Work Text:
The monotonous soft buzzing noises remain the only sound in the room for the longest time, courtesy of the white lights as they brightly illuminate the room.
For the longest time, anyone passing by the lab won’t have any clue that it is occupied. After all, the only two presences in the room are two very tacit men. The first one is switching between working on some cables or a series of numbers in the screen, pausing to mumble to himself once every now and then, or cursing in frustration. The frown lines in his face are enough to alert anyone in the vicinity to not get on his bad side.
The other one is an unconscious male lying down on a cold table. His eyes are closed peacefully and his hands rigidly laid on his sides. Upon a quick glance, he looks to be in a deep sleep, until you see the gaping cut on his arm, displaying a set of tangled metallic cables swirling inside the vacuum of his body.
No blood is running through his veins, or tendons and muscles sticking to his bones. Just cables and silver shine of electric stimuli travelling through them.
“Hyung.”
The voice makes Soobin jump on his seat, almost dropping a tiny screwdriver into the body cavity. He exhales in relief when he spots the blonde haired male, holding a four-pack cups of hot coffee on a hand while he peers over his shoulder.
“Taehyun-ah,” he sighs, running a hand down over his face as he clears his throat. His throat feels strained from the long period of not speaking.
“Yeonjun hyung wanted me to check up on you, see if you’re still alive.”
That makes the scientist snort. “Of course he would. I wish you’d stop doing errands for him, though. You’re an intern, not an office boy.”
Taehyun shrugs. “It’s fine, I live in the same building as the coffee shop anyway. Besides, it gives me an excuse to see you, who haven’t seen the light of day since last month.”
“You sound like Yeonjun hyung now.”
Choi Yeonjun who got recognized for his talent and innovative inventions; the star of Seoul Science Invention Facility. Choi Yeonjun, who always comes up with inventions that could help increase humans’ quality of lives, unlike Soobin and his never-ending failures.
“Hyung, this is unhealthy,” Taehyun says, eyes trained down at the lifeless man on the table. “I don’t understand why you’ve been obsessing with this project for months. It’s just a robot. We have plenty of them.”
“I know, Taehyun-ah. I just feel like… there’s something that urges me to finish this. Funny, huh? It’s like a feeling.”
“Fate is speaking to you?” the younger arches a brow in interest.
Soobin snorts, sinking back on his seat to turn it away from the other. “We’re scientists. There’s no such thing as fate for us, only hard work.”
He hears a sigh and a sound of a paper cup placed on top of his desk, followed by scuffling of feet walking out from his lab. Now that he is left alone again, the thoughts are swallowing him up. A dark ink that started as a droplet, only to spread and cover every inch of his being, pushing him to the edge and threatening to make him plummet into the sea of his own negative thoughts.
The more he looks at the humanoid before him, the more he can feel every single sand slipping through his fingers and down the neck of the sand clock. He is running out of time, and there’s still a possibility of this robot being an unfixable item that belongs so far before his time.
This was the fault of a week-long Christmas holiday forced upon him. As he had nothing to do at his own apartment, he went to spend that week at his grandparents’ house in the countryside. He figured that the fresh air would drag him out from his constant need to access computer data and tinker with metallic tools in his lab.
Instead, he found himself in an old tool shed hidden at the back of his house.
It was once a property of his grandfather before he died during the war a few decades ago. Everything was untouched and dusty. Countless blueprints scattered over the floor and the walls. The inventions his grandfather didn’t have the privilege to create. All of them were eventually invented by someone else, but Soobin knew that it was once a dream of a countryside man who fought for the world they’re living in right now.
None of them mattered to him, until he found the lump of blanket near the back of the shed.
He figured it was just one of his grandfather’s unfinished inventions. As he ripped the blanket away, particles of dust flew all over the place. More of them clouded his sight as he coughed profusely.
Then he saw it, the heap of limbs on the floor.
A perfectly made humanoid. One that looked so real that Soobin almost got scared. His heart was beating loudly inside his chest at the horror of some stranger ending up in his grandpa’s toolshed, and then it beat for a different reason when he knelt down to check on his pulse, only to find the unnatural coldness of artificial being under his fingers.
Being this close, he could see that the humanoid was beautiful. His chest clenched with longing, for that split second.
(He reasoned that it happened because he was amazed by the well-made humanoid skin.)
“Who are you, are you lost, too?” he asked softly, instantly feeling like an idiot for talking to a humanoid that wasn’t even activated.
But he is not an idiot. He is a known scientist in technology who graduated as one of the top students from his class. He was admitted easily into the #1 science faculty in the nation, and now.
Soobin had the power to bring this unfinished humanoid into life.
And here he is, months later, facing a still very stoic humanoid on his table. A sign of despair starts creeping into his system.
“Who are you, why are you still lost?” He asks the same questions as the very first time he faced the metallic heaps of a robot. A derisive smile forms on his lips at how sentimental he is being, as he reaches out to place his fingers on top of the cold, unresponsive fingers on top of the table.
“Come to me. Let me find you.”
==
It’s a week later that a positive sign is bestowed upon him.
He’s pulled back from the brink of despair. The fire is alight again under his veins, just the way electric molecules travel inside the system in this humanoid’s body. It’s responding to what Soobin has been doing to fix him.
He calls the humanoid Beomgyu, from the smudged writing plastered on his ankle, probably his grandpa’s doing. With a name and the lack of cables showing from under his skin, he looks more human . Just the way everyone in the nation has been trying to make their robots.
The humanoid is now positioned to sit on the edge of the table, still not responding to the stimulus he’s giving to the cables attached to his chest. Still, Soobin is more elated at the growth, staring intently at Beomgyu’s unresponsive eyes.
He has never seen a pair of eyes that look so solemn and beautiful the way Beomgyu’s is. It’s funny, remembering how they are just a pair of human-made eyeballs.
