Before her, my life was a single-player game polished to a blinding sheen. I knew my map by heart: the gray subway line, the humming office open space, the three familiar bars that rotated menus every Friday. My skill tree had long been leveled to absurdity: “Sarcasm” at level 100, “Art of the impassive face” at expert, “Ability to tell good whiskey from bad” at master.

I wasn’t a bad player. I cleared the daily quests “Deadline,” “Survive the meeting,” and “Fake interest.” I farmed loot in the shape of salary. Sometimes I took on side missions like “Go on a date,” “Visit the parents.” But I could always feel invisible walls trimming the map and knew there was nothing beyond them. I was my own predictable character inside my own world.

And then she crashed my session. No invite, no warning. She simply appeared on my map, and the world around me started redrawing itself in real time.

It was an update that unlocked hidden content. Turned out I’d been wandering all this time inside the starter zone. Turned out my game had always been a co-op - I’d just been playing it solo, unaware of the second, grayed-out button in the main menu.

With her, my world map detonated. The dreary park behind my building became a location with rare clover artifacts. The nighttime city, once a bundle of streetlights, transformed into a quest zone for hunting constellations. I discovered entire branches in my skill tree I’d never noticed because they were marked in gray: “Requires second player.”

All at once I unlocked skills like “Talk nonsense as if it saves the world” and “Laugh until you cry.” I opened the talent “Read her mood by the lift of an eyebrow.” I earned the achievement “Stay silent together as if you’re listening to the best music on Earth.”

She didn’t pull me out. She handed me a key to every door inside myself. I didn’t become someone else. I became myself in 8K resolution. I was the same program, but running on brand-new, powerful hardware, and my code finally stopped lagging.

And then… then a small caption blinked in the corner of the screen: “Player 2 has left the game.”

No explosion, no drama. Just a system notification.

And the world didn’t simply collapse. It turned itself inside out. All those vast, radiant locations we unlocked together stayed on the map. But now I saw them like a ghost sees the house it once lived in. I could look, but I couldn’t enter. Every gate carried an invisible lock that read: “This content requires a party of two.”

I opened my skill tree. All those vivid talents faded back to gray and inactive. “Talk complete nonsense” now triggered only awkward silence. “Reading the mood” slammed into a wall of unfamiliar faces.

That’s when I understood what real pain is.

I didn’t miss her. Or rather, not only her. I ached for the version of myself that exists only in co-op. I was a tourist wandering the ruins of my own potential. I walked the streets and saw a ghost - not of her, but of me. That me. The one who could spot constellations in a puddle.

Friends said, “Find another player.” They didn’t get it. It’s not about filling an empty slot. It’s that the specific build with that unique patch will never boot again. Any other player will mean another game. Maybe a good one. But another.

Sometimes, late at night, I open my main menu. I run the quests, grind my drab “Sarcasm” up to level 101. And then my eyes fall on it - that same button in the corner. It’s still there. Gray, inactive, like an old scar.

The button labeled “Co-op.”

And I realize that hell isn’t playing alone. Hell is playing alone while every cell in you remembers exactly what it feels like to play together.