My OP Minion System in the Apocalypse

Let me ask you a question.

How does someone fall in love?

We've all seen romanticised love at first sight all over the media.

But that simply doesn't exist right?

If I got you to walk down a long road with people standing on either side, would you suddenly fall in love with any of them?

No, right?

You can consider them pretty, you can consider them attractive, but in the end, that's just an appearance. There's no secret connection between two people who've never met.

So how does someone fall in love?

Can two people suddenly develop a magic connection, succeeding space and time, linking them together like a soft, fluffy chain?

No, right? Magic doesn't exist.

As cliche as it sounds, love is just a human thought process.

It's a feeling where two people feel inseparable, where they are willing to spend any and all the time they have with each other.

But isn't that in itself fundamentally flawed?

Any other relationship like that would be toxic. An alcoholic who can't function without alcohol, who feels connected to alcohol would be considered unhealthy. A shut-in who spends most of their day playing video games, craving it like an illicit substance would be considered unhealthy.

All healthy relationships require space, you say?

With all these counteracting elements, what is love?

Can you really love something with all your heart without being crushed? Regardless, we are getting side-tracked.

If love isn't something that is developed supernaturally, then how is it developed?

Maybe love is developed by an unrepayable favour, like a princess saved by a knight in shining armour? But that in itself sounds wrong.

Love is not meant to be an infinite guilt but an unconditional acceptance.

**

The first to fall in love loses.

It wasn't like nobody ever liked me. There were still people who confessed to me, but they were never the people I liked. At first, I thought that this was just bad luck.

But this was obviously no coincidence, love in its most fundamental form is established by forming a genuine connection.

That's why it is so much easier to fall in love with your friend than it is with a stranger.

Love is already in the air when you already have a working relationship. You're merely building on top of an already stable foundation instead of starting from scratch.

So, can you manufacture love?

I'm not talking about making someone fall in love with you. What I wanted to find out was

can you manufacture love within yourself?

This itself is extended from the idea of love at first sight. You simply input the idea of love into your head when you see the person.

In love at first sight, the subtle glance from a cute person. Instead of letting your brain accept that as a mere glance from a stranger you think

Maybe we have a connection?

This is when you subconsciously claw yourself into a rabbit hole which gets harder to get out the deeper you go.

You didn't have a connection with this person, you made yourself think you did.

This is why I spent the very last three years of my life fawning for a girl who barely even knew me.

Actually, that would be a lie.

I didn't really like her either. Not in a cliché way.

I only pretended to like her.

I lied to the people around me, I lied to her and I lied to myself.

That's why it felt different, there was no foundation or even a base. It was just the walls of a house placed on the dirt of the ground.

It was funny, why her? I thought she was somewhat cute, but that was it. Aside from one time when she sat next to me on the bus, I had practically no experience with her.

I had no problem with it, though. Despite everything, my artificial affection for her gave me a little bit more motivation every morning.

In the meantime, I had actually been through many more romantic experiences.

It wasn't until after that, that I realised, maybe I was the outlier. That I was the one different from everyone else, not the other way around.

*

It was a cold, crisp afternoon like any other. I was sitting on my couch, happily texting some friends. There was this girl who used to always start texts with me, with a naive 'hi' or maybe something more extravagant like 'hey'.

I thought of it as nothing much.

She's just a talkative person, I guess.

Obviously, in hindsight, that was not the reason. Partially because I was consumed in another world coveting another girl, one who had already consumed all of my thoughts.

People really are blind when it comes to something regarding themselves.

I wouldn't break my rock-hard defence of innocence until a message, practically punching me in the face and then kicking me whilst I was on the ground, was sent to me.

'The person I like is you.'

Oh yeah, I get it now.

It was years too late. It wasn't even that I didn't like her. I actually liked her very much since primary school, but that changed nothing.

There was someone else I 'liked'.

My mind was being eviscerated by a monster generated by my own selfish desires hidden under a façade of innocence and childishness. However uncomfortable it was to accept, my almost broken yearning for her was as healthy as one thing could be.

It was like a respectful distance between the crude concept which is romantic relationships.

I never got too close, I was not addicted. It was like a subtle boost of energy at periodic moments in the day when I would see her and think.

Cute.

Nothing less, nothing more.

Is this what love is?

Could this really be love in its purest form?

Something as unimportant and irrelevant as a subtle craving formed by a hole in one's heart, could something like this really be love?

Love at first sight.

What a fluid yet unreachable ideal.

Despair.

The space left open within the darkness of one's heart.

Hahahahahahahahaha.

Is this really it?

Hahahahahahahahaha.

Tell me,

how does someone fall in love?

Maybe I'll find out in the future.

***

"Oliver, stop talking about such superficial things... it's cringe."

"Hey! It's not superficial... why do you always have to be such a downer, Noah?"

The second-rank and third-rank humans sat beside each other, looking out into the forest.

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