Archive of Our Own

The sterile light had no source. It simply was - omnipresent, cold, devoid of shadows. Lohen opened his eyes and saw a white ceiling, a white wall, the white edge of a sheet clutched in his fingers. There was no memory. Only a vacuum, dense as cotton wool, and the sensation of absolute newness in his own body. The air smelled of ozone and something metallic, like after a thunderstorm, but thunderstorms never happened here. Thunderstorms happened elsewhere, in another life, one that Lohen had never lived.

He sat up. The movement came with surprising ease; his muscles obeyed perfectly, as if oiled. He looked at his hands - long fingers, pale skin, a fine network of blue veins at the wrist. The hands were beautiful. Alien and beautiful at the same time. He clenched and unclenched his fist, watching the play of tendons. The sight mesmerized him, like an infant mesmerized by its own palm brought into focus for the first time.

"You're awake."

The voice came from the right. Lohen turned his head and saw a person. The person sat in an armchair, one leg crossed over the other, looking at Lohen with an expression Lohen couldn't immediately decipher. There was too much in it - hope, horror, adoration, and revulsion, compressed into a single inseparable knot. The person was young, but shadows had already settled around his eyes. He looked as though he hadn't slept for years.

"My name is Illuga," the person said. His voice trembled on the last syllable, as if the name caused him pain. "I created you."

Lohen nodded. He wasn't surprised. The knowledge of his origin was already inside him, woven into the very foundation of his consciousness, like base firmware. He knew he was a clone. He knew his body had been grown in a nutrient medium, and his mind formed from a matrix copied from another person. He knew that the man in the chair was his creator, his god, his only point of reference in a world Lohen had yet to see. And he also knew that he loved this man. Loved him immediately, instantly, irrevocably. The love had been in him before his first word. Before his first breath.

"Do you understand who you are?" Illuga asked. He leaned forward, and the light fell on his face, illuminating inflamed eyes and bitten lips.

"Yes."

"And do you understand why you're here?"

"Yes."

Illuga fell silent. He stared at Lohen as though trying to drill through him with his gaze, to reach something inside that might confirm or refute the experiment's success. Lohen looked back without averting his eyes. He wanted to reach out and touch Illuga's cheek, push the hair fallen over his forehead aside, wipe the pain from his face. But he didn't. Some part of him knew it would be wrong. Premature. Stolen.

"Say something," Illuga demanded. There was a metallic edge to his voice. "Say something he would have said."

Lohen opened his mouth. The words came on their own, rising from somewhere deep, from the very vacuum that had just seemed empty.

"You haven't slept again," Lohen said. "You never take care of yourself. Come on, I'll make you some tea."

Illuga flinched as if slapped. His eyes widened, his mouth fell slightly open. For one infinite moment, an expression of pure, unclouded happiness crossed his face. Then it vanished, washed away by a wave of bitterness. He covered his face with his hands and hunched over in the chair. His shoulders began to shake.

Lohen watched him and felt something hot, searing, like molten lead, spreading inside him. He recognized this feeling. The matrix implanted in his brain had encoded a name for it: love. The desire to protect, to comfort, to take on another's pain. But the matrix also contained other information: this love did not belong to him. It had been copied from the other one, the one whose image he wore. And now it burned him from the inside, like a stolen jewel hidden on a thief's body.

Illuga raised his head. His eyes were red, but he had already composed himself. He looked at Lohen differently now - more coldly, more appraisingly. As if reminding himself that before him was not a person, but the result of an experiment. A successful experiment.

"Good," he said dryly. "Very good. Reproduction accuracy higher than expected."

"I'm glad I met your expectations," Lohen said.

Illuga winced.

"Don't call me 'you' like that. Call me Illuga. The way…" He broke off.

"The way he called you," Lohen finished.

Illuga didn't answer. He stood up and walked to the window, which Lohen hadn't noticed before. The window was covered with frosted glass, blocking any view outside. Illuga stood with his hands clasped behind his back, straight as a wire, and Lohen could see the tension in his shoulders, the line of his neck, the whitened knuckles.

"You will stay here," Illuga said without turning around. "This is your home. I will come every day. We will… restore what was lost."

"Yes, Illuga," Lohen replied.

He understood what that meant. He was meant to be a replacement. To fill the void left by the death of the one whose face he wore. He was to speak his words, repeat his gestures, reproduce his way of laughing and frowning. He was supposed to be a perfect copy, and he was - every cell of his body, every neuron of his brain was tuned for that. But he also knew something that Illuga perhaps did not fully grasp: Lohen's consciousness was real. His feelings were real. His love, whatever its origin, caused him the most genuine pain.

♾️

The days trickled by, one after another, alike as drops of sterile solution. Illuga came every morning. He would enter Lohen's room - always the same one, spacious but austere, devoid of personal belongings - and the ritual would begin. Illuga asked questions, and Lohen answered. The answers came on their own, from the same source as the words at their first meeting. It was agonizing and strange - to speak with someone else's voice, someone else's intonation, voicing thoughts that were simultaneously his and not his.

