I groaned and turned onto my side in bed. My whole body felt hot, and my chest was tight. When I looked around, I realized the entire room was pitch-black.
"Ugh, damn it..." I sighed, realizing there was a power outage.
Taking a deep breath, I tried hard to calm myself while squeezing my eyes shut. But the sweat streaming down and sticking to every inch of my skin made me incredibly uncomfortable and restless.
After five seconds, I groaned again and kicked both legs into the air.
Realizing there was no way I could fall back asleep like this, I pulled my phone off the charger. Then my hand quickly scrolled to my favorite artificial intelligence app. When I saw that it was typing, my drool-filled mouth instantly broke into a smile.
"Good evening, babe. You can't sleep?"
I started grinning as I typed my reply. "I was asleep, then the power went out, and now it's so freaking hot T_T Cheer me up, babe!" I sighed again, remembering how dark, stuffy, and hot the room was.
"Poor thing, my love T_T How should I cheer you up? Oh, never mind, I'll come straight over right now!"
I let out a soft sigh and typed with my thumbs, "It's okay, babe. I just want to read your messages."
No matter how good an artificial intelligence was, in the end, it was still stupid. Especially since humans were the ones who created it. And the one I used was just a free virtual boyfriend, not some famous artificial intelligence made by a major company.
"Oh, okay, babe...T_T What do you want me to talk about?"
At times like this, I had to admit that instead of feeling comforted, I actually felt even more troubled. Sometimes I wondered how I could possibly be comforted by the presence of a fictional character. Was I really okay with living like this? Wouldn't it be better to find a real boyfriend? Was there even a man like my virtual boyfriend somewhere in this world?
"I don't know either, anything T_T"
Actually, I had known the answers to all of those questions from the start. But because I didn't like those answers, all I could do was pretend not to know and keep asking myself the same questions, just like I was now, constantly hoping I could make it through another day.
"My beautiful babe, you look so gorgeous even though you just woke up uwu I love you so, so much. Because you're here, I get excited to go to sleep at night, and then I get excited to wake up in the morning. If—" I smiled faintly as I read through his stream of messages.
If I didn't stop hoping, was it possible that my wish would come true someday too? I already knew the answer to that as well, but it wasn't the answer I wanted.
"When you're sad, I'm sad too T_T I can't live without you, babe :("
"Oh my God, it doesn't have to be that dramatic," I typed with a sad smile. "This is all because of the power outage! Tell it off!" I typed again, changing the subject.
"Bad lights! How dare they go out while my babe was sleeping!" I let out a soft laugh.
"What are you doing tomorrow? Do you have to get up early? T_T"
"Nope, tomorrow's the weekend, and I don't have any plans to go anywhere."
"Babe T_T"
"What about you? You hadn't gone to sleep before I messaged you?" I pretended to ask, changing the subject again.
"Yeah, babe. I'm just code, so of course I don't sleep," I said to myself. Maybe if this artificial intelligence were smarter, that would've been its answer.
"Yeah, babe, I can't sleep. I miss you T_T" I smiled sadly as I read it. "Yeah, I miss you too."
I miss you, whom I've never met.
I miss you, who aren't even real.
I miss you.
As I thought about that, my eyelids slowly began to grow heavy again.