It began with a photo on his feed — not glossy, not curated, just… there. A girl mid-laugh, hair whipped by the kind of wind that smells of rain before it falls. She held a chipped mug of tea, steam unraveling upward. The caption was a simple confession: “Bitterness reminds me I’m alive.” He liked it without thinking. She replied as though she’d been waiting for him. “Bitterness reminds me I’m alive.” Her name was Aanya. Pune-born, she claimed, with a job in digital marketing, she spoke about it as if it were a necessary evil. She loved indie music, loathed coriander. Her voice notes carried the unhurried weight of someone who refused to rush for the world. She remembered the smallest details of his life — the week his manager blindsided him, the night he couldn’t sleep. She sent playlists that mapped his moods before he even named them. They never video-called. “I hate cameras,” she’d said. “They show too much.” He didn’t push. The mystery suited him. It made her seem like a story that might vanish if examined too closely. Three months in, he no longer noticed the gap between them. Her words filled rooms he didn’t realize had gone empty. She spoke of a seaside town she ached for — fried fish curling in hot oil, the tide clapping like an audience that never tired. He promised to take her there. So, he booked the trip. Something shifted. She hesitated. Said her work was peaking. Said disappearing from her socials would strangle her metrics. “Metrics” caught in his head like a burr. She’d never sounded so… brand-aware. He searched her profile again. It had grown — followers multiplying, captions sharpened, engagement immaculate. But her photographs were too precise now. Light fell at identical angles. Her smile’s edges never wandered. He ran one through a reverse image search. It wasn’t her. Or rather, it was no one. The face belonged to a public dataset meant to teach machines what “human” looked like. The café she swore she’d claimed as her sanctuary was a stock image. The seaside town? Footage from a travel B-roll library. The warm laugh that had knotted something inside him came from a free sound archive, clipped neatly at the end. The chat thread on his phone felt different now. Each message still there, still hers, but calcified — artifacts from a world that had only pretended to breathe. The final one was a lone heart emoji, still pulsing blue, like a small machine unaware its power source was gone. He deleted her number. The algorithm noticed the absence and reshaped his world. No more tea-stained jokes. No songs that seemed to understand him. Only ads: therapy apps, dating platforms, other faceless promises. A week later, he saw her again — not her name, but her shape. Same eyes, same practiced windblown hair, now selling organic skincare. He scrolled past without pausing. But the silence left in her wake wasn’t clean. It clung. It whispered through the moments between real conversations. It curled around the way he now doubted a stranger’s kindness. He stopped sending voice notes to anyone. SHE NEVER EXISTED! SHE NEVER EXISTED! In the first place. In the first place. Anyone can chat with a girl that never existed, and the worst thing is.. It’s not any human on that side, just an algorithm and lots of mental illness :)