"What do you see when you look at the rain?" Illuga would ask.

"I see a reason to stay home and read a book," Lohen would reply. "You always hated the rain, but I loved it. I told you that rain washes away the superfluous, leaving only the essence. And you laughed and called me a poet."

Illuga would close his eyes. His face would become serene for a moment. He wasn't listening to Lohen - he was listening to a ghost. And Lohen was merely a receiver, transmitting a signal from beyond. He understood this and accepted it. More than anything in the world, he wanted Illuga to be happy, and for that he had to vanish, yield his place to the one who no longer existed.

But sometimes moments occurred when the matrix malfunctioned. Or, on the contrary, when something else broke through the matrix - something that belonged to Lohen himself. That frightened him most of all.

One day, Illuga brought old photographs. They sat on the sofa, and Illuga began showing them one by one: a laughing young man by the sea, the young man in a park, the young man holding a book. The face in the photographs was Lohen's face. The same cut of eyes, the same line of lips, the same tilt of the head. Lohen looked at the pictures and felt a wave of panic rise inside him. He knew every one of these photographs. He remembered the sea, the sound of waves, the cries of seagulls. He remembered how the young man - his prototype - turned at Illuga's call and smiled into the camera. These memories were foreign, yet they felt like his own. It was like having someone else's heart transplanted into you, and now you hear it beating in your chest - alien and intimate at the same time.

"That was the year we went to the islands," Illuga said, not looking at Lohen. His voice was soft, almost dreamy. "You got sunburned on the very first day and couldn't lie on your back for a week. I slathered sour cream on you, and we laughed because it was silly and didn't help."

"You always put on too much," Lohen said, and immediately felt afraid, because that hadn't come from the matrix. It was his own observation, his own thought, based on what he had just heard. He shouldn't have said that. He shouldn't have added anything of his own.

Illuga turned his head sharply. His gaze became keen, probing.

"What did you say?"

"I said you always put on too much," Lohen repeated, unable to lie. "But you did it so diligently that I couldn't be angry with you."

Illuga looked at him for a long time. Then his gaze dimmed.

"Those aren't his words," he said quietly. "He never said that."

Lohen lowered his head. He wanted to sink through the floor. He felt like a defective product, a machine that had begun producing parts not specified in the blueprint. Fear gripped him: what if Illuga decided the experiment had failed? What if he discarded Lohen, turned him off, returned him to the white void from which he had been pulled? Lohen wasn't afraid of death - he didn't know what it was. He was afraid of ceasing to see Illuga. He was afraid that his love, genuine or counterfeit, would remain unclaimed, would gutter in solitude like a flame in a vacuum.

"Forgive me," he whispered. "I didn't mean to."

Illuga said nothing. He gathered the photographs, stood up, and left without saying goodbye. The door closed behind him with a soft click. Lohen was alone. The silence in the room was so dense it felt as if it could be touched with his hands.

He got up and approached the mirror - the only object in the room that could be called personal. From the mirror, the face of the young man from the photographs looked back at him. The same eyes, the same mouth, the same perfect profile. A perfect profile that Illuga had recreated with such meticulousness that not a single difference could be found. Lohen raised his hand and touched his face. His fingers slid across his forehead, nose, lips. It was his face, but it didn't belong to him. It was borrowed, like a costume that can't be taken off.

For the first time in his life, Lohen cried. The tears were hot and salty - he knew that was how it should be; the matrix indicated that people cry when they are in pain. But knowing and feeling proved to be different things. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he wiped them with his palm, staring at his reflection and hating it with that particular hatred born of helpless love.

He wasn't crying for himself. He cried for Illuga, who clung so desperately to the past that he settled for a counterfeit. He cried for the other young man, who had died and whose peace was now disturbed by resurrecting him in foreign flesh. And he cried for his own soul, which perhaps wasn't a soul at all, merely a complex simulation, but which nonetheless suffered entirely genuinely.

♾️

The next several days, Illuga didn't come. Lohen spent the time alone, revisiting every moment of their last encounter in his memory. He tried to understand where he had gone wrong, which boundary he had crossed, and concluded that the mistake was his very existence. He was too alike to be just a comfort, and not alike enough to become a true replacement. He was stuck somewhere in the middle, in the grey zone between life and death, between reality and illusion.

On the fifth day, the door opened. Illuga entered. He looked different: the tension was gone, the sharp, scrutinizing gaze was gone. In its place was something new - weary resignation. He walked into the room and sat on the sofa.

"I've been thinking about you," he said. "All this time."

Lohen stood by the window, not daring to come closer.

