Upon hearing what he said, I replied in the affirmative.
Just a nod. A single, economical tilt of the head. Nothing more.
Him… her… I didn't even know anymore. The thought surfaced like a bubble of swamp gas, and I shook my head, a sharp, mechanical jerk as if trying to rattle the confusion out of my skull.
"I…—"
The word slipped out of me as little more than a half-whisper, a ghost of a sound that barely had the velocity to leave my lips.
My internal logic was a mess. A part of me—the part that usually preferred a ghost's existence—wondered if we should have just kissed. If I should have sought out the chase-thrills I spent my life avoiding. My default was minimum engagement, a flatline of existence, but the physics of the room were changing.
In the mist of all this, he moved. He didn't just step; he encroached, shrinking the distance until the air between us was a compressed, vibrating pocket of heat.
His lips leaned closer. The proximity was a sensory overload that finally drowned out the "Daniel" logic. I could no longer imagine myself as anything other than the vessel I was currently inhabiting. Maybe... beneath this interface, beneath the clay and the confusion, I just wanted the validation of the gaze. I wanted to be seen as a woman.
Someone to reassure the wreckage. Someone trustworthy. Someone benevolent.
I felt the involuntary pull of gravity. I leaned in, my weight shifting forward, my breath hitching in a jagged, expectant rhythm.
But the connection never came.
"Don't push yourself."
His hand moved—not a strike, but a soft, sweeping arc. He cupped my cheek, his palm a searing brand of warmth against my skin for one agonizing second, and then... he pulled away.
The sudden vacuum of his presence was like a physical blow.
Eh?
A misunderstanding? A miscalculation of the data?
If I were your average woman, the blood would have rushed to my face in a visible, crimson tide. I would have blushed on the spot, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I would have wanted to die of embarrassment.
But I couldn't.
My emotions were a locked system, an uncalibrated interface that wasn't ready for that kind of surge. I stood there, cold and static, my face a mask of marble while the "nothingness" inside me tried to process the rejection. I wasn't embarrassed; I was digitally interrupted.
He—or rather, the feminine silhouette that housed him—turned to leave.
The movement was fluid, a graceful displacement of pixels that felt like a door closing in my face.
The vacuum he left behind was unbearable. My hand all of a sudden moved on his own before my mind could authorize the command. It wasn't a choice; it was a reflex of the soul.
What was it... my female instinct?
I reached out and clamped my hand around his arm.
The contact was a sensory collision.
My fingers, thick and calloused, wrapped almost entirely around the delicate, tapering curve of his female forearm. I felt the structural mismatch immediately—the raw, heavy power of my grip meeting the soft, yielding velvet of his skin.
"Wait."
The word didn't come from my throat; it felt like it was dragged out of my chest, a low-frequency thrum that vibrated through the air.
VelvetVice froze. I could see the micro-tension ripple up his spine, the way his shoulders locked under the thin fabric of his avatar's dress. He didn't turn back, but the heat radiating from him was a palpable, electric charge.
I didn't let go. If anything, my grip tightened, my thumb pressing into the shallow groove of his wrist where a pulse should have been. It was a possessive, desperate gesture—a woman's plea delivered through the heavy machinery of a man's limb.
Please... stay.
Don't leave me here alone.
VelvetVice didn't move for a long, agonizing heartbeat.
The silence between us was so thick I could hear the hum of the server, the digital wind whistling through the gaps in our code. My fingers were still dug into his arm, the red crescents of my grip blooming on his pale, feminine skin.
Slowly, he began to turn.
It wasn't a sudden movement; it was a rotational shift, deliberate and heavy with intent. The fabric of his dress hissed as it brushed against his legs—a dry, silk-on-skin sound that seemed too loud in the quiet room.
"You're shaking, Midnight," he said.
The voice was that same melodic, female ripple, but the cadence was blunt, a man's observation delivered through a girl's throat. He reached up with his free hand—the one I wasn't crushing—and mirrored my earlier movement.
He didn't cusp my cheek this time. He wrapped his fingers around my wrist, his grip a counter-pressure that was just as firm, just as possessive.
"Is it the instinct?" he whispered, leaning in until our foreheads were almost touching, the thermal bridge between us reigniting. "Or are you just realizing that in this world, 'alone' is the only thing that's actually real?"
H-how did he know?
"Please... stay. Don't leave me here alone."
The words hung in the air, wet and heavy.
Those were the words scraping the bottom of my throat, the truth I had spent years trying to cap. But hearing them out loud? It sounded pathetic. It sounded like a "dishonest girl in love" archetype from a bad visual novel.
I want to take them back. Delete the line. Reload the save.
But my hand—my large, tanned, masculine hand—didn't listen to the logic of my brain.
It listened to the blood.
I was gripping him so hard I could feel the fine, delicate architecture of his radius bone beneath the velvet skin. I was hurting him. I knew I was. But the fear of the vacuum, of the cold, digital silence behind him, was louder than my conscience.
VelvetVice didn't pull away.
Instead, the "fluid displacement" of his movement arrested. He froze, a statue of silver hair and delicate fabric against the gloom.
"Midnight," he said.
He didn't turn around yet. He just spoke to the empty air, his voice that soft, female melody that always felt like a dangerous lure.