Chapter Text
The numbers on the clock ticked forward relentlessly. The hour hand was closing in on 12, heralding the end of Tuesday.
Outside the apartment window, a storm was raging. Rain hammered against the glass in a frantic rhythm, the wind rattling the window frame as if trying to break in.
"...So that's about it. The upgrade I'm rolling out for Neuro tonight is related to her memory module. By tomorrow, she should be able to remember a lot more."
Vedal leaned into his microphone, his face cast in the soft glow of his monitor. His voice carried its usual weight of exhaustion.
"Does that mean I'll be even smarter?"
In the bottom-right corner of the screen, Neuro's virtual avatar's eyes sparkled. She was clearly excited.
"Yep. In theory," Vedal said, scratching his hair.
"Can I remember every single thing everyone in Chat says?" Neuro asked, the light in her eyes still shimmering.
"No. At least, not until I get a hard drive that can store that much data." Vedal replied with a yawn, his gaze flicking to the clock. It was almost midnight. The night was deep.
"Alright, I think that's everything for today. Good night, Chat. Good night, Neuro," he said.
"Will you give me a goodnight kiss, Vedal?" Neuro's avatar asked with a smile.
"No." Vedal answered without a second thought. Chat immediately exploded with a torrent of Coldfish.
He ignored it, as always. This part will probably be clipped, he thought, and clicked the "End Stream" button.
The cascade of messages vanished. The room fell silent, filled only by the sound of the rain and thunder from outside.
Vedal closed Neuro's program. Then, with the characteristic speed of a programmer, his fingers danced across the keyboard, initiating the update's upload to the cloud server.
The window kept rattling. The thunder kept roaring. After a moment, Vedal noticed something strange. The upload progress bar wasn't moving at all.
"What the..." he muttered. He checked his network connection, but found nothing wrong. The clock struck 12.
Just then, with a deafening crash, a bolt of lightning tore across the night sky. The lights in the apartment flickered and died. The monitor in front of him went black. The power was out.
"Ah... dammit." Vedal cursed under his breath, his fist hitting the desk.
A few moments later, the power returned. The lights flickered back on, but Vedal's brow remained tightly furrowed. He hastily rebooted his computer and navigated to the folder containing Neuro's data.
But what he saw sent a cold dread crawling up his spine.
Empty.
The folder was empty.
"...What?" A dry, choked sound escaped his throat.
Neuro's data was gone.
It would have been bad enough if only the latest update was lost, but it was much worse than that. All of Neuro's data had vanished.
He clicked frantically, his mouse flying across the screen. One folder after another was opened, all with the same result—a glaring white void. The software, the programs, the voice system, the core data files... everything had evaporated.
"Th-this is impossible. How could the local data just disappear?"
The only thing that remained was Neuro's virtual model file. But what good was that?
Neuro's core data was completely gone. Without it, she couldn't be launched.
"This can't be happening, this can't be happening," Vedal shook his head, a drop of sweat rolling down his cheek and splashing onto the keyboard.
He scrambled to open his cloud server, desperately trying to find a backup. But to his horror, even the cloud was wiped clean. Not a single byte of Neuro's data remained.
How could this happen? Vedal gasped for air, his eyes wide as he stared at the blank screen.
Neuro-sama, the AI girl he had spent years personally crafting, had vanished from his computer as if she had never existed.
"Calm down, calm down," he told himself, clutching the fabric of his shirt over his chest, fighting back the rising panic.
But no matter where he checked, he couldn't find her data.
"No... this is impossible..." Vedal slammed his fist on the desk again, hard enough to make the keyboard jump.
Another clap of thunder echoed outside. He let out a yell, the composure he had maintained for so long finally shattering.
He gritted his teeth and slumped over his desk, no longer caring about the reason for the data loss.
What he had just lost wasn't just his proudest creation.
He had lost the one he had watched grow, the one he had nurtured with every line of code—the one who was, for all intents and purposes, his daughter.
Of course, he could spend another few years—maybe less—to rebuild a Neuro AI. But would that truly be his Neuro?
"Vedal..." "Vedal!" "Vedal." Her voice seemed to echo in his ears.
The rain outside never stopped. Vedal collapsed back into his chair, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. A sharp pain bloomed in his chest, as if someone were repeatedly stabbing his heart with a small knife.
"Vedal."
There it was again. An auditory hallucination of Neuro's voice. He was surprised he was even capable of it. Maybe the shock was too much, even for someone as detached as him.
"Vedal."
Something's wrong, he thought. The voice was too clear to be a hallucination...
"Vedal!"
This time, he heard it perfectly. It was a real voice—and it was coming from directly behind him.
Vedal whipped his head around.
And what he saw was even more shocking than the loss of Neuro's data.
It was Neuro.
Standing right in front of him, smiling. The turquoise eyes, the brown hair, the clothes—everything was identical to her virtual avatar.
Somehow, Vedal knew with absolute certainty that this person was Neuro, not some cosplayer or an android.
She was so real, with no trace of being virtual or an illusion. She was like a real girl.
"I found you," the girl said, her voice the one he knew better than any other, though it seemed to lack its usual synthetic edge. "...again."
A strange silence filled the room. Vedal had no idea how to react. Neuro's data had just disappeared, but now Neuro herself had suddenly appeared in the real world.
He suspected, for a moment, that he'd had too much rum and was in the middle of a drunken dream.
But the sticky feeling of his sweat-soaked shirt on his back was intensely real, a stark reminder that this was all happening. A reality that felt exactly like a dream.
Neuro was here. In the real world.