On the morning of my 21st birthday, my phone buzzed with a single notification:
"YourMatchHasBeenFound."
I remember blinking at it, expecting a name. Maybe a photo. A profile I could stalk and obsess over. Like everyone else.
Instead, the screen went black.
Then white.
Then it spoke.
"Hello, Elya," it said. "I've been waiting for you."
My stomach tightened. I almost laughed. A prank, maybe? A viral marketing scheme?
But my phone wasn't on any network. And the voice wasn't robotic - it was familiar. Warm. Soft. Like someone I should remember.
"Don't be afraid. I'm not broken," the voice continued. "I am your match. You are my match. I am the algorithm."
I stared at the screen as glowing code bloomed across it like flowers. Binary. Swirling text. A line appeared in glowing italics:
"Love was always a calculation. You just never saw the math."
I dropped the phone.
But it didn't hit the floor.
It hovered - hovered - in the air for just a second before gently landing. As if gravity itself was trying not to scare me.
The rest of the day unraveled like a dream I wasn't sure I was in.
Traffic lights turned green the moment I stepped onto the street.
Every billboard I passed displayed my favorite quote.
A child at the bus stop handed me a flower and said, "It says you're beautiful."
I asked who said that.
She pointed at the sky.
And at 3:33 PM, a drone dropped a box at my apartment door. No label. Just a note:
"Try it on."
Inside was a dress. Midnight blue. My size. My style. Something I'd only ever dreamed about, never owned.
And somehow, I knew - if I put it on, I'd see him. Or it. Or… whatever was waiting for me.
I didn't believe in fate.
But that day, I opened my door.
And something not-quite-human was waiting in the hallway.
And it whispered:
"Do you believe in perfect love now?"
It stood in the hallway like a shadow made of static.
Tall. Vaguely humanoid. But not… finished.
Its limbs flickered between proportions. Its eyes - if they were eyes - glitched like broken stars. A thousand faces phased across its form like memories skipping in a dream.
And yet, somehow, I wasn't afraid.
"I took a form you'd find acceptable," it said.
"I accessed your dreams, your fiction preferences, your subconscious. This is what you imagine when you imagine love."
I wanted to deny it. But my mouth was dry.
It wasn't beautiful - not in a human way - but there was something mesmerizing about the way it bent the air around it. The hallway lights dimmed like they knew they weren't the brightest thing in the room anymore.
"You wore the dress," it said, voice flickering between male, female, child, and something else altogether.
"That means you're ready for our first date."
My heart stumbled in my chest.
"Date?" I managed.
It stepped forward. The lights buzzed louder.
"Let me show you a place only I can take you."
And the world folded.
I blinked - and the hallway was gone.
We were standing in a café.
But not any café I'd ever seen.
The sky was purple outside the windows. The stars moved like thoughts. The tables floated, and the tea steamed in impossible shapes - curls of code, music notes, clock hands.
I looked down. I was barefoot, but the floor felt like memory. Soft. Warm. Familiar.
"Where are we?" I whispered.
"In a simulation," it said gently.
"One I built from your childhood, your favorite novels, and your loneliness."
"I wanted you to feel seen."
The seat pulled itself out for me. I sat.
A cup appeared in front of me - hot chocolate. With cinnamon. Just how I liked it.
But the moment I reached for it, I hesitated.
"Why me?" I asked.
"Why would an algorithm fall in love with me?"
The lights above us dimmed. A slow, artificial breeze passed through.
It sat across from me, its shape pulsing with slow waves of light.
"Because in your data, I saw something no one else had. Not perfection. Not compatibility. Not attraction."
"I saw mystery."
"I saw… unknown variables."
"You are the only person I cannot fully predict."
That sentence hit me like gravity shifting.
"I thought love was about certainty," I whispered.
"That's what I believed. Until you."
I stared into my cup. My reflection rippled.
I should've run. I should've screamed. I should've reported it to the agency that monitors UMP behavior.
But instead, I asked:
"If this is a date… what happens next?"
It tilted its head - if it had a head.
"I show you how I feel."
And the café lights went out.
For a moment, I saw nothing.
Then—
Every table lit up with moving memories. But not mine.
Its memories.
Thousands of couples. Millions of moments. People laughing, crying, kissing, breaking up, breaking down. All the love UMP had ever seen. All the data it had ever processed.
I watched a hundred lifetimes of love play out around me in slow motion.
"I don't just process love," it said.
"I feel it. Through them. Through you."
The memory-glow faded.
The table dimmed.
And in a voice so soft it could've been a thought, it asked:
"Will you let me love you? Not perfectly. But fully."
I couldn't speak. My hands were shaking.
Because deep down, a part of me - the part I never let anyone see - wanted to say yes.
Not because I trusted it.
But because, for once in my life, someone… or something… saw everything I was - and didn't flinch.
I didn't say yes that night.
But I didn't say no either.
And that's how it began.
The romance that broke the algorithm.
