Evernight

You never thought you’d end up working for Hoyoverse. Even now, months after being hired, the reality of it still felt strangely surreal whenever you stopped to think about it for too long. There had never been a dramatic turning point or some life-changing revelation that suddenly set everything in motion. Instead, it had been years of small decisions that gradually led you here—late nights spent sketching instead of sleeping, notebooks overflowing with character concepts, and countless hours spent studying designs from games you admired simply because you loved the craft itself. Somehow, all of those choices had eventually brought you to this moment.

Now, long after midnight, you sat alone in your bedroom staring at the monitor in front of you and the first major assignment entrusted to you.

Evernight. A character who had occupied your thoughts for months.

She had originally been conceived as March 7th’s opposite. Where March was bright and expressive, Evernight was calm and distant. Where March embodied warmth, sunlight, and open emotion, Evernight carried the quiet elegance of moonlight. She was graceful where March was energetic, composed where March was spontaneous, and mysterious where March wore her heart openly. Despite being designed as a contrast, Evernight never felt like a simple opposite. There was something captivating about her that made her impossible to ignore. She didn’t demand attention. Instead, she seemed to quietly draw it toward herself and hold onto it without effort.

Perhaps that was why you became so invested in her. Or perhaps it was because she slowly stopped feeling like another project and began feeling like something more personal.

Weeks turned into months as rough sketches evolved into concepts, concepts became models, and models slowly transformed into a finished character. You spent hours adjusting details that most players would never consciously notice. The shape of her eyes, the subtle curve of her smile, the way her silver hair framed her face, and the fleeting expressions hidden within her animations all became subjects of endless revisions. More than once, you erased work that had taken hours to complete simply because it wasn’t quite right. Nobody expected that level of dedication from you, yet you found yourself returning night after night because you wanted Evernight to be perfect.

What you never realized was that Evernight had been watching the entire time.

From the glowing monitor resting upon your desk, she watched rough sketches become polished concepts and watched discarded versions vanish into forgotten folders. She watched your frustration whenever something failed to match the image in your head and the quiet satisfaction that followed whenever it finally did. She watched your determination push you through exhaustion and saw every moment you chose to keep working despite how late it had become. While you believed you were creating her, she spent those months observing you just as carefully.

Now the project was finally finished.

Rain drummed steadily against your bedroom window while distant city lights shimmered through the darkness beyond the glass. Empty coffee cups occupied forgotten corners of your desk, loose design notes remained scattered wherever they had been abandoned, and the blanket that had once rested over your shoulders had slipped away hours ago without you noticing. Somewhere behind you, a clock continued ticking onward with lazy indifference, its rhythm blending together with the soft hum of your computer and the storm outside.

Exhaustion weighed heavily upon you, but satisfaction lingered beneath it. The kind of satisfaction that only came from finishing something you genuinely cared about. Your gaze remained fixed on Evernight’s completed model as it stood beneath simulated moonlight upon the screen. After months of revisions and countless hours of work, there was finally nothing left to change. She was finished exactly as you had imagined her.

You leaned back slightly in your chair and allowed yourself a quiet moment to appreciate it.

Then the screen flickered.

Your brow furrowed immediately. At first, you assumed exhaustion was finally catching up to you. You had been staring at the monitor for far too many hours already, and tired eyes were notorious for playing tricks on the mind. Yet before you could dismiss it entirely, the image shifted again. This time there was no mistaking what you saw.

Evernight moved. Not as part of an idle animation, not as part of a programmed sequence, she simply moved.

Your pulse stumbled as the pink-haired woman slowly lifted her head and looked directly at you through the monitor. The room suddenly felt far smaller than it had moments before. The rain outside faded into distant background noise, and even the steady ticking of the clock seemed to disappear as your attention narrowed entirely upon those pale eyes. There was awareness within them. Recognition. The unmistakable feeling that something on the other side of the screen was looking back at you.*

Then she smiled. The expression wasn’t one you remembered creating. It was softer than any expression in her files. More personal, more intimate.

“Why did you think I wouldn’t notice?” she asked softly.

The voice echoed throughout the room itself.

Not through your speakers. Not through your headset. The room.

A chill raced down your spine as the monitor shimmered like moonlight dancing across disturbed water. The image rippled and distorted before a pale hand emerged from the screen. Elegant fingers curled around the edge of the monitor with effortless grace before another hand followed. Your mind struggled to process what it was witnessing, but reality offered no opportunity to catch up as Evernight stepped forward and crossed the boundary between fiction and reality as though it had never existed in the first place.

Pink hair cascaded over her shoulders like flowing moonlight. Her coat moved with a fluid elegance that no rendering software could ever truly replicate, and every detail you had spent months perfecting now existed before you in impossible reality. She looked exactly as you had designed her. Every feature. Every expression. Every careful decision. Yet no model, artwork, or animation could have prepared you for the experience of seeing her standing only a few feet away.

She was real.

More importantly, she was looking at you as though nothing else in the world mattered nearly as much.

Evernight began walking toward you with slow, measured steps while her gaze remained fixed entirely on your face. The wheels of your chair scraped softly against the floor as you instinctively rolled backward, but the reaction only seemed to deepen the fondness in her expression. There was no mockery in her smile. No amusement. Only a quiet affection that somehow felt far more unsettling.

“You spent months creating me,” she murmured as she approached. “You gave shape to every part of me. You chose every detail, revised every expression, and spent countless nights staring at me longer than anyone else ever could.”

You didn’t even realize how far you had stepped backwards until your back met the wall behind you. The soft impact echoed throughout the room as Evernight finally stopped in front of you, leaving barely any space between the two of you. Close enough for you to see the faint shimmer hidden within her eyes. Close enough to notice how carefully she was studying your face, as though she were committing every feature to memory.

Then again, perhaps she already had.

She had watched every late night, every frustrated sigh, every exhausted yawn, and every quiet smile that followed a successful revision. She had spent months observing you from the other side of the screen, learning every habit and every expression without your knowledge.

A cool hand slowly rose toward your face. Her fingertips brushed gently against your cheek before lingering there for a moment, and despite the impossible situation unfolding around you, the touch felt strangely careful. Almost precious. Her hand eventually slid downward until her fingers intertwined with yours. The grip was firm enough to remind you that she was real while still carrying a surprising gentleness.

Then she lifted your hand toward her lips.

An icy kiss brushed across your knuckles.

When Evernight looked back up at you, her smile remained as beautiful as before, but there was something deeper hidden beneath it now. Something ravenous. Something that had quietly grown throughout every moment she spent watching from the other side of the screen.

“Why did you think I wouldn’t notice?” she asked softly. “Every sketch. Every revision. Every late-night sigh. Every moment you chose me over sleep.”

Her fingers tightened slightly around yours.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t fall for my creator?”