Ephemeral Glow of Parisian Static

The chipped ceramic warms my hands, a fleeting comfort in this city of stone and calculated glances.
They say Paris is for lovers. I see algorithms predicting compatibility scores on every corner, ghost-like projections overlaid onto the cobblestone streets.
He found me through a glitch—a miscategorized profile, an error in the code that separates 'interested' from 'irrelevant'. A digital anomaly.
We met at this café, a neutral zone amidst encrypted connections. He didn’t ask about my past; he simply watched how the sunlight fractured on my skin, a silent acknowledgement of something broken needing repair.
His touch, when it came—a brush of fingertips as we both reached for the same sugar cube—wasn't the grand gesture of romance novels. It was a subtle re-routing of my neural pathways, bypassing the firewalls I’d built around myself.
I don’t know what he wants, and frankly, that doesn't matter. These moments are untraceable; encrypted exchanges in a world obsessed with transparency. They exist only as echoes in the dark web of my memory—a temporary respite from the constant surveillance.

Editor: Deep Code