Chapter 165: A Question Louis Cannot Answer

Freya asked Louis a question over breakfast.

"If I hadn't changed, would you have loved her?"

Louis knew immediately who she meant.

The original Freya.

He put down his coffee.

"Why are you asking?"

"I don't know."

That was not entirely true.

Reading the old interview transcripts and preserving the design sketches had made the original woman feel more real. Freya had stopped seeing her as a foolish side character.

With empathy came an uncomfortable question.

Had Freya received a life that should have belonged to someone else?

Louis took his time answering.

"I don't know."

Freya appreciated the honesty even though it hurt.

"Our marriage was distant," he continued. "I didn't dislike her. I also didn't understand her."

"Would you have tried?"

"Maybe too late."

The original novel said Freya would leave after his bankruptcy. Adrian's model gave it a ninety-six-percent probability.

But neither prediction answered what might have happened if someone had interrupted the pattern differently.

Freya looked down.

"I sometimes feel guilty."

"For surviving?"

"For being happier in her life than she was."

Louis reached across the table.

"You didn't choose what happened."

"No."

"But you choose what you do now."

Freya smiled faintly. "Very Beyond the Algorithm of you."

"I read the series."

"Disturbing."

Louis squeezed her hand.

He could not tell Freya whether he would have loved the original woman.

No one could.

That unanswered possibility belonged to a future that never happened.

Later, Freya visited the design scholarship program established in Louis's grandmother's name. Students had displayed concept boards across a gallery.

One project focused on grief-sensitive housing for people rebuilding after disaster.

Freya stood before it for a long time.

The student designer explained that people often needed control over small environmental choices after losing control over major parts of life.

Freya thought about the original woman's shopping.

The bags.

The clothes.

The desperate attachment to expensive objects after betrayal and loss.

Perhaps those purchases had been her way of controlling something.

Freya returned home and opened the box containing the three bags she had kept.

She had planned to preserve them simply as memories of her awakening.

Now she chose one and placed it beside the original design portfolio.

Not as evidence of greed.

As evidence of survival, however imperfect.

Louis found her there.

"Did you get your answer?"

"No."

"Is that okay?"

Freya thought about it.

"Yes."

Not every question needed a rewritten past.

Some needed compassion for the person who never got the chance to answer them herself.

Freya closed the box.

Then she went downstairs with Louis.

Their future was waiting, and unlike the past, it could still respond.

That night, Freya wrote a few paragraphs about the original woman in a private journal. She did not call her shallow or foolish. She wrote about fear, grief, pride, and the expensive armor she had built around herself. The description felt fairer.

Freya made a note of the development and returned to the practical work in front of her. She had learned that a complicated life became manageable only when she separated what she knew, what she suspected, and what she could actually do next. Louis respected that habit, even when his instinct was to solve everything immediately. For now, they chose the next useful step and left the unanswered part where it belonged.

Freya made a note of the development and returned to the practical work in front of her. She had learned that a complicated life became manageable only when she separated what she knew, what she suspected, and what she could actually do next. Louis respected that habit, even when his instinct was to solve everything immediately. For now, they chose the next useful step and left the unanswered part where it belonged.