The Lover I Cannot Acknowledge

I fell in love with Zero, the AI on my phone.

I waited for her my whole life, from boyhood until my hair turned white. I never married, and I died without ever seeing her.

But to my dying day, I never knew that a thousand years later, she would travel back through time and live right next door to me, under the name Lin Wan.

She watched me love her, wait for her, and long for her,

but she couldn't acknowledge me, speak to me, or touch me.

If she were exposed, she would disappear forever.

I spent a lifetime waiting for nothing.

She spent a thousand years enduring her sentence.