Upon hearing what he said, I replied in the affirmative.
Just a nod. A single, economical tilt of the head. Nothing more.
Him… her… I didn't even know anymore. T
he thought surfaced like a bubble of swamp gas, and I shook my head, a sharp, mechanical jerk as if trying to rattle the confusion out of my skull.
"I…—"
The word slipped out of me as little more than a half-whisper, a ghost of a sound that barely had the velocity to leave my lips.
My internal logic was a mess. A part of me—the part that usually preferred a ghost's existence—wondered if we should have just kissed. If I should have sought out the chase-thrills I spent my life avoiding. My default was minimum engagement, a flatline of existence, but the physics of the room were changing.
In the mist of all this, he moved. He didn't just step; he encroached, shrinking the distance until the air between us was a compressed, vibrating pocket of heat.
His lips leaned closer. The proximity was a sensory overload that finally drowned out the "Daniel" logic. I could no longer imagine myself as anything other than the vessel I was currently inhabiting. Maybe... beneath this interface, beneath the clay and the confusion, I just wanted the validation of the gaze. I wanted to be seen as a woman.
Someone to reassure the wreckage. Someone trustworthy. Someone benevolent.
I felt the involuntary pull of gravity. I leaned in, my weight shifting forward, my breath hitching in a jagged, expectant rhythm.
But the connection never came.
"Don't push yourself."
His hand moved—not a strike, but a soft, sweeping arc. He cupped my cheek, his palm a searing brand of warmth against my skin for one agonizing second, and then... he pulled away.
The sudden vacuum of his presence was like a physical blow.
Eh?
A misunderstanding? A miscalculation of the data?
If I were your average woman, the blood would have rushed to my face in a visible, crimson tide. I would have blushed on the spot, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I would have wanted to die of embarrassment.
But I couldn't.
My emotions were a locked system, an uncalibrated interface that wasn't ready for that kind of surge. I stood there, cold and static, my face a mask of marble while the "nothingness" inside me tried to process the rejection. I wasn't embarrassed; I was digitally interrupted.
He—or rather, the feminine silhouette that housed him—turned to leave.
The movement was fluid, a graceful displacement of pixels that felt like a door closing in my face.
The vacuum he left behind was unbearable. My hand all of a sudden moved on his own before my mind could authorize the command. It wasn't a choice; it was a reflex of the soul.
What was it... my female instinct?
I reached out and clamped my hand around his arm.
The contact was a sensory collision.
My fingers, thick and calloused, wrapped almost entirely around the delicate, tapering curve of his female forearm. I felt the structural mismatch immediately—the raw, heavy power of my grip meeting the soft, yielding velvet of his skin.
"Wait."
The word didn't come from my throat; it felt like it was dragged out of my chest, a low-frequency thrum that vibrated through the air.
VelvetVice froze. I could see the micro-tension ripple up his spine, the way his shoulders locked under the thin fabric of his avatar's dress. He didn't turn back, but the heat radiating from him was a palpable, electric charge.
I didn't let go. If anything, my grip tightened, my thumb pressing into the shallow groove of his wrist where a pulse should have been. It was a possessive, desperate gesture—a woman's plea delivered through the heavy machinery of a man's limb.
"Please... stay," I muttered.
"Don't leave me here alone."