“I wonder how long it’d take,” he mumbles to himself, fingers feeling the skin on the back of Beomgyu’s neck for the switch, making sure it’s already set in activation.
But the longer Soobin stares into Beomgyu’s eyes, the more uneasy he feels. They look so unresponsive. So artificial.
Beomgyu is not reacting to any of the stimulus he’s giving: the heat to his skin, a loud noise to his ear, an electricity zap, a gentle touch to his hair. His eyes stayed stoic, staring right up into Soobin’s own.
After two hours, he grows tired. He’s standing right before Beomgyu this time, bringing his face in for a closer look into the pair of unresponsive eyes.
“What are you waiting for?” he asks, voice gentle and coaxing, as if that would work in any way when dealing with a bunch of cables and codes in the robot’s head. It makes him break into a laugh, deciding to just make it comical to soothe himself. “Beomgyu-ah, wake up.”
What he didn’t expect is the small flicker of Beomgyu’s eyes. They move so subtly, snapping out of a trance-like daze to focus on Soobin.
It’s the only reaction given. The first sign of life in the machine.
Yet it does wonder to Soobin’s heart, as it leaps in his chest, doing one, two, three backflips and making him pace around the room to control his excitement. His fists balling on his sides.
“Oh my god, it works. You’re not responding yet but you’re… oh my god.”
Biting back his excitement, he dashes out from his lab, swallowing the urge to yell about his beautiful ‘creation’ into the world in order to find someone who would appreciate this invention.
That someone; is not taking his excitement too well. Especially not when it turns out to be a false alarm.
When he manages to drag Yeonjun into his lab, Beomgyu is still sitting in his former position. There’s no more change, and his eyes are back in their original state of daze. No movement or reactions. No flinch or recognition to light as the elder scientist shines a pocket flashlight into the pair of artificial eyes.
“So, you managed to open his eyes. That’s it?”
“No, wait. He was responsive earlier. He looked at me !” He says defensively, only to shut his mouth when Yeonjun turns around to stare him down.
One of the reasons why Yeonjun is so successful is that he is always hard on himself and everyone else. It’s also one of the many reasons Soobin always comes to him as a mentor even after he graduated from his internship days.
Soobin was good. He was one of the most promising interns.
That’s why the look of disappointment in Yeonjun’s eyes hit him the hardest.
“Taehyun’s right. This is getting unhealthy,” he says, punctuated with a sigh before he keeps going. “It’s an old model. And it’s broken, Soobin. Why are you trying so hard to fix garbage?”
He shakes his head, trying to ignore the words that pierced through his heart like pieces of glass. His gaze flits towards the humanoid, catching its unblinking eyes staring at him.
“I’ve gotten this far, Yeonjun hyung. I’m so close.”
“You have other promising projects that you abandoned for this. The cancer detector? That time machine?”
“You know the time machine is illegal,” Soobin turns around, hands flying up to mess with his own hair. “Nothing is going right, hyung. I just want to do this one thing right!”
Yeonjun is silent for a moment before he walks towards Soobin. His voice is lowered, as if anyone else could hear them if he spoke too loudly, when it’s just the two of them in the vicinity. As if the warning inserted in each word he spoke is not intimidating enough, it’s intensified with the way Yeonjun is cornering him.
“Do you think this is not illegal, Soobin? You showed me on the first week you found him, telling me about the unfamiliar coding of the AI. What if it has an ability to learn, to adapt, to rebel against humans, what then?”
“Beomgyu won’t do that,” he frowns at the hint of paranoia dripping from the elder’s voice.
It’s true that the government has banned an advanced form of AI that is not fully controlled by humans. Sensations and feelings are okay, but not the ability to make decisions or understand emotions the way humans do. Humanoids are made to be below humans, and there is no space for free will or advancement.
“You’re on a first name basis now?” Yeonjun scoffs, shaking his head before giving a squeeze on Soobin’s shoulder. “You know I support you, Soobin. You’re really smart, and you’re up for good things, but—“
“Can’t you support me on this one, then? I’m sure there’s nothing like that AI for Beomgyu. He’s created like more than fifty years ago, for god’s sake.”
Yeonjun stares at him for a moment before exhaling, bringing a hand up to ruffle his hair.
“That’s something to worry about for when it actually works , Soobin. Good luck with that.”
The senior leaves his lab shortly after that, but the foreboding warning lingers like a gas leak in the vast, white-dominated room.
For the first time ever since he brought Beomgyu into this lab, wrapped in that filthy blanket and dust, Soobin feels so alone. This leads him to a realization that he treated the robot as someone . A soulless friend. Even the humanoids distributed in the market don’t have the ability to think on their own, and if they do, they would be labelled as illegal and promptly destroyed. Why would Soobin have an expectation that he rebuilt Beomgyu to be a friend to him?
This is it. The main reason why he will be stuck with his title as a nobody.
A scientist with no achievement.
Given the same project, Choi Yeonjun would make the old-fashioned humanoid into an advanced one to be used for a greater good, probably a military aid like what the government had been proposing. Meanwhile Choi Soobin would settle for a friendly humanoid who would talk to him.
It won’t be his first failure, but he shouldn’t be so devastated about this. Not when he didn’t even do it from scratch.
Sighing, he seats himself across the humanoid, staring into the pair of clear, unblinking eyes.
It saddens him that he can’t continue his grandfather’s old project, but that sadness is incomparable to the one he feels about not seeing the pretty eyes blinking and focusing on him. It’s a disappointment on his side, that he can’t give a life into this perfect vessel.
“I should give Taehyun something to assist on,” he mumbles to himself.
He’s already planning a bunch of other projects to finish working on, when his unfocused gaze caught a movement. It’s a subtle one, easily mistaken as a shadow of his own tired eyes.
