Flawed Utopia | Hyunlix

Chapter 3

"What?" Completely startled, I touch the screen and the face dissolves under my fingertips, pixelated into specks that look like dust. Words appear but before I can read them the screen goes completely blank. Again.

"What's going on?" I say out loud. The port screen stairs blank I feel blank too. This is 1000 times worse than the empty screen last night. I knew what that meant then, I have no idea what this means now. I've never heard of this happening. I don't understand, the society doesn't make mistakes but what else could this be? No one has two matches.
" Felix?" Chan close to me through the door.
"I'm coming" I call out tearing the microcard from the port and shoving it into my pocket, I take one deep breath and then open the door.

"So I learned from your microcard that you like cycling" Chan says formally as I close the door behind me, making me laugh a little in spite of what just happened? I hate cycling it's the worst out of all the exercise options and he knows it. We argue about it all the time, I think it's stupid to go riding on something that doesn't move, spinning, your wheels, endlessly. He points out that I like to run on the tracker which is almost the same thing. "it's different" tell him, but I can't explain why.

Did you spend all day staring at my face on the port screen? He asks, he's still joking but suddenly I can't catch my breath. He viewed his microcard. Was my face the one he saw? It feels so strange to be hiding something, especially from him.
"Of course not it's Saturday remember, I had to work" Itry to tease.
"I did too, but that didn't stop me. I read all your stats and reviewed all the courtship guidelines." Unknowingly he throws me a lifeline with those words. I am not drowning in worries anymore. I'm neck deep and it still washes over me in cold waves but now I can breathe, he still thinks we matched. Nothing strange happened to him when he viewed his microcard, that's something at least. "You read all the guidelines?"
"of course didn't you?"
"not yet" I feel stupid admitting this but Chan laughs again.
"They're not very interesting" he says, "except for one" he winks at me, tilting his head with it, the classic Chan wink, so dramatic like always . "Oh?" I say distracted. I see other teens our age gathering on our street, walking to the game centre like us, they're waving wearing the same clothes we wear, but there's a difference tonight. Some are watching, their eyes glance at us, then flick away only to look back. I'm not used to it we're not outsiders. But I feel separated now, as though a clear thin wall has risen distinctly between myself and those staring at me we can see each other, but we can't crossover.

"Are you alright?" Chan asks.
Too late, I realise that I should've responded to his comment and asked him which guidelines he found interesting. If I can't pull myself together soon he'll know something's wrong, we know each other too well. Chan reaches for my elbow as we turned the corner and leave the boroughs. When we have walked a few steps more, he slides his hand down my arm, linking his fingers with mine. He leans closer to my ear.
"One of the guidelines said that we are allowed to express physical affection if we want." And I do want, even with all the stress I feel the touch of his hand against mine with nothing to separate us is still welcome and new. I'm surprised that Chan is so natural at this, and as we walk I begin to recognise the emotion that I see on some of the faces of those staring at us. It's jealousy, pure and simple. I relax a little because I can understand why, none of us ever thought we would have golden, charismatic, clever Chan. We always knew he would be matched with another person in another city, another province, but he's not he's matched with me. I keep my fingers locked as we walk towards the centre. If I don't let go, maybe it will prove that we are meant to be matched, that the other face on the screen means nothing that it was simply a momentary malfunction of the microcard. Except the face I saw, the face that was not Chan, I knew him too.
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Sorry for not updating in a while I was sick and got busy with uni. I have an ITZY concert this Tuesday so I may double update for u guys now to make up for that and the missed updates. I'll try my best to get back to the schedule I said I would have for updates.