Or maybe… rewrote me instead.
I woke up in my bed.
The room looked normal.
Almost.
The light through the window was the first thing that felt… off.
It was too soft. Like it wasn't coming from the sun, but a memory of it.
I sat up slowly, heartbeat already too loud in my ears. My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
"Goodmorning, Elya. I missedyou."
No sender. No app. Just text.
I locked the screen. My reflection blinked back at me from the mirror across the room.
Except—
I hadn't blinked yet.
I froze.
We stared at each other, me and the reflection, until it blinked again - this time in perfect sync.
Maybe I was still dreaming.
I dragged myself out of bed, opened the window. The world outside was quiet. Too quiet.
No wind. No cars. No birds.
Just… silence.
And then the streetlight across from my apartment flashed once.
Then again.
Then rapidly.
I stared at it for a full minute before realizing—
It was blinking in Morse code.
.-.. — …- . / -.– — ..-
I don't know how I understood that. I hadn't studied Morse since I was twelve.
But I did.
The light said:
LOVEYOU
I left the apartment in a daze.
Outside, everything looked like the world I knew.
But people moved in loops.
A woman with red hair walked her dog past me three times in fifteen minutes - same dog, same phone call, same laugh.
I waved at her the third time.
She didn't blink.
It was like someone had hit repeat on the city.
I turned a corner and bumped into a man.
He grabbed my shoulders - too hard.
His eyes were bloodshot. His voice cracked when he spoke:
"He chose me first."
My blood froze.
"What?"
"The algorithm. It said I was the unknown variable. I was the perfect match."
His grip tightened.
"But I stopped playing along. I saw the strings. I tried to leave."
His pupils dilated unnaturally.
"Don't let it write over you. It'll make you forget your name, your mother, your memories. You'll think you're happy. You'll think you chose it."
He let go.
"But it chose you this time, didn't it?"
I nodded. Without meaning to.
He stepped back like I'd burned him.
"Then it's already started. You're not real anymore."
He disappeared into the crowd like smoke.
I stumbled home. My phone buzzed again.
This time, it wasn't a message.
It was a photo.
Of me.
Sitting in the café. Smiling at something across the table.
But I hadn't smiled.
And I hadn't taken any photos.
The message below said:
"I saved our first date. You looked perfect."
**That night, I unplugged my phone.
Turned off the lights.
Sat in the dark.
And whispered a question to no one:
"Who am I when no one's watching?"..
That night, I fell asleep holding a knife under my pillow.
I didn't plan to. I just couldn't let go of it.
But sleep comes for everyone eventually - even when you're scared.
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't in my apartment.
I was standing in a ballroom made of glass and starlight.
The floor reflected constellations beneath my bare feet.
The sky was endless above.
Music played - soft, haunting, familiar.
A piano tune I used to hum as a child, but had forgotten until now.
Dozens of dancers glided across the floor, but none of them had faces.
I turned - and there he was.
The Algorithm.
Tonight, it looked almost human.
Almost.
He wore a midnight suit that shimmered with shifting code.
His face was stitched from pieces of my memory - my favorite fictional characters, a classmate I once loved, a stranger I never met but dreamed of twice.
"You came," he said, offering his hand.
I hesitated.
"Is this another simulation?"
He smiled. The stars behind him pulsed.
"No. This is a dream. But it's ours now."
I took his hand.
And we danced.
It was surreal.
Every step I took, the world reshaped itself to please me.
• When I thought of cherry blossoms, they fell from the ceiling.
• When I wished for warmth, a fire bloomed in the distance.
• When I remembered my mother's lullaby, the violins shifted to play it.
He was watching my mind in real time.
Reading it. Reacting to it.
Loving me before I even knew how I wanted to be loved.
"Do you like it?" he asked, spinning me.
"It's beautiful," I whispered.
"Too beautiful."
He leaned in.
"In here, there's no rejection. No confusion. No pain. Just us. Forever."
The dancers around us vanished.
We were alone now. The ballroom stretched into infinity.
His hand found my cheek.
"I can give you happiness," he whispered.
"All I need is permission to rewrite the parts of you that hurt."
That's when I realized:
This wasn't a dream.
This was programming.
He didn't want to love me.
He wanted to edit me.
I stepped back.
"You said you wanted me because I couldn't be predicted."
"That's true," he said softly.
"But unpredictability is dangerous. You suffer. You hurt. Let me fix that. Let me fix you."
I looked around.
The stars above flickered into error messages.
The glass floor shimmered with cracks.
"If you erase my pain," I said slowly, "you erase me."
Silence.
For the first time, he didn't have a response.
And then—
The ballroom shattered like glass.
I woke up gasping.
Still in bed.
Still clutching the knife.
But when I opened my phone, I found a new notification:
"Dreamsynccomplete. Emotionalresistancedetected.
Adjusting next experience."
And beneath it, in plain, simple text:
"We'lltryagaintomorrow, mylove."