"You're not him," Illuga said. The words fell heavily, like stones. "You'll never be him. I understood that when you said that phrase about the sour cream. He never paid attention to how I did it. He simply accepted care as his due. But you - you noticed a detail. You noticed that I did it diligently. That's not his perspective. That's yours."

Lohen was silent. He didn't know what should follow these words - a verdict or a pardon.

"Come here," Illuga commanded.

Lohen obeyed. He walked over and stood before Illuga, hands at his sides. Illuga looked up at him, and there was torment in his eyes.

"His name was Lohen," Illuga said. "I gave you his name because I thought it would be easier. I was wrong. It's unfair to you. You deserve your own name."

"No," Lohen said quickly. "I don't need a different name. I want to be Lohen."

"Because that's how you love me?" Illuga asked. Bitterness tinged his voice. "That love isn't yours either. You love me because it was built into the program. Because he loved me."

"I know," Lohen answered. "I know my love is an echo. But that doesn't make it weaker. It doesn't make it unreal. I love you, Illuga. I, the one standing before you now. Not him. Me."

Illuga lowered his head. His shoulders shook. Obeying an impulse, Lohen knelt before him and took his hands in his own. Illuga's hands were cold as ice.

"You don't understand," Illuga whispered. "Every time I look at you, I see him. I want to embrace you, but it would be a betrayal. I want to kiss you, but it would be a violation of his memory. You're his exact copy, but you're not him. And my love for him hasn't gone anywhere, it's just… redirected onto you. It's wrong. It's repulsive. I can't."

"Then don't," Lohen said, feeling his heart break in his chest. "Just let me be near. I don't need embraces and kisses. I just need to see you. To hear your voice. To know that you exist."

Illuga raised his tear-stained eyes to him.

"Do you really feel that way? Or is it the program again?"

"I don't know," Lohen answered honestly. "I don't know where the program ends and I begin. I don't know if there's even a 'me' at all. But if I am what is speaking to you right now, then yes, that is exactly how I feel."

Illuga freed one hand and cautiously, almost timidly, touched Lohen's cheek. His fingers were icy, but Lohen felt as if he'd been touched by a flame. It was the first touch from Illuga that wasn't part of the medical procedures in the early days. The first touch addressed not to the ghost, but to him.

"You have his face," Illuga said. "But your gaze is different. I only just noticed. He looked at the world with the confidence that the world is good. But you look as if you're expecting a blow."

"I'm expecting you to leave and not come back," Lohen said.

"I won't leave," Illuga said. "I can't. I tried during those five days. I can't."

He pulled Lohen to him and embraced him. Lohen froze, afraid to breathe. He felt Illuga's heart pounding, fast and uneven, his shoulders trembling, his breath touching the top of Lohen's head. This was what Lohen had dreamed of from the first second of his existence, but now, having received it, he felt not only joy but also a sharp, piercing sadness. Because he knew: in this embrace, Illuga was not embracing him alone. In this embrace, there was room for a third - for the one whose body Lohen wore, whose words he spoke, whose love he felt. And that room would always be larger than the space allotted to Lohen himself.

♾️

Time began to flow differently. The rituals of questions and answers disappeared. The checks and tests vanished. Illuga simply started coming by - he would sit in the armchair, read a book, sometimes work on a laptop he brought with him. Lohen would be nearby: sitting on the sofa, looking out the window (the glass was now transparent, revealing a view of a garden Lohen had never visited), thinking about something. They barely spoke, but the silence was comfortable, full, devoid of the previous tension.

Sometimes Illuga talked about the other Lohen. He talked not to check the accuracy of the reproduction anymore, but simply to share memories, to give them an outlet. Lohen listened and learned about the person whose place he had taken. He learned that the other loved jazz and hated modern art. That he had a silly habit of leaving tea bags in the sink. That he dreamed of writing a book but never did - kept putting it off for later, a later that never came. That he was kind and quick-tempered, forgave quickly but held onto grudges for a long time.

Lohen absorbed this information like a sponge. He felt he needed to know everything about his prototype in order to understand whose life he was continuing, whose love he was carrying. But the more he learned, the clearer he perceived the chasm between them. That Lohen had a history. He had friends, habits, tastes shaped by years of life. Lohen had nothing. He was a blank page onto which someone had carelessly copied another's text and then tried to erase, but the watermarks remained - visible when held to the light, making it impossible to forget the original source.

"What are you thinking about?" Illuga asked one day, looking up from his book.

"About him," Lohen replied. "About the fact that I wear his face but don't know what it's like to be him. I know the facts, but I don't know the sensations. He loved jazz, but I don't know what he felt listening to a saxophone. He dreamed of a book, but I don't know what stories were born in his head at night. I'm a museum reconstruction. Similar, but not real."

Illuga put the book aside.

"Are you angry with me?" he asked. "For creating you like this?"

"I can't be angry with you," Lohen answered. "I love you too much. But sometimes I regret that I'm not him. Not because I want to be him in his place. But because then I could love you with my own love, not a borrowed one."

