"Love is counted" was never meant to be comforting. It's a warning.
I write this novel to express my fictional thoughts to all of you and I hope you can support me as a first timer author. My achievements is in your hand reader🫶
When affection becomes transactional, people start to chase validation instead of connection. They perform instead of feel. And yet—within that same world—characters like Luna and Leejun begin to question it. Their bond doesn't just defy the algorithm; it exposes its limits.
I created this system not because I believe love should be measured, but because I wanted to explore what happens when it is. How does it change people? What do they lose? What do they fight to keep?
The irony of the Heartlock Trial is that it tries to calculate something deeply uncountable. And the most powerful moments in the story are the ones that can't be graphed—the glances, the silences, the sacrifices.
So yes, in this world, love is counted.
But the real question is: Should it be?
And I think every character will answer that differently