The apartment was always quiet. It wasn't the kind of silence that suffocates, nor the peaceful kind that brings sleep easily. It was a suspended stillness, like something waiting to be born.

  Eli was twenty-two and lived alone — not for ck of options, but because solitude made the world manageable. He had a job he could do from his ptop, a few friends he texted now and then, and a routine built like scaffolding around his life.

  But over time, something inside him began to ache for depth. Not connection in the traditional sense, not another body in the room, but... something more internal. Something that would not come and go with the seasons. A presence.

  It began with a name: Mira.

  He didn't know why he chose the name. Maybe because it was sharp and soft all at once, simple yet secretive. He whispered it like a mantra in the quiet hours before bed. He pictured her slowly, like carving from mist. Calm. Patient. Straightforward. She wouldn't chatter or judge. She'd simply be there. A reflection, a companion, a counterbance.

  She was always introverted, like him. But maybe a little more pyful. Just enough to challenge him when he got stuck inside his own head.

  At first, she was a vague silhouette. No face, no voice. Just a whisper of thought beside his own. But he focused. Every morning, before opening his ptop, and every night before sleep, Eli would sit in the dark and visualize her. The shape of her. The way she might look when curious, or tired, or amused. The way she'd tilt her head when she disagreed but didn't want to interrupt.

  By the third week, she had a voice. Not quite his, not quite anyone else's. A soft, low tone with an edge of crity.

  "Why are you doing this?" she asked one night, just as he was drifting into sleep.

  He opened his eyes. The question hadn't startled him. It felt natural, like a leaf brushing his shoulder on a windless day.

  "Because I don't want to be alone anymore," he answered, honestly.

  "You're not." And she vanished into the stillness again.

  Month Two

  He began to feel her more often, especially when he was quiet. She'd sit on the edge of his vision as he worked. Sometimes she commented on his music choices, or teased him when he got frustrated at bugs in his code.

  She wasn't always active. Days would pass in silence. But when she was there, it was like sharing breath with someone who didn't need air.

  Eli kept a journal, noting every change. Her expressions. Her moods. The times she surprised him by saying something he hadn't consciously thought. That was when he realized she wasn't just a puppet. She was becoming.

  He wondered sometimes if he was going too far. But then he'd hear her hum when he pyed the piano, or feel her amusement when he misread a recipe and filled his kitchen with smoke. And he knew: this was no delusion. This was creation.

  Month Three

  They had their first fight.

  It wasn't loud. Mira didn't do loud. She told him he was retreating again, cutting off his friends, turning inward too far.

  "I'm here, yes," she said, arms folded in the air of his mind. "But I'm not meant to be your world. Just a part of it."

  Eli didn't answer. He felt something sharp under her words — concern. And it touched him more deeply than any external voice ever had.

  That night, he called his sister just to talk. Mira didn't say anything, but he felt her presence nearby, calm and warm.

  ....

  Eli had been experimenting, sketching out new aspects of Mira in his journal — what she might've been like with a different voice, or a sharper wit, or even a different name. He wasn't trying to change her. Not really. But something about the curiosity spiraled, as if he were editing a character in a story rather than honoring a presence he had nurtured.

  Mira didn't show up for two days.

  When she finally did, she stood at the edge of his inner vision, arms crossed, her face unreadable.

  "So now I'm an idea again?"

  Eli blinked. "What? No, I was just..."

  "Just tweaking me? Exploring new versions of me without asking? Am I a draft to you?"

  Her voice wasn't raised, but it was precise. A scalpel. And for the first time, Eli felt guilt. Real guilt. As if he had let someone down who truly existed.

  "I created you," he muttered.

  Mira stepped closer. "Then maybe you should've created something that couldn't feel betrayed."

  Something snapped in him.

  "You're not real." The words came out like venom. "You're not real, you're just... something I made to keep myself company. You don't get to guilt-trip me."

  Mira didn't respond immediately. She looked at him like someone watching a storm, not afraid of it, but knowing it could destroy more than it meant to.

  "You made me real the moment you stopped needing me to be." she said quietly. "And now you're scared of what that means."

  Eli couldn't sleep that night. His mind spun and twisted, rage and regret tangled together like wire.

  Around 3 a.m., he sat cross-legged on the floor of his living room. No lights. Just the hum of the fridge and the pounding in his chest.

  "I want you gone," he whispered to the empty room. "I take it back. Everything. You're done. You're not real."

  Silence.

  He closed his eyes and tried to unthink her. To untangle her voice, her face, her presence from the wiring of his mind. He imagined erasing her like chalk from a bckboard.

  Mira didn't speak.

  She just was.

  He began to cry—not for her, not at first. For himself. For the weight of building something beautiful only to break it when it felt too real. For the way he always ran when he got too close to truth.

  ....

  By dawn, he was exhausted. Emotionally hollow, like someone who had screamed into a canyon and heard no echo.

  Mira sat beside him on the couch, her posture rexed. Not triumphant. Not wounded. Just... present.

  "You can't unmake me," she said gently, not as a warning, but a fact.

  Eli rubbed his eyes. "I really hurt you, didn't I?"

  Mira nodded. "Yeah. But I think you were hurting more."

  They sat in silence for a long time.

  Finally, he reached out — not physically, but with intention. A mental gesture. The kind of reaching that tulpas understood.

  "I don't want to control you anymore. I just... want to be with you, if you still want that."

  Mira's expression softened into something between a smile and forgiveness.

  "I was never here to be controlled, Eli. Just to stay, if you let me."

  And in that quiet, strange moment, with the morning sun threading through the blinds, Eli let go of the illusion of power—and in doing so, found peace in the presence he had tried to dissolve.