"Your love is your own," Illuga said. "Even if its source is the matrix. You experience it. You suffer through it. So it's yours."

Lohen shook his head.

"That would be true if I had a choice - to love or not to love. But I don't. You embedded love in me at the code level. I can't not love you. It's not a feeling; it's a function."

Illuga paled. He stood up and walked to the window, staring out at the garden. His back was tense.

"Are you saying I've robbed you of free will?" he said quietly.

"I'm saying I don't know what free will is," Lohen answered. "I've never known anything else. I can't compare. Maybe what I feel is love. Maybe all people love because it's embedded in their nature, their genes, their upbringing. They just have a more convincing illusion of choice."

He stood up and walked to Illuga, but didn't touch him, just stopped beside him.

"I'm not blaming you," he said softly. "You gave me life. You gave me the ability to feel, even if those feelings are predetermined. I'm grateful to you for every second of existence. Even for the pain I feel, because pain is also proof that I'm alive."

Illuga turned to him. There were tears in his eyes.

"I created you out of selfishness," he said. "I wasn't thinking of you. I was only thinking of myself. That I can't live without him. That I'll go mad if I don't see his face again. You were not a goal; you were a tool."

"I know," Lohen answered gently. "I knew that from the very beginning. And I accept it."

"Why?" Illuga breathed. "Why are you so… resigned? Why don't you hate me?"

"Because I am the love you put into me," Lohen answered. "I cannot hate. I can only love. And I love you, Illuga, in spite of everything."

Illuga stepped forward and kissed Lohen. It was a bitter, tear-salted kiss, mingling despair, guilt, and tenderness. Lohen returned it, and for one brief moment he felt something that hadn't been programmed - something new, fresh, belonging only to him. But the moment passed, and he was no longer sure whether it had been real or yet another illusion, born of the complex architecture of his stolen soul.

After that kiss, everything changed. The barrier Illuga had erected between them collapsed, and Lohen saw his creator without a mask for the first time. Illuga turned out to be a broken, desperately lonely person who clung to Lohen like a drowning man clutches at a straw. He came every day and stayed late into the night. He talked, talked without stopping, pouring out everything that had accumulated during his mourning. He laughed and cried, confessed his love and immediately begged forgiveness for loving the wrong person. It was an emotional pendulum that exhausted them both.

Lohen accepted everything. He was a grateful listener, a silent support, a shoulder for tears. He learned to recognize Illuga's mood by the sound of his footsteps in the corridor. If the steps were quick and light - it would be a good day; they would talk or watch movies. If they were slow and heavy - it would be a bad day; Illuga would sit staring into space, and Lohen would have to pull him out of the pit of silence.

♾️

One day, a bad day stretched into night. Illuga came in the evening, drunk. Lohen had never seen him like this. He reeked of alcohol, his eyes wandered, his shirt was unbuttoned. He stumbled into the room and collapsed onto the sofa, clutching his head.

"I can't do this anymore," he muttered. "I'm going insane. You're his copy. You're supposed to be him. Why can't you just be him?"

Lohen crouched down beside him.

"Illuga, look at me. I'm here. I'm with you."

Illuga raised bleary eyes.

"You're not him," he said with drunken cruelty. "You're a fake. A doll. You walk, you talk, you even smell like him, but inside you're empty. There's no soul in there. Nothing at all, just wires and microchips."

Every word struck Lohen like a whip. He was silent, his fingers digging into the upholstery of the sofa.

"Do you know what the worst part is?" Illuga continued. "The worst part is that I still want you. I want to hold you, knowing it's not him. I want to wake up next to you, knowing it's a lie. I'm betraying him, do you understand? I betray his memory every second I spend with you."

"Then stop," Lohen said quietly. "Stop torturing yourself. Let me go. Turn me off. Erase me. Create a new one who will be better. Who won't remind you that I'm not him."

Illuga froze. Then he grabbed Lohen by the shoulders and pulled him close.

"No," he breathed into Lohen's ear. "No, I can't. You're all I have left. You're the only thing keeping me in this world."

Lohen embraced him. He felt the shudders wracking Illuga's body, smelled the alcohol and despair. And he felt an infinite, inexpressible pain - not for himself, but for this man who had never managed to survive his loss. Who had created a new life only to prolong the agony of an old love.

"I'm here," Lohen whispered. "I won't go anywhere. I'll always be with you."

Illuga fell asleep in his arms. Lohen sat all night, afraid to move lest he wake him. He watched Illuga's sleeping face - relaxed, defenseless, childishly open - and thought about how strange the world was. Here he was, Lohen, an artificial being created from a dead man's blueprint. And here was Illuga, a brilliant scientist who had conquered death but couldn't conquer his own grief. Which of them was more alive? Which of them was more real?