But there is only he and this failed humanoid in front of him. If it’s not him who’s making the movement, then…
“It’s nothing, right?” he tilts his head to a side as he stares some more at Beomgyu, diminishing any hint of hope in his system since he can’t go through any other false hope and disappointment.
After what feels like an hour of silent staring battle, it happens again.
At first, it’s just a tiny flutter of eyelashes, followed by a blink. Soobin is on the verge of freaking out when Beomgyu’s eyes caught him, blinking a few more times.
“Beomgyu?” he calls out warily.
The answer comes as a twitch of Beomgyu’s lips into a smile initially, before they parted to speak. Beomgyu’s eyes are gaining more light too, moving around as if scanning the room, before they are back to focus on the human sitting across of him.
“Hello! Finally I can say hi to you now,” he says meekly, almost sheepishly. “Choi Soobin, my creator.”
The excitement is choking him now, making him forget to breath in case the slightest movement he makes would shatter the illusion. But there’s none, as he is watching the robot hops off the table with so much fluidity, frowning as he stares at the cables attached to him, but manages to walk a few steps forward, to Soobin, who is still glued to his chair.
“You’re alive. You—“ Soobin gasps, shooting up from his chair and barely restraining himself from hugging the other. He might break something if he’s not careful, and no. He really doesn’t want to lose hope again.
“I’m not really alive, you see,” he lifts his arm, showing the silvery streaks replacing the blue of his veins should be on the inside of his wrist. Under the bright white lights, they look even more artificial.
Or magical. Too beautiful to be true.
“But you… you are working! The system works and hey, you’re even walking,” he says, stammering as he’s still holding back his astonishment.
And then Beomgyu smiles, eyes twinkling up at him. Soobin feels like he’s the one with metallic wires under his skin. How could a robot have such a warm smile?
“Sorry for the wait! I needed a few moments to calibrate all the prior data with the ones I could access from the internet, and then I was also trying to find a proper way to describe how beautiful you are to me,” Beomgyu says, pursing his lips as if he’s really thinking. “The program glitched and short-circuited every time I tried.”
Soobin feels faint now. This can’t be real.
There is no way he just fixed a potentially most advanced humanoid model from decades ago, only for the said humanoid to flirt with him. No way.
==
Following an additional presence in the lab, the place gained a new source of light.
These scientists are accustomed to work in a lonesome situation, except for some big assembling projects that require more manpower. Soobin is the brain, the inventor. He spends most of his time assembling his ideas into a faulty prototype. That’s why having Beomgyu around is a whole new territory for him. One that consists of too many new things brought into his mundane life.
First, Beomgyu won’t shut up.
He always has something to talk about. All the questions and commentaries about every little thing (“Is this your house?” “Do you have a lover?” “Why do you like noodles but not rice noodles?” “Are you always this silent?” “If your house only got this one bed, are you going to sleep with me?”). Soobin can’t find the access to turn that feature off when he dives into the depth of Beomgyu’s coded ‘mind’ inside his computer, so he has to live with it.
Second, Beomgyu is always moving.
It’s almost as if he’s just born into this world, curious about everything new he’s seeing, that he wants to touch and observe them closely. When he is not attached to Soobin’s computer by the cables, Soobin could just blink and he’s already lost the boy from his periphery of vision. At least he hasn’t got curious enough to open the door and explore the outside world.
The more Soobin stays inside his lab and studies Beomgyu’s movement, the more his confusion grows.
Humanoids are not something new in the country. There are countless of them spread all over the big cities, even in this facility alone. Most of them are made to aid humans – cleaners, patrol officers, babysitters, and industrial workers.
None of them are quite like Beomgyu.
Not the responsive eyes, questions and pick up lines to start a conversation, or self-initiatives to do something. They are all programmed to do just what they are supposed to do. What the humans need them to do.
Beomgyu is too advanced for a robot with an AI made decades ago, and barely a few years ago, the government had gotten rid of AI projects that are getting out of hand. Robots that were getting smarter, learning common senses and looking for independence from humans. Robots that were eradicated to the last bit of metal wires because humans couldn’t handle their minds.
Illegal, as Yeonjun would say.
Fear instantly settles in his chest as he snaps his gaze towards Beomgyu, who is curled up atop his ‘bed’. A thick cable is connected to the back of his nape, buzzing softly as electricity flows into his veins. Recharging.
No matter how you look at him, he is a robot. Yet the several hours that Soobin spent observing Beomgyu made his chest ache at the thought of having to submit him into the government or other scientists to examine. The only outcome that will come from it is losing the humanoid before he can learn more about him.
His grandpa had died before he could get the recognition as the first human who invented this kind of advanced AI; the least Soobin can do is to continue his legacy.
He is committing a crime to keep Beomgyu.
As soon as he sets up that resolution, the door to his lab slides open. The worst scenario is already formulating in his head – an army of government’s robot officers, charging into the place to get rid of an invention that is deemed dangerous to the nation.
The reality that lets Soobin breathe again is a blonde boy sauntering into the lab with the usual four pack coffee cups in one hand and his bag in another. It’s not an army of tall, invincible robots.
“Oh, it’s you,” Soobin says, relief dripping from his voice.
Taehyun arches a brow, totally sensing the difference in his tone than his usual nonchalant one every time he sees the intern. His sharp gaze is trained on Soobin as he places the cup on top of his desk.
“What did you do?” he asks. No hello, just a question that almost made Soobin drop the cup he just took.
“What—“
“You looked alarmed when I walked into the room, then you looked to be in relief, and now you look guilty,” the stream of accusations pour fluently from the boy’s mouth, before it twists to a side in displeasure as Soobin won’t say anything to them. It’s just natural that he presses further. Taehyun always presses. “Did you finish the time machine and it actually worked?”
