Reality

Lu Yan sat on the stool, looking into Aemeath's eyes. They were clear, and she didn't look like she was pretending.

He was silent for a moment, his gaze falling on Aemeath's rather slender shoulders.

At this moment, he wasn't looking at a model on a screen, but a living, breathing being.

"Aemeath, since you've decided to live here, there are some things we need to sort out first."

Lu Yan pointed at a book on the table, then at the computer screen. "Can you learn to read the writing here? You'll have a hard time doing anything without it."

Aemeath thrust out her well-shaped chest, outlined by her combat suit, and folded her arms, wearing an expression that said, "How dare you doubt me?"

"Hmph~ Who are you looking down on?" Aemeath held out a slender finger, blue data dancing at its tip.

"That's a piece of cake for me."

"Give me ten minutes... No, five will do!"

Lu Yan couldn't help laughing. Seeing how cocky Aemeath looked, he felt reassured.

Aemeath transformed directly into her electronic ghost form, and points of data light began swirling around her.

Lu Yan watched her dive straight into the computer monitor. The surreal sight still left him in a daze.

The web pages on the screen began flipping by at a frantic pace.

Suddenly, the pages stopped flipping, and the screen settled on an encyclopedia entry.

A pale blue light flashed, and Aemeath emerged from the screen, taking physical form again and landing steadily in front of Lu Yan.

But she didn't smile triumphantly as she had before. Even her rosy lips had lost their color.

Lu Yan noticed something was wrong with her expression.

Aemeath's face was pale, and her lively eyes were trembling violently.

"Aemeath? What's wrong?" Lu Yan's heart tightened, and he hurried to his feet.

Aemeath didn't look at him. Instead, she slowly turned around and used the mouse to open a page on the screen. It was an entry and database about Wuthering Waves.

"What... is going on?" Aemeath's voice was filled with bewilderment.

Lu Yan looked at the page on the screen, his breath catching.

"When I was searching this world's internet just now, I saw..." Aemeath pointed at the character profiles on the screen, her fingertip trembling slightly. "I saw Lynae, Mornye, Tunneler, and even Aleph-1."

"All of this... what on earth is going on?" Aemeath pointed at the character profiles on the screen, her fingertip shaking violently.

The light from the screen fell on her pale face, making her look especially forlorn.

"Why has my world, even every inch of land I once protected, become nothing more than information people can browse at will here?"

Aemeath turned sharply to look at him, tears welling in her golden eyes. Her voice was bewildered as she asked, "Can you tell me... did all that pain and sacrifice really mean nothing at all?"

"...Was it just an illusion someone created?" Aemeath lowered her head to look at her hands.

Seeing Aemeath looking ready to fall apart at any moment, Lu Yan felt an oppressive ache in his chest.

He instinctively reached out, wanting to put an arm around her shoulders and pull her into an embrace to comfort her.

But just before his fingers touched her, reason made him stop himself.

"It's not fake. Aemeath, listen to me."

Lu Yan forced himself to calm down. He crouched, met her gaze, and looked straight at her as he spoke in the firmest voice he could muster:

"Look again, carefully. In all those character lists and story records, can you find the name 'Aemeath'?"

Aemeath froze, tears still brimming in her eyes.

She turned back and began flipping through the pages again.

Page after page went by.

The official Wuthering Waves website had all sorts of characters, including the Rover who served as the player's avatar.

But no matter how she searched, the Resonator girl named Aemeath, with her long pink hair and starry eyes, hadn't left so much as a byte of evidence in the entire internet's databases.

"Nothing... Why is there nothing?" Aemeath murmured. A tear dropped onto the back of her hand.

"If that world is real, why am I not there?"

"Because you came here," Lu Yan explained softly, certainty in his voice. "It's precisely because you came to reality that the Aemeath who originally belonged in the game disappeared."

"You're a real soul who crossed dimensions." He pointed to Aemeath's heart, then to his own eyes.

"If all of this is fake, then who are you, standing here crying, feeling heartache, and visible to me?"

"Those records are only projections of that world. You're real. Once you came to this world, they could no longer capture a trace of you, so those records about you disappeared."

Aemeath raised her head and looked at him, her eyes glistening with tears.

The sincerity in Lu Yan's eyes was like a ray of warm sunshine, gradually melting the cold sense of emptiness in her heart.

"R-really?" Aemeath sniffled, her voice still a little nasal, like a child who had been wronged.

"Of course it's true." Lu Yan breathed a sigh of relief and gave her a gentle smile. "Look, everything about you in this world has disappeared."

"That proves the logic governing how that world works is real, and that you're real too."

Aemeath stared at him blankly. A long time passed.

At that moment, her heart, which had been racing because her worldview had collapsed, calmed amid his gentle murmurs.

She silently mulled over the word in her heart: real.

Aemeath thought for a long time before finally coming back to herself. She wiped away her tears, her crying giving way to a smile, and muttered, "You do know what to say..."

"All right, now that the existential crisis is resolved, we really need to deal with the most pressing problem at hand."

Lu Yan pointed at the combat suit she was wearing. It looked good, but it was far too eye-catching in a modern city like this.

"You can't keep wearing that outfit, can you?"

"Come on, I'll take you shopping. In this world, buying new clothes is a ritual for starting a new life."

Aemeath looked at Lu Yan's hand reaching toward the door, then down at her own clothes. She touched her chest, and her eyes gradually lit up.

Aemeath thought, That's right. As long as this heart is still beating, and A-Yan still exists, then all of it is real.

Her voice grew a little wistful. "A new life..."

"I want the prettiest clothes!"

"As long as you don't max out the card." Lu Yan smiled and pushed open the door. Sunlight streamed in from the end of the hallway.