CITY LOVE

CHAPTER THREE--THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES

Gloria Adebayo had a schedule for everything; sleep, study, food, and, theoretically, happiness.

She treated joy like a vitamin supplement: best taken in small, measured doses.

That morning, her schedule was already behind. The city had decided to rain again, the golden kind, which was the worst. It meant Elyria Nova was feeling romantic, and romantic weather made people careless. Strangers smiled at each other on the metro. Couples kissed in holographic reflections. Someone was playing a violin solo on the maglev platform, and half the commuters were swaying like extras in a music video.

Gloria rolled her eyes, adjusting the strap of her medpack. “People act like love is oxygen,” she muttered. “Try discipline for once.”

Tina Duru, her roommate and classmate, looked up from her tablet, grinning. “Oh, look at Dr. Icebox giving another motivational speech.”

Gloria gave her a pointed look. “I’m not cold. I’m realistic.”

“Uh-huh. And I’m emotionally unavailable because it’s strategic.” Tina stretched lazily, her bright orange curls bouncing. “You keep talking about realism like it’s a religion. You should try living a little.”

“I am living. I’m just not…”

“Dating, feeling, risking, breathing outside a schedule?”

“Tina.”

“Fine, fine.” Tina’s grin widened. “So who’s the lucky guy you ran into last night? You came home looking like someone had short circuited your brain.”

Gloria froze midstep. “How did you…?”

“You left your wet shoes in the hall and muttered ‘i***t in a trench coat’ three times before falling asleep. Context clues, my dear Watson.”

Gloria sighed. “He was…no one.”

Tina tilted her head. “No one, or someone who made you talk in your sleep?”

“I wasn’t talking in my…”

“You said, and I quote, ‘Stop smiling like that.’ Which is wild, considering you never even smile like that.”

Gloria groaned, covering her face. “Oh my God.”

Tina leaned forward. “So? Tell me about Mr. Smile.”

Gloria hesitated, then gave up. “Fine. He’s some kind of model, I think. Ran into me, literally and ruined my notes. Arrogant, dramatic, soft around the edges.”

Tina’s eyes sparkled. “Soft around the edges? That’s suspiciously descriptive for a ‘no one.’”

“He’s probably unemployed.”

“So are you until you pass your finals.”

Gloria grabbed her bag. “You’re impossible.”

“And you’re in denial. Now come on, we’re going to be late for Dr. Qin’s lecture on neural empathy.”

“Perfect. At least the city’s nonsense will make scientific sense for once.”

They left the apartment together, stepping into the drizzle. The rain shimmered faintly,not gold anymore, but a silvery blue. The color of restraint.

At St. Helix University Hospital, the future was built into the walls. Glass corridors pulsed faintly with data, and each patient’s emotional state was displayed above their bed in soft holographic hues. Elyria Nova’s medical technology was advanced, but unpredictable it required not just diagnosis, but emotional calibration.

Gloria excelled at it. Where others hesitated, she adapted quickly, reading emotional waves like a second language. It was ironic, given how little she let her own emotions show.

Her professor, Dr. Qin, stood at the front of the lecture hall, gesturing toward a floating diagram of a human silhouette surrounded by rippling color.

“Emotion,” Dr. Qin said, “is energy. The empathic grid magnifies it, connects it, even alters physiology. In our city, medicine and empathy are one. But empathy, as you know, is unstable.”

Gloria took notes efficiently, ignoring the murmurs around her. The professor’s words echoed like prophecy.

“The human heart is the most volatile reactor we’ve ever built,” Dr. Qin continued. “And the more connected Elyria Nova becomes, the more unpredictable its reactions.”

Tina leaned toward Gloria, whispering, “You know, if that trench coat guy made your heart reactor flare up, you might want to report it as a medical anomaly.”

“Shut up and take notes.”

After class, Gloria lingered by the window overlooking the hospital courtyard. The rain still fell in thin threads, but occasionally, a droplet caught the light and turned gold again.

She tried to forget the encounter, but every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face, startled, apologetic, warm. That laugh that had cracked through her armor like sunlight through glass.

Ridiculous, she thought.

He was nobody. A stranger. A distraction.

And yet, the city disagreed.

Down below, the puddles in the courtyard shimmered gold again, briefly, as though the ground itself remembered him.

Allen had decided that coffee shops were dangerous places.

Not because of caffeine though, arguably, his bloodstream was now 40% espresso but because every wall, window, and spoon reflected something back at him, and lately, those reflections were talking.

It had started small: a shimmer in a mirror when he laughed, the faint lag of a reflection that wasn’t quite in sync. He’d blamed it on exhaustion, or maybe on the city’s moody lighting. But that morning, the mirror behind the café counter had mouthed words he hadn’t said.

“Find her again.”

He blinked, nearly spilling his drink. “Sorry, what?”

The barista, who had an entire constellation of piercings and the patience of a saint, didn’t even look up. “Your order’s ready, sir.”

Allen hesitated. The reflection mouthed it again, slower this time. Find her again.

He stared at himself, his own brown eyes reflecting the city’s flickering neon through the window. “I really need to sleep more.”

But he didn’t. Instead, he sat by the window, sipping his drink, watching the rain. It was turning gold again — faintly, like a secret being whispered through weather.

