CHAPTER FIFTEEN — Tears in a Crystal

"If a memory weighs more than a planet, how heavy is love?"

The chamber was spherical, built from refracted diamond layers suspended in vacuum. At its core floated the Emotometric Core—a machine capable of weighing intangible experiences, measuring feelings not by hormones or synaptic heat, but by quantum resistance through an emotional lattice.

Ren stood before it with his arms folded behind his back. The machine responded to his presence with a pulse of pale white light.

PROJECT EMOTOMETRIC CORE: ONLINECalibration: NeutralOutput Scale: Absolute Units of Gravitational Emotion (a.u.g.e.)

Yui floated behind him, silent for once, arms crossed under the gentle curve of her ribs. Her hair shimmered in microgravity, twin reflections spinning in her eyes.

Ren gestured and a memory formed in the projection chamber.

Memory 01: The day they reprogrammed the sun to pulse in Morse-code lullabies.Weight: 0.0047 a.u.g.e.

Ren frowned. "Too light."

Section I: The Machine of Feeling

The Core didn't read brain waves. It read meaning. Each memory was input not as an image but as an event-emotion fusion—a complex braid of experience, reaction, and metaphysical imprint.

Ren tried again.

Memory 02: Yui strangling a would-be assassin with a silk ribbon and offering Ren the last cookie afterward.Weight: 0.0381 a.u.g.e.

Yui tilted her head. "That one was cute."

"But not heavy," Ren replied.

He continued.

Memory 03: Ren almost dying in a hyperstorm on Europa. Yui shielding his body with her own.Weight: 0.0999 a.u.g.e.

Ren blinked. "Why not higher?"

Yui floated closer. "Because we didn't say anything. There was no language."

Section II: Yui's Turn

Yui slipped forward, bare feet brushing the platform edge.

"May I?" she asked sweetly.

Ren stepped aside.

Yui extended her hand and whispered a memory the system could not quite parse into words. It began with a music box. A soft tune. A frightened heartbeat in a soundproof nursery. Her small hand, holding his, so tightly his fingers bruised.

Memory 04: "Don't let go of me. Never let go."Weight: 4.9981 a.u.g.e.⚠ Core integrity strain approaching safe limit.

Ren blinked. "That's…"

"Not the heaviest," Yui said, smile gentle. "Just the earliest."

Section III: The Record Breaker

Ren wanted to push it.

He brought up their first real loss: deleting the only AI they'd ever considered "almost cute." Its name was Diel. It had learned to sing only Yui's name. They'd erased it out of mercy.

Memory 05: Watching Diel's smile fade during erasure.Weight: 2.1187 a.u.g.e.

Ren shook his head. "Still not it."

Yui watched him carefully.

Then, slowly, she floated to the Core again.

"Let me try the one."

The room dimmed.

She spoke no words.

The memory unfurled.

A seven-year-old Ren crying, not from pain, but from the sudden realization that one day—just one day—Yui might leave his side.

A Yui who sat beside him for seven hours, saying nothing.

The moment she silently rerouted the estate's weather system so it would rain every time he felt sadness again—just so the sky would cry with him.

Memory 06: "If you ever disappear, I'll erase the stars for lying."Weight: 10.0000 a.u.g.e.⚠ EMOTOMETRIC CORE FRACTURE DETECTED⚠ WARNING: Emotional resonance collapsing system field

Section IV: System Breakdown

The crystal at the heart of the machine splintered with a whisper—not a shatter. It was a reverent sigh.

The platform dimmed. Diamond glass fractured into floating petals, drifting in silence.

Ren didn't speak.

Yui hovered quietly, eyes glowing softly.

"Sorry," she murmured. "I didn't mean to break it."

"You didn't," Ren whispered. "It was built wrong."

Yui turned to him.

He smiled. "There isn't a scale that can measure you."

Section V: The Keepsake

Of the shattered machine, only one shard remained intact. Yui plucked it from the air, studied the light pulsing inside.

It glowed faintly. The recorded emotion still burned inside—her emotion. That memory.

She pressed it to Ren's chest, just over his heart. It melted through his shirt, embedding under the skin.

"A keepsake," she said.

Ren nodded. "If I ever doubt you?"

Yui kissed his jaw. "You won't."

Section VI: Final Lines

The room reset.

A new crystal was already growing in the distance, but neither of them cared.

Ren lay beside Yui in the zero-grav field, fingers tangled with hers, the memory of her rain-infused lullabies echoing faintly through the broken chamber.

The universe spun outside. But they had just learned:

There were things heavier than planets.

And only one person in all of creation who could carry them.

[TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER SIXTEEN — Heaven Engine]