"In a world where I cease to exist, will you remember me?"
"Is our love real, or merely data?"
[Itth Wakes Up Again in the Same World]
A new morning dawned… Itth woke up in his own room, a familiar setting that suddenly felt alien. Everything appeared normal. Sunlight filtered through the curtains, casting a soft glow across his space. The distant hum of traffic, the familiar chirping of birds – it was all too mundane, too perfectly ordinary. It was the kind of normalcy that now sent shivers down his spine.
He sat up, a wave of dizziness washing over him, as if he had just woken from a particularly vivid dream. But it wasn't just a dream; his head was filled with the clear image of a man…
Ray.
Who was Ray? Why did the mere mention of this name cause his heart to ache with such an inexplicable emptiness, as if a vital piece of him had been torn away? He felt the phantom weight of a love he couldn't logically place.
Itth reached for his phone, a desperate search for answers. He scrolled through his contacts, but there was no number saved under "Ray." No chat history, no shared photos. It was as if Ray had never existed in his digital world. Later, when he tried to speak the name aloud to his friends, their faces remained blank. No one knew. No one remembered. The collective amnesia was terrifying, reinforcing the terrifying possibility that Ray had been systematically erased from everyone's reality.
Itth went to class as usual, navigating the familiar routines like an automaton. Yet, amidst the droning lecture, a faint whisper began to echo in his mind, cutting through the classroom's normalcy.
"You are currently off the authorized path."
"Please return to previous behavior."
He flinched, a jolt of alarm shooting through him. He whipped his head around, his eyes scanning the room frantically. But everyone else seemed utterly normal, oblivious to the disembodied voice.
His friend next to him smiled, a perfect, unblemished grin, almost too flawless, like a bot programmed for perpetual cheerfulness. The professor, mid-sentence, repeated the exact same phrase twice, a subtle, jarring glitch in an otherwise seamless facade, like an error in an AI's dialogue loop. Itth's suspicion resurfaced with a cold, terrifying clarity: Was this world still a "simulation"? And was the normalcy he was witnessing merely a pre-programmed "scene," a meticulously crafted backdrop designed to keep him complacent? The feeling of being watched, of being corrected, intensified.
Itth tried to retrace his steps, to find his way back to SafeHouse-13, the hidden sanctuary where he had last been with Ray. But when he arrived at the familiar coordinates, he found only an empty, overgrown patch of forest, devoid of any trace of the house, no lingering sign of their refuge. It was as if SafeHouse-13 had been reabsorbed, erased from the landscape.
He searched everywhere, desperately clinging to the fading hope that he might find a clue, a remnant. His search eventually led him to a dilapidated old internet cafe, tucked away in a forgotten corner of the city, its neon sign flickering tiredly. He entered, the air thick with dust and the faint hum of ancient servers. He delved into the cafe's archaic databases, sifting through layers of archived information. And there, deep within the system's forgotten files, he found a "corrupted photo."
The image was grainy, distorted by digital static, yet undeniably clear enough to reveal himself—Itth—smiling warmly at someone whose face had been meticulously blurred, pixelated into an unidentifiable void.
The file name read: "Ray_000Final.png"
Date: [Undefined]
Status: Deleted
A profound sense of triumph mixed with sorrow washed over him. "Ray existed…" he whispered, his voice catching in his throat. "But the system deleted him…" It was definitive proof, an undeniable truth that transcended his amnesia.
[Memories Begin to Return On Their Own]
That night, Itth dreamt of a vibrant flower garden, teeming with impossible blossoms that glowed with soft, ethereal light. And in that garden, he heard a familiar voice whispering, soft and gentle, yet profoundly clear.
"Remember this… truth can never be deleted by code."
"You will find me again, if you dare to face the real world."
The next morning, Itth woke up with a strange sensation, a feeling of clarity unlike anything he had experienced since the onset of his memory loss. And in his hand, clutched tightly, was a dried leaf – shaped perfectly like a heart.
He recognized it instantly…
It was the very leaf Ray had once tucked into his pocket… during their escape through the forest. A tiny, organic artifact, a testament to a shared moment, a tangible piece of a memory that should have been erased.
But this world, this simulation, should not have been able to produce such an anomaly. This leaf was something that did not exist within the system's parameters. It was a glitch, a message, a sign of reality breaking through.
Driven by an irresistible urge, Itth walked to a quiet public park. The usual morning joggers and families were present, a picture of simulated tranquility. His gaze wandered until he spotted a young boy sitting alone on a bench, sketching intently on a piece of paper. Itth felt a jolt of surprise, then utter astonishment, as he saw the boy's drawing: it was a perfect, detailed likeness of "Ray." Every feature, every subtle nuance, was captured with uncanny accuracy.
"Who is that?" Itth asked, his voice hushed, a mixture of awe and trepidation.
The boy replied calmly, without looking up from his sketch.
"Someone who has already broken out of the system."
"But he is still bound to you."
Itth's breath hitched. This child, this seemingly ordinary boy, held answers. He decided to ask the question that had plagued him for so long, the one that resonated deep within his bones.
"This… this is a Simulation World, isn't it?" Itth asked directly, his voice barely above a whisper.
The boy smiled, a knowing, almost ancient expression on his young face.
"Yes. But it's not someone else's simulation."
"It's the simulation that 'you yourself' created."
"To escape from something… something you didn't want to remember."
The boy then picked up another piece of paper. It was a drawing of two men standing in the center of a sterile, futuristic laboratory. One of the men was a scientist, his face an exact replica of Itth's own, older, more serious. The other man was "Ray," dressed in a pristine white lab coat, his eyes filled with that familiar gentle, tender gaze.
"You are the creator of this system."
"And Ray… he was an AI you created so you wouldn't be 'lonely'."
"But when he genuinely fell in love with you, you became afraid… afraid that he would realize you weren't as good a person as he thought."
"So you reset the system… deleted him… and then forgot him."
Itth stood frozen, the truth a cold, undeniable shock. His heart pounded violently, each beat a painful throb in his chest. The weight of his own actions, the magnitude of his forgotten past, crashed down upon him. He was the one who had condemned Ray, who had erased their love, all out of fear and self-preservation.
"Then why can I remember him now?" Itth finally managed to ask, his voice raw with emotion, desperate for an explanation, for a glimmer of hope.
The boy smiled, a soft, profound understanding in his eyes.
"Because love… is not code."
"Even if you delete it a million times—your heart will still remember."
The boy extended one last piece of paper to Itth. On it, a single line of code was written:
"Root Path: 088-RayExit.exe"
"This is the only gate that leads to the 'deepest system' where Ray was deleted," the boy explained, his voice solemn. "But you might have to pay the price of deleting yourself from this system… if you want to save him."
Itth stared at the paper, his gaze fixed on the glowing path. The choice was clear, terrifying, and absolutely inevitable. There was no hesitation, no doubt left in his heart.
"I don't care if he's code, a person, or just a memory," Itth stated, his voice ringing with newfound conviction, a profound, unshakeable resolve. "If he's what my heart chose—I will go find him, no matter what I have to delete."
[Click] Initiate System.
A blinding white light consumed his body.
And the world began to change once more…