The logs didn’t lie. His system—his choice —had terminated the connection. The local system, indeed.

Then he opened the terminal once more. His fingers moved before his mind caught up.

That was the night Elena left.

Leo typed a reply. Deleted it. Typed again. Deleted.

He closed the laptop. The screen went dark. The local system had finally learned: some connections shouldn’t be aborted. Some errors can only be fixed by walking out the door.