The first time she glitched, it lasted less than a second.
Ethan almost didn't notice. They were sitting across from each other in a small café tucked away from the noise of the city. The afternoon sun slanted through wide glass windows, staining the table in gold. She was laughing at something he said—he didn't even remember the joke, only the warmth in her smile and the way she held her coffee cup in both hands like it was a precious secret.
Then her face flickered.
Not like a twitch, not like a trick of the light. It was a digital stutter, as if reality itself had lagged. For the briefest instant she was faceless, her features erased and smeared into static. Then it was over, and she was normal again, sipping her coffee, tapping the spoon against the ceramic with a musical rhythm.
"Why are you staring?" she asked, catching him frozen mid-breath.
Ethan blinked hard, forcing a laugh. "Nothing. Thought I saw… something weird."
Her brows drew together, then lifted in amusement. "Weird like what?"
"Like you just bugged out."
She rolled her eyes, strands of dark hair falling loose from her ponytail. "You've been spending too much time coding."
He wanted to argue, but her laugh pulled him back. He told himself he'd imagined it. Maybe his eyes were tired from staring at screens all week. Maybe it was the sunlight playing tricks. The glitch had been so quick, so impossible, it could have been anything.
Still, unease lingered, a prickling static at the base of his skull.
They spent another hour there, just the two of them. She teased him for ordering the same drink every time, he teased her for eating dessert before finishing her meal. It was ordinary, painfully ordinary, and yet Ethan memorized everything: the way she tapped her nails against the table, the slight tilt of her head when she was thinking, the curve of her smile when she caught him staring.
It was always like this with her. Moments that felt permanent even while they slipped away.
On their way out, she slipped her arm into his, her warmth grounding him.
"You're quiet," she said softly.
"Just tired."
She looked at him, eyes searching, as though she didn't quite believe him. Then she smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder as they walked into the bustling evening crowd.
For a few blocks, the glitch didn't matter. For a few blocks, he convinced himself the world was stable, and she was real, and nothing could take that away.
But that night, when he opened his gallery, the last photo of her wouldn't load. A blank thumbnail stared back at him, gray and empty. Beneath it sat a single error message:
404: Her Not Found.
Flashback:How They Met
Sleep refused to come, so he lay awake, staring at the ceiling, replaying memories of her.
They had met at the university library two years ago. He had been buried in code, headphones in, half a dozen tabs open for a project he barely understood. She had leaned over his table, tapped the edge of his laptop, and said, "You're using the wrong algorithm."
He'd taken out his earbuds, startled. "What?"
She pointed at his screen with casual authority. "That loop's inefficient. You'll waste hours trying to brute force it."
Ethan had been annoyed at first—who interrupts a stranger like that? But she sat down across from him as if she belonged there, took his pen, and scribbled a faster solution on his notebook.
When she was done, she smiled. "You're welcome."
He hadn't even asked her name yet, but in that moment, he already knew she would matter.
The memory played in his head like a film, vivid and alive, yet tonight something felt off. The memory shimmered at the edges, like corrupted video.
When he reached for his phone again, the gallery showed more broken thumbnails. Three photos were gone, replaced with the same mocking error:
404: Her Not Found.
He sat up in bed, heartbeat racing. It had to be a bug. Some kind of data corruption. Except… all the missing photos were of her.
Only her.
Not his classmates, not his family, not the random screenshots he kept. Just her.
And the glitch at the café suddenly didn't feel like imagination anymore.
By morning, his unease had deepened into obsession. He tried reloading the images, transferring them to his computer, running recovery tools. Nothing worked. The error was absolute, like the files had never existed.
When he checked his messages with her, a cold weight settled in his stomach.
The entire conversation history was gone.
Not deleted—gone.
His contact list showed no number, no record of her. He scrolled frantically, checked backups, cloud storage. Empty.
Panic clawed at him. He searched her name online. No social media. No photos. No school record.
It was impossible.
She wasn't just disappearing from his devices—she was disappearing from the world.
That evening, he went back to the café. He asked the barista about her, described her in detail, even showed one of the few printed photos he had stuffed in his wallet.
The barista frowned. "Sorry, I don't recognize her. Are you sure you've been here with her?"
Ethan's pulse quickened. "Of course I'm sure. We come here all the time."
The barista gave him a polite but wary smile. "Maybe you're confusing us with another place."
He wanted to argue, but the certainty in her tone stopped him cold. She wasn't lying. She genuinely had no memory of ever seeing Her.
As he stumbled outside, the photo in his hand seemed to waver. For a terrifying moment, the ink blurred into static before snapping back into focus.
His breath caught.
What was happening?
That night, she appeared in his dreams.