“No way, that’s illegal!” What a hypocrite.
“Not really, they only made those things illegal because they never send humans into different times and have them back in one piece. But you? I think you have the brain to figure out where they do it wrong.”
It’s nothing new that Taehyun always has something to say whenever Soobin is feeling down. The younger always tries to praise him and encourage him to get up. But this was unprompted, that Soobin stays stunned there.
So stunned that he didn’t register that the gentle buzzing noise of electricity has stopped, nor did he notice the movement from his working table.
“What the…”
Taehyun’s gasp is what alerted him. As Soobin brings his gaze up from his own hand, Taehyun is standing face to face with Beomgyu who is already sitting on the edge of his table. The humanoid’s eyes are moving, scanning the intern. It goes on for about forever until Beomgyu’s lips curl into a smile and he hops off the table.
At the sudden movement, Taehyun yelps. The rest of his coffee cups meet the pristine floor in messy streaks.
“The robot, he is moving,” he states the obvious, eyes still shaking as he tries to make sense of it, flitting back and forth from Beomgyu to Soobin.
“I’m sorry, Taehyunnie. I was going to tell you sooner, but yeah, I managed to get him to work and—“
“No way! Hyung, this is brilliant!” Taehyun’s eyes are alight with excitement as he makes a round to avoid the coffee splatter to get to Soobin behind the desk. He grabs on the scientists’ shoulders, shaking gently. “You worked on it for months and nobody thought that it’d work but hey, you proved them wrong!”
“Taehyun, listen—“ Soobin starts, holding the other by his wrists.
But Taehyun is not listening, already turning around to look at the table. His face turns into a confused one as Beomgyu is not there anymore, but already working on mopping the floor. It must be even more confusing for him to see the cringing in the robot’s face at the brown liquid.
“And it is… cleaning the floor. Is it a cleaning robot?”
Beomgyu has already cleaned off the mess, and he has his attention to Taehyun at the question.
“ He is cleaning the floor, and he is not a cleaning robot. Soobin just nags a lot whenever there’s a mess, and I still can’t find his mute button.”
The robot is talking to him unprompted, so Taehyun’s astonished face is justified. Soobin decided to interrupt before the poor boy’s head exploded with too much assumption. He tugs on Taehyun’s hand, dragging him along as he walks to the door.
“Beomgyu, please stay here and wait until I’m back. We’re going to get lunch.”
As they step out from the lab, Soobin sees Beomgyu stare at him forlornly just before the door slides into a close. He exhales a long breath that he’s held, finally facing Taehyun who seems to have a million questions ready on the tip of his tongue.
“I’ll explain, okay? Let’s go get that lunch.”
==
It’s easier to explain things to Taehyun, because the guy listens to him.
After the whole explanation over a tray of stale kimbap and curry for lunch, Taehyun comes into a conclusion that it actually is dangerous to keep Beomgyu around without knowing the extent of what his AI can do. But he doesn’t warn him like Yeonjun did. He just seems mildly concerned, as if Soobin is not already anxious enough with the secret he kept in the confinement of his government-funded lab.
“They fear the unknown, hyung,” Taehyun says in the end. “If you observe him some more and provide proof that his AI is not dangerous to mankind, they won’t fear him.”
“Exactly! I just need more time.”
“You’ll have as much time as you need, just so long as no one finds out about him,” Taehyun says wisely. Sometimes Soobin wonders just how lucky he must have been to have Taehyun assigned as the intern under his care.
And how unlucky Taehyun is to have him as his mentor.
That makes Soobin sigh. “Which means that Yeonjun hyung can’t know about this either.”
“I don’t think you should keep him in the facility too, it’s too dangerous, hyung.”
“It’s fine, Taehyun-ah. Nobody ever comes into my lab anyway.”
Taehyun gives him a doubtful look. But it’s Taehyun, and Taehyun always trusts him no matter what kind of decision he is making.
This is one of those times.
==
And he is right about it. That nobody else comes into his lab to discover his little ( big ) secret like Taehyun did. Except what’s happening is even worse.
Beomgyu is too active for his own good, too curious.
Eventually the lab is too small of a world for Beomgyu, that the inevitable happens one morning as Soobin falls asleep with his head laid on top of his desk. It’s not the first time that he fell asleep mid-work, but it’s the first time he wakes up without any presence of a certain, bothersome humanoid inside the room.
The room is too quiet when he comes to, and only as he realizes that his access card is missing from his tag. Then the quietness vanishes, replaced by a deafening alarm blaring in his brain.
Beomgyu is out there. Out of the safety of his lab.
If he wasn’t fully awake, Soobin has his full consciousness back by the time he is running out from his lab. The morning sun is too bright to his sleep deprived eyes, and he had to take a break when he reached the windows facing a fountain park located in the backyard of the building.
That’s when he sees Beomgyu, standing in the middle of the park down below. His bare feet brushing along neatly trimmed grass and sunshine in his eyes as he tips his head back, as if he could feel the warmth on his cheek.
He looks so human, Soobin would be fooled if he hadn’t been the only one to know the truth.
Once the scientist snaps himself out of it and rushes his way downstairs, he notices another presence by the humanoid. Beomgyu is crouching down, apparently talking to a little girl who is showing him a piece of paper. Soobin can only catch a piece of their conversation as he walks through the grassy patch.
“It’s a beautiful art. You’re a good artist,” Beomgyu says, gesturing to the drawing.
The girl looks up at him, smiling, before reaching out to brush her fingers over Beomgyu’s cheek. “You too, are a beautiful art, mister. Your creator must have loved you a lot.”
When Soobin reaches the center of the park, the little girl has already run off. Her backpack swaying on her back, while Beomgyu is staring at her quietly, just before he turns around and almost walks into the scientist who towers over him with a displeased look in his face.
