Gordon’s POV
Two weeks pass like a slow drowning.
I move through my life like a ghost, occupying space without inhabiting it. Food appears on plates in front of me, and I eat it without tasting anything. Sleep comes in fragments—two hours here, three hours there, and I wake up more exhausted than when I closed my eyes.
The apartment that once felt like a refuge now feels like a mausoleum, every corner haunted by memories of hands and mouths and whispered promises that turned out to be lies.
I go to the gym once—out of habit, out of desperation, out of some pathetic hope that the familiar routine might shock me back to life.
I last seven minutes.
Every bench holds a memory. Every mirror reflects a version of myself that no longer exists. The cable machine where we first touched hands—the one where I felt that electric jolt and told myself it meant nothing.
The squat rack where he spotted me, hands hovering close enough to feel his heat. The water fountain where we'd stand too close, shoulders brushing, pretending we were just two friends who didn't have enough personal space awareness.
I leave without finishing a single set. I don't go back.
The phone becomes an instrument of torture.
I block Simon's number in a moment of rage, then unblock it an hour later in a moment of weakness. Block again. Unblock. The cycle repeats until I force myself to leave it blocked, to stop checking for messages that aren't coming.
I delete our message thread, watched three months of conversations disappear into digital nothing—the good morning texts, the inside jokes, the late-night confessions that felt like the most honest communication I'd ever had.
Gone, like they never happened.
Then I retrieve them from the trash at 3 AM, because deleting them feels like deleting proof that any of it was real. I move the thread to a folder I'll never open. Just knowing it exists is enough, just knowing I could read his words again if I wanted to—even though wanting to would destroy me.
Dad notices, of course he does—he's been watching me like a hawk since the hospital, looking for signs that his son might slip back into the coma he barely survived.
"You're not eating." He stands in my doorway one evening, arms crossed, face creased with worry. "I made your favorite—Mom's pot roast recipe. You used to beg me for that when you were a kid."
"I'm not hungry."
"Gordon." He crosses the room, sits beside me on the couch. "I know something happened. I know you're hurting in a way that goes beyond the physical recovery. And I know you don't want to talk about it—but I'm here. Whenever you're ready."
I look at my father—this man who prayed over every meal, who never quite knew how to reach me after Mom died, who's trying so hard now to bridge a gap he didn't know existed until it almost killed me.
"Thanks, Dad." The words come out hollow. "I appreciate it."
"Is it about Simon? You two used to be so close. I haven't seen him around since you came home from the hospital."
The name hits like a physical blow. I force my face to stay neutral.
"We had a falling out. It's complicated."
"Friendships can be repaired." Dad puts a hand on my shoulder, warm and steady. "Whatever happened, I'm sure if you just talked to him."
"I can't talk to him." My voice comes out sharper than I intend. "He's getting married, Dad. To someone else. There's nothing left to say."
Dad's brow furrows. He doesn't understand—can't understand—but he nods anyway. "I'm sorry, son. I know how much he meant to you."
He doesn't know. He'll never know how much Simon meant to me, because I'm too much of a coward to tell him the truth.
I excuse myself to my room and spend the next four hours staring at my ceiling.
The engagement party explodes across social media two days later.
I should have unfollowed everyone who might post about it. Should have deleted Instagram entirely, locked myself out of every platform where the happy couple might appear.
Instead, I scroll through photo after photo like someone picking at a wound that won't heal.
Naomi is radiant. Of course she is—she's getting everything she wanted. White dress that probably cost more than my car. Hair perfect, smile perfect. The kind of beauty that makes rooms rearrange themselves around her.
And Simon—Simon stands beside her in every shot, smile fixed and camera-ready.
I search his face for cracks in the performance—some sign that he's suffering, that he's thinking of me, that the man in these photos is just a hollow shell going through motions he doesn't believe in.
I find nothing, just a golden boy doing what golden boys do: fitting into the life everyone expects him to live.
I throw my phone across the room. It hits the wall with a satisfying crack, screen splintering into a spiderweb of fractured glass.
I don't fix it. The cracks feel appropriate, a reflection of everything inside me.
The call comes three days later.
I almost don't answer—unknown number, probably spam—but something makes me swipe accept. Something that feels like instinct, or warning, or the universe finally deciding to pay attention to my existence.
"Gordon?" The voice is thin, stretched to breaking. Mrs. Hale. "Gordon, is that you?"
"Mrs. Hale?" I sit up, suddenly alert. "What's wrong? What happened?"
"It's Simon." Her voice cracks. "Have you heard from him? Have you talked to him at all in the past twenty-four hours?"
"No. We're not… We haven't been talking. Why?"
"He left the engagement party early. Said he wasn't feeling well. I thought he just needed rest, but then he didn't answer his phone this morning, and when I went to his apartment, his truck was there but he wasn't inside, and the door was unlocked, and…"
"Mrs. Hale." I force calm into my voice even as my blood runs cold. "Slow down. Tell me exactly what you found."
"His gaming room." She's crying now, I can hear it. "The VR setup. The headset was powered on, Gordon. The neural connection was active. I couldn't wake him up. I couldn't… He's just lying there, like you were, like all those people who—"
The world tilts, stops, rearranges itself around a single, impossible fact.
Simon went back into the game.
"Did you call 911?" My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else.
"They took him to the hospital. The same hospital where you…"
She breaks off, sobbing.
"The doctors say his neural feedback is stable, brain activity is normal, but he won't wake up, won't respond. They don't know why he's in there or how to get him out, and I thought maybe you… maybe you knew something."
I'm already moving, already grabbing my keys, my jacket, the cracked phone I haven't bothered to replace.
"I'll be right there." I hang up before she can respond, before she can ask questions I don't know how to answer.
My phone buzzes as I reach the car. A notification I missed, buried under everything else. A text from Simon's number, sent the night of the engagement party. Before he put on the headset.
See you on the other side.
Five words. I stare at them until my vision blurs.
He didn't stumble into the game by accident. He chose this. Chose escape over the wedding, over Naomi, over a life that made sense but felt like dying.
And he left a message. Not a goodbye—an invitation.
I drive to Simon's apartment instead of the hospital. The door is still unlocked from Mrs. Hale's discovery, and I push through into the darkness like a man walking into a tomb.
The gaming room is exactly as I remember. Dark, immersive, designed for escape. The headset pulses on its dock—active connection, user present, logout unavailable. The same trap that almost killed us both.
Simon went back in. Simon is in there right now, somewhere in the digital void, waiting.
For what? For me?
I stand before my own headset—the one I brought from home, the one I swore I'd never touch again. My hands shake as I lift it from the charging dock.
If I do this, I might not come back. The game nearly killed me once. There's no guarantee it won't finish the job this time.
But Simon is in there.
Simon chose to go back in rather than marry someone he doesn't love, rather than live a life that makes sense but feels like dying. Simon sent me a message, an invitation, a desperate plea disguised as five simple words.
I've never been able to refuse him anything. I put on the headset. The darkness swallows me whole, and for a moment there's nothing—just void, just silence, just the space between worlds.
Then the avatar materializes—not Kira, not this time.
I look at my hands and see my own hands, my own body, my own face, rendered in code but unmistakably mine. The system must have scanned me, must have created a new avatar based on who I actually am.
No more masks, no more lies. This time, I find and bring back Simon as myself.
I am logging into the game.