I Work at the Pharmacy That Dispenses Selemnus. I Think I Just Found the Love They Took From Me.

The commercial used to play all the time when I was younger. It had this soft piano music that made everything sound gentle, almost forgiving. A woman would be sitting on a couch holding an old photograph while a doctor explained that heartbreak didn’t have to define the rest of your life. Then the camera would cut to a small glass vial filled with clear liquid.

Introducing Selemnus, the voice would say. The first emotional separation therapy designed to help you remember your past without the suffering.

They named it after the river from the old myth. The river that could wash away love.

Back then it sounded poetic.

Now I work for the company that bottles it.

My name is Rachel. I’m a pharmacy technician for Aphrosyne Pharmaceuticals, and most of my job is painfully ordinary. Verify prescriptions. Scan codes. Log serial numbers. Hand people their medication and explain dosage instructions. The patients who come in for Selemnus usually look exhausted in a quiet way, the kind of tired that happens when someone has been crying for weeks and finally runs out of tears.

Selemnus doesn’t erase memories. That’s important. You still remember the person.

You just don’t miss them anymore.

I didn’t really understand how powerful that was until I needed it myself.

Gerard and I had been happy in the kind of simple way that sneaks up on you. We had this low couch that sagged in the middle, and he liked sitting cross-legged on it with one of his stupid beanies pulled halfway down his head even when it wasn’t cold. His hair was black and wiry and impossible to tame, which was why the beanies existed in the first place.

Every afternoon when he was drained from work, around four or five, he would make tea or coffee and sit there scrolling through whatever article had caught his attention that day.

He ate terrible food when he was stressed. Lime and chili chips that turned his fingers red. Instant noodles he devoured in five minutes and then complained about afterward like he had betrayed himself somehow.

I remember all of that too clearly.

Which is strange, because the thing that ended us was so stupid it still feels unreal when I say it out loud.

One night he was using his tablet and somehow ended up on the Netflix login screen. My ex still used the account sometimes. We had never bothered kicking him off because it didn’t seem important. It was just one of those leftovers people forget to clean up after breakups.

Gerard saw the login page and went quiet.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t accuse me of cheating. He just got this look on his face, like something had confirmed a suspicion he already had.

The next morning he sent me a vague message about feeling hurt and needing space.

That was it.

He was still friends with his own ex. He lent her money sometimes. But somehow the Netflix login page was the line he couldn’t cross.

Looking back, I think he had already decided to leave me long before that moment. The Netflix thing was just the exit ramp that let him do it without admitting the truth.

He never called again.

Never explained.

Never came back for the hoodie he’d left on the couch or the three beanies scattered around my apartment like proof he had once lived there.

For weeks I walked past them like they belonged to someone who had died.

Eventually I signed up for the employee therapy program and took the Selemnus injection.

The change was immediate in the strangest way. I still remembered Gerard perfectly. The couch, the beanies, the weird snacks, the plans we had made about traveling for my birthday in August.

But the ache was gone.

The memories stayed.

The longing didn’t.

A few months later I started seeing Daniel. He’s kind in ways Gerard never was. Daniel fixes things around my apartment without being asked. He remembers groceries. He shows up when he says he will.

Objectively, Daniel has done more for me in six months than Gerard ever did in a year.

But sometimes I wonder if something important was removed from me along with the pain.

A few weeks ago Aphrosyne flew a group of pharmacy staff to headquarters for training. It was mostly procedural updates, inventory systems, things like that. The building itself was enormous and sterile, all glass corridors and sealed labs.

I had started smoking again recently, something I told myself was temporary. That habit ended up putting me outside one night behind the loading docks where shipments came in.

Two lab executives were already there talking.

I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop but the conversation carried.

One of them mentioned something about extraction protocol from “the River.”

At the time I assumed it was just a nickname for a production line.

Later that evening curiosity got the better of me. I grabbed a reflective vest hanging near the freight elevators so I looked like I belonged and wandered farther into the building than we were supposed to go.

That’s how I found the room.

At first I thought it was a server facility. Tall racks of equipment humming quietly in the dim light. But the glow coming from them wasn’t the sterile blue you usually see in data centers.

It was pink and orange.

Like sunset reflecting off water.

Lab assistants moved between the racks filling small glass vials from thin taps connected to the glowing columns.

They worked calmly, methodically, like what they were doing wasn’t strange at all.

One of the trays was labeled.

EROS-9.

I recognized the name from training materials. A new oral medication that would soon be distributed to pharmacies nationwide.

At the time I assumed the glowing liquid was just some chemical mixture.

So I left.

Weeks later our pharmacy received the first shipment.

EROS-9 comes in small orange-tinted vials meant to be swallowed. The label even says orange flavored, which feels weirdly cheerful for something designed to manipulate human attachment.

The boxes arrived late in the afternoon. I started unpacking them the way I always do, cutting tape, removing thermal padding, lining the smaller cartons on the counter so I could log them into inventory.

I had my laptop open beside me for verification.

At some point while lifting one of the boxes, I accidentally tilted it toward the laptop camera.

The computer chimed.

A window opened automatically.

At first I assumed the barcode scanner had triggered, except I hadn’t used the scanner.

Then the files started appearing.

Lines of text spilled across the screen faster than I could read them. Patient files, therapy notes, emotional extraction logs.

The header read:

EROS-9 MATCH PROTOCOL

The box I was holding was labeled for a patient named Evelyn. Thirty-three years old. Postpartum depression. Reported emotional dissociation from her husband.

That part made sense.

Then I saw the next line.

Emotional Source Match: RSG

My initials.

Below that was my therapy intake report from months earlier. The one I filled out before receiving Selemnus.

It described how much I missed Gerard. How convinced I had been that we would spend our lives together. How the breakup had left me disoriented and humiliated and unable to think straight.

Seeing those words in Aphrosyne’s system made my face burn.

It had to be a mistake.

I scanned another box.

The system opened a new file.

Timothy. Former soldier. Combat history in Syria during the ISIS campaigns. Night terrors. Emotional numbness.

Under emotional source match was another name.

Luisito.

His partner Manuel had died in a homophobic attack two years earlier.

I sat down slowly.

Then I started scanning more boxes.

A widow matched with someone who had lost a fiancé. A teenager matched with someone whose first love had died of leukemia.

This wasn’t random.

This was matching people.

The system wasn’t inventing emotions.

It was redistributing them.

Eventually I reached the box with my initials attached to it.

Inside was a single EROS vial.

The liquid inside looked like diluted orange soda.

When I picked it up, the color changed.

First pink.

Then deep purple.

And suddenly Gerard was back inside my chest.

Not the memory of him.

The feeling.

The certainty we were meant to grow old together. The afternoons on the couch. The beanies. The stupid chips. The plan to travel in August.

But something else came with it.

Daniel.

Warm, steady, patient Daniel.

It felt like two loves occupying the same space in my body at once.

The pressure made me gasp.

I set the vial down.

Immediately the liquid faded back to orange.

The feeling vanished.

I stared at the glass for a long time before putting it back in the box.

Because if EROS really contains extracted attachment…

then tomorrow morning Evelyn is scheduled to drink the love I once had for Gerard.

And I can’t stop thinking about what happened when I touched it.

For a few seconds…it felt like the vial recognized me.