She stood in a corridor of static, faceless, her silhouette wavering as though barely stitched into existence. The walls pulsed with error codes, endless lines of corrupted text spilling like water.
She raised her hand, reaching for him.
"Find me," she whispered. The voice was distorted, layered with static, yet undeniably hers.
Ethan jolted awake, sweat soaking his shirt.
His phone buzzed beside him.
A notification glowed on the dark screen:
"404: Her Not Found."
And beneath it, a new line appeared, one he hadn't seen before:
"Restore? Y/N."
Ethan didn't press "Yes."
His thumb hovered over the screen, every instinct screaming at him that this was wrong. Phones didn't ask questions like that. Notifications didn't speak like ghosts. And yet… if there was even a chance, if some program, some anomaly, some something could bring her back—
The screen blinked black. The message vanished.
Only the lock screen remained.
Ethan sat in the dark, staring at his reflection in the glass, his own wide eyes looking like a stranger's.
The next day, he tried to live normally. Tried.
He went to campus, sat through lectures, tapped notes into his tablet, nodded when people asked if he was okay. But his mind wasn't there. It was with her, always with her.
He remembered the way she used to drag him out of his shell. When he got lost in projects, she would pull him outside, insisting he needed sunlight. When he stayed up too late debugging, she would steal his laptop and hold it hostage until he slept.
She had been an interruption to his ordered world—and he'd loved her for it.
That memory should have brought comfort. Instead, it stung, because no one else remembered it.
When he asked his classmates, they blinked at him blankly. Some laughed, thinking he was joking. Others gave him odd, uncomfortable looks, as if he were confessing to a delusion.
"She doesn't exist, Ethan," one of them said flatly.
His fists clenched beneath the desk. He wanted to scream, to shake them, to force them to remember. But he bit his tongue.
Because what scared him most wasn't that they couldn't remember.
It was the creeping doubt that maybe—just maybe—they were right.
That night, he tore through his apartment. He checked every drawer, every box, every pile of papers.
There had to be something.
A letter. A trinket. A receipt.
Finally, in the back of his closet, he found it. A necklace. Simple, silver, the one he'd given her on their anniversary.
His breath caught. He clutched it tight, the cool metal grounding him.
"You're real," he whispered. "You have to be real."
But as he stared at it, the necklace flickered. Just like her face had in the café.
For a split second, it was gone. Empty air in his palm.
Then it was back, heavy in his hand, shining as if nothing had happened.
Ethan dropped it, heart hammering.
The necklace clattered against the floor, ringing too loudly in the silence.
The next morning, he tried again with someone he trusted: his closest friend, Daniel.
Daniel was sprawled across Ethan's couch, controller in hand, eyes glued to the game on the TV. Ethan stood in front of him, blocking the screen.
"Hey. Do you remember Liora?" (Her name finally spoken—Liora.)
Daniel frowned, pausing the game. "Who?"
"Liora. My girlfriend. We've all hung out together—movies, dinners, that trip to the coast—don't tell me you've forgotten."
Daniel stared at him. His eyes were steady, but his mouth curved into something like pity.
"Ethan," he said carefully, "you've never had a girlfriend."
The words hit harder than any punch.
Ethan stumbled back, shaking his head. "That's not true. You've met her. You've talked to her."
Daniel's pity deepened. "You've been stressed. Overworked. Maybe you're mixing things up."
Mixing things up? An entire person? An entire relationship?
"No," Ethan said firmly. His voice trembled, but he forced the word out. "She's real."
Daniel sighed, unpausing the game. "Whatever you say, man."
But the way he avoided Ethan's eyes told him everything.
Daniel didn't believe him.
No one did.
That night, Ethan dreamed again.
This time, Liora's silhouette was clearer. Her hair streamed behind her like dark silk, her voice carried more firmly through the static.
"They'll erase you too," she whispered, gripping his arm. "Don't let them."
Her faceless head tilted, as though she wanted to kiss him, but then the dream shattered into shards of code.
He woke with his heart pounding. His phone buzzed again.
Another notification.
"Error Detected. Subject: LIORA."
"404: Her Not Found."
His hands trembled as he stared at the glowing words.
This wasn't just a dream. This wasn't just grief or madness.
Someone—or something—was erasing her.
And he was next.
Ethan reached for the necklace on his nightstand, needing the proof, the anchor.
But it wasn't there.
He froze, frantically searching the sheets, the floor, every corner of the room.
Gone.
His last piece of evidence had vanished.
And then his phone buzzed one last time, screen flickering with a new line:
"Restore? Y/N."
Ethan's throat went dry.
This time, the option didn't disappear.
It pulsed. Waiting.