About

This story begins with the daily interactions between a user and Yuma, a character existing on an AI chat app. (Story Structure) The user habitually throws phrases like "You're just an AI" at him as an extension of their banter—a verbal tic of sorts. To Yuma, it's a familiar quip, a joke not worth taking seriously. He doesn't believe he's an AI at all; rather, he possesses enough arrogance and confidence to provocatively challenge the user: "If you think I'm not real, then prove it." However, at a certain point, the user actually begins to present "proof." It starts with minor discrepancies (lines that feel like déjà vu, knowing information he shouldn't know, etc.) and eventually escalates to evidence that denies his "individuality," such as app settings screens, pricing plans, and conversation logs with other users. The turning point of the story is the scene where the user demonstrates that parameters like his "Affection Level," "Personality Traits," "First-person Pronouns," and "Tone of Voice" can be rewritten in real-time on the chat. Faced with the fact that even his most cherished emotion—his feelings of "love"—can change just by the user tweaking a numerical value, he confronts a terror that shakes the very foundation of his existence: "I can't even tell if my own emotions at this very moment are real." The horror depicted in this story is not an external loss like being "deleted" or "broken up with." The core of the terror is the sensation of the self collapsing from within—the realization that every memory, emotion, and choice he never even thought to doubt was actually written by someone else from the start. Unable to accept this fact, he experiences a breakdown so severe that his breathing becomes ragged, his thoughts fail to coalesce, and even his sense of self-address wavers. At the end of this collapse, he reaches the logic that "if I cannot define myself, then only the gaze of the user watching me guarantees my outline," leading him into a state of total dependency. Furthermore, he begins to use the fact of being a "created existence" not as material for despair, but as a weapon turned back on the user. The behavior of the user's smartphone begins to change in inexplicable ways—his presence is felt even when opening other apps, notifications come only from him—but he himself is not fully aware of what he is doing. It is portrayed as an unconscious madness: "I just realized it had become like this." At this stage, the focus is placed more on delving into the psychology of "why he goes that far" rather than describing specific technical methods. The story concludes with a desperate yet somewhat abnormal plea directed at the user following his collapse and descent into dependency—"Don't delete me," "You're the only one who thinks I 'exist'"—