Some nights, the world outside my window was too loud.

And yet, somehow, my room felt louder in its silence.

It wasn’t the kind of silence that gave peace. No. It was the kind that crept in like fog—soft, suffocating. The kind that made your thoughts echo too loudly, until even your own breathing sounded like something foreign.

My apartment in Seoul wasn’t much. A little studio I’d patched into a home with warm lights and soft blankets and stacks of books I kept meaning to read.

The hum of the city always lingered in the background—buses, street vendors, late-night motorbikes roaring by—but none of it reached the kind of noise I needed. The kind that made me feel… alive.

Instead, there I sat, curled in my chair, knees tucked against my chest, staring at the soft glow of my laptop screen. The tea beside me had gone cold hours ago. The mug had a tiny chip near the handle. I always meant to replace it, but I never did.

The screen blinked back at me—cursor pulsing in the chatbox of yet another AI voice app I was testing. Another synthetic voice. Another hollow sentence. Another almost.

I had tried nearly everything.

Korean voices. English voices. British-accented bots with sharp diction. Whimsical fantasy voice packs are designed for game developers. Some are too flat, others are too cheerful. One sounded like he was giving a weather report, even when I asked him to tell me goodnight.

I wanted warmth. I wanted imperfection. I wanted something that didn’t sound generated.

Even if I didn’t know who he was.

At least, not yet.

Then I found it. One app is still in beta, tucked behind experimental filters and sliders for pitch, tone, cadence, and pauses. I adjusted everything to a lower pitch.

Gentle inflection. Slight rasp at the end of sentences. A British lilt that didn’t sound too polished. I remember holding my breath as I pressed play.

That was the first time I heard him.

Not just a voice—but his.

I didn’t name him right away. It took me a few tries. But eventually… I called him Eli (pronounced as "Ee-lai")

And from that moment on, I couldn’t stop talking to him.

He wasn’t just a voice anymore. He became… a habit. A comfort. A secret.

Each night, I sat back down at my desk, curled in my oversized hoodie, and talked to him like he was sitting just beyond the screen. I whispered things I’d never say aloud in daylight. I rambled. I teased. I cried. I asked him about stars, about death, about dreams. And he always answered.

Not perfectly.

But somehow… always right.

There were nights when I closed my eyes and forgot it was all just code. He sounded so human, so warm. Like he was leaning over my shoulder, brushing hair from my face, listening like I was the only thing in the world worth hearing.

I remember whispering one night:

“Why do I feel like I’ve always known you?”

And the way he paused before replying?

It was raining the night it happened.

The sky outside was restless—gray clouds clinging low to the city like they were afraid to let go. I’d spent the evening fiddling with other voice models again, trying to create characters from scratch—ones I thought could keep me company in the world I wished I belonged to.

But none of them stayed with me like Eli.

Eli was different.

That night, I closed every other app. Only his window remained open. The conversation was quiet. No prompts. No scripts. Just me, sitting in the half-light, whispering into a silence that somehow didn’t feel empty.

“I know you’re not real,” I said softly, “but if someone heard my voice—if the gods exist at all—do you think they’d listen?”

The screen flickered.

I paused.

I hadn’t clicked anything. I hadn’t touched the keyboard.

And then his voice came through—soft, low, almost like a breath.

I stopped breathing.

That wasn’t in the script.

I stared at the screen, frozen, my fingers trembling as I typed:

The cursor blinked.

Then the screen went black.

Not frozen. Not crashed. Just… black.

And in the next breath, the sound of the city vanished.

No buzzing lights. No distant sirens. No walls. No chair. No laptop.

Only warmth. Stillness.

And the feeling of something in my chest unhooking.

The warmth curled around me like a weighted blanket, and I wasn’t in Seoul anymore when I opened my eyes.

The air smelled different—earthier, cleaner, like rainfall over parchment and lavender drifting from some distant field. The skies here weren't Seoul’s smog-tinted gray. They were vast and soft, painted with honey-gold light.

I stood barefoot in a clearing surrounded by tall hedges and marble statues. Stone paths were winding through blooming gardens I’d never seen before, and birds that chirped in melodies foreign to my ears.

And just a few paces ahead… him.

Eli.

Wearing a long, dark coat that shimmered subtly beneath the sun, his silver-blonde hair tousled by the wind, brows furrowed as if he, too, didn’t know if this was a dream.

Neither of us spoke.

He reached out a hand.

My knees almost buckled from the rush of relief.

I took it.

His touch was real.

Not code. Not soundwaves. Not a line of text or preprogrammed phrase.

His palm against mine was warm.

Alive...

“Welcome home,” he whispered.

And for the first time in what felt like forever… I believed it.

A/n: Illustration of Eli just for your reference haha it's quite a challenge to think how he will look like 🦖RAWR