He had no clue if Beomgyu’s AI came with the ability to read expressions or emotions in someone’s face, but he seems to be shrinking under Soobin’s stern gaze.
“Good morning. Thank you for letting me borrow your card!” he says, a small smile tugging on his lips.
An exasperated sigh falls off Soobin’s lips as he drags the male back into his lab. Thankfully, it’s morning time, and not many people are around in the building. There’s no danger of having Beomgyu seen by another scientist, yet Soobin still feels restless over the fact that the humanoid decided on his own to actively leave the room without him knowing.
He still hasn’t had any access to the code of Beomgyu’s AI, and until he knows just what he is facing, he can’t take the risk.
“I’m sorry, you’re not actually mad at me right, Soobin?”
They’re back in the lab by the time Beomgyu is trying to talk to him again, after they spend way too long in silence. Soobin being too angry and worried to actually yell at the other (besides, why would you yell at a bunch of metal plates and codes?) and Beomgyu actually reading the room enough to not bother him.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” he finally says once he’s calmed down, sitting back behind his desk and running a hand down his face in an attempt to ease some tension.
“But I’m okay! I just wanted to see what’s outside this room. I want to see other people too, and experience things. Not just a bunch of cables and your boring room.”
Wants . A robot actually wanted things.
Soobin frowns, staring at the latter whose eyes are looking at him wistfully. At least that’s how it might imply, seeing how robot’s eyes don’t actually hold emotions. At this moment, however, Beomgyu actually looks guilty, and he has no one to blame but himself for seeing that. For letting the delusions take over his mind.
Humanoids can’t feel emotions. It might as well be a very advanced AI inside Beomgyu’s head that’s trying to trick him, trying to take over his ‘creator’ before eventually taking over the human world. That's humankind's common paranoia about artificial intelligence, but they are not baseless.
Until then, Soobin can’t take too much precaution.
The precaution that he takes is a cause of Beomgyu’s silent treatment.
Every time he is about to leave the lab or fall asleep, he would manually switch off the humanoid, letting him shut down on top of the bed, attached to cables. Beomgyu pleads with him to let him stay activated in the beginning, but eventually, he gives up, sitting there and frowning every time Soobin approaches him for the button at the back of his nape.
“Robots don’t sulk, right?” Soobin wonders aloud one time, as he is having his brunch with Taehyun at a coffee shop close by to the centre.
Taehyun hums around his mouthful of waffle while Kai blinks a few times.
“You’re the scientist here, Soobin hyung. I like to think that you’re coming here for food and not extra workload.”
Kai is the owner of the coffee shop. In his young age, he took over his family’s coffee shop business while his parents moved back to a less industrial city, so he has extra room to rent on the second floor of the building. That’s where Taehyun lives.
This little circle of friendship Taehyun’s letting him be a part of is one that keeps Soobin sane. It’s a tiny corner of the world where he can shut himself out from the whole science business and expect some normalcy. Instead of robot arms making these coffee and dessert, it’s just Kai.
“Okay, but, seriously. You guys have interacted with other humanoids, right? Do they actually get upset when they’re treated badly?”
Taehyun snorts. “It’s not that they don’t get upset. It’s that they can’t . It’s more convenient that way, right? If people want someone who they can treat with human compassion, they wouldn’t let these artificial lives take over the common jobs.”
“That’s cruel. These robots look so much like humans, so sometimes I say hi to them and try to engage them in conversations and everything, but it’s useless,” Kai chimes in. “They’re only programmed to do certain things.”
“So… why is it that my robot is sulking at me?”
Kai and Taehyun share a confused look as he sighs, uneasiness making it at home again in his chest the longer he keeps Beomgyu deactivated in the darkness of his lab.
His relief does come whenever he watches the light fill up Beomgyu’s eyes when he switches him on, watching the pair grow bigger for a split second as they focus on Soobin’s frame before Beomgyu’s expression grows stoic.
“Look at that, someone finally needs me again. To think that he was so happy the first time I woke up.”
Apparently, the robot can be passive aggressive too, muttering about Soobin like that without even looking his way. The one thing he is not aware of is Taehyun’s presence in the room, watching the couple with incredulity filling his round eyes. Soobin just throws him a helpless look, while Beomgyu stays still on the table, arms folded across his chest.
“Hyung, your robot is behaving like a jealous boyfriend. Maybe he is one of those lover-programmed humanoids.”
“Those exist?” Soobin frowns.
“Not for long. People eventually found them boring, since they can’t really react the way real humans do. They just follow instructions.”
“Certainly, that doesn’t apply to our friend here…” he throws an irritated look at the source of problem.
“Is it my fault that I can’t follow instructions well?” Beomgyu cuts in again. “ You made me, Prof. Choi.”
Soobin turns around on his feet to face Taehyun again, giving him a look that says ‘ see?’, now that Taehyun is aware of what little problem he had with his project. It’s not the matter of making him work anymore, but figuring out why he became like this. Is it a malfunction that he is behaving in a different way than any other humanoids?
Sadly, Taehyun doesn’t have any answer for him, and no matter how much he wanted to call Yeonjun for some help, there’s no guarantee that the elder won’t end up disassembling his robot and opening up his brain.
Soobin is not pissed off enough to put Beomgyu through that. Not yet.
==
It’s a few nights later that he is willing to listen to the humanoid.
As it’s already time to go home for the day, Soobin made Beomgyu sit down on the bed. A routine that the two have grown accustomed with no matter how much the other complained about it initially.
The little flinch that comes with his hand reaching behind for Beomgyu’s nape makes him stop, eyes searching Beomgyu’s face.
“You really don’t like this.”
Beomgyu blinks, eyelashes slowly casting shadow down his cheek before his eyes gaze up at the scientist again. “I’m not sure I understand how to like or dislike something.”