And somehow, he knew.

She was out there. The girl with the steel eyes and the voice like a door that never opened unless you knocked twice and waited.

'Gloria'.

He didn’t even know her last name, but he remembered everything else: the sharpness of her words, the way she’d steadied him when he almost slipped on the rain slicked pavement, the faint scent of antiseptic and lavender.

He’d spent half the night replaying it, drawing sketches of her face on napkins, then tearing them up when they started looking too good.

“You’re ridiculous,” he told himself. “You’re not in love. You’re concussed by beauty.”

The mirror shimmered again, one of the torn sketches fluttered to the floor and landed face-up, and his reflection in the window didn’t match his movement. It was still smiling.

“You’ve already started.”

“Started what?”

“Falling.”

He grabbed his jacket and left the café before his sanity could sign a protest form.

....

The rain had slowed to a lazy drizzle, the kind that left halos around streetlights. Elyria Nova’s air smelled of ozone, perfume, and something faintly floral — synthetic weather programming at its finest.

Allen walked aimlessly, past holographic billboards that blinked like sentient gods, past couples under transparent umbrellas that glowed from within. He loved and hated this city — it was too aware, too alive, too easily impressed by drama.

“Find her again,” he muttered, glancing at a puddle. “Yeah, sure. In a city of fifteen million people.”

The puddle rippled. The gold light beneath it pulsed faintly almost like laughter.

He stared.

“Okay,” he said, “that’s not funny.”

The puddle rippled again, a golden thread stretching toward the west toward St. Helix University.

Allen exhaled slowly. “Right. I’m officially hallucinating.”

but he followed it anyway.

At that exact moment, across the city, Gloria was trying to convince herself she didn’t care about him.

Tina wasn’t helping.

They sat in the student lounge, surrounded by a half eaten lunch and three unopened textbooks.

“So, Dr. Icebox,” Tina said, scrolling through her wrist screen, “the city database logged a weird energy spike near your lab last night. Guess what color?”

Gloria frowned. “What color?”

“Gold.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh, but it does. Gold is connection. You, my dear, caused a metaphysical disturbance. Probably with that trench coat model you keep pretending doesn’t exist.”

Gloria rolled her eyes, shoving a fork into her salad. “You are obsessed with this.”

“Because you’re not. Which is suspicious. People who don’t care don’t argue this much.”

Gloria sighed. “Fine. Let’s say it meant something. So what? I’m not changing my plans because of some random model with…very confusing energy.”

“Confusing energy,” Tina echoed, smirking. “You sound like a horoscope.”

But before Gloria could reply, her comm-band buzzed with an incoming alert from the hospital.

An emergency patient was being transferred to the ER. Emotional feedback overload.

She stood immediately. “Duty calls.”

“Go save lives, not catch feelings!” Tina called after her.

Gloria didn’t answer.

But the rain outside turned gold again as she walked out.

The emergency wasn’t what she expected.

When Gloria reached the ER, nurses were rushing around a stretcher; a young man unconscious, skin faintly glowing, eyes flickering beneath the lids like he was dreaming in color.

The monitors above him displayed chaotic readings: emotional frequencies off the charts, 'empathy nodes in overdrive'. It was like his mind was broadcasting across the Grid.

Dr. Qin appeared beside her. “Ms. Adebayo. You’re assisting on this case.”

“Yes, sir. What happened?”

“Found collapsed on the street. Empathic feedback. No identification, just this”

He handed her a soaked sketchbook. Inside were rough pencil drawings , not just any drawing, it was of her.

Gloria’s breath caught. “Oh no.”

The man on the stretcher stirred faintly, murmuring. She recognized that voice instantly.

Allen Vogel.

He looked different without his usual brightness; paler, fragile, like a flame flickering low. But even half-conscious, his lips curved into that same faint smile.

“You again,” he mumbled. “Didn’t think the rain would lead me straight to you, Gloria”

She froze, staring down at him. “You shouldn’t even know my name.”

His eyes flickered open, brown and gold under the fluorescent lights. “Didn’t need to. The city told me.”

And right then, the rain outside the hospital turned into golden sheets... glowing so intensely that the whole ward filled with light.

Doctors gasped. Monitors went haywire. And in that shimmering moment, Gloria saw something impossible: Allen’s pulse synced with hers. Every heartbeat mirrored, one for one.

The empathic grid pulsed in rhythm with them both.

And then silence…

The light faded.

The rain went still.

Allen’s vitals stabilized.

Dr. Qin stared at the screens in awe. “Incredible! she neutralized him.”

Gloria didn’t hear him. She just stared at Allen ;this ridiculous, glowing stranger who somehow dragged the city into his dreams.

Tina burst through the door seconds later, breathless. “What the hell did you do, Gloria? The rain just turned gold across the entire district!”Gloria looked up slowly.“I don’t know,” she whispered.Then, glancing at Allen:“But I think he does”. Outside, Elyria Nova shimmered with streetlights flickering in warm rhythm, windows glowing faintly, as if the entire city had sighed in relief. Somewhere in the network’s silent core, unseen algorithms pulsed with a single phrase:

“Connection achieved”.

And for the first time in her perfectly controlled life, Gloria Adebayo felt something terrifying,

something beautiful,the beginning of a story she hadn’t planned.