I Raised a Virtual Baby, and Now He’s My Boyfriend?

To save the younger brother next door, who is unconscious after a car accident, I put on a special device and enter his consciousness every night.

Inside, he has the mind of a three-year-old and trembles in fear.

I’m forced to start raising a virtual child

By day, I’m a quiet illustrator. Late at night, in his consciousness, I’m wiping tears from a crybaby’s face, teaching a little tyke to read, and taking a teenager to look at the stars.

A few months in reality become thirteen whole years in the virtual world.

I think it’s just a treatment assignment.

Until, a few months later, the boy opens his eyes in the hospital.

With his parents and doctors watching, he clutches my clothes and refuses to let go:

“Big brother… I’ve been dreaming about you for so long.”

Everyone says it’s imprinting.

But only I know

He wants me to blow on his first meal after waking and feed it to him;

When he can’t sleep, he dozes off as soon as I pat his back in a particular rhythm;

He even blurts out a pet name he could only have learned in his “dreams.”

The child I raised is back, carrying thirteen years of memories.

And now this newly crowned campus heartthrob is closing in on me at every turn:

“Big brother taught me how to love for ten years.”

“Now it’s my turn to graduate and put it into practice.”

Wait, I only wanted to raise a kid.

I never meant to get myself caught up in this!

[One-on-one, both sexually inexperienced, recipient-focused, virtual child-rearing, clingy younger pursuer, warm and healing]

Aloof campus heartthrob by day, crying mess in his dreams at night, clingy boyfriend in real life