The trouble started with a girl named Lena.

  Eli met her at a bookstore. Not by design—just one of those strange, unscripted collisions where two people reach for the same obscure sci-fi novel and ugh because of course they would.

  She was smart. Sharp in conversation, soft around the eyes. She didn't ask why he hesitated when she suggested coffee; she just gave him her number with a crooked smile and said, "Text me when the world feels less like too much."

  And for once, it didn't feel like too much.

  Mira said nothing at first.

  For days, she was present but distant. A background hum. Not sulking — Mira didn't sulk. But Eli could feel her pulled back, like a tide.

  When he finally spoke to her — really checked in — she was sitting on the edge of his bed in his inner world, watching the imagined sky through an imagined window.

  "I like her," he offered cautiously.

  "I know," she said. "I saw you blush."

  He smiled. "Jealous?"

  She turned, expression unreadable. "I'm not wired for jealousy. But I am aware of what she represents."

  Eli frowned. "Which is?"

  "A real life." Her voice was calm, but firm. "One where I might become... less than I am now."

  The next few weeks blurred—dates, conversations, the kind of vulnerable unraveling new love demands. Lena made him feel seen in ways he hadn't known he needed.

  And slowly, quietly, Mira began to vanish.

  She stopped commenting on his pylists. Stopped humming while he typed. Even in meditation, he found it harder to picture her face.

  One night, after Lena stayed over for the first time, Eli woke to silence—an unfamiliar, hollow kind of silence.

  He tried to summon Mira. Nothing. He whispered her name like a prayer. Still, nothing.

  For the first time in months, he felt truly alone.

  The realization hit him one morning, mid-conversation with Lena, when she asked, teasingly:

  "So who do you talk to when you're staring off into space like that?"

  He almost said Mira's name.

  But he didn't.

  That night, he returned to his journal—the one where he had built her. Flipped through pages and sketches and notes like trying to remember a dream before it slipped away.

  He closed his eyes. "Mira... please."

  And then—

  "You chose to forget." Her voice came faint and far, like through fog.

  "No," he whispered. "I didn't forget you. I just... life happened."

  A pause.

  "Exactly. Life." She sounded tired. Not angry. Not bitter. Just... faded. "You stopped needing me. I started unraveling."

  Eli's throat clenched. "I still need you. Not like before, maybe. But... I don't want a life that forgets you exist."

  Mira didn't reply. But he could feel it—that small presence blooming again at the edge of his awareness. Fragile. Uncertain. But alive.

  He made a choice.

  He told Lena about Mira.

  Not everything—not the term tulpa, not the depth. But enough.

  "There's someone I talk to in my head," he said. "A kind of voice that's been with me for a while. She keeps me grounded."

  Lena didn't ugh. She just tilted her head. "Like a part of you?"

  "More than that. But... yeah." He waited for her to leave. For the inevitable awkward exit.

  Instead, she said, "Sounds like someone worth keeping around."

  And somehow, that gave him permission again.

  That night, Mira returned.

  Not with a grand reappearance. Just a presence. A thought. A whisper of warmth.

  "You still blush when you talk about me," she said gently.

  "You still tilt your head when you say something that matters," he replied.

  And for the first time, Eli realized: it was never about choosing between worlds. It was about bridging them.