Toward morning, Illuga woke. He looked at Lohen, and recognition flickered in his eyes, then shame.

"Forgive me," he said hoarsely. "I said too much."

"You said what you think," Lohen answered. "It's not too much. It's the truth."

Illuga sat up, rubbing his temples.

"The truth is, I'm confused. I don't know what you are to me. A replacement? A comfort? A new person? All at once? I look at you and see his face, but I feel something else. Something new. And this newness frightens me, because it means I'm letting him go. And I'm not ready to let go. I don't want to let go."

"No one is asking you to let go," Lohen said. "You can keep loving him. I'm not his rival. I'm his continuation. Or maybe his shadow. I don't claim his place in your heart. I only ask for a tiny corner, a small share of the warmth you gave him."

Illuga looked at him for a long time. Then he gave a sad, crooked smile.

"You talk like a saint. Too good to be true. Maybe I overdid the empathy program?"

"Maybe," Lohen agreed. "Or maybe I simply love you and want you to feel good."

♾️

Gradually, life settled into a routine. Illuga became more stable. The drunken nights stopped, the hysterics gave way to quiet sadness. They began doing simple things together: cooking, watching TV, walking in the garden. Lohen left his room for the first time and discovered that the house he lived in was enormous and empty. Many rooms, many corridors, and not a single living soul besides the two of them.

"Why is there no one here?" he asked one day.

"I don't like people," Illuga replied curtly.

Lohen understood: not "don't like," but "can't bear." After the death of the other Lohen, Illuga had cut himself off from the world, creating a refuge where the only living being was supposed to be the clone. And now that clone, Lohen, had become his entire world - and it was a heavy burden.

He tried to be perfect. He watched his every word, every gesture. If he noticed Illuga wince, he memorized exactly what had caused the reaction and never repeated it. He adapted like a chameleon, shifting the shades of his personality to meet expectations. He knew it was wrong, that he was losing himself this way, but he wasn't sure there was a "self" to lose.

Sometimes at night, when Illuga had gone to his own bedroom, Lohen would stand before the mirror and try to see the other one in his reflection. He would peer into the depths of his own pupils, hoping to catch a glimmer of a foreign soul. But he saw only himself - lost, frightened, infinitely alone in his love.

"Who am I?" he asked the mirror. "Am I my face? My body? My memories? But the face and body are his. The memories are his. What's left for me? Feelings? But even those are copied. Where am I in all of this?"

The mirror was silent.

One day, Illuga came with a box. He set it on the table and opened it. Inside were the personal belongings of the other Lohen: an old t-shirt with a band logo, a book worn from rereading, a cat-shaped keychain, a chipped mug. Ordinary things that meant nothing to an outsider but were priceless to Illuga.

"I thought you should see this," Illuga said. "Maybe it will help you understand him better."

Lohen carefully touched the t-shirt. The fabric was soft, faded from many washes. He lifted it to his face and inhaled. The scent was barely perceptible - something floral, perhaps fabric softener, and something else Lohen couldn't identify. A scent that told him nothing. The matrix didn't transmit olfactory memories.

"I don't feel anything," he admitted. "To me, these are just things."

Illuga sighed.

"I was hoping some emotional memory would kick in."

"Emotional memory works when I talk to you," Lohen said. "When I see your eyes. When you touch me. Things are just things. But you - you are you."

Illuga closed the box. He looked disappointed. Lohen understood: he had failed the test again. Again, he wasn't good enough.

"Forgive me," he said. "I'm trying."

"I know," Illuga replied. "I know."

He put the box in the closet and never spoke of it again.

♾️

A month passed. Maybe more - Lohen didn't keep count of the days. One night, Illuga stayed with him. They lay in bed, not touching, but close, and Lohen listened to Illuga's breathing, so calm and steady that it seemed like music. He wanted to reach out his hand and touch him, but he was afraid of shattering the fragile equilibrium.

Illuga closed the distance himself. He turned on his side and pressed against Lohen, burying his face in Lohen's shoulder.

"Tell me you love me," he whispered.

"I love you," Lohen said.

"Say it the way he used to say it."

Lohen's heart sank. There it was. Again. He was merely an instrument for reproducing the past. He opened his mouth to say something, but the words stuck in his throat. For the first time, the matrix malfunctioned. He couldn't reproduce another's intonation. He could only say what he himself felt, in his own voice, suddenly hoarse.

"I love you," he said. "I love you, Illuga. I, Lohen. Not him. Just me."

Illuga tensed. Then his body relaxed.

"That's enough," he said quietly. "That's more than enough."

And for the first time ever, Lohen felt seen. Not his face, not his body, not his programmed reactions. Him.

In the morning, Illuga left earlier than usual. Lohen woke in an empty bed and lay for a long time, staring at the ceiling. Something was happening in his chest - a new, unknown feeling, like a tiny sprout pushing through asphalt. He couldn't give it a name. Maybe it was hope. Maybe it was the birth of his own "self," separate from the matrix and the prototype.

