in a blanket of tender green.

Lu Yan lived on the ground floor, and a simple set of security bars enclosed his window. Before he reached the entrance to the corridor, he stopped in his tracks.

A figure was curled up in front of his door.

A girl was crouching there with her arms around her knees, her head buried deep in the crook of her arms.

Her long pink hair was tied in a high ponytail that hung down her back, her ahoge drooped limply, and she wore a stocking only on her left leg. The hem of her skirt trailed on the ground.

Blue data constantly flickered around her outline.

When Lu Yan saw what the girl looked like, his hand trembled, and his keys clattered to the ground.

The girl heard the noise and slowly raised her head to look at him.

"Lu... Yan." She spoke, her voice hoarse with the sound of having traveled across endless ages.

Aemeath called him by name without a mistake.

"Ae... meath?" His voice trembled.

Aemeath braced herself on her knees and stood up. She wore her Acceptor outfit, which clearly outlined her striking curves, and the heart-shaped Tacit Mark on her chest, with a piece missing, glowed pink and blue.

In this completely unfamiliar place, she had found him without fail.

In Aemeath's eyes, the frequency emanating from him was as bright as a fire in the darkness.

"What took you so long to come back~?" Aemeath pouted.

"But it doesn't matter." Aemeath playfully tilted her head, a glint of extreme danger flashing through her golden, starry eyes. "I finally found you."

Lu Yan looked at Aemeath. The unruly tuft of hair at the back of his head was still sticking up, looking a little comical in this scene.

The panic he had felt today over her complete disappearance from the game, his documents, and his hard drive was now filled with a sense of strangeness.

"You..."

Aemeath cut him off and naturally linked her arm through his, her voice cloyingly sweet. "The world doesn't need saving anymore. I finally found you."