Chapter 12: Three Days of Forever

The next three days moved like they were made of glass—beautiful, delicate, and at constant risk of shattering.

___ and Sunspot didn’t speak about the lab again. They didn’t talk about the countdown, the reassignment, or the inevitable separation that waited like a shadow at the edge of every moment.

Instead, they lived.

They ate lunch under the tree behind the school. They skipped their last class and wandered around the quiet neighborhood. They bought cheap ice cream from a vending machine that barely worked and sat on a park bench while it melted in the spring sun.

And they laughed.

Real, genuine laughter.

It was strange—knowing that time was running out seemed to make everything brighter, sharper. Every glance, every accidental touch, every shared silence felt like it mattered more than it should. Like their world had shrunk to just the two of them, and nothing else outside mattered anymore.

But when night came, and they went their separate ways, reality crept back in.

___ sat in his small, sterile room in the lab compound. The walls had no posters. His bed was perfectly made. The desk had only a single terminal and a stack of emotion-processing reports. It was a room for a test subject—not for someone who had fallen in love.

He looked at the photo stuck to his monitor. It wasn’t a real photo. Just a printout of a screenshot someone had captured during surveillance. It was of him and Sunspot, walking together, laughing about something he no longer remembered. It didn’t matter what it was. The feeling in the image was real.

And that terrified him.

A knock came at the door.

He turned to see one of the junior scientists—someone he barely knew.

“They want to see you.”

He didn’t ask who “they” were. He already knew.

⸻

In the main lab, the silver-haired scientist stood by the screen showing the day’s final data.

“You’ve made remarkable progress,” the man said without turning. “The emotional cognition scores are far beyond what we projected. Even your autonomic response readings show improvement. It’s impressive.”

___ said nothing.

The scientist finally turned. “But it’s time. Tomorrow, the experiment ends. You’ll be returned to the foundation facility for debriefing and emotional reset.”

___ clenched his fists. “What happens to her?”

“She’ll be reassigned. Her memories of this project may be suppressed, depending on emotional residue levels.”

“She’s not a residue.” His voice shook. “She’s not just some handler or variable.”

“She was part of your development protocol,” the man replied coldly. “That’s all.”

“No.” ___ stepped forward. “She’s more than that. And I’m more than your subject now.”

Silence.

Then the scientist said quietly, “If you truly believe that… then maybe we’ve taught you more than we intended.”

He paused. Then:

“You’ll have until sunset tomorrow. After that, she’s gone.”

⸻

The next morning, ___ waited at the school gates.

When Sunspot arrived, her eyes told him she already knew.

“One more day?” she asked softly.

He nodded.

She didn’t smile. But she didn’t cry either.

“Then let’s make it count.”

They spent that day like it was their last on Earth. No school. No lab. Just the world they’d created together.

They visited a rooftop café they’d always talked about. They sang badly in a coin-operated karaoke booth. They left a note hidden behind a loose tile under their favorite park bench: “This was real.” They made a list of places they’d go if they had more time.

And when the sun finally began to set, they stood at the top of the hill that overlooked the city—where the sky melted from gold to violet and the wind carried spring with it.

___ turned to her. “Do you regret it?”

She shook her head. “Not a single second.”

He opened his mouth, but no words came out. There was too much he wanted to say—too much he couldn’t.

So she stepped forward and hugged him.

Not a staged hug. Not part of the experiment.

A real one.

And for a moment, the world disappeared.

⸻

When he returned to the lab that night, she was gone.

No goodbye. No final message.

Just silence.

The monitors no longer displayed her face. The reports were sealed. The project had ended.

But something inside him hadn’t.