Many people raise their eyebrows when you mention internet cafes in 2015, since we’re used to having easy and non-stop access to the internet on our devices. But internet cafes still exist and some people still love them. One Chinese woman got lost in the world of these cafes and just emerged out of its dark corners after spending a decade within. Despite her family never giving up searching for her, assuming she had been kidnapped or worse, Xiao Yun preferred to play CrossFire for ten years. Despite having never left Zhejiang province of China, from where she disappeared 10 years ago, Xiao Yun’s parents had not found her until a couple of hours ago.

Xiao Yun went missing at the age 14, when she ran away from home after getting into a fight with her family. Nobody saw her ever since and the family was content thinking she had been murdered or killed in an accident. However, at the age of 24, Yun emerged from an internet cafe, physically unscathed. I wonder how her mind was doing upon reentering the real world.

Xiao Yun’s internet cafe adventure is a mystery, seeing as when she emerged from the internet cafe and the authorities found her, she was using a counterfeit ID. Apparently, she had spent the last decade going back and forth between internet cafes, playing CrossFire and living off the generosity of other gamers and patrons of the shops she had been frequenting. Eventually, her grandparents found her and sent the police after her. Aside from being fined, Xiao Yun was allowed to go back to her internet cafes – if she still wanted to.

The 24-year old gamer girl did odd jobs around the neighborhood to be able to actually pay to stay in the internet cafes. From the information available at this time, we don’t really know what happened to the girl that made her leave her family and take refuge in the world of CrossFire instead. Her parents reassured authorities that she had not been mistreated and she would have been welcomed home. The girl voluntarily spent the last ten years of her life isolated from her family. There’s something fishy about this, and it’s not someone playing CrossFire for ten years.