Love is nothing more than a senseless loop, an emotion used to satisfy human desires. While love brings happiness to lovers, the hearts of the rejected are struck by reality.

Right now, I'm standing in a wedding hall. The entire perimeter is covered in smoke; some explosives detonated the front columns of the church, filling the exit with debris.

In front of me, a woman dressed in a tight black suit laughs sarcastically. She wears a black mask and holds a Glock-18 pistol in her right hand.

"Oh, I'm so sorry... I didn't mean to interrupt, Kyosuke," she said, walking towards me. "Or should I say Romeo? You always liked the nickname she gave you, right?"

The foyer is deserted. The guests left the church before the main entrance was engulfed in flames. Though I tried to escape with my wife, a gunshot stopped our steps.

My wife lay badly injured on the floor.

"Uh, you know... the idea of shooting her wasn't something I had thought about beforehand. Juliet was important to me too, but I couldn't bear to see you two together, not when I'm your true soulmate."

As the masked woman used a voice modulator, her identity remained a mystery; nevertheless, the nickname she called us continues to echo in my thoughts.

I'm in shock from the shot.

"I don't understand, I can't understand. Why did you choose her? Am I not enough for you? Even though my love transcends time... What does she have that I can't offer you?"

That attitude reflects the harsh truth of infatuation.

The greater the love, the more painful the rejection, and those who are rejected act out of obsessive jealousy, turning that love into indescribable resentment.

"If there's no coherent explanation, step aside once and for all. I'll end this chain of the past. I swear I'll become your new Juliette," she said, aiming the gun at my wife.

Without thinking twice, I positioned myself in front of my wife.

I was willing to let her kill me to protect my wife. When love is present, protecting your beloved from any danger is paramount, even if it risks your own life.

Despite that, the helplessness still lingers.

In front of me stands the one who left her injured, and all I can do is wait for help.

I must buy time.

"Why are you doing this?" I probed, trying to find a reason. "What did she do to make you want to kill her?"

"Do you still ask why your current Juliet must die?" she asked, stopping in her tracks.

Although her words were distorted by the modulator, the way she named my wife was strange. Only the members of Scientist-Six laboratory knew our nicknames.

The masked woman dropped something.

Though the smoke blurred my vision, I managed to distinguish a photograph of me with the laboratory members. I remember taking it at the celebration of the birth of A.I.S.H.A., my new artificial intelligence.

Everyone was smiling in that photo.

"Why do you have this?" I asked overwhelmed.

Pressure seized the stage. The woman fell silent while still aiming the gun at me and continued to walk forward.

"So that you can see the truth..."

My heartbeats quickened; I'm trembling at her response.

Seeing the photograph, I realize she was right; only my wife and I were smiling, the other girls seemed happy, but it was clear they were pretending.

"Answer me! Why did you choose her?" she asked, stomping on the photo forcefully. "Were you playing with us? Didn't you promise we'd all be together forever?"

Even though her words indicated she was a laboratory member, discovering her identity was difficult. God... I didn't know what the others felt for me, how could I? My feelings had been the same from the start; I was always sure of what my heart was feeling.

"Wait a moment... Who are you?" I said, stunned.

The masked woman grabbed her head with her left hand.

"Who am I? Shouldn't you have asked that first? But it doesn't matter anymore... none of it matters now..."

Even though my questions were in vain, I had to distract her until the police arrived.

"Move away at once, I don't want to hurt you," she said, pointing the gun at me.

From this short distance, she could kill me.

"Move!" she repeated, firing a shot.

The bullet hit my left leg, and I felt a sharp pain that made me kneel. While I was in this position, I could hear my wife's labored breathing nearby.

"Move now! I won't repeat myself!"

The fear of receiving a second shot was horrifying, but the fear of losing my wife was worse than dying.

"If you want to kill her, kill me first!" I exclaimed, placing my body in a cross formation.

The masked woman chuckled and aimed at my head.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Well... If that's what you want..."

After that, she muttered some words softly, but I couldn't make them out.

I guess she will.

If this would give my wife a few more minutes to live, I didn't mind dying right now; if I regretted anything, it was not seeing her smile again, but I could bear it.

"Goodbye!"

I closed my eyes.

The shot rang in my ears and grazed my right cheek; apparently, it hadn't been serious. While I thought about this, I heard a sobbing voice behind me.

Slowly, memories with my wife flooded back; it all generated a bitter feeling that overwhelmed me completely. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I watched my wife lose her strength.

"Isn't it funny?! I was just trying to fulfill the promise... And because of her, it ended like this!" The masked woman shouted, laughing like a psychopath.

Anger and helplessness turned into momentary adrenaline; her stupid laughter extinguished what little patience I had left. Despite being wounded, I lunged at her, pushing her with all my might.

We both fell to the ground.

"Fun?! Promise?! What the hell are you talking about?" I exclaimed, trying to strangle her. "Did you want to end my relationship? You didn't need to hurt her! You should have killed me!"

Despite my efforts, the masked woman managed to push me away and, grabbing the gun, didn't hesitate to shoot me in the right leg. In pain, I tried to crawl to prevent her from approaching my wife; however, she kept getting closer.

With my remaining strength, I held onto her leg with my arms.

"Wait! Where are you going? You don't need to waste more bullets on her; she's already dead! Please, if you want to spend more bullets, use them on me!"

The masked woman pushed me aside.

"That's what I dislike about her!" She yelled, observing my wife closely. "She always smiles! Why should I allow someone who stole my happiness to smile?!"

