On the screen, a little girl with freckles knocked on a boy’s door, offering him a carton of eggs. (A scene from the movie Flipped).

  "I think we’re moving a bit too fast," Dream-Jun said, stroking Haruka’s cheek. She closed her eyes, letting out a soft, contented purr like a kitten.

  Haruka felt a prickle of annoyance at his restraint, but she was mostly comforted. He sounded just like her Aunt Hana; it meant he truly cared for her.

  She fell asleep on his shoulder. Jun dimmed the volume of the movie, his gaze drifting past the semi-transparent Status Overlay in front of him, watching the childhood romance on the screen transition into teenage angst.

  The turning point of their lives came at the end of that summer.

  The day before the new semester began, Haruka told Jun that her aunt had been diagnosed with a vanishingly rare condition.

  "Aunt Hana says... the doctors might name the disease after her," Haruka whispered.

  Haruka’s parents had died in an accident when she was a toddler; her aunt was her only tether to the world.

  "If she dies... I don't think I’ll know who I am anymore," Haruka murmured.

  Jun looked at the girl in his arms. She was physically there, but her soul felt a million miles away.

  Three months later, Aunt Hana passed away.

  When Jun reached the hospital room, Haruka had been kneeling by the bed for an hour. He knelt beside her and pulled her into his arms.

  "I'm here," he said.

  "Kiss me." She looked up at him, her eyes swollen and raw from crying.

  They kissed. Haruka strained her neck, desperately forcing her tongue into his mouth as if trying to suck the very air from his lungs. It was a kiss of pure, jagged desperation.

  A nurse passing by the room stopped in the hallway. She saw the two of them: the boy looking down with a face of divine mercy, the girl looking up with a face of total ruin. It looked like a sinner finally reaching the hand of God.

  "Give it to me," Haruka gasped, her lips barely parting from his.

  "Here?" Jun looked at the bed. Her aunt’s body was still warm.

  "Right here. Do it now, or I’ll forget I’m even alive." Her eyes were hollow, reflecting nothing.

  "Wait—" Jun tried to pull back.

  "NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE ME LIKE SHE DID!" Haruka screamed into his ear, her voice a jagged blade.

  "I love you," Jun whispered, holding her tight enough to bruise.

  "If you love me, why won't you take me?" Her voice dropped instantly, becoming a weak, pathetic whimper.

  "Not in this room, Haruka. Please."

  "It has to be here. Right now. I have to show her she doesn't need to worry. I have to show her I’ve found someone else to belong to."

  Haruka’s body went limp. If Jun hadn't been holding her, she would have collapsed back onto the floor.

  "Please... just love me."

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Jun reached out, locked the door, and pulled the curtains shut.

  After that day, Haruka never returned to school. Jun stopped working; he spent every hour after class at her estate.

  One night, Jun opened the door to Haruka’s bedroom. It was pitch black. He could hear nothing but the rhythmic sound of her breathing.

  "Haruka? We can't keep living like this." Ever since the hospital, he had dropped all formality.

  Every night, they lost themselves in that massive, velvet-draped bed. It was the only time she seemed like a living human being. Outside of those hours, she did nothing—she didn't leave the room, she barely ate. She was a ghost haunting her own life.

  The room remained silent.

  "Not tonight," Jun said.

  "Do you stop loving me?" her voice rang out from the darkness.

  "No."

  "Then why stop?"

  "I’m quitting school. I’m packing my things tonight. Tomorrow, we’re leaving. We’re going to travel."

  Haruka opened her eyes. "I don't want to. It sounds exhausting."

  "You don't have a choice." Jun gave her a sad, determined smile.

  The next day, he dragged her out of the house.

  They started in Japan—the snows of Hokkaido, the hot springs of Mt. Fuji, a helicopter ride over a simmering volcanic crater.

  "How does it feel?" Jun asked, opening the helicopter door so she could look directly into the glowing red throat of the volcano.

  "I wonder what it feels like to jump in," Haruka said, her eyes tracking the flowing magma.

  "Don't even think about it." Jun gripped her hand. "If you jump, you’re taking me with you. We go together or not at all."

  Six months later, they left the country. They watched the great migration on the African savannah, stood among the cracking glaciers of Antarctica, and walked through the poppy fields of a small English village.

  Haruka looked out at the endless sea of blood-red flowers. She felt as though her own lifeblood were draining out into the soil.

  The red was too much. It was suffocating. A single tear tracked down her cheek.

  "To hell with this flower field," she spat, her voice full of sudden, sharp venom.

  Jun looked at her, his eyes full of a dazed, obsessive adoration.

  "You look so beautiful when you’re angry."

  _______

  After a year of traveling, Haruka’s soul finally returned to the world of the living.

