I had come to the cafe looking for someone, but what I had found was just a toy.
I realize I had loved this person once, in that leap-of-understanding way so common in dreams.
So this is how it ends, huh? I thought, leaving the cafe. Not a name or a memory of your own. Not even a gender. Just a bit of human brain in a grubby plastic shell and a painted smile.
I had failed to see the small portrait on one of the paneled
columns. Two figures, myself stood in the upper right looking dour yet
somhow happy. The other was the person I had loved when they were still
human. She was smiling broadly and happily.
Who put up that photo? Did the toy stare at it after-hours thinking Those two look so happy, not realizing it used to be one of them?
