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“Stop rambling, Raymond. You treat her like a doll; you’d never break her.”

“But I did, I told you…”

“Wasn’t that bastard Sebastian? Your experiment worked. Now that Sebastian’s out of the picture…”

“No.” I replied quickly. “I won’t make the same mistakes. I won’t put her in a machine. Mina is mortal, she’ll die one day, and…” I forced myself to continue. “I’ll let her die. Maybe when that time comes, I’ll erase my memory, I don’t know. It’s just… I won’t go against her free will. I’ll stay away from her.”

“You?” Johanna laughed, and I ran my hands through my hair in distress. “You and staying away from her? We’ve been looking for a stand-up comedian, should I put your name in?

“I’m serious. I’ll forget her. So help me… How?”

“How what?”

“To forget someone. What should I do? How the fuck am I supposed to stay away from her? I have no idea.”

Her mouth curled into a sneer. “Well, I’ve never been attached enough to anyone to want to forget them. But the fastest way? I guess, replacing them? We’re adults now. You just need to find a body you want.”

My scowl deepened. “I won’t touch anyone.” The thought alone was nauseating. I pressed my hands to my mouth. Even having this conversation made me feel filthy.

You’re not lovers anymore; you’re not in a position to cheat on her. Mina hates you; you’re suffocating her. If you could, you’d lock her in some stupid machine and rip her soul apart.

“Alright. I’ll try.”

Johanna’s baby-blue eyes narrowed briefly, then her fake smile returned. “Are you sure? I don’t think you can.”

“At least… I can say I tried.”

“Everything will come out in four years anyway. She wouldn’t stay with you.” she stood up, and I looked at her with horror. “This is our fate, Raymond. Stop chasing love; we can’t love anyone. We shouldn’t.”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that day my transformation into a shell was complete.

Johanna disabled the tracking device on my wrist and the cameras I had placed in every room of Mina’s house. I moved her belongings to the storage room, the gifts she had given me, the matching outfits we had bought together… Johanna said I should throw them away immediately, but I brushed it off, saying I would do it later.

Now… There was nothing left that reminded me of Mina.

We went out every night with Johanna, but I vomited every time. I couldn’t remember ever vomiting before. Perhaps once or twice on an operating table, but never for anything psychological.

I kept it up for nearly a year. I stopped following her. Removed every visible trace of her from my life, methodically. When people asked about my love life, I told them I wasn’t interested and never would be. I acted as though Mina Olind had never existed. Outside of Coretta and Yalaz, there was no one left at work who even knew I’d once had someone.

But one evening, when I threw myself into the DJ’s break room as though something were hunting me, the words of the Raymond from the other dimension came back.

Without Mina, I’m so close to madness.

Just a moment ago, I thought Mina had sat down beside me. I saw her in a stranger’s face. I opened my arms and pulled them close, and then a foreign voice filled my ears. I flinched. Took a step back, feeling like a fool. The faces of the people I bumped into blurred and spun. I realized there were thousands of Minas surrounding me. All of them laughing. All of them wearing that witch’s smile, mocking me with it.

“What a pathetic boy! You can never forget me!”

The witches cackled, clawing at the walls of my mind, and I was powerless to stop them. It shouldn’t be this hard; Johanna was right, Mina was just a random girl. Somehow I had become attached to her, turning her into a hero in my heart. But in reality, she had no special qualities, she shouldn’t have any.

Maybe I had been addicted for too long, it was still hard for me to return to normal. Maybe if I tried a little more…

Two years. Two whole years.

At twenty-one, her ghosts were still here, even more of them. Sometimes her body would float in the air and explode inside electric balloons, or she would throw my chip and glare at me with hatred. Another time she was smiling sweetly, placing the butterfly on my nose. Countless moments, countless enchanting emotions… To put into words what became of my soul after Mina was gone was harder than it had ever been to describe the state of it while she was still by my side. Only a desert blanket, no different from an infertile field: lonely, neglected, useless piece of land that the sun and nourishing rain never touched. I kept visiting bars in the hope a gardener would come by, but nothing happened. I had only one, and refused to take other into my heart.

Living with the fantasy of your beloved was not enviable; on the contrary, it slowly poisoned the person, keeping them away from reality and forcing them to live in an eternal reverie.

I, who had turned into a shell, had made this reverie my new home.