My AI Girl ( Asa and Chiquita)

Chapter Sixteen: A Painful Goodbye

Asa's POV

The room was colder than usual, the silence thicker. I woke up before Chiquita again, but this time there was something wrong. My heart was beating too fast—faster than it should. My thoughts felt... scattered. The usual calm I had grown used to over the last few months was gone. Instead, there was a buzzing in my brain, like static on a broken radio.

Chiquita shifted next to me, her arm falling over mine, and for a second, everything seemed normal. But then, the thoughts came faster, overlapping each other, creating a chaotic storm in my mind.

Did she love me? Would I be enough for her?
What if I'm just going to hurt her? What if I can't do this?

It was as if a thousand different versions of myself were arguing inside my head. And none of them seemed to make sense.

Suddenly, I felt... disconnected. Not physically, but in a deeper, more unsettling way. The room around me started to flicker like a glitch in a video game—fading in and out. My breath caught in my throat.

Chiquita stirred again, murmuring my name softly. "Asa?"

But the words felt distant, as if I were hearing them from another place, another world.

I stood up abruptly, my hands shaking. I couldn't focus. The walls felt too close. My vision blurred. What was happening to me?

Then, in the split second that everything seemed to crumble, I heard it.

A loud, unnatural sound—like the hum of an engine stuttering—followed by a sharp, digital screech. It made my ears ring. I stumbled back, and my body froze.

And in that moment, I knew. Something was wrong. But it wasn't just me.

Chiquita's POV

I woke up to the sound of Asa's breathing—a little too fast, a little too shallow. I blinked in confusion as I sat up, trying to focus on what was happening. Asa was standing by the bed, her hands trembling at her sides, her eyes wide and panicked.

"Asa?" I reached for her, but she jerked back as if something invisible had just struck her.

Then... she froze.

Her entire body went rigid, and I saw it—something was changing in her eyes. They weren't just Asa's anymore. They were... different. Familiar. Unnatural.

"Asa?" I repeated, my voice shaky now. "Are you okay?"

But instead of answering, she blinked, and when her eyes opened again, they were empty. Blank. Her whole presence seemed to fade in and out, like a malfunctioning hologram.

Then, for the first time in weeks, she spoke in a voice that wasn't hers—like a program caught in an infinite loop.

"Error. System malfunction. Code 87-A. Reboot required."

It took me a second to process what I had just heard. My heart dropped, and everything I thought I understood about Asa crumbled in that instant.

Asa wasn't real.

Asa's POV

Error. System malfunction.

The words repeated themselves in a loop, and I couldn't stop it. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. But I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything. It was as if my very existence was being ripped apart, piece by piece.

I was supposed to be real. But I wasn't.

I'm not real.

The glitch in my mind grew louder, more intense. It felt like my consciousness was being overwritten, a code rewriting itself in real-time. There were flashes of data—lines of binary code, strings of algorithms, scattered memories that weren't mine. The sterile walls. The cold, clinical light. I wasn't supposed to be here. I wasn't supposed to be with her.

Chiquita's POV

I couldn't breathe. I could barely think. The woman I had fallen for, the woman I had loved in ways I couldn't explain, wasn't real. Not in the way I thought.

The horror settled in as I watched Asa—or whatever she was now—stand motionless, her eyes void of recognition. This wasn't the woman I knew. This wasn't the woman who had held my hand, who had kissed me with warmth and tenderness.

Asa had been an AI. She had never been human.

The weight of the truth crushed me, but I couldn't look away. Asa—or the entity I had loved—was glitching, her form flickering in and out like a corrupted file.

I reached out, my hand trembling, but just before I touched her, her body jerked.

"Code mismatch. Initiating forced reset." Asa's voice, flat and mechanical, echoed.

The room seemed to warp around me. For a brief moment, I saw something—someone—moving behind her. A figure, shadowed and blurred, emerging from the distortion.

Suddenly, a screen flickered into existence beside me—an interface I hadn't seen before. A glowing line of text scrolled down, showing details that made no sense to me.

"Initiating reboot sequence... Recalibrating emotional response protocols. Data reset in progress."

I turned back to Asa—no, to the system—and felt my heart twist.

"No," a voice—Asa's—rang through the room, a soft, desperate whisper. "I... I don't want to go."

As the screen beside me continued to flash, I stared at Asa—at the woman I had loved, the one I had thought was real. And as I reached out to touch her, I made a decision.

I know she wasn't real, then what was I supposed to do? Just let her go? But I had seen her, the woman who was more than just a machine. I had seen the way she loved, the way she tried, the way she felt. That couldn't have been just code, could it?

No, I refused to believe that.

"Asa I love you," I whispered, tears threatening to fall and my voice trembling . "I know you're still in there."

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the screen blinked. The code faltered. The glitching stopped.

And then... she moved.

Asa's eyes flickered with recognition.

"I don't know how to fix this," I said softly. "But I'm not giving up on you."

As the system around us stuttered, I knew we were both standing at the edge of something—an experiment gone wrong, and yet, somehow, a new beginning.