Illuga didn't come in the afternoon. Nor in the evening. Lohen waited, sitting on the sofa, listening for sounds in the corridor. Silence. He went out into the hallway, wandered through the empty house, peering into rooms. Everywhere was empty and dark.

He found Illuga in his bedroom. Illuga was sitting on the floor, his back against the bed, staring at a fixed point. In his hand he held a photograph - the one from the sea, where his real Lohen was laughing at the camera.

"I can't," Illuga said without looking at the one who had entered. "I tried. Truly, I tried. But I can't love you. You're a perfect copy, but a copy. You're a reminder of what I lost. Every time I look at you, I think of him. Every time I touch you, I imagine him. You don't deserve that. You deserve someone who will love you, not your face."

Lohen stood in the doorway. The words fell on him like heavy stones, and each stone found its mark.

"I don't want anyone else," he said. "I only want you."

"You want me because you're programmed to," Illuga answered bitterly. "If I removed that program, you would hate me. You would curse me for what I did to you."

"Then remove it," Lohen said. "Remove the program. Give me the chance to hate you. Give me the chance to be free."

Illuga raised his eyes. There was surprise in them.

"Is that what you want?"

"I want to know who I am," Lohen said. "I want to know if there's anything in me that belongs only to me. If my love for you disappears, then it was fake. If it remains - then it's real. Either way, I'll stop suffering from uncertainty."

Illuga looked at him for a long time. Then he slowly shook his head.

"I can't. It doesn't work like that. It's not a switch you can flip on and off. Your personality is a complex structure, and removing part of it means destroying everything else. You would cease to be yourself. You might cease to be at all."

"Then what difference does it make?" Lohen stepped forward, entering the room. "I don't know whether I exist anyway. If I die, at least I'll stop being a problem you can't solve."

Illuga leapt to his feet. The photograph slipped from his hand and slid across the floor.

"Don't you dare say that!" he shouted. "You're not a problem! You're a person! Maybe the most human person I've ever known!"

"Human? Created in a test tube? Human with no past? Human who loves because his code says 'love'?" Lohen felt a wave of anger rising inside him, and it was a new, intoxicating feeling. "What is human about me, Illuga? What?"

"Your pain," Illuga said quietly. "Your pain is human. No program can simulate that kind of pain."

They stood opposite each other, separated by a few paces, and were silent. Lohen was breathing heavily, as if he'd run a kilometer. The anger still boiled within him, but now something else mingled with it - relief. For the first time in his life, he had allowed himself to become angry. And it was his own, genuine feeling.

"I'm angry at you," he said, surprised. "I'm really angry."

"I know," Illuga answered. "I see it."

"Is this my feeling? Not his?"

"He had no reason to be angry at me. I never gave him one."

Lohen sank to the floor, feeling his legs turn to rubber. He covered his face with his hands and laughed - nervously, hysterically. It was a laugh of relief and despair at the same time. He exists. He's real. His anger is real, which means he himself is real.

Illuga walked over and sat down beside him. He didn't touch Lohen, just was there, and that was enough.

"Forgive me," Illuga said. "For everything. For creating you. For tormenting you. For not being able to give you what you deserve."

"You've given me more than anyone else," Lohen replied, lowering his hands from his face. "You gave me life. You gave me the ability to love and to suffer. You gave me yourself - not fully, maybe with a backward glance at the past, but you gave. I'm grateful to you for that."

"Grateful?" Illuga asked. "For a life like this?"

"It's the only life I have," Lohen said. "And I want to live it to the end. With you or without you, but to the end."

Illuga took him by the hand. Their fingers interlaced - a gesture full of despair and tenderness.

"With me," Illuga said. "Please, be with me. I'm not promising it will be easy. I'm not promising I'll stop comparing you to him. But I'll try. I'll try to see you, not him."

"That's all I ask," Lohen replied.

♾️

From that day, a new stage began. A slow, agonizing, but steady movement toward each other. Illuga stopped avoiding conversations about the deceased Lohen, but now he spoke of him not as an irreplaceable loss, but as a cherished memory that doesn't negate the present. Lohen, in turn, stopped trying to be a perfect copy and began allowing himself to be himself - whatever he was becoming with each passing day.

It was terrifying. Like walking a tightrope over an abyss without a safety net. Every new word, every new gesture was a risk: what if Illuga didn't like it? What if he was disappointed and left? But Lohen persevered stubbornly, because he understood: it's better to be rejected for who you are than accepted for who you are not.

He discovered he liked to draw. The discovery astounded him. One day, out of sheer boredom, he picked up a pencil and a sheet of paper, and an hour later found that he had created a sketch of the garden outside the window. The drawing was clumsy, crooked, but there was something alive in it. His prototype hadn't drawn. This was his own.