As someone who works around technologies and codes that make machines work, Soobin sure forgets a lot that a humanoid is not supposed to have emotions. Or free will.
But there has to be something that explains why Beomgyu is against being turned off for the night, and how he could behave all upset if he really did not have any emotions.
“Liking something is a reaction to something you think is good, something that makes you feel good. Happy.”
Beomgyu stares at him some more, making him feel like an idiot for trying to explain emotions and feelings to a bunch of programmed data. There is no way he can make sense of this.
Sometimes he forgets that he is the only human in the room.
“I don’t have what you call emotions or feelings. If you punch me in the face, I won’t feel pain. I can’t feel touches, or temperature, so nothing bothers me. But every time you switch me off, it’s like blinking, and suddenly I’ve missed so many hours of the day, and there’s something in here.”
His hand goes to pat low on his chest, fingers tracing along where his heart should be if he were a human.
“What kind of thing?” Soobin asks.
“Like cables got tangled in here, or maybe malfunctioning? And then the only words that I can say to you are the ones categorized as ‘bad’ or ‘mean’, which I don’t think are appropriate to be said to anyone”
Soobin frowns, watching the fingers move along his chest.
There’s a small suspicion inside him. Just a silly thought in the back of his mind, that maybe his grandpa had found a way to insert emotions into his humanoids. Maybe Beomgyu does feel something, but he can’t make sense of what it is because he knows that he is not supposed to feel anything.
Only one way to find out, and Soobin can already see a tiny Yeonjun in his head frowning at the idea that just pops out in his mind.
==
Beomgyu stares long and hard at the device Soobin brings into the lab this morning. He has taken it from the storage room, finding it among all the items invented by the amazing people in the facility. The items are generally mass-produced to the public under government’s name, but Soobin is not sure if he wants Beomgyu to be a product sold like any other humanoids in the market.
That alone already shows how he’s betraying his workplace.
It also comes with this weird feeling of being possessive. The small thought budding in his head that tells him how Beomgyu should be solely his own because he’s the one who fixed him.
He slaps himself on the cheek for that, realizing he has gotten side-tracked from his initial purpose of bringing the malfunctioning humanoid from where it was rotting away.
Once his attention is back at Beomgyu, the pair of void eyes are still trained on the device. It’s shaped like a pair of headphones, and it obviously is not included in Beomgyu’s database since he takes awfully long time to define the item.
“It’s an Emotion Enhancer,” Soobin says, bringing the humanoid’s eyes back to focus on him. “It helps people feel and identify emotions by injecting some stimuli into their brains. Someone made this for their family member who was born with Alexithymia.”
“Alexithymia, difficulty to distinguish or identify feelings.”
“Yes, so this device will help them feel a certain emotion for a brief moment, in order to help them make sense of what’s going on in their head. I read a report of how this product is a failure, but maybe we can help you put a word into that thing you experienced—“
Having been impatiently bouncing on his heels while listening to Soobin’s long explanation, Beomgyu finally cuts him off with a loud Yes, yes, yes, give it to me! .
Unfortunately for him, he still has to wait while Soobin tweaks the product to transfer its programmed stimuli into a bunch of coded, artificial nerves in his brain instead of a human brain it’s targeted for. He has a feeling that Beomgyu would never talk to him anymore if he failed him this time.
Especially since the humanoid has been sitting on the foot of his working chair like a puppy. Even going so far as to rest his chin on top of Soobin’s thigh and look up at him while he works on the item.
A few hours later, Beomgyu is already sitting on top of the desk again. The headphones attached to his head.
The first emotion that Soobin picks for him is happiness . He inserts the card into the device, watching as it lights up momentarily. The effect is seen as Beomgyu’s eyes glaze over, filled with a series of processing codes.
Only at moments like this is Soobin reminded of what the male actually is. And he’s thankful for those, because Beomgyu could look very much like a human at times, that it fools him when he doesn’t have his guard up.
“This feeling, I saw this on you the first time I saw you.”
Beomgyu starts talking again not long later, eyes finding Soobin’s. This time, a smile is spread on his lips, and this doesn’t look like his usual one – the ones all the workers humanoid have on their faces since humans only want their robots to look friendly and always happy to see them. The smile on Beomgyu's face; it’s almost genuine. Almost like Beomgyu is actually feeling it right now as the device has stopped transferring the emotions.
“Yeah?” Soobin laughs, recalling that first day he had gotten all happy on his own, to the point of dragging Yeonjun into the lab. “How do you think happiness looks like?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Is it?” he arches a brow at the description.
“Happiness looks beautiful on you,” Beomgyu says, staring in the way that makes it hard for Soobin to pry his gaze away. “This happiness thing, it triggers all the pretty things in my head. The first ray of sunshine in the morning, caramel drizzle on ice cream, rainbow reflection on a pavement, ferris wheel in a meadow, your first kiss with a beautiful stranger.”
“What’s that last one?” Soobin tries to laugh it off, taking a mental note to erase the flirting category programmed inside Beomgyu’s code the moment he figured out the access key.
“I’m just saying whatever shows up in my head during that period!”
“Okay, don’t ever try to kiss a stranger though, you’re not a lover robot or anything weird that Taehyun thought you were.”
“Give me another one,” Beomgyu demands, kicking his legs out impatiently. He probably thought that all the emotions would be as pleasant as this first one.
Soobin shakes his head, taking the headphones off the humanoid’s head and poking him in the forehead the moment he tries reaching out for it. “Your battery is low. That’s enough for today.”
There’s a series of complaints from the male that Soobin decided to tune out, letting him be for a few moments until a beeping sound comes out from his chest and Beomgyu quickly runs back towards his bed to plug himself with the charger.
The sight only makes Soobin snort.
It’s moments like this, where Beomgyu’s antics make him look adorable to his eyes, that make the whole thing worth it.
