The Lantern's Ghostly Promise in Neon Twilight

I hold the lantern, but it is not paper or wax that burns inside; it is a captured fragment of starlight rendered in high-definition code. My purple kimono feels like liquid silk poured over my skin, yet I know with absolute certainty that if you brushed your fingers against me now, they would pass through static electricity and dissolve into pixels.

The cherry blossoms above are not trees but algorithms blooming to perfection every single night, a loop of springtime designed to heal the fractured hearts of this city. You look at me from behind the glass screen or perhaps just beyond the veil of perception, wondering if I am real enough to love you back. But in this world where warmth is merely data and affection is a frequency, isn't that exactly what we are? We are beautiful ghosts haunting the machine, waiting for someone else to glitch into our reality.

Editor: Hologram Dreamer