I Wrote Seven Years Of Letters Answered By AI Chapter 06

I Wrote Seven Years Of Letters Answered By AI Chapter 06

Three days after vanishing, I signed the lease on a tiny apartment in this new city.

It was a modest one-bedroom, with a bright south-facing window bathed the room in sunlight.

The landlady was incredibly kind; she’d hung curtains ahead of my move and left two potted green vines as a welcome gift.

I picked up a local SIM card and bought a brand-new phone. After transferring all work files off my old device, I wiped it completely with a factory reset.

On the fourth night, I logged into Instagram one last time on the old phone.

My message threads were buried under a mountain of unread notifications.

Carter had messaged me from three different accounts of our friends, his tone shifting repeatedly from sharp accusations to desperate pleas.

His most recent text had been sent two hours prior.

[Iris, what do you want from me? Name your price, I’ll agree to anything.]

I ignored him and scrolled further up.

Voice memos from his mother threaded the chat, her initial resentment giving way to tearful begging.

“Iris, even if you’re furious, you can’t run off like this. Carter hasn’t slept a wink these past two days. Where on earth are you? Just pick up the phone, I’m begging you.”

I finished listening and exited her chat window.

A little further down sat a message from Summer.

[Iris, I heard you left town? Mr. Rushton hasn’t stepped foot in the lab for days, and the whole project’s falling apart. Did you misunderstand something between us? Carter and I are strictly student and mentor. Please come back—he still cares about you deep down.]

Reading her words felt eerily familiar.

It was the exact manipulative logic she’d used back in the lab, when Carter had stood over her guiding her through tea brewing, and she’d cooed that he treated everyone the same way.

On the surface she sounded like she was mediating peace, yet every sentence reeked of smugness over her special place by his side.

I typed a single reply to her.

[There’s no misunderstanding. He’s your professor, so enjoy learning from him. My spot’s open now—feel free to take it.]

The second I hit send, I blocked her too.

I was about to close Instagram entirely when an incoming call from Carter popped up.

He had a seldom-used private account. I’d missed this account, so I never blocked it.

I hesitated for two full seconds before answering.

A long silence stretched over the line, then Carter’s hoarse voice crackled through the speaker. “Iris. You finally picked up.”

I leaned against the windowsill and said nothing.

He fell quiet again for several beats.

“Which city are you in? I’ll come find you.”

“Don’t bother,” I replied flatly.

He pressed on. “I know you’re hurt, Iris. But can you just come home so we can talk everything through face-to-face?”

“There’s nothing left to talk through,” I said evenly.

His breathing grew heavy and ragged all at once. “Then tell me—why did you delete your email? Why erase all my training data?”

Listening to his accusation drove home the cold truth: even now, all he cared about was that dataset.

“Carter, those files were every letter I ever wrote you. To you, they’re just corpus material for your research model. To me, they were seven years of my heart laid bare. Every handwritten card, every line saying I missed you—you fed every single word to an algorithm without reading a single one yourself.”

A heavy silence hung on the line for ages.

Then he spoke, guilt thick in his tone. “I did read them.”

“Who are you trying to fool?” My voice stayed far calmer than I expected.

“I walked in on your assistant tuning the model right in front of me.
My cards were the test samples. I saw the tags clear as day: heartfelt surprises labeled as low-priority daily input, my tears assigned to a one-click comfort response template. Carter, you used my feelings as training date.”

He fell completely speechless.

Nearly a full minute passed before he lowered his voice to mumble an apology.

“I was wrong about that. But Iris, the AI was just a tool. The sentiment behind every reply was still mine. I just didn’t have spare time to write them out fully, so I let the model polish the wording for me.”

I almost laughed out loud at that ridiculous excuse.

“Polish the wording? You never knew when I wrote each card, never read a single line inside. The whole process—receiving my notes, analyzing them, drafting replies—ran fully automated from start to finish. Where exactly did your ‘core thoughts’ factor in?”

“Or are generic lines like Got it, honey, you’ve worked hard, I’ll make it up next week supposed to pass as genuine feelings?”

He stayed silent.

I kept going. “Do you know what’s the most bitter irony of all? You told me mature people shouldn’t cling to trivial formalities, yet you memorized Summer’s hatred of metal stirring spoons. You claimed you had no time to write me letters, yet stayed up late carving a custom wooden tea spoon just for her.”

“It was never about time. You simply never wanted to spend it on me.”

A dull thud echoed through the phone, like his fist slamming hard against a desk.

Carter’s voice started trembling. “That tea spoon was just a standard lab welcome gift. I give one to every new intern who joins the team.”

“Is that so?” I asked calmly. “What did you give the intern before Summer, then?”

He had no retort.

We both knew the last student had received nothing at all.

“I don’t want to argue with you anymore, Carter. Over seven years I wrote you more than two hundred handwritten cards, and you never penned a single reply with your own hands.”

“My email’s gone, the data’s wiped, my coffee shop’s sold. Every single thread tying us together has been cut clean.”

His voice shot up sharply. “You sold the shop too?”

“I signed the transfer contract three days ago.”

Dead silence swallowed the call.

After a long pause, Carter spoke again, desperate. “Don’t do anything rash, Iris. We can buy the café back, I don’t care about the lost data anymore. Just tell me where you are, and I’ll drive there immediately. Let’s start over—please.”

Hearing those seven-years-too-late words stirred nothing inside me, no warmth, no longing.

“No.”

I hung up the call, deleted my Instagram account, and powered my old phone down for good.