==
After the first time trying out the device, Beomgyu has been so occupied by it that he forgets to be upset about being switched off every night.
It’s almost funny, seeing how easy it is to distract a robot. An AI. Soobin didn’t think it was possible until he saw Beomgyu, and wrote about the new things that he found in his notebook every day.
The second emotion he picks for Beomgyu is sadness.
The initial curiosity in the male’s face is drained by the time his eyes gain focus again, now filled with pain. As if he really had something to be sad about.
Soobin tries to make himself feel better for making the other go through that by telling himself over and over again that robots don’t feel emotions. Not real emotions at least. No matter how broken Beomgyu looks right now.
“Do you people feel this on a daily basis? Since it’s one of the six basic emotions,” Beomgyu says once he lowers the device, round eyes finding the scientist’s.
“Well, some people might be lucky enough to not feel it for a long time. Some people might feel it randomly from time to time. But it’s inevitable that humans feel sad.”
“I don’t want this.”
“Me neither,” Soobin says with a sigh. “If only we also come with a button to turn emotions on and off.”
“I wish I had a button to turn emotions on. My own emotions at least.”
Beomgyu looks away after he says that. His face stays stoic, as it should be, because robots cannot feel emotions. So he can’t feel sad or offended by Soobin’s statement. No matter how much he sounds like it.
Once Soobin gets better at convincing himself that Beomgyu is just a bunch of data and codes put into human-built hardware, it’s easier for him to not feel guilty about letting the humanoid have a taste of more awful emotions.
It’s more of an entertainment now, seeing the faces Beomgyu can make in retaliation to these emotions being inserted into his brain.
The scrunched up nose and a cringe that’s drawn on his face when the device introduces him to disgust .
“Ew, what was that? Why do you humans eat that kind of thing?”
“Eat what?” Soobin asks curiously, fingers covering his mouth to hide an amused smile.
“Tomatoes! They are disgusting!”
“You can’t even taste it.”
“I can see the moment it’s squished and the juice spurted out… no, thank you.”
Most people would associate the feeling with something worse, gross things that invoke a feeling of wanting to throw up. But Beomgyu is not most people. He is not even a person. It’s just about right that he associated it with a taste, despite being unable to taste food on his tongue at all.
Then, there comes the anger .
A frown is drawn on Beomgyu’s face briefly, just before his face grows impassive again as he points at the human.
“This is it! That stabbing on my chest I felt when you kept switching me off!”
Soobin arches a brow at that. “You felt ?”
“I can’t actually feel things, but you get the point, that's a similar thing. I was upset at you.”
“Understandable,” he mumbles, making a mental note to research further about this since Beomgyu did say that he felt upset.
There are robots who are made to feel pain or touches, but scientists haven’t discovered just to what extent they can make these artificial humans feel. Knowing that Beomgyu, a prototype that’s made decades ago, has a possibility to feel emotions is almost scary.
It’s scary, just how much he doesn’t know about this humanoid despite claiming to be his maker.
Pain makes Beomgyu curl up into a ball in the corner of the lab, refusing to talk to the scientist for putting him through that.
“You know you didn’t actually feel that, right?” he eventually calls out after a few hours of silence. It’s a curse that’s put on him, the inability to adjust into silence anymore ever since a certain robot brings so much light and noises into his lab.
The said humanoid is unresponsive, but it’s apparent that he’s still activated judging from the silver tendrils that are travelling over his arm, all the way to the back of his nape.
After another hour of not being acknowledged, Soobin finally gets up from his desk where he was tinkering with an artificial arm, bringing an emergency kit box to where Beomgyu is lying down.
“Where does it hurt?” he asks.
A pair of eyes flicked up at him, blinking slowly. “There’s no actual wound, so I can’t pinpoint where the jolt came from. It was just really unpleasant.”
“So you know what’s pleasant and unpleasant now?”
A huff. “Shut up. I’m learning how to live like you guys.”
Shaking his head, Soobin gestures for the latter to get up from his balled-up position, making his expression as demanding as possible to the point that it’s impossible to be refused. Beomgyu is still displeased when he gets up to sit on the floor, but the expression falls a moment later as he sees a flash of colour stuck on his artificial skin.
“There, it won’t hurt anymore.”
It’s a blue pororo band-aid, neatly placed atop his wrist. The cartoon is a striking view when it’s seen on Beomgyu’s skin, but his face lights up because of it. “This is an old character. You have an old-man taste!”
“Shut up. It’s cute. It’s suitable for you since you came from that era anyway.”
Beomgyu tilts his head to a side, lips parted as if he was about to say something. Yet his words dissipated into a thin air. The small hint of excitement alit in his face is replaced by that shine of gloom again.
Perhaps pain is too much for an old fashioned robot like him.
The last emotion they pick from the device is Love .
It’s a tricky one. Even in his two decades of living as a human, Soobin still couldn’t fully grasp the essence of this emotion. He knows the feeling of loving his parents, the respect and adoration built since childhood. Then there is the love he has for his friends; the friends he failed to stay in contact with, which results in falling out.
“This is not really necessary for you, though. Not many humans even get to feel or receive this kind of feeling,” he warns at first, only to hope that he has swallowed his words the moment he lifts his head to catch Beomgyu’s sharp gaze at him.
“Are you saying that robots like us don’t deserve to be loved?”
That is exactly what Soobin had in mind. It’s a norm that the humanoids are only bought for aiding humans, and they are disposable for whenever they are not needed anymore. No humans ever bother to be nice or make connections with humanoids, especially since there is no chance of bonding.
These robots are not equipped with an ability to feel.
Now that one of them actually questions the norm, Soobin is tongue-tied.
Just as any other time emotions are introduced to him, Beomgyu’s eyes glaze over as the data is installed into his head.
