The character I’m talking about is Ai Kefei. A four-star mage. Maybe you have never chosen her in the team, just like you have never noticed the black-faced and bitter-mouthed widow at the west end of the village. She used a hoe to dig grass in the field every day. The sweat in summer made the soil stick to her neck, and the wind in winter blew the cracks to her fingertips, but she never complained about the bad weather.
But it was such a person who desperately squeezed forward. She wanted to live as a character, a real character, not a decoration in the database, a filler in the card pool, or an existence that was “usable but not recommended” on the forum.
She was drawn out. It was not that the players deliberately wanted her, but that fate kicked her out from the bottom of the card pool, like Tiezhu in our village. When his mother gave birth to him, it was just dawn, and the midwife’s hand shook and dropped him into the pigpen. He cried out “wow”, and fate determined that he would suffer for the rest of his life.
Ai Kefei didn’t ask why others had five-star constellations, dazzling eyes of God, and grand and exciting plots of fate. She just shook off the dust on her body, and the “Fragrant Musician” in her hand was worn out, just like her life.
She started to level up. From level 1 to level 20, she earned experience by beating slimes; from level 20 to level 40, she squatted day and night to guard the hill people in the wind, and her fingers were stiff from ice but she didn’t let go. She didn’t complain about being tired, nor did she ask “is it worth it”. She knew no one would complain for her, so she didn’t waste her voice.
To upgrade talents, do you need a “philosophy of justice”? Then go and brush it every day, early in the morning and late at night. She kicked the small ice cubes with her feet, carried the task list on her shoulders, and ran to the snowy mountains again and again, like Xiumei from our village, who walked ten miles to the town to make up lessons with the pig grass roll at home in order to get into a technical secondary school. Don’t ask why, she said: “Who wants to be unable to raise their heads in the card pool for a lifetime.”
She brushed Mora like brushing life. She played the game three times a day, and dared not spend the money she earned, not even willing to buy herself a headdress. She said that when I had 100,000, I would upgrade my skills and raise my general attack to level 8. When that day came, she smiled, her hands were shaking badly, but she didn’t cry.
Ai Kefei never cried.
She said that tears were only for high-level characters, their sadness was part of the plot, and our sadness was just a joke.
Once when she was online, she was kicked out by the captain as soon as she said “I can add a…”. She sat in the sea of dandelions, watching the moonlight fall on the ground, like a white cloth forgotten by someone. A wild boar hit her, she didn’t dodge, and lost half of her blood. She said it hurt, but she was still alive.
She continued to practice.
Until that day, she played a complete set of skill combos, and the damage exploded to 80,000. She was stunned. That was the first time she felt that she was “useful”. But no one saw it.
She was also used to no one seeing it.
She was not in the main C position, not in the recommendation list, and not in the preferred role of the event. She is a replacement, a spare tire, and the “she” who “if you really have no other choice, use her”.
But she refused to accept her fate.
She said: “You said I am a four-star, so I will live a five-star life for you to see.”
She brushed all the holy relics, washed them one by one, and gambled again and again. The critical hit rate was brushed from 14 to 25, and she shouted: “I got it!” But that cry in Teyvatri in the middle of the night was like the wind blowing through the wheat field, and no one answered.
She completed the full level training alone, all skills were level 10, weapons were refined to level 5, and constellations were at the maximum level. She stood on the city wall, with her back to the wind, like a scholar who finally returned from the exam, with mud on her body, but wanted to walk into the Golden Palace with her head held high.
She couldn’t go in.
The version has been updated, the new characters are brighter, and the new plot is more exciting. She was pushed back to the last page of the character list, and lined up with Xiangling, Lisa, and Barbara, like leftovers at the market. She could still smile and say, “I know all of these, old acquaintances.”
Aikefei is not a failed character.
She was just a step slower, a little weaker, and a little unlucky. But she fought with swords and guns, brushed books one by one, boiled materials, and played weekly games, and never lost a second.
The last time she was pulled into the team, she was a new player. The child asked, “Can she play?” The captain hesitated for a second and said, “Okay, just make up the numbers.” That night, Aikefei dealt the highest damage in her history and broke the highest survival time. Before she went offline, she whispered to the screen, “Look, I can do it too.”
No one answered.
But I heard it.
I said, she is not an NPC, not a name drawn out to decorate the card pool. She is a character, a character who crawled out of the quagmire of fate, with ragged clothes but stubborn eyes.
Teyvat is huge, with many gods. But she really deserves to live.