Sword Art Online Material Edition 03

Ceramic Heart (セラミックハート) is the third Material Edition of «Sword Art Online». Kawahara Reki published it under his pen name Kunori Fumio.

Plot
Yui doesn't understand human "love." She ponders the meaning of the word, when one day while in ALO, she meets a boy who confesses to her. She tells him that she will not be his, but the boy says there is no need for an answer, and that he is happy either way. Confused, Yui asks Asuna what the boy had meant, and she says that she should ask him the next time they meet. As it turned out, he had deleted his account the next day, so she accessed the remaining information, and tracked him down to his place of residence. Asuna goes and finds that the boy was actually an elderly man who had recently died, and had taken up a hobby of going into VRMMOs. Before the elderly man died, he last told his adult daughter that he had actually met his deceased wife in ALO.

Later Yui begins to realize, and assessed that the feeling of loss, is what it truly means "to love."