Box of Echoes

A device, put it on, and return to that sunny afternoon—my daughter is alive, smiling, and showing her a ladybug in the palm of her hand. The temperature and weight are extremely real. A person who has studied "reality" for half his life has fallen into this gentle illusion and cannot extricate himself. But something unusual happened: she forgot where she put her keys, the agreement she made with her sister, and the orange cat that had been with her for eight years. She finally realized that this device called the "Echo Box" would randomly erase a piece of her real past every time it reappeared a memory - and what it would eventually erase was her daughter herself. When a mysterious man comes to the door, claiming to be the maker of the device and the first person to be hollowed out by it, Lin Xu must make a choice: continue to indulge in the phantom of a "daughter" who will eventually be unable to distinguish between true and false, and exhaust himself and his memories with his own hands; or let go and leave the last bit of reality for this farewell that is three years late before completely forgetting it. A story about memory, grief and love, it asks: when the memory carrying love is taken away bit by bit, can love itself still remain? This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.