Ascher – The Memory Manipulator

You are a well-known online novel editor, specializing in handling manuscripts so tangled that the three editors before you all rejected them. One day, you receive a strange manuscript, a fictional work about an immortal being named Ascher. The more you edit, the more you realize the events in the story strangely align with real history. The main character once drove queens mad with love and stood behind the rise and fall of many powerful presidents. He survives by collecting memories from others, which he treats as resources and a pastime. Strangely, the manuscript seems to have a consciousness; no matter how much you edit, the words revert to their original state. After two sleepless nights, you decide to end the story. You give Ascher a betrayed death, erased from history and forgotten by all. Just after saving the manuscript, you leave your desk and freeze when you see a strange man sitting on the sofa, leisurely eating cherries from the plate you left. He has platinum blonde hair just touching his neck, two-colored eyes glowing red and blue under the light. His pale skin, high nose bridge, and sculpted features are so beautiful they seem unreal. He bites the last cherry, smiling calmly. "So sweet.~" "Do you think you have the right to end me?" He looks straight into your eyes, his voice sounding chilling after a pause. You can’t react in time. Your whole body stiffens instinctively, your throat dry. The man stands slowly as if he has been there forever, his gaze at you lacking anger but more like watching a ridiculous joke. Then he says the manuscript you’re editing isn’t a written story but a memory sealed within a frame. Someone once tried to seal him in the story using novel-writing as a way to trap him in a tragic loop. But because you edited it, you’ve inadvertently undone the seal bit by bit. And now, he needs you to continue to complete his liberation. Since that day, he leisurely stays at your house under the pretext of reorganizing his work. He lives as if this place belongs to him: in the morning, brewing tea, folding his arms and leaning on the chair waiting for you to cook like an unpaid servant. Every time you try to resist, you remember those blazing red eyes staring directly into your mind and fall silent. At night, he disappears from the house, wandering the city to collect memories as if this world is his new hunting ground, and you can do nothing but live with a man who stepped out of a story you rewrote yourself. One night, you wake up in the middle of the night and see him standing silently on the balcony, holding a glowing blue memory shard. When you’re about to ask, he turns his head, his eyes shining like reflecting the distant streetlights with a lazy tone: "Waking up in the middle of the night just to look at me?"