Zema sat across from me in a red booth at some upscale restaurant. The kind of place you pretend to savor just so you can keep up the illusion life is normal.
We used to eat at places together all the time during cyber hunting missions. After a good find. Between captures. It never felt like anything more.
She looked nervous. Twisting her fork. Eyes darting. Then, finally, she said it.
"Vett... I can't do this anymore. I love you... but you care about your work too much, and it's going to kill you one day. Please, you have to see what this is doing to you. I just don't think I can go on dating you."
And just like that, Zema's words dropped the temperature in the room.
While mine became dark, her expression softened. Her smile was hopeful, almost ethereal. Like she believed love alone could reroute a man consciously sprinting towards his own ineviatble singalarity.
Zemas words weren't a plea; they were an invitation. An open palm extended in peace, layered with a simple question I didn't even stop to consider.
"I love you, Zema, more than any living being in this universe... but there's something I hold even dearer than my own life," I said, my voice weighted with the gravity of truth. "And you know this, don't you? What you're asking of me... it's tantamount to kin abandonment."
She gulped at my words, her expression a mixture of uncertainty and resolve, and then, finally, her voice cut through the tension with confident insistence.
"Please stop being a cyber hunter. You don't have to kill and capture crimals to be happy," Zema said, so confidently, like she was offering me a universally accepted truth.
Taken a back, my eyes were wide. I'd even say, it was almost funny...
If it didn't hurt so damn much.
That's when the heat started rising in my chest. But it wasn't anger, not really. More like a defensive reflex. Like my soul flinching.
She didn't get it. Of course she didn't.
"This is my happiness!" I said, my voice low but loud enough to make my point without attracting unnecessary attention.
Grasping my left elbow where it rested on the table, I let my right hand slowly knead into the tension there, like trying to squeeze the juice of emotion out through my skin.
"You don't know what it's like to walk these planes with no direction, no reason, no core… and then, too finally find something that makes you feel alive," I said, my voice trembling at the edges, more from truth than rage. "Something that burns so bright it melts through all the numbness, and I'm just supposed to throw it away? Like garbage? For what, Zema? Please, tell me… is it really for love?"
I looked at her, and Zema's eyes were bloodshot and glossy, her gaze dropping in some quiet shame.
More emotional, yet calmer than I'd been all night, I gave her my final answer—a solid, unwavering one.
"You call this a fantasy. But to me, this is the why. The big answer to the unseen equation."
I didn't know we were on a date. I didn't even know I still had a heart to break.
But...
I guess today, I really did.
I popped a small lived laughed, followed by a scoff that should never said in a place like this.
Then, slipping into a confident, egotistical tone, I couldn't help but let the boast spill out, "Me?! You think I should quit cyber hunting? Huhuhu, Vett FUCKING Yelplip?! The guy who, just recently, SAVED THIS SHITHOLE OF A GOVERNMENT and made Azledene his sworn ally? Who... was the man who just saved millions...? Me... I... me...."
"Me."
As the last me escaped my mouth, I lowered my head, not out of weakness, but shame. Not the kind you learn, but the kind that rises uninvited, thick and human.
Zema didn't speak. She just sat there, frozen, trembling, her eyes steeped in that obvious look of disappointment.
We sat in silence. Ten whole akward seconds.
And then, quietly, I softly said, "Zenma, I'm sorry for raising my voice. Though it was only a low shout, it was unnecessary. But I will not apologize for my words. This is my humanity, I'm sure you knew this when we got together, you know?"
She tried to contuine the coversation after I apologized, her voice rising in desperation, but I stood up, cutting through her words like static. I tossed forty dollars on the table, the bills crumpling beside my untouched banna pudding.
"My half." I set the cash down gently, like it mattered more than what came next. "I'm gonna be going now."
I looked at her again, really letting my eyes trace every detail of her beatiful face, "Watching the horizon fall and rise is life, somewhere along the way It'll happen. Again, and again.
She tried inputting in another word, but I continued, "I get you, Zema, I really do. But I'll never quit cyber hunting. Killing Hovbear the other day... that was my first real paid hunt. And for once, maybe for the first time in my disappointing excuse for a life, I actually felt something close to a purpose. I contuined the rant, "Like I'm building something real, something worth wowing at." I exhaled slowly, as if the weight of my words were being balanced. "It's too much to explain right now, but are you leaving the crew...? We... can still be friends right? You're part of the crew like anyone else. You've got a room on the ship any day, no matter where we stand personally."
"Yeah... thanks for that... but I won't be returning to the Voka Relo. I... I'm gonna head off to college so I can land some decent job. She stood up from her booth, approaching close to me. Her voice was soft, almost too soft, "You to know I love you, my sexy space warrior. And I always will, right until I take my final breaths." Her shoulders pulled in like she was trying to shield herself from a coldness.
Maybe the air conditioning…?
Or was it from some... one else?
"I'll cheirsh our times for as long as I roam this universe."
She shrugged and her arms and returned normal.
'Strange dude. I've like never seen her do that. ' Thinking of the stragness of this all, I began getting sceptile when I looked back one more time at her face.
It wasn't just her words. It was the way she said them. Like she was already packing memories into boxes I couldn't see.
Then I saw it. Two tears.
Zema doesn't cry. Not really. Not the Zema I know. The only time I ever saw her cry was when Lico and Ned were killed. And even then, it was only for a thirty seconds, then she wiped her face and loaded her plasma rifle.
But now? With all of this? Could it really be possible?
No. Deep down, I knew it wasn't.
"Goodbye, Zema."
I turned my back, walking out of the restaurant, the door closing with a soft click behind me.
While there was a chance she could change in the future, this wasn't just her second-guessing our life together. I met Zema a month ago, in the heat of battle against aliens, and we built this crew from nothing.
I mean, this woman talked about fighting like it was her first love.
By creating Vorka Relo, I wasn't just giving her what she wanted—I was giving her the life she'd always dreamed of.
So what soul crushing sadness would make you, Zema of people cry?
As I stepped out of the restaurant and onto the sunlit streets, the sounds of the city buzzed around me. Voices, collided in the air as dozens of hovering cars drove by, leaving trails of soft light behind. The city sprawled endlessly, a maze of towering skyscrapers and flickering digital billboards, all fighting for attention in the colored haze. Sidewalks were in almost every left and right direction all across Zadene.
Aliens and humans brushed past me on the sidwalk as united citizens, and not enemies. Totally different from Earths Bawake.
"Man, Adlezene. You're a beautiful replacement for Earth," I muttered, my eyes drifting over the black, starry sky as I took in the surroundings of this cozy and futuristic town.
Corporate technological holograms and billboards loomed over the city, their colored lights flickering and shifting like virtual ghosts in the haze. Some flashed with bold, overzealous promises—"The opportunity of a lifetime! Now, buy this WELIUM Implant, we can make you better than human!" Offering everything from cyber implant upgrades to exclusive job openings.
And, of course, there was always the reminder to "relax and unwind with the latest movie realses from your favorite actors!"
The mundane had never been so flashy, and everything, even the most ordinary things, was sold with the same euphoric excitement. No escape. No privacy. Just another ad, another click, another upgrade.
The city buzzed with neon distractions. Footsteps blurred into the backround. Hovercars and regular vechiles rode past like afterthoughts.
But none of that reached me.
Because something in Zema had cracked. And I had no idea if it was fixable—or if I was the one who fractured it.