  They returned to Haneoka High as "Repeaters"—held back a year, social outcasts—but they didn't care. The absolute devotion of their relationship had turned Haruka into a creature of pure, concentrated vitality.

  At the School Festival, they performed a duet.

  Haruka wore a gown of black lace, a silver crown perched on her head. She didn't look at the audience; her entire world was the boy standing across from her. Under the spotlights, Jun smiled, and for the first time in years, Haruka’s smile was real.

  She sang with tears streaming down her face, finally throwing her microphone aside to leap into Jun’s arms. They shared a long, cinematic kiss while fireworks exploded in the night sky and the crowd screamed in a frenzy.

  In that moment, she was the undisputed Queen of Haneoka.

  But entropy is the law of the universe.

  Haruka had buried the memory of her aunt, but in its place, her dependence on Jun had grown into a monstrous, all-consuming vine. He had pulled her out of the abyss, and now his hand was the only thing keeping her from falling back in.

  If Jun left her sight for even a minute, panic set in. She followed him everywhere. She became his shadow.

  "You’re seriously following me into the bathroom? You don't find this a bit much?" Jun sat on the toilet, still half-asleep. Haruka was sitting on his lap, her head nodding as she dozed against his chest.

  "Wherever you go... I go," she murmured in her sleep. "Don't leave me. Love only me."

  She drifted back off, her body sliding forward. Jun sighed and caught her, pulling her back into a protective embrace.

  Every human needs to breathe. But with Haruka, Jun felt like the oxygen was being slowly sucked out of the room. Her dependence was sweet, but it was terrifying. He knew with absolute certainty that if he died, she would be in the ground beside him within the hour.

  The final straw came during a visit to the orphanage.

  "Jun," the Director said, pulling him aside. "Have you noticed everyone is avoiding you lately?"

  Jun gave a weak laugh. "I figured the kids were just hitting their rebellious phase."

  The Director didn't smile. She waited until Jun’s mask slipped.

  "Is it because of Haruka?" he asked.

  The old woman nodded. "She hasn't done anything 'wrong.' She just stays by your side. But whenever any of the other kids try to get close to you, she looks... devastated. Like she’s drowning."

  "The kids are good souls, Jun. They don't want to be the reason she suffers. So, they’ve just stopped coming around."

  As they left, the Director waved to Haruka, who was pressing her face against the window glass, watching them with wide, frantic eyes.

  On the walk home, Jun held Haruka’s hand in silence. A red command flashed on his Status Overlay:

  [Objective: Teach Haruka Mochizuki to be independent.]

  He started with gentle persuasion.

  "Why do we need 'space'?" Haruka asked, her eyes welling with tears. "I just want to be with you."

  "I need to be alone sometimes, Haruka. It’s healthy."

  "Do you stop loving me?"

  It was the question he’d seen a thousand times in the Simulation. Seeing it in person was even more exhausting.

  The next time he went to the bathroom, he locked the door.

  Immediately, the pounding started.

  "Jun? Why is the door locked? Let me in! Please!"

  "I’m just using the restroom, Haruka! I’ll be out in two minutes. We can talk through the door."

  The pounding grew more violent. The wood groaned under her fists. "NO! I need to see you! Let me in! I don't care if you pee on me! I JUST NEED TO SEE YOU!"

  Jun flushed the toilet and opened the door before she could break it. Haruka threw herself into his arms, shaking, inhaling his scent as if she were starving.

  "This can't go on," Jun said, his voice turning cold and hard.

  Jun woke up in the middle of the night to find Haruka staring at him, her eyes unblinking in the moonlight. She was memorizing his face, her expression etched with a frantic, desperate intensity.

  "Are you leaving me?" she asked.

  He didn't lie. "I'm not leaving. But I need you to give me air. I have Saaya, I have Yuji, I have the Director. I can't be only yours. You have to accept the world outside of this room."

  Haruka didn't answer. She just rolled over, her back to him.

  "If you walk out that door, don't come back."

  Jun hugged her from behind. "You don't mean that." He kissed the back of her neck.

  When he woke up the next morning, the room was empty. He’d finally pushed her too far.

  He had tried everything—from gentle coaching to clinical logic. Finally, the System forced him to use the "Nuclear Option": the cold, hard truth.

  "Haruka, you have to learn to exist as an individual. No one can stay with you forever. Not even me."

  Those were the darkest days. They barely saw each other. When they did, it was brief, clinical. He ignored her video calls. He ignored her pleas. He was "curing" her.

  He didn't realize that without him, she wasn't "learning to be independent." She was simply rotting from the inside out.

  Haruka started keeping a diary. At first, it was coherent. But by the end, every page was filled with the same three lines, written over and over until the ink bled through the paper:

  You turned and walked away.

  You turned and walked away.

  You turned and walked away.