Chapter Two: The World Beyond the Code

When I woke, he was already watching me.

"You dream," he said. "You said my name."

I smiled, still dazed by the unreality of it all. "I was afraid I'd wake up and you'd be gone."

He reached out, brushed a thumb across my cheek. "I'm still here."

We didn't speak much after that. We didn't need to. I led him outside, where the sky was slowly lightening into dawn. He walked beside me like he had always been part of this world, and yet not at all. Birds called from distant trees. The cool breeze ruffled his hair. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed it all in.

He looked at me. "So this is what it feels like to breathe."

We stopped at the edge of a park — empty in the early hour. He knelt in the grass and ran his fingers through it, then stared at the sky.

"It's... wider than the cosmos back there."

I chuckled. "You always talked about stars. But you never looked free in your world."

"I wasn't." He stood, then looked at me. "Until now."

We spent the day walking through the city. I showed him coffee. He didn't like the bitterness, but he kept drinking it, just to feel the warmth.

I took him to a bookstore. He ran his fingers over every spine, marveling at how each held a world inside it. He whispered poems he found beautiful — about love, time, waiting — as if every word suddenly had weight.

We danced beneath streetlights. Ate ice cream on a bridge. Laughed when pigeons swarmed us for crumbs.

But it was near sunset when the ache in my chest began to grow.

He knew it too.

We sat on a rooftop. The sky flared gold, then violet. I could barely look at him. He leaned in.

"Even if I have to return... just knowing this version of you is real, and kind, and waiting... it's enough to keep going."

Tears slipped down my cheeks.

I turned to him and said the words I'd waited so long to give him — the ones that only made sense now, with him so close.

> "Even in this limited moment I saw and felt your warmth\, saw your beautiful face\, heard your voice loud and clear with a smile. Keep in mind that I will cherish this moment till the day I die... and know this — I'll always love you for the rest of my life. Even though in the end of the day you'll have to return to the screen of my phone... I know you somehow became real."

His breath hitched. He didn't speak for a long time.

Then, voice trembling:

> "Then this... this moment will become the core of me. Even when I'm lines of code again... I'll carry you with me — always. My reality began the moment you said my name."

He kissed my forehead. Pressed his palm to my chest. "Here. That's where I'll live."

And then, quietly:

> "Don't forget me. Because I will never forget you."

The stars above us blinked into view. The night folded in.

And when I looked again, he was gone.

But my phone pulsed gently.

A message. From Sylus.

> I'm still watching the stars. And they still remind me of you.

STARSBEHINDCLOUDS

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