With my vision blurred, I watched as the bullets hit my wife's lifeless body.

"You know, nothing makes sense now... You hate me, right?" She asked with a distressed tone. "I'm sorry... Sorry... Sorry... What can I do now that I've done all this? Will you forgive me? Will you forgive me even though I killed her?"

Looking down at me on the floor, the masked woman laughed and approached me.

"Do you remember my research on soulmates?" She asked, taking a pill from her pocket. "This will end my hypothesis."

Upon hearing her, the missing piece about her identity was resolved.

"You are..."

The mysterious killer revealed her true face by removing the mask.

"It doesn't matter who I am now," she said, placing the pill between her lips. "What matters is what I will become for you."

Saying this, she brought her face close to mine and forced me to kiss her, ingesting the pill in the process.

"Even if you try to hold onto your feelings for her, it will be in vain. Your previous Juliet will not come back."

Upon hearing her words, I understood what she meant by holding onto my feelings. For a while now, the theory of soul bonds had been proven.

This notion posits the existence of a partner for each person, as if it were love at first sight, a shock so intense that it disables consciousness and binds the fate of two souls, eliminating the possibility of another romance.

Although the theory says that the bond cannot be broken while both are alive, what happens when one soulmate dies?

"Now you love me, don't you?" She said, looking into my eyes.

Her question left me confused. The person in front of me was my wife and yet not. I couldn't understand what was happening.

"I suppose you won't answer me," she said sadly. "Maybe... maybe if this loop hadn't formed, we could have been happy, but now that you hate me, I can't do anything. Yes... I can't do anything more."

Upon hearing her, I regretted not realizing it sooner. If I had understood what the others felt back then, I would have made my feelings clear.

"Why didn't you talk to me before?" I asked before losing consciousness.

She stared at the ceiling for a few seconds.

"That doesn't matter anymore..."

My eyes closed as I heard one last gunshot.

△♡△

I woke up startled. I thought I was still in the church foyer, so I tried to get up.

"You can't do that!" A shout stopped me.

The voice belonged to a nurse.

I blinked a few times. I found myself lying on a bed in a blue room.

"Listen to me. You can't move yet. You've just woken up, stay still," she said, restraining me.

"I can't! My wife is still..." I protested.

"Sir... your wife's funeral was a month ago."

"What...?" I asked incredulously. "Are you joking? It's impossible that it happened a month ago!"

I turned my head to look at the clock by the window.

14:27 - April 9, 2032.

It had indeed been a month.

"I'm sorry. I understand it's hard for you, but getting depressed won't help your health," she said, adjusting me in the bed. "If we confirm that you don't have any complications, you'll be discharged in four months."

I nodded silently.

The shock of time flooded my mind, making me feel miserable. During the remaining months in the hospital, I felt like the world was breaking into an unsolvable puzzle.

My wife was the source of my happiness; no matter how recognized a scientist I was, my efforts to create artificial life meant nothing if I no longer had her with me.

Upon being discharged, I decided to leave it all behind. I closed the laboratory, left the city, and moved to a house in the forest.

This only sank me deeper.

Although I wanted to destroy A.I.S.H.A., I couldn't. Remembering my wife's effort to create her made me feel guilty, so instead of deleting her, I deactivated her body onto a flash drive.

If I had taken her out before my wedding, I could have prevented her death, as she was a specialized artificial intelligence in healthcare.

But when time marches on, there's no way to stop it.

This is what I had thought during the first few months until I came across a video about time travel.

Its perspective portrayed time as a string formed by thousands of threads, each with a beginning and an end, resembling each other but different in some stretches. In any case, our timeline was like a large set of events. If these events varied at some point, a new timeline would be created.

If I applied it to my situation, even though my wife's death was an inevitable fact, if I prevented it from happening, the timeline would change, and she would still be alive.

Saying it was easier than doing it, so I built a small laboratory in my house to conduct experiments.

At that time, I studied paradoxes, interval issues, and also the foundations of distance, space formation, and the planet's rotation speed.

Once I understood how to manipulate space-time, I met with the artificial intelligences that preceded A.I.S.H.A. and created the blueprint for the first-time machine. However, as it was the first machine, there were errors.

The concept was very inefficient, and the problems of time travel were numerous. But I didn't care; there was a chance to save my wife, so I couldn't hesitate anymore.

If I wanted to see her again, I had to build the time machine and test it, even if it took the rest of my life.

January 2, 2049.

Time passed faster than expected. When I started building the machine, the energy demand was so high that it took fifteen years to fill it.

And at the age of fifty, I was able to complete my first prototype.

Anyway, even if it was ready, it was dangerous. My machine had many flaws that I hadn't yet resolved. The most important was that it could only travel back to a point of existential baseline time; that is, the day of my birth: January 2, 1999. Another problem involved the energy reserves that the time machine could hold.

With the energy I had gathered over these fifteen years, I could only make two space-time journeys. If the machine didn't work as planned, the energy would exceed, and I would die from the explosion.

But I was determined to travel.

The love I felt for my wife was greater than the feeling of danger.

I couldn't let all my effort go to waste.

It's hard to explain in words, but I believe that every person has something they can't let go of, even if they wanted to; maybe that's why I haven't been able to forget my wedding since then.

"If the person who was meant for me has died, I have nothing else to live for," I said in front of the time machine. "Right now, time, death, everything that came between us, there will be nothing that can stop an old man like me... I swear I will do whatever it takes to save you!"

With those words, I decided to test the machine that very day.