They call it “owning” someone. The game gives you a collar, a screen, and a set of commands. But no one warns you that the first time she flinches at your touch, you feel something crack inside your chest.

In the end, you are not her master. You are her witness. And she—this quiet, scarred girl—has made you more human than any freedom ever could.

There is a morning, weeks in, when she touches you first. A small, trembling hand on your sleeve. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t need to. In that single gesture, the entire architecture of “ownership” collapses. Who owns whom now? You are bound by her fragility. You wake up thinking about her breakfast. You cancel plans to sit in comfortable silence. You have become, without noticing, a caretaker in a cage of your own making.