Aemeath's identity

Back home, Lu Yan was so exhausted that he collapsed onto the old armchair.

Aemeath, however, was brimming with energy.

She returned to physical form, dug the pink slippers she had just bought out of a plastic bag, and swapped the shoes from the mall for them.

"Patter, patter." The sound of the fluffy pink slippers against the floor was especially pleasant to hear.

Lu Yan sank into the armchair and stared blankly at the ceiling, wondering if there was a good solution to the problem of Aemeath's identity.

"You've been staring at the ceiling this whole time. What are you thinking about?"

At some point, Aemeath had come over to the armchair. Bracing her hands on her knees, she bent down and gazed at Lu Yan, his rather dejected face reflected in her eyes.

As Aemeath drew closer, he was enveloped by a scent that mingled the sweetness of milk tea with her own.

"About you," Lu Yan blurted out without thinking.

Aemeath's eyes instantly curved into crescents, and the corners of her mouth rose uncontrollably. At that moment, her possessiveness melted into a honey-sweet, innocent charm.

Aemeath scratched her head. "Ehehe, that sounds nice and all, but your brows are so furrowed you could crush a mosquito between them."

"Come on, what's bothering you? Are you worried I'll eat so much I'll eat you out of house and home?"

Lu Yan sat up straight, his expression turning serious. "Aemeath, even though you can move around in ghost form, you need proof of your existence here."

"Proof?" Aemeath asked, puzzled.

"An ID card." Lu Yan made a rectangular shape with his hands.

"Without one, you can't take high-speed trains or go to most places. You can't even get a SIM card."

"And if the police ask you for it, that'll be trouble, though the chance of that is very small."

"I don't want you to always have to go out as an electronic ghost. I want you to be able to walk openly in the sunlight."

He paused. "Now that you've come here, I have to find a way to give you a legal identity."

Aemeath was taken aback for a moment, then her smile grew even brighter.

She didn't look embarrassed as Lu Yan had expected. Instead, she seemed completely at ease.

"So that's what you've been worrying about, A-Yan." Aemeath straightened up and gave a light tap with her fingertip. A wisp of blue data swirled around it.

"To me, systems are like mazes without locks."

"As long as something exists in a database, I can make it so it was 'there all along.'"

"You mean..."

"Give me two minutes." Aemeath returned to her translucent ghost form and passed straight through the monitor of the computer, which was still on.

Lu Yan stared at the screen as the previously still desktop suddenly began flickering wildly.

Windows opened and closed on their own, code refreshed at breakneck speed, and lines scrolled down one after another.

He saw the household registration management system, social security interfaces, and even certain internal network protocols of certain ministries being accessed repeatedly in a short span of time.

Against this world's data security mechanisms, an "electronic ghost" like Aemeath was practically a dimensionality reduction attack.

In less than two minutes, the screen went still, and a clear digital ID photo appeared in its center.

"All done~" Aemeath popped out of the screen and flashed a V sign.

Aemeath returned to physical form and sat on the armrest, leaning against Lu Yan's shoulder. She raised her brows as if asking for praise.

"Since I dropped in out of nowhere, I made up a perfect background for myself to avoid any logical inconsistencies."

Aemeath pointed at the information on the screen and read it aloud. "Aemeath, female, twenty-four. Both parents deceased. Her place of origin was a village that has since been dissolved due to a geological disaster."

"Her household registration was missed during a system update, and she's now registered under the police station responsible for your household registration through a supplementary registration program."

"I also forged all the paper records and original electronic files to match... Oh, no, I mean I corrected them." Aemeath put on a mischievous expression.

Looking at the unusual surname in the name field, Lu Yan scratched his head in puzzlement. "The surname 'Ai'? It's not common here. It does exist, but it still feels a little strange."

"What does it matter?" Aemeath pouted in displeasure, then slipped her arms around Lu Yan's neck and wrapped herself around him like a vine.

"'Ai' sounds so nice. And the word means the resonance of souls perfectly attuned to each other, doesn't it?"

Feeling the warmth against his neck, Lu Yan stiffened slightly.

He knew that the surname did exist in modern society. It was rare, but at least it wasn't unheard of.

Aemeath buried her face in the crook of his neck and took a deep breath of the faint scent on him:

"A-Yan, from now on, I'm not just your ghost. I'm also a legal presence on your household registration, family with a name of my own."

The word "family" made Lu Yan's heart tighten.

He had always been afraid that Aemeath was just a passing guest, staying for a while, and that one day he would wake up to find the data on his computer restored and the girl before him gone like morning mist.

But now this obsessive yet clever girl had used an almost overbearing method to force her name onto my household registration.

"All right, stop spacing out, Great Artist Lu." A sly light gleamed in Aemeath's eyes.

"Now that the identity problem is solved, shouldn't we deal with the problem of making a living?"

"Hasn't the client called you dozens of times already to hurry you up?"

At the mention of the client, Lu Yan's phone began vibrating wildly on the coffee table, as though it had sensed some kind of curse.

The caller ID on the screen read: [Miss Lin].

Lu Yan pressed a hand to his aching forehead. "I'm done for. It's Miss Lin, the hardest client to deal with..."

The smile vanished from Aemeath's face, and her gaze darkened.

She stared at the vibrating phone, a few faint wisps of deep-blue data appearing around her as her tone grew somewhat dangerous. "Oh? Miss Lin? She sounds like someone who cares about you a lot."

"A-Yan, answer it. Let me hear what she wants to say to my 'family.'"

Lu Yan shivered.