From just being "edible" at first, he eventually found himself faintly looking forward to the new cuisines Xia Li would experiment with. He had gradually grown accustomed to that scene: pushing the door open, first smelling the cooking oil and smoke, then seeing her pop her head out of the kitchen wearing an apron to say, "Dinner’s almost ready! Remember to wash your hands!" That feeling—to sound a bit cliché—was what Yu Xian considered "home" back then.
Memories flipped past one by one, like someone slowly unrolling a reel of old film in his mind. Yu Xian raised a hand to cover his eyes, pressing his fingertips against his brow bone. His breathing grew erratic. If all of this was just his hallucination, if she truly didn’t exist—then who exactly had he been talking to all these years? Was this a memory or a delusion? What exactly went wrong?
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to pull away from his memories. He knew he had to stay calm; at a time like this, he couldn’t afford to let his thoughts run wild. He recalled Yu Zhengze’s words in the car: "Once all impossibilities have been eliminated, whatever remains must be the truth..."
What were the possibilities? He sat up, took out a pen and paper, and forced himself to sort out this bizarre, almost suffocating situation. As he pondered, he wrote down the first line:
"Possibility 1: A problem with my memory."
Could he really be sick? For instance, some psychiatric symptom causing memory disorder could indeed explain all this. But the problem was—could a human’s hallucination truly be this complete, this realistic, and contain such complex details? If a fictional character only existed in his fragmented memories, that might be acceptable. But Xia Li had maintained a continuous presence in his life. Was that something a psychiatric disorder could construct? Even a mental illness had to have an underlying pathological mechanism.
Uncertain, he rested his pen on the notebook, got up to fetch his laptop, and opened the browser. In the search bar, he typed: "mental illness memory alteration" and "cases of mental illness fabricating non-existent people." There were serious medical articles as well as clickbait posts. He selected a few of the more formal-looking ones to read.
The relevant disorders mainly included "schizophrenia spectrum disorders" and "dissociative identity disorder," commonly known as schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. He carefully cross-referenced his symptoms and confirmed he didn’t fit the traits of either illness. The most crucial evidence ruling out schizophrenia was that schizophrenic hallucinations absolutely could not interact with other objectively real people, which was why many patients would ask in confusion, "Why can’t you see ’him’?" Xia Li had interacted plenty with his classmates and teachers—even if they no longer remembered her now. As for multiple personality disorder, it only involved conversations within the patient’s own mind without any physical "hallucination" present, which matched Xia Li’s situation even less.
As for other clinical psychology or neurological phenomena, he would have to find time to consult a professional for a diagnosis.
He stared at the line he had written, drew an X on the paper with his pen, paused, and then added a question mark next to it. He couldn’t entirely rule it out, but the possibility was low.
He then wrote:
"Possibility 2: External interference."
If his brain wasn’t broken, then the bizarre and illogical events of today could only be attributed to external interference. In other words, was there someone capable of manipulating everything, completely erasing every trace of Xia Li’s existence from the world? Could they have even altered everyone’s memories, forcing all who knew Xia Li to forget her?
A chill ran down his spine at the thought. But immediately after, he forced himself to calm down and consider the realism of this possibility. A person disappearing—along with her address, communication records, social circle, and even an entire floor "evaporating into thin air"—was no longer something achievable by ordinary technological means. In fact, it leaned heavily into the realm of "superpowers" or "mystical forces."
As a physics student at a prestigious university, Yu Xian believed in the scientific nature and objective reality of the world. He didn’t believe in the supernatural, or as Professor Yang Zhenning once said, "Although the structure of the universe is not accidental, there is no basis for forcefully placing a human-shaped Creator within it." Even taking a billion steps back, assuming such a divine God truly existed, He would have no reason to single out Xia Li for erasure.
Slowly shaking his head, he rejected this speculation and drew an X next to it. Next, he wrote down a third possibility:
"Possibility 3: The Truman Show?"
He had watched the movie *The Truman Show* a long time ago. The protagonist of the film always believed he lived in a normal world, until one day he accidentally discovered that the city he lived in was actually a massive, entirely pre-designed soundstage, and his life was nothing more than a giant reality television show broadcasted to the globe. So what if—just what if—his own life was also a meticulously crafted lie? And under some sort of script setting, the actress playing "Xia Li" had to "wrap up her role"?
He couldn’t help but look up at his rented apartment. Suddenly, he realized a much more terrifying problem: if this world was fake, what about Yu Zhengze? Who was he? Was he also a pre-set actor? What was his role in the "script"? In this play, could Yu Zhengze actually be the "best actor"?
At this point, Yu Xian felt he was getting a bit paranoid. This was reality, not a movie. If this were a soundstage, there had to be a boundary. Yet, whether it was traveling out of town or searching the internet, this world was seamless and logically self-consistent.
He put the pen down and leaned back against the sofa. The world remained quiet. Faint headlights flickered past the curtains, and the air conditioner continued to BUZZ, blowing out warm air.
Yu Xian downed the rest of the wine in his glass in one gulp. His laptop browser was still open to the webpages he had searched during the day: "Friend suddenly disappears from everyone’s memory," "Reality is altered," and "Feeling of the world being unreal."
They were all highly unscientific cases. They were either unexplained urban legends like the "Classmate Pan" incident, romance stories about a senior girl disappearing due to "puberty syndrome," or purely fantastical reasons like "Norse Mythology’s Main God Odin altering the memories of all humanity." Yu Xian found none of these explanations convincing.
Fueled by the alcohol, his thoughts drifted and wandered. As a physics student, he had always felt that even if supernatural elements truly existed in this world, they must adhere to science and possess rigorous, self-consistent logic. Just like how the delayed-choice experiment’s subversion of causality could still be explained and empirically proven.
Even if he assumed he was living in a "novel" world, that novel had to be of the sci-fi genre, rather than fantasy or supernatural, or even a fantasy disguised under a pseudo-scientific veneer. If he ever learned that Xia Li had been abducted by aliens, entered a reincarnation game, or inexplicably crossed into a parallel universe, such an illogical, *deus ex machina* disappearance would mean this "novel" had a terrible ending.
His gaze shifted back and forth between the screen and the notebook for a while before exhaustion slowly weighed him down. The alcohol was fully kicking in, making his eyelids heavy and causing the text to blur into double vision after staring for too long. He had originally wanted to look up some foreign academic papers and experimental reports, but his fingers were too weak to lift.
The living room lights were still on. The sound of the rain outside was muffled by the walls, sounding dull and distant. With the cursor blinking steadily in the search bar, Yu Xian had already fallen asleep.