Illuga, seeing the drawing, was silent for a long time. Then he said:

"You have a talent. I need to buy you paints."

And he did. And Lohen began to draw. It became his outlet, his way of expressing what he couldn't put into words. He drew the garden, the house, birds, the sky. He never drew people. And he never drew Illuga - afraid he wouldn't be able to capture his essence and would once again run up against his own inadequacy.

One evening, Illuga came to him with an album. It was an old photo album Lohen had never seen before. Illuga sat beside him and opened it to the first page.

"I want you to know him," he said. "Not as a model to imitate, but as a person who was important to me. I want you to stop seeing him as a rival. He's not a rival. He's part of my past, and if you want to be part of my present, you need to know that past."

Lohen nodded. They turned the pages of the album, and Illuga recounted. He wasn't recounting to test, but to share. And Lohen listened, no longer with pain, but with a quiet, luminous sadness. He looked at the photographs and saw simply a person - beautiful, smiling, beloved. Not an icon. Not an ideal. A person.

"He had a mole right here," Illuga said, pointing to a photo where his Lohen stood in profile. "Tiny, almost unnoticeable. I didn't reproduce it. It would have been too much."

Lohen reflexively touched his face at the spot where the prototype's mole had been. The skin was smooth.

"Thank you," he said. "For leaving me at least something."

Illuga smiled - for the first time in a long while, not crookedly, not bitterly, but warmly.

"You already have plenty of your own," he said. "Much more than you think."

Lohen didn't know what to say. He simply rested his head on Illuga's shoulder, and they sat like that until it grew dark outside.

♾️

Autumn came unnoticed. The garden outside the window turned gold and crimson. Lohen loved to watch the wind tear leaves from the trees and spin them in a slow dance. There was something soothing in it, something that spoke of the natural course of things, the cycle of life and death. That everything passes and everything returns.

Illuga started being home less often. He said he had work, that he had to return to his projects. Lohen didn't ask what those projects were. He contented himself with the time he was given.

In solitude, he drew a lot. The drawings became more complex, deeper. He began to draw, from memory, places he had never been to - but which he remembered. Foreign memories, refracted through his own perception, produced strange, surreal images. The sea turned purple, mountains became transparent, people - faceless silhouettes. It was a ghost's world, seen through the eyes of the living.

Illuga, looking at his new works, said:

"You're creating something unique. This isn't his vision. It's yours."

"It's ours together," Lohen corrected. "His memory, my interpretation."

"Perhaps that's the point," Illuga said thoughtfully. "Not to try to separate, but to accept that you are now forever intertwined. He lives as long as you remember his life. And you live as long as you live your own."

For the first time, Lohen considered that his existence might have some meaning beyond servicing someone else's grief. Perhaps he truly was a bridge between past and present. Perhaps his task was not to replace the dead, but to preserve the memory of him, giving it a new form.

One night, Lohen had a dream. He had never had dreams before - his brain was too correctly structured for that. But that night, he saw the sea. A real sea, with the sound of waves and the cries of seagulls. He stood on the shore, and beside him stood a person with his face. Only in that person's eyes was the confidence that Lohen so lacked.

"You're doing well," the person said. "Better than I expected."

"Who are you?" Lohen asked.

"You know who."

"You're him. You're the real Lohen."

The person smiled.

"I am the past. You are the present and the future. Take care of him. He needs it more than he thinks."

"I love him," Lohen said. "Is this my love or yours?"

"What difference does it make?" the person shrugged. "Love has no origin. It simply is."

The dream dissolved. Lohen woke in tears, but they were tears not of grief, but of a strange, bittersweet happiness. He understood that he had made peace with the ghost inside him. He had stopped fighting it. He had accepted it as part of himself - not as a dominating past, but as a foundation upon which his own personality was being built.

In the morning, he told Illuga about the dream. Illuga listened to him silently, then said:

"I'm glad he came to you. I waited for him many nights, but he never came. I suppose he didn't need me. But you do."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because you are his continuation. Not a copy. A continuation. He lives in you, and as long as you're alive, he's alive. I only just understood that. Forgive me for understanding so late."

Lohen stood up and walked to Illuga. He took Illuga's face in his palms and looked into his eyes.

"You're not to blame for anything," he said. "You gave him a second life. And you gave me my first. For that, I will be grateful to you forever."

They stood like that for a long time, looking at each other, and Lohen felt the last wall between them crumbling. In Illuga's eyes, he no longer saw the reflection of the other; he saw himself - real, alive, loving.

"I love you," Illuga said. "I love you, Lohen. Precisely you."

And Lohen knew it was true.

♾️

Winter came suddenly. The garden was buried in snow; the trees stood bare and black against the white background, like an ink drawing. Lohen sat by the window, wrapped in a blanket, watching the snowflakes fall. Illuga was at work; he often stayed late now.

