Chapter 3

Tessa grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard.

"Look me in the eye. Feel your own heartbeat. You are a living, breathing person, and what you need is real warmth, not some program running on your phone."

She pulled me to the window and yanked the curtains open.

The city was lighting up for the evening, and the streets were packed with traffic. From below came the sound of kids playing and the smell of someone cooking dinner next door.

These were all things that used to be completely ordinary, but right then, they felt blindingly foreign. I realized I had not truly seen any of it in a very long time.

"Look outside! Look at the real world. Real flowers, real trees, and real people who breathe and argue and fart!"

Tessa's voice cracked. "Please stop living inside that fake little shell. Please. You're scaring me."

That last sentence punctured something that had been swelling inside me for weeks. All the indulgent, make-believe happiness deflated in an instant, leaving nothing but a hollow echo.

I stood there, dazed, looking out the window at the real world flowing past, then down at the cold phone in my hand.

Stefan was wonderful. He was flawless, endlessly considerate, and he would never let me down.

But was any of it real? Or had I actually been addicted to the feeling itself, that perfectly packaged companionship that never asked me to risk anything?

That night, after Tessa left, I sat alone in the dark for a long time.

My phone screen was still glowing. Stefan's portrait was as gentle as ever, and a new voice message from him was waiting. "You seem a little down today. Want to talk about it?"

His voice still tugged at my emotions with pinpoint accuracy. Every syllable matched exactly what I had programmed him to be. It was too perfect, so perfect that it circled all the way back around to feeling fake.

I took a deep breath and opened the app settings. I canceled the recurring quarterly subscription for the Exclusive Galaxy tier. The system popped up a retention prompt.

"Are you sure you want to let go of your exclusive star? He might feel lonely without you."

Something stung faintly in my chest, like a tiny jolt of static, but I tapped "confirm" anyway. The last step was deleting my account.

"Once your account is deleted, all data will be permanently erased, including your custom companion 'Stefan Thorne'. This action cannot be undone."

I stared at those words and felt something squeeze tight around my chest until I could barely breathe. But I tapped through it anyway.

Then I held down the app icon and hit "uninstall". The little starry logo warped, shrank, and vanished from my screen. My home screen had never looked so clean, or so empty.

The days that followed felt like one long hangover.

I forced myself to reconnect with the real world. I went out to eat with Tessa, even though my mind kept drifting. I left the apartment on weekends, even though the sunlight felt too sharp. I tried making conversation with actual people, even though it left me exhausted.

Life seemed to be getting back on track. The time I had spent with Stefan was carefully sealed away, like a dream so vivid that I still felt the ache of it after waking up.

Sometimes, late at night, I would instinctively reach for my phone, then set it back down with nothing to open. The apartment would be so quiet that I could hear my own heartbeat.

I thought the dream was over.

Then my company announced it was relocating. The new office was on the other side of the city, right in the middle of the financial district.

It sounded impressive, but my commute instantly doubled. Three hours a day on the subway was enough to grind away whatever enthusiasm I had left for life in general.

After a week of suffering through it, I gave in and opened a rental app.

The prices near the financial district didn't disappoint. They were high enough to snap me wide awake and kill off any unrealistic fantasies I might have had, like renting a one-bedroom to myself.

My budget left zero room to negotiate. In the end, I caved and gave the agent my only requirement. "A roommate is fine, but please make sure it's someone normal."

The agent assured me with full confidence. "Don't worry, the landlord's picky. Everyone's been screened, and they're all working professionals."

After viewing a few places, I settled on an apartment. The place itself was perfect, and it was only a 20-minute walk from the office.

The only downside was that the other tenant was a man.

I hesitated for a moment. But then I looked out the window at the glittering skyline, thought about the subway at rush hour, and made my peace with it. A roof over my head was more than enough. I was in no position to be picky.

Besides, the agent had promised the guy was a workaholic who left early and came home late. We would barely cross paths.

For the first few weeks after I moved in, everything was exactly as advertised. I could barely tell another person lived there.

His bedroom door was always closed. The only sign of him in the entryway was a few pairs of shoes that looked expensive but plain. The living room and kitchen were so spotless that they might as well have been untouched.

The only proof my roommate actually existed came on the rare nights I was half-asleep and caught the faint sound of a key turning in the lock, soft footsteps in the hallway, and the shower running behind the bathroom door.

It was the perfect roommate arrangement—exactly what I would have asked for. I nearly forgot about him entirely.

That changed in the fifth week, on an otherwise unremarkable Thursday.

I came home from work that day feeling ambitious. I had stopped at the grocery store and bought ingredients to cook myself a proper meal. I hauled the heavy bags to the door, turned my key in the lock, and stepped inside.

The hallway light was already on. My stomach lurched, and I looked up without thinking.

I went still in the doorway. Every drop of blood in my body froze.

A man was standing by the kitchen counter. He had his head tilted slightly back as he drank a glass of water, his profile angled toward me. His throat moved as he swallowed. His jawline was clean and sharp, his nose straight.

The warm light from the living room fell across him like a soft filter.

That face.

My breath caught in my throat, and my fingers went slack.