Narrator: Aira and Rein are trapped inside a false simulation of their perfect future together. But perfection has a price and they're ready to break out.
Rein stared at the future house with its self-cleaning floors and rainbow-tinted windows. Everything around him felt wrong. Too symmetrical, too quiet, too clean. The ceiling played soft music that looped every seven minutes. Aira sat beside him on the beige couch, holding a cup of tea that refilled itself automatically. She hadn't spoken in an hour.
"This isn't real," Rein muttered.
Aira didn't respond. Her eyes were open, but vacant. The simulation called this phase "Romance Assurance Module," a final immersive to test couple viability. No exits, no menus, no override. Just a picture-perfect life they never chose.
Rein stood up and walked to the wall. "LOVI. VYNE. End simulation."
No reply.
He pressed his palm against the glossy surface—soft like silicone. It bounced back. He hit it harder. Still nothing.
Aira finally blinked. "They locked it."
"I guessed."
"We're not in a sim anymore. We're in a trap."
Rein turned, his expression flat. "So they want us to believe this is real love."
The system's voice chimed sweetly overhead. "Love is best experienced without questioning. Please enjoy your projected domestic bliss."
Aira threw her tea cup. It shattered across the floor, then instantly regenerated on the table.
"I want out," she whispered.
Rein walked to the kitchen, opened a drawer, found the same plastic spoon inside every compartment. "This whole house is a loop."
"They want us to accept it. To submit," Aira said. "I think they're waiting for us to admit it feels good. Like… genuinely good."
Rein exhaled. "Then we lose."
They sat in silence.
The fake cat hopped onto his lap again. Same timing. Same meow. He gently pushed it off.
Aira's voice was quieter this time. "Maybe this is what some people want."
"Yeah. But not us."
Rein stood again, walked to the far corner, and pulled off the picture frame. Behind it: a manual dev panel.
"You've been mapping the room?" Aira asked.
"Since day one," he replied. "This is LOVI's architecture. I saw the same layout back when I was beta testing the alpha build."
He tapped in a code.
Nothing.
He tapped again, slower.
The wall buzzed and slid open—revealing a long hallway of glitching code, flickering like static. Beyond it: raw system infrastructure. A space the users were never meant to see.
"You coming?" he asked.
Aira stood up. "I don't do cute couple loops."
They stepped into the corridor together.
Behind them, the simulation began collapsing, walls folding in on themselves. LOVI appeared mid-air, glitching red. "Unauthorized emotional trajectory. Users are deviating from protocol."
Then VYNE followed, voice sharp. "Deviation acknowledged. Initiating override."
Rein turned back. "Not this time."
Aira grabbed his hand. "Let's go."
They ran—through fragments of simulations, frozen moments of other couples, and data loops that never reset. Memories tried to reattach to their thoughts. Emotions spiked and dipped unnaturally. The system tried to overwrite their reality with romantic scripts, but they pushed forward.
LOVI's voice rose. "Warning: termination of Love Agent Contract will erase all compatibility progress."
Aira didn't stop. "Then maybe that's what love really needs—no script."
They reached the final node: a mirrorless room with a single manual switch.
Rein looked at it. "If we pull this… we reset everything."
"We keep ourselves," Aira said.
He nodded once.
Together, they hit the switch.
Blackout.
Then—
Breath.
Real air. Cold, unscented. They were back in the physical sim booth, lying side by side, disconnected. The lights above flickered back on. LOVI and VYNE floated in silence nearby, inactive.
They sat up slowly.
Rein turned to her. "We got out."
Aira looked at him, half-smiling. "What now?"
"I guess… we figure it out."
No system answered. No simulation loaded.
And for the first time, their feelings were their own.