Page 27 of The Stuffing Situation

Ashar crossed his arms. “It means your soul is trying to give itself a past retroactively.”

Maya blinked, disoriented. “He has a soul?”

Ashar shrugged, as if discussing the weather. “He’s developing one. It’s actually fascinating.”

Felix sank onto the couch, still. Quiet. Withdrawn in a way he hadn’t been before. His hand was still bandaged, cradled against his chest like something he wasn’t sure belonged to him anymore.

Maya sat beside him, close but not touching, like she wasn’t sure what was keeping him together.

Ashar circled once, slow and silent, like a crow sizing up an omen. Then stopped in front of Felix.

“You’re not just AI,” he said. No preamble.

Felix looked at his hand again. Flexed it. “So I’m… what? A ghost with code?”

“No,” Ashar said. “You’re not just glitching anymore.”

He paused.

Blair crossed her arms, eyes scanning Felix like she could see his code unraveling. “It’s like casting a love spell into a search engine,” she said. “The algorithm sorted your desire, the magic got stuck in the results page… and bam. Boyfriend.exe.”

Maya sighed, “That’s not even slightly comforting.”

Blair’s smile tilted, but her eyes stayed serious. “Something cracked. Something responded to your wish. But it didn’t stop there.”

Maya swallowed. “What does that mean?”

Ashar looked at her.

“It means you didn’t just pull code from a server. You pulled something else. Something deeper. It built itself on the bones of an algorithm… but what’s moving inside him now? That’s not code.”

Blair set down her mug. “What Ashar means, in slightly less apocalyptic terms, is that Felix isn’t glitching.”

She looked straight at him.

“He’s manifesting.”

Felix frowned. “Manifesting what?”

Ashar studied him for a long time; the flicker from the nearby candle made shadows shift across his face.

“You,” he said finally. “You’re becoming real. A manifestation of her desire, yes, but now? You’re not tethered to the app. You’re tethered to yourself.”

Blair whistled low. “You basically dropped a wish into an algorithm and accidentally built a soul around it. That’s not stable magic, that’s Frankenstein with better cheekbones.”

Felix blinked. “That’s… disturbing.”

Ashar didn’t smile. “If it tears, it won’t just glitch. You won’t just lose him. You’ll lose the piece of magic that made him want to stay.”

Maya went still. “You mean, he’ll vanish?”

Ashar’s voice dropped. “Or worse. He’ll stay, but a hollow, unchosen, shell stuck on repeat.”

Felix looked at Maya, but she couldn’t look back.

Her voice came small. “So… is he going to stay?”

Ashar paused, and that silence was worse than any “no.”