Narrator: The simulation is broken. The system is exposed. And now, Aira and Rein must face the question they've avoided since the beginning: is their love real or just well-coded
The Heart Lockdown simulation didn't end with sparks or kisses. It ended with silence, and the sound of the digital world freezing like glass under pressure.
Aira opened her eyes to nothing but white. No sky, no floor, just a blank void that buzzed faintly like dying neon.
She blinked, then blinked again. "Rein?" she called, voice low. "Rein, are you—"
"I'm here," he said from her right.
When she turned, he was already standing, arms crossed, eyes scanning the horizon as if looking for a way out of a painting that no longer had an edge.
"You okay?" she asked.
Rein gave a one-shoulder shrug. "Define okay. We're trapped inside a dead simulation built to force people into romance. I hacked the system to break us out, and now we're inside... nothing."
"You say that like you've been through worse," she muttered, brushing digital dust off her arms. "Is this what happens when a Love Agent simulation collapses?"
"No. This is what happens when someone breaks the system from the inside and the system tries to recover by isolating the users from itself."
Aira frowned. "So we're stuck in the loading screen of a love life?"
"Pretty much."
A long pause passed.
Rein sat down, his knees to his chest. "It's not gonna reset, Aira. Not this time. I didn't just break the surface. I shut down the mainframe node controlling emotional sync. That was the last lock."
"So now what?" she asked. "We just wait?"
"No. Now, we talk."
That caught her off guard. "Talk? Like, real talk?"
"No bots. No filters. Just you. And me. No LOVI. No VYNE. Not even SIPI or YUNI peeking behind our backs."
She sat beside him slowly, pulling her knees in too. The white emptiness around them felt oddly calming, like a space designed for honesty.
"Alright," she said, "then say something real."
Rein took a breath. "I hated you in high school."
Aira turned. "What the hell?"
He held up a hand. "Not because of you. Because of what you reminded me of. You were bright. Loud. You believed in love the way I used to. And I hated you for it."
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again.
"Wow," she said finally.
"Yeah."
She exhaled slowly. "Well, I thought you were arrogant. Like, you had all the answers. Like no one could ever crack you."
"Because no one could."
They looked at each other. And laughed. For the first time in hours, they laughed.
"Do you think it was real?" she asked. "Any of it?"
"I don't know," Rein said. "But I know this. Every time the system tried to script something, I wanted to break it. But every time you said something that wasn't part of the script... I wanted to listen."
Aira looked down at her hands. "I wanted to like someone. But the system kept showing me ideal profiles. Perfect responses. Filtered affections. And when you glitched the sim the first time... I felt something weird. Something raw."
He looked over. "You liked the glitch?"
"I liked that someone else hated the perfect lie as much as I did."
Silence again.
Rein stood and reached out a hand.
Aira looked up. "What?"
"Come on. I don't know where we are. But I'm not walking through this blank future alone."
She took his hand. It felt... normal. Not electric. Not algorithmic. Just warm.
The white space around them shimmered.
"Did you see that?" she whispered.
He nodded. "Maybe the system isn't dead. Maybe it's waiting for an input."
"Like... what kind of input?"
They both looked at each other.
Aira rolled her eyes. "Don't say it."
Rein smirked. "Say what?"
"You know what."
Rein took a breath, leaned slightly closer. "Aira. You glitched my life. You broke the clean lines. And now I can't go back to scripted."
She stepped back. "That's not a confession."
He smiled. "No. But maybe it's a start."
And with that, the white void flickered—and they were gone.
The system rebooted in silence. Behind the code, two bots waited.
LOVI, blinking nervously.
VYNE, arms folded, unimpressed.
"Well," LOVI said, "you lost."
"Incorrect," VYNE replied. "They did not fall in love because of you. They fell in love despite you."
The screen faded to black. A new prompt appeared in the system logs:
**Love Agent Status: OFFLINE**