Chapter 13: After the Experiment

The world didn’t stop.

It kept moving, as if nothing had changed.

But ___ had changed.

The sterile lab he returned to felt even colder now. Every corridor, every white-lit room, every quietly humming terminal reminded him of what he’d lost. The scientists stopped asking him questions. No more emotion tests. No more behavior drills. They had gotten what they wanted: data.

And yet, for ___, nothing felt complete.

He still woke up expecting a knock on his door. Still paused before opening a juice can, remembering how she always struggled with hers. Still instinctively looked around the school hallway, even though she was no longer there.

He was no longer part of the school.

They had withdrawn him the day after the experiment ended. Just a line of protocol text: Subject no longer requires immersion in social environment.

But ___ didn’t want to return to being a subject.

Not anymore.

⸻

Days passed.

Then weeks.

He asked where she was. No one answered.

He tried accessing the lab’s personnel logs. They were restricted.

He tried escaping once—tried walking out during a supply delivery. Security caught him before he reached the outer gate.

They didn’t punish him. That would’ve meant acknowledging something had gone wrong.

Instead, they gave him more silence.

So he began writing.

Late at night, with the lights dim and the door locked, he used the old terminal hidden in a storage room no one visited. He wrote down everything he remembered about her. Not the mission logs, not the observed behaviors—just her.

How she smiled when she made fun of him for being too serious.

How she once sneezed during lunch and spilled water on his notebook.

How she held his hand during a school festival and didn’t let go, even when the crowd pushed them apart.

He wrote about the last day.

About how she didn’t cry.

And how he did.

He wrote not to analyze—but to remember.

Because he was terrified that if he stopped, she would fade away like a dream, and he would return to being a perfect machine.

And he didn’t want to be perfect anymore.

⸻

Then, one night, while flipping through the last page of a manual he’d long ago memorized, he found something.

A note.

Not typed. Not part of the manual.

A handwritten message tucked between the last two pages. “If you’re reading this, then maybe you haven’t forgotten. I hope you still feel something. And if you do… find me.Because I’ll be waiting.”No signature. No name. Just her handwriting. His heart stopped—and then started again, louder than before. She’d left it for him. She remembered. She wanted him to find her.___ closed the manual slowly, like it was the most fragile object in the world.And for the first time since she was taken, he smiled.