He goes.

I understand when I am not welcome. Regardless of how I felt about the matter, I decided to take her at her word.

I dressed into my normal clothes with deliberate slowness. The only sound in the room was her exhausted breathing, lying atop her bed, turned away from me. I waited for her to say something, to stop me from leaving. But she said nothing.

I walked home in dead silence.

Later that evening, as I ate a bowl of microwave ramen, my phone dinged. An alert from the Utopia app.

thank you for visiting. you did a good job.

I sent her a message. Thank you. I enjoyed our 'play' a great deal. I would like to meet again. Same time and place next week?

I kept my phone by my side every second for the next few hours. It was past midnight when I got the next message.

no. goodbye.

The next morning, I woke up and checked my phone again. No messages. I opened the app. In the messages, Aisha's profile icon was blank. Her name was replaced with _[deleted], _and the 'respond' option was greyed out.

I stared down at it in silence for a very long time, long enough that I lost track. I counted the words in our messages. Not even a hundred.

In the upper right of the screen, the minutes ticked by, and in the upper left, the battery sign inched lower. I kept staring for a very long time.

[The End]