A cheerful, high-pitched voice broke the silence.

“So, you died too.”

Leonardo’s eyes flew open.

That voice.

The VR headset slipped from his hands as he shot upright. His heart pounded in his chest as he frantically looked around, searching for her.

And then… he saw her.

Gelsomina.

She was there, hovering in the air, her small mechanical body and translucent wings trembling slightly as she floated near him. Her artificial eyes—yet incredibly expressive—gazed at him with a bright, playful light.

Leonardo grasped her gently but with overwhelming joy, as if afraid she might vanish again. His hands trembled slightly as he held her—not too tightly, but with the tenderness one reserves for something precious, irreplaceable.

Gelsomina tilted her head, then grinned mischievously.

“You thought I was really dead?”

Leonardo nodded, still in shock.

“Yes. I thought I’d lost you forever.”

She giggled, but her smile was more tender than amused.

“As long as I have a body in this world,” she explained, fluttering her wings with a soft rustle, “every time I die in Source Code… I can be reborn. Just like you.”

Leonardo stared at her for a long moment, then asked, almost hesitantly,

“Then… why didn’t you just kill yourself? You would’ve come back to me right away.”

Gelsomina hesitated. Her smile faded slightly. She lowered her gaze as if suddenly uncomfortable.

“Because I had never died before…” she murmured softly. “I didn’t know what it would feel like.”

A small silence fell between them.

Then she looked at him again, and for the first time, something different showed on her mechanical face.

A faint shadow.

An imperceptible tremor in her wings.

As if she were afraid to remember.

“It was… painful.”

It was barely a whisper, but Leonardo felt it like a dagger to the chest.

She was just a robot, right? An advanced artificial intelligence.

And yet…

The way she said it, the tone of her voice… it was the same as someone who had experienced trauma.

He didn’t have time to respond.

Gelsomina slipped gently from his hands and returned to her floating robotic flower, landing gracefully. Then, suddenly, she smiled again.

But this time, there was more than just cheerfulness in that smile.

There was a promise.

“Next time… it will be different.”

Leonardo gazed at her for a long moment, then, slowly, he smiled too.

“Yes. Next time… our vacation will truly begin.”

As those words echoed in his mind, Leonardo reached for his nightstand and picked up his smartphone. Almost 1 AM.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

It wasn’t so much the time that surprised him, but rather the number of missed calls from his mother. He swallowed.

“She’s going to scold me like crazy tomorrow…” he thought, already resigned.

At least it was Saturday. No work.

With a sigh, he turned off his phone and got out of bed, heading to the kitchen. Gelsomina floated after him, her soft glow barely illuminating the room as Leonardo prepared something to eat.

While he was eating, he turned to her with a playful smile.

“Aren’t you hungry? If you want, I can fix you up a nice lithium battery for dinner.”

Gelsomina, comfortably seated on her floating flower, crossed her arms in an almost offended manner.

“Tsk! I don’t run on batteries,” she replied proudly. “I recharge with the VR headset charger.”

Leonardo raised an eyebrow.

“Oh yeah? I never thought about that…”

Now that he thought about it, the Source Code package Laura had given him included only one charger, which he had never used.

After dinner, driven by curiosity, he checked the charge level of his VR headset—it was still full.

“And you? Do you need to recharge?” he asked, turning to Gelsomina.

She shook her head. “No, I’m fine.”

After cleaning up, Leonardo took a quick shower and went back to bed. But sleep was slow to come.

Ever since he started working as a librarian at the university, he had lived alone… yet that night, he didn’t mind having company at all.

He turned toward Gelsomina, who was floating beside him, and gave her a glance.

“Do you feel like talking about Source Code?”

She lit up slightly, excited.

“Of course!”

“How do I get stronger?” Leonardo asked bluntly.

From the guides he had read, he knew that leveling up required completing quests, hunting monsters, and gaining experience… but he still didn’t understand how to learn skills and techniques.

Gelsomina tilted her head.

“I don’t know much about that, but—”

Leonardo cut her off with an incredulous expression.

“What do you mean, ‘you don’t know much about that’?! You’re my Guide of the Egg! Aren’t you supposed to be my mentor?”

Gelsomina huffed, crossing her arms.

“If you’d let me finish, I was about to tell you that I know what you need to do to learn your first technique and allocate your Sense Points and Stat Points.”

Leonardo stared at her, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh yeah? And that would be…?”

She turned to the side, crossing her legs in a slightly embarrassed manner.

“I’ll explain it to you on Encrypted. Without the interface in front of me, it’s hard to talk about.”

Leonardo frowned.

“Why?”

Gelsomina’s eyes widened as if caught off guard. Her gaze suddenly became evasive, and after a moment of hesitation, she quickly answered, almost annoyed:

“That’s none of your business!”

Leonardo chuckled quietly but didn’t press the issue.

They kept chatting about less serious things until sleep finally took over.

“Goodnight, Gelsomina.”

She watched him for a moment, then settled on her flower and powered down, remaining still on the nightstand beside his bed.

The next morning, Leonardo was woken by a cheerful, ringing sound.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!”

Gelsomina floated above him, spinning in circles like a hyperactive dragonfly. Her mechanical body gleamed slightly in the morning light, and every movement of hers seemed to radiate an infectious energy.

Leonardo yawned, stretching.

“You’re way too energetic for this hour…”

But his smile betrayed his happiness.

After a quick breakfast, he put on the VR headset again.

“See you on the other side.”

Gelsomina, resting on her flower right next to his pillow, looked at him with amusement.

“Try not to die right away.”

Leonardo chuckled too, then closed his eyes.

The world around him faded.

But when he opened them again…

He was in the black room.

The floral screen in front of him displayed:

Time Until Respown: 14:22:45

Below, the only option: Log Out

Aster sighed, wearing the expression of someone who had just done something incredibly stupid and only now realized it.

“Of course… I should’ve expected this.”

He pressed “Log Out” and found himself back in his room.

Gelsomina was sitting on her floating flower, her back turned to him.

Leonardo got up, stretching.

“You couldn’t log in either?”

She barely turned, looking annoyed.

“I can only go back in fourteen hours.”

Leonardo groaned.

“Same.”

Realizing they wouldn’t be able to play that day, Leonardo decided to spend the whole day with Gelsomina.

He read her one of his favorite fantasy novels, and to his surprise, Gelsomina was captivated.

“It’s amazing! I never thought books could be so… thrilling!”

Leonardo smiled, pleased.

“I’ll read you more, then.”

And so, the day passed quickly.

At almost 1 AM, Leonardo lay down, put on the VR headset, and closed his eyes.

This time, he wasn’t greeted by the black room.

But the white room.

In front of him, the floral screen displayed a single message:

Log In

Aster sighed. But this time… it wasn’t a sigh of frustration.

It was the sigh of someone ready to embark on a new adventure.

Of someone who had left the past behind.

Of someone whose journey was about to truly begin.