The narrator flies to Oakland to visit Kris, excited and fantasizing about a new role-play game involving Elsa Penbrook-Gibbard and staged abandonment fears. However, upon arrival, Kris is withdrawn and distant. During their usual grocery shopping ritual, Kris won't meet the narrator's eye. Back at the cottage, Kris tells the narrator she feels hopeless about their compatibility, citing the narrator's refusal to be kissed over fresh lipstick as emblematic. The narrator tries to hold Kris, who cries but then asks for space, suggesting the narrator sleep at her friend Sharon's. Stunned, the narrator dramatically removes and drops her gold buckle ring, leaves, waits on the sidewalk for Kris to follow, then returns to find Kris showered, changed, and about to go out—looking at the narrator like a stranger.

At Sharon's, the narrator doesn't sleep. The next morning she texts Kris apologetically and is invited back, but before she arrives Kris texts that she has had sex with Elsa Penbrook-Gibbard. On the phone, Kris confirms it will likely happen again and that Elsa is "more into it." The narrator changes her flight and goes home. She tells Harris and Jordi. Harris is protective and angry on her behalf. That night the narrator texts Kris at two a.m. suggesting they need to "process," and Kris responds, "Are you gaslighting me?"

The narrator enters a devastating spiral she connects to her father's concept of the "deathfield"—a dissociative, panic-laden state where she can't breathe, eat, or sleep. She loses weight rapidly, dropping to 106 and then 102 pounds. She tries every sleep aid, sniffs her own underwear pretending it's Kris's scent, and ignores Scarlett's gym invitations. She realizes she has lost the ability to fantasize or dissociate, leaving her trapped in the raw present moment. She reflects on her pattern of white-knuckling between shared dreams and emergencies, and wonders whether any of her life's enchantment was real or just survival mechanisms.

Jordi reminds her she'd said she wasn't in love with Kris, but the narrator insists the abruptness of the ending—"like being startled out of a dream"—is what devastates her. The narrator connects this to her father's shared nightmares, the "lag time" between a catastrophe and recognizing it. She drafts a generous, self-blaming email to Kris, which Jordi advises against sending. The narrator sends it anyway, admitting the relationship was "ninety-eight percent imaginary" and praising Elsa. Kris never responds. A week later, at a dog park, a friend of Kris's tells the narrator that "Kris forgives you," revealing that in Kris's version of events, the narrator is the perpetrator. The narrator realizes there will be no closure.

Harris goes to stay at Paige's for two nights, leaving the narrator alone with Sam. In the bathroom, the narrator shakes and nearly falls into the deathfield pattern her father modeled—pulling a child into one's despair. She recognizes the temptation and resists it. When Sam calls her out, she admits only that she was "having a tough time in the bathroom," and Sam innocently interprets this as a digestive issue. Sam then shows her a Lego tower that fits perfectly into every right-angled corner in the house. In a parallel internal conversation, Sam tells the narrator the tower is about scale—she's in a corner, but corners are everywhere, and even tiny corners still fit. The narrator doesn't fully understand, but senses it's important. Sam sighs and says, "Maybe you will later."