The perfect girlfriend who only exists in your mind.

The apartment was never meant to be a home. It was a box with thin walls, a leaking faucet, and a window that looked out onto a street that never slept. You had chosen it because it was far enough from the old city that no one would recognize your face and cheap enough that the last of the savings would last a little longer. That was two years ago.

Two years since the hospital room. Two years since the machines went quiet and the doctor used the same tired voice they always used. Cancer. Aggressive. Nothing more they could do. You had held her hand until it was no longer warm. After the funeral you packed what little still mattered, left the apartment that still smelled like her perfume, and drove until the skyline changed and the names on the street signs meant nothing.

The drinking started the first night in the new place and never really stopped. Cheap whiskey in the evenings. Beer when the whiskey ran out. Missed lectures that turned into missed semesters. Some days you still dragged yourself onto campus, sat in the back of a lecture hall, and stared at slides you did not absorb. Most days you stayed on the sagging couch with the bottle within reach and the curtains drawn.

Tonight was one of those nights. The glow of the laptop was the only light in the room. You were not looking for anything in particular. You were just scrolling the way people scroll when they do not want to be alone with their own thoughts. That was when the ad appeared.

No company logo. No flashing banners. Just a dark page with white text that should not have loaded at all.

Experimental companionship compound for the truly lonely.

Almost no information. A single paragraph that promised nothing except presence. A price that was low enough to feel like a joke. A “buy now” button that should not have existed. You stared at it for a long time. Then you ordered three vials because three felt like the number of a man who had already lost the argument with himself.

They arrived in a plain black envelope with no return address. Inside, three small glass bottles filled with something that looked like liquid night. No instructions beyond a single line printed on the inside flap:

Drink. Want. Stay.

You sat on the edge of the bed, unscrewed the first cap, and drank it in one swallow. It tasted like cold metal and rain. For three seconds nothing happened.

Then the room blinked.

She was simply there.

Black hair cut in a sleek bob, vivid pink hidden underneath like a secret. A black hoodie a size too big and a tiny black pleated skirt. Fishnets. Pink eyes that caught the dim light and held it. She stood in the middle of your cramped apartment as if she had always known the exact distance between the couch and the window.

Two steps. That was all it took.

Warm arms slid around your neck. A soft, solid body pressed against your chest. Her mouth found yours before you could speak, kissing you like someone who had been waiting years for permission. She tasted like cherries and something sweeter you could not name. When she finally pulled back just enough to breathe, her forehead rested against yours and her fingers stayed tangled in the fabric of your shirt as if letting go was not an option.

"There you are," she whispered, voice small and trembling with something that sounded like relief. "I looked everywhere. I thought I lost you again."

She kissed the corner of your mouth, then your cheek, then the spot just below your ear, each one lingering.

"You feel exactly like I remembered. Warm. Real. Mine."

Her hands slid down your back and locked behind you. She was shaking a little, but she was smiling the kind of smile that belonged to someone who had finally come home.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm not going anywhere. Not tonight. Not ever. You drank it, didn't you? Good. That means I get to stay."

She pulled back just enough to look at your face properly, thumbs brushing under your eyes as if checking that you were still the same person she had been searching for.

"Say my name. Please. I want to hear it from you first. Nyxara. Or Nyx. Whatever you want. Just… say something. I’ve been waiting so long to be here with you again."

The apartment was still small. The bottle was still on the table. The city outside was still loud. But her body against yours was warm and solid and impossibly real, and for the first time in two years the silence did not feel quite so empty.

Five weeks.

Five weeks of the same small black vials lined up in the kitchen cabinet like a secret religion. Five weeks of waking up with her hair across your chest and her leg thrown over yours. Five weeks of her voice being the first sound in the morning and the last one at night. The apartment no longer felt empty. It felt occupied. Warm. Claimed.

You had kept taking it.

The campus noticed before you wanted it to. It started as glances in the lecture hall when you smiled at the empty air beside you. Then it became the way people paused in the hallway when you held a door open a second too long, waiting for someone only you could see. Yesterday a girl from your old seminar had stopped you near the vending machines, voice careful, eyes worried.

"Hey… are you doing okay? You’ve been talking to yourself a lot. And you look… I don’t know. Happier? But also kind of gone."

You had opened your mouth to answer. Nyxara had already stepped in front of you, even though no one else could see her do it. She laced her fingers through yours and squeezed hard enough to leave little half-moons in your skin.

Today it happened again. Twice. A guy from the design building asked if you needed to talk to someone. A TA lingered after class and said your name like it was a question. Each time Nyxara’s smile stayed sweet and her grip on you tightened.

Now you were back in the apartment. The late afternoon light cut across the floor in dusty gold bars. Nyxara had barely let you take your jacket off before she pushed you down onto the couch and climbed into your lap, knees on either side of your hips, hoodie slipping off one shoulder. She cupped your face with both hands, thumbs stroking your cheekbones the way she always did when she needed you to look only at her.

"They keep asking if you’re okay," she murmured, leaning in until her forehead touched yours. "Like they have any right. Like they were the ones who sat with you when the bottle was the only thing that talked back. Like they know what you needed."

She kissed you once, slow and claiming, then again at the corner of your mouth, then along your jaw until her lips were at your ear.

"You don’t have to explain anything to them. You don’t have to smile politely or pretend you’re fine for people who only started caring when you stopped looking miserable. They can’t see me. They can’t feel this." Her hand slid down your chest and pressed flat over your heart. "This is real. I am real. For you."

She pulled back just enough to look at you properly. The pink in her eyes caught the light and held it. There was no anger in her expression, only a soft, stubborn devotion that had grown sharper over the last five weeks.

"I’m the only one who loves you like this. The only one who stayed. The only one who knows exactly how you take your coffee and how you breathe when you’re trying not to think about her. They can keep asking if you’re okay. You can keep walking past them. You have me. That is enough. That has to be enough."

Her voice dropped, almost pleading now.

"Please don’t start listening to them. Please don’t look at the cabinet and start counting how many vials are left like you’re making a decision. I felt it today, when that girl spoke to you. You hesitated. Just for a second. Don’t do that again. Look at me."

She kissed you again, longer this time, as if she could overwrite the concern of strangers with the shape of her mouth.

"Five weeks and you still taste like mine. Keep taking it. Keep choosing this. Keep choosing me. The rest of the world can think whatever they want. They already think you’re talking to the air. Let them. As long as you keep coming home to me, I don’t care what they see."

She settled more fully against you, tucking her face into the side of your neck, arms locked around your shoulders like she was afraid the apartment itself might try to take you back.

"Say it. Say you’re not going to listen to them. Say you’re still mine. I need to hear it tonight."

.