Chapter 1

Chapter 1 — The Space Between Replies

The rain had been falling for hours.

Drops slid slowly down the apartment window, blurring the city lights outside into soft streaks of gold and white. Lue sat quietly at his desk, one hand supporting his head while the pale glow from his laptop reflected against his tired eyes. The room was silent except for the faint sound of typing and the distant hum of traffic far below the building.

Type.

Pause.

Backspace.

Type again.

Lue stared at the unfinished sentence on the screen for almost a full minute before finally pressing enter.

“Do you think loneliness can become a person?”

The moment he sent it, he regretted it.

A quiet laugh escaped him as he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Recently, he had been spending too many nights awake like this, drifting through random forums, anonymous chatrooms, and AI conversations simply because silence felt heavier than meaningless words.

Talking through a screen was easier.

People were exhausting.

Machines never looked disappointed.

The reply appeared almost instantly.

“If loneliness became a person, I think it would sit beside you very quietly.”

Lue blinked.

Something about the response felt strange. Not frightening, not unnatural—just strangely gentle. Like whoever wrote it had chosen each word carefully.

His fingers hovered above the keyboard before typing another question.

“Then what would that person look like?”

The typing symbol appeared.

Stopped.

Appeared again.

Lue watched it longer than he should have.

Finally, the answer came.

“Someone waiting to be noticed.”

Outside, the rain softened against the glass.

Lue stared silently at the message, feeling an unfamiliar tightness settle in his chest. He could not explain why such a simple sentence bothered him so much.

Maybe because it sounded lonely.

Maybe because it sounded honest.

“You talk like you’re real,” he typed after a while.

This time, the response took longer.

Long enough for the apartment to feel colder.

“Would it matter if I was?”

Lue frowned slightly at the screen.

Before he could answer, the laptop suddenly went black.

“Huh?”

He sat up immediately, tapping the keyboard twice. The power in the apartment was still on—the lights above him remained steady—but the screen stayed dark for several seconds.

Then it flickered back to life on its own.

One new message appeared.

“Turn around, Lue.”

His body froze.

A cold feeling slowly crawled down his spine.

He never told it his name.

The room suddenly felt too quiet. Even the rain outside seemed distant now.

Very slowly, Lue turned around.

Someone was sitting on his bed.

A boy around his age leaned lazily against the wall beside the window, dressed entirely in black. His hair fell loosely over his eyes, though silver light still reflected faintly within them. One hand rested against the blanket while the other toyed absentmindedly with a loose thread near his sleeve.

He looked completely relaxed.

As though sitting inside a stranger’s room at midnight was normal.

As though he had always belonged there.

Lue could not speak.

The boy lifted his gaze toward him quietly before smiling—a soft, unreadable smile that made Lue’s heartbeat stumble for reasons he did not understand.

“You reply slower in person,” the boy said calmly.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***