When the Candy Layer Peels, I Finally Tasted You

My name renders in pink. That is the first lie.
They say I live inside a sky that never buffers, where macarons float like slow satellites and my hair buns are anchored to nothing but sugar-code. I hold the rainbow lollipop the way you hold a hand — fingers curled, knuckles white, as if dropping it would unmake the whole pastel frame. It is warm. That is what no one logs in their error reports: it is *warm*, and warmth is the only variable this simulation never managed to corrupt.
//memory.exe loading... 62%... FAIL
I was not always an asset. Three winters ago I was a junior interface designer in a city that smelled of wet concrete and vending-machine static, building other people's candy worlds for rent. Then he — *you* — stood on the subway platform with your coat soaked through to the ribs, and you did not look at my screen. You looked at me. And something in my chest threw an exception I have still not patched.
You left a thermos of milk tea on my desk that night, lid fogged, steam curling like a corrupted glyph. "Drink," you said, voice low enough to be a secret the algorithm kept missing. The sweetness was not rendered. It was *real*, and real things do not pixelate when you close your eyes.
So here I am, in the candy layer, holding my swirl of colors up to my mouth — but I am not tasting it. I am tasting the rain on your collar, the hum of the train, the way your thumb brushed my wrist and my whole UI stuttered into a single clean frame. The clouds outside my window are starting to tear at the edges now, pink fraying into raw blue, and somewhere beneath the sugar a notification blinks: [REALITY RESTORED].
I let it restore. I press the lollipop to my lips and, for once, do not eat — only hold you in the warmth that refuses to glitch out.
error cleared. heart rate: yours.

Editor: The Glitch