He was in no hurry. At the age of 59, I had learned that things that are cooked over low heat taste better. I also knew that sometimes, even when cooking well, rice burns. But that hadn't stopped him.

He lived alone, wrote stories that no one asked him to, and edited images with the same dedication with which others make promises of eternal love. He was good at that. Not so much in the promises, but in the light effects and in removing backgrounds without leaving hard edges.

One day, while checking his emails, he found one of those promotional ones: "Do you want to find true love?" Although the sentence was absurd, it seemed honest to him. It clicked. After all, I had tried everything except an app called: algoserio.io. He installed it, put together his profile with a photo on which the filter worked wonders, and wrote:
"Editor of images / Caster of stories / and of pods too / Sometimes poet / Sometimes burnt rice.”

A woman wrote to him. Her name was Amanda. She was 49 years old, perfect smile, hair with unruly loops, and a bio that said: "Made with gluten and sarcasm."He fell, roundly like a good fan of contradictions.

After a few weeks of exchanging messages, they decided to see each other. The appointment was at a design fair. He arrived on time, with a more or less ironed shirt and wrinkled nerves too. She appeared all tasty, with the sure step of one who already knows what he wants.

They talked about everything. About how cemeteries are more poetic than sad, about his taste for cat reels in existential crisis, about how Canva filters were a tool for good if they were known to be used in moderation. She was laughing a lot. He didn't know what to do to get rid of Bobo's face.

And just when I thought nothing could ruin it, it happened.

She told him that she was a community manager of vegan quantum astrology and that she needed a presentation video with visual effects, violet fire, and music as to smoke monte. He asked her with a passive-aggressive sweetness that disarmes and with the question that does not accept a no: "Can you help me, right?”.

He burned his eyelashes editing a five-minute video that looked like an interdimensional journey between chakras, fairies, mantras, and phrases like "Love is a vibration that your gut can feel if you are aligned.”She adored him. And he thought that was love.

They kept going out. He started reading about orbs, energy cleanses, and ended up in a family constellation session where he cried, not knowing if it was because of his grandfather or because the WiFi was not working well.

Amanda was glowing. And he... he was losing his shape.

The night when everything went wrong was the eclipse. She organized a collective meditation on the rooftop of her building and asked him to record the event with his drone. The drone wasn't his; he rented it. I've never handled it before. When he tried to capture an aerial shot of the attendants in the lotus position, he lost control. The drone fell right on the head of the guest guru, who was left without spiritual enlightenment. It was the end.

Amanda didn't want to know more about him. He tried to write to her, but only received an audio with words like: “karma”, “desalinee”, and “low vibration”.

That night, while editing the last reel for a client who sold seasoned chickpeas to order, he said to himself:

• I probably deserved that.

Just because. Because one cannot lose oneself so much in another person as to forget oneself. Because love should not be a disguise or a failed Reiki session. Because if you have to change too much, maybe love didn't touch you.

And although it hurt, as the gnemas hurt after editing for eight hours in a row, it also relieved him to return to his stories, his images, his silences.

A few weeks later, in a bookstore in Plaza España, a woman approached him. He had a book in his hand and a T-shirt that said "Romantics don't die out, they just charge by the hour.”

He smiled at her.

And he thought, "Maybe now I do. But without a drone, without violet fire... and without ceasing to be me.”