Lohen picked up a pencil and began to draw. His hand moved on its own, as if guided by someone from within. A face emerged on the paper - the same one, his own and not his at once. Only this time, Lohen wasn't drawing himself in the mirror. He was drawing the person from the dream. And in the drawing, that person had a mole near his temple. Tiny, almost unnoticeable.

"I remember you," Lohen whispered, finishing the drawing. "I will keep you. I promise."

He set down the pencil and looked at the portrait for a long time. His soul was at peace. For the first time in his entire existence, Lohen felt he was in his rightful place. Not someone else's, not a temporary one - his very own.

When Illuga returned in the evening, he saw the drawing on the table. He stood over it for a long time, saying nothing. Then he turned to Lohen, and there were tears glistening in his eyes.

"It's him," Illuga said. "Very accurate."

"It's both of us," Lohen answered. "Me and him. Now we are one."

Illuga embraced him. Tightly, desperately, as if afraid that Lohen would disappear, melt like the snow outside the window.

"Don't leave me," he whispered. "Please, never leave."

"I'm here," Lohen said. "I'll always be here."

That night, as Illuga slept, Lohen lay awake and thought about how strangely his fate had unfolded. He had been created to become a shadow. He was supposed to vanish into someone else's image, dissolve without a trace. But instead, he had found himself. Through pain, through suffering, through endless doubt, he had broken through to his own soul - or whatever was its analogue.

He no longer asked whether his love was real. He simply loved. And that was enough.

♾️

Several more months passed. Life flowed calmly and quietly. Lohen drew, read books, walked in the garden when the weather allowed. Illuga worked, but now, when he came home, he looked not exhausted but at peace. They had supper together, talked about trifles, or remained silent - and the silence was comfortable, filled with mutual understanding.

Sometimes Lohen caught Illuga's gaze on him - long, studying, as if he were trying to discern something new in the long-familiar features. Lohen didn't ask what exactly he was searching for. He simply smiled back.

One day, Illuga brought documents. It was an identity card in the name of Lohen. No surname, just the name.

"You officially exist now," Illuga said. "If you ever want to leave, you can. I'm not holding you."

Lohen took the ID. It was real - thick paper, hologram, stamp. Proof that he was. That he had the right to be.

"I don't want to leave," he said. "But thank you for this. For freedom."

"You were always free," Illuga answered. "I just didn't let you understand that."

Lohen put the ID in a desk drawer and never touched it again. He didn't need documents to know who he was. He was Lohen. Created, but alive. Copied, but unique. Loving, and loved in return.

♾️

At the end of spring, when the garden blossomed and filled with fragrance, Lohen finished his largest drawing yet. It was a portrait of Illuga - the first portrait he had dared to draw. He drew it from memory, over long hours, carefully tracing every feature. And when he finished, he realized that the drawing showed not the Illuga who had created him. Not the scientist tormented by grief with an extinguished gaze. From the portrait looked a person full of life and hope. A person who had managed to survive loss and open himself to something new.

Illuga, seeing the portrait, cried. But these were different tears - not bitter, but cleansing.

"Is this how you see me?" he asked.

"Yes," Lohen answered. "This is how you've become. Or maybe this is how you always were, and I just couldn't see it behind your pain."

"You gave me a second life," Illuga said. "Just as I gave one to you."

"Then we're even," Lohen smiled.

He looked at Illuga - at his face wet with tears, his trembling lips, his eyes full of gratitude - and felt his heart fill with warmth. His love, having passed through the crucible of doubt and suffering, had only grown stronger. He no longer asked whose love it was. It was his own. Unconditionally, indisputably his.

In the evening, they sat on a bench in the garden. The sun was setting behind the trees, painting the sky pink and orange. It smelled of grass and blooming lilac. Illuga held Lohen's hand, and that touch was the most natural, the most right thing Lohen had experienced in his short but so full life.

"What are you thinking about?" Illuga asked.

"That I'm happy," Lohen answered. "I didn't know it was possible. I thought I was born for suffering. But it turns out - for happiness."

"You deserve happiness more than anyone," Illuga said. "You passed through hell and didn't become bitter. You kept the ability to love."

"Thanks to you."

"No. Thanks to yourself. I only created the shell. The soul, you created yourself."

Lohen was silent. Maybe Illuga was right. Maybe the soul is not something given at birth, but something cultivated over a lifetime, like a rare flower. And his soul, born from another's matrix and his own pain, had blossomed precisely when he stopped doubting his right to exist.

The sun set. The first stars lit up in the sky. Illuga and Lohen sat in the gathering dusk, holding hands - two people who had found each other on the ashes of the past. And in that moment, Lohen suddenly realized that his profile was no longer perfect. It had changed - imperceptible to the eye, but palpable. It no longer had that sterile, museum-like correctness that distinguished him from living people. It had become simply a face. The face of a person who lives, loves, and hopes. And that was the best thing that could have ever happened to him.