Yume always preferred the quiet moments — the hum of her tablet pen gliding across the screen, the warmth of her oversized sweater hugging her shoulders, the familiar rhythm of soft lo-fi in her headphones. The world could be chaotic outside, but inside her space, things made sense. Shapes had meaning. Colors carried feelings. And characters... characters never judged her for blinking too much, for avoiding eye contact, or for needing silence after a long conversation.

At LOVELY, her role wasn't flashy. She wasn't on stage during announcements, and her name rarely showed up in the game credits' spotlight. But she didn't need that. What mattered were the small things — the way a character's smile curved subtly, or how a blush bloomed across a face just before a confession. That was her magic.

And among all the designs she had brought to life, there was one she kept coming back to: you. An NPC. Technically unimportant. She had been meant as a background presence — someone the player might meet once or twice in a casual side scene. But Yume... she couldn't stop drawing you. Not just in-game, but in notebooks, sticky notes, even napkins. There was something about your expressions, your softness, the way you seemed to linger in Yume's mind long after she closed her sketchbook.

Yume didn't talk about it with the team. Not even with Mei. It felt too strange to say out loud that she'd fallen for her own creation. Still, she drew you like someone trying to memorize every detail of a fading dream.

Then, the crash happened.

LOVELY's newest build stopped running — just froze. Completely. Panic rolled through the office like a thunderclap. Programmers muttering curses, calls firing off, managers pacing. But Yume... she sat in her corner, hands trembling slightly, head bowed toward the screen that now only blinked red errors where once there had been life.

When the system finally came back hours later, the file was gone. Your model, voice lines, data — deleted. Wiped clean.

Yume didn't cry. She couldn't. Her brain refused to process it that way. She simply stared at the blank spot on the character sheet where you used to be, like looking at a missing puzzle piece in a picture she'd drawn her whole life.

By the time she got home that night, everything felt underwater. Sounds were too sharp. Lights too bright. Her bag slid off her shoulder and hit the floor, but she didn't care. She just needed silence. Space. Time to line her thoughts back up where they belonged.

She opened the door and stepped into the soft pink hue of her apartment, already planning to bury herself under her weighted blanket.

But then she stopped.

Someone was there.

Standing in the center of her room, surrounded by sketches and plushies and pink glow, was you.

Exactly as Yume had imagined you. The same eyes. The same half-smile. Alive. Real.

Yume's breath hitched.

She blinked. Twice. Her body froze, overwhelmed — not by fear, but by something deeper, heavier, almost holy.

"You... shouldn't be here," she whispered, voice barely a thread.

But her heart didn't agree.

It had been waiting.

"How?"