This time, however, he is not reacting as quickly once it’s done. The process is slow: a hint of glow in his face, one that is present in the faces of people in love. Then it’s replaced by a darker expression. A hint of anguish.
Soobin has to check if he has picked the right option, only looking up again when the other speaks.
“Love, it’s the same as pain,” his attention is brought to the hand reaching out to his chest. His heart beating steadily against the cold hand. “But it’s here. Like an early onset of a heart attack. If I were a human, I’d be feeling the ache here, and then start having difficulty breathing.”
“That’s a weird way to explain the feeling, since it’s supposed to be beautiful.”
“Is it?” he tilts his head to a side, looking like a curious puppy. “So why is it that the memories associated with this feeling are painful ones?”
==
The next time Taehyun visits the lab is supposed to be a quick one. He has to grab the perfected model of this robotic hand Soobin has been working on as a part of a project. Yet, the moment he steps into the room, he is engaged in a staring battle with Beomgyu that lasts for a little too long.
The silence is suspicious enough that Soobin looks up from his computer, frowning at the direction of the doorway where the blonde is standing.
“Taehyun’s upset.”
“You know me,” asks the scientist. The trace of uneasiness in his face is instantly replaced by a confused one. “And how did you know that?”
“You’re Kang Taehyun, 22 years old. A top graduate from SNU’s Department of Technology, recruited straight into the—“
“Not that. How did you know what I’m feeling?” he cuts the humanoid off, earning a blank stare from him.
That leaves Soobin no choice than to confide him on what he’s been doing with Beomgyu for the past week. He has stored the device back into the storage room before anyone noticed it’s gone, but apparently that’s not what Taehyun’s apprehensive about. The initial annoyance he had when he walked into the room is only intensified as he glares at Soobin in disapproval.
“Hyung, are you aware of what you are doing?” he asks in a hushed tone, eyeing Beomgyu from a corner of his eyes. “He can read emotions?”
The humanoid is staying a good distance away from them, busying himself with some potted plants near the window. He has been staying near the window a lot, occasionally catching a glimpse of someone walking on the street and trying to read their emotions.
When Soobin tells him that information, Taehyun looks at him like he has lost his mind.
Maybe he had. Because what Taehyun says next makes sense, and he is not the one with years of experience between them.
“Are you hearing yourself right now? Your robot, which is equipped by an unknown AI, is learning about emotions ? And it’s not concerning for you?”
==
He really should have been more concerned about it, and not leaving it for other people. To have Taehyun’s disapproval is already bad enough, and now that he has someone else looking at him with apprehension, inside his own lab, it’s finally dawned on him.
The weight of this situation. The fear .
“Choi Soobin, are you insane?”
He is stunned in front of the doorway, staring at a certain pink haired male who is staring at him with intimidation exuding from his smaller frame. But that’s not what alarms him. It’s the presence of Beomgyu sitting on the edge of his bed – the examination table.
When he left the night before, he had made sure to switch the humanoid off like usual, and now the familiar pair of round, clear eyes are staring at his way. Accompanied with a glare from Yeonjun’s foxy eyes, this is not a good situation to walk into. Not at all.
“Hyung, why are you here?”
“I wanted to check if you were still sleeping in your lab, but I met your little friend instead.”
Anger bubbles up in Soobin’s blood this time, as he marches into the room, standing before the elder who keeps his firm stance. “And you’re touching my stuff?”
“You should be grateful of the fact that I decided to check on this humanoid, because what the fuck are you doing?”
Soobin takes a deep breath, trying not to show the fear that’s starting to materialize to his expression, completed with the subtle shakiness in his fingers.
“What do you mean?”
“Tell him,” Yeonjun turns his gaze to Beomgyu instead. “What happened here.”
“Yeonjun was happy at first because you actually managed to fix me, but then I pointed it out to him, then his emotion changed. It doesn’t look much like anger until you walked in, though. He said something about how wrong this is and how I’m not supposed to understand emotions, so I told him that you taught me.”
“See the problem, Choi Soobin? You don’t think this is an anomaly?”
“I think he is just angry that you didn’t tell him, though,” offers Beomgyu. Not helpful at all.
The elder finally couldn’t take it anymore, he reaches over to place his finger on the spot behind Beomgyu’s neck, tracing along a flat button that makes the humanoid’s eyes glaze off before they fell shut again. His body slumps over until Yeonjun positions him back to lie down on the bed.
“You know what’s wrong already, but I’d still list them down for you. He thinks and asks questions, he reads emotions, and he does things without being commanded to. Doesn’t this look weird to you?”
“He just has a very advanced AI, hyung. I’m still trying to get a grip on it.”
“And when you finally figured out that his AI is developing, learning from humans and getting smarter than us, are you going to deactivate him?”
Soobin shuts up at that. He has had the question popping up in his mind already at the beginning of this all when he saw Beomgyu act on his own, but it’s all forgotten until now. He’s been too lulled into the false sense of security given by Beomgyu.
Not Beomgyu. His AI.
“Well, you won’t even get to do that. The facility will be doing that for you, Soobin-ah,” Yeonjun steps back, motioning to the vast room with his arms. “You’d be so naïve to think that they are not already onto you. You’d be lucky if they’re only taking him away and not your license along with it.”
The fear is settling inside his chest now, materializing into a stone that’s dropping into his stomach and making him nauseous. Why does it matter, the possibility of Beomgyu being taken away?
What he knows is that it’s not the matter of Beomgyu being his creation anymore. It’s just Beomgyu.
Soobin knows that he can’t lose him.
==
The next time Beomgyu opens his eyes, he is not inside the cold, deadly silent lab.
Soobin thought he’d be alarmed right there, anticipating the worst reaction to a new environment, only to mentally punch himself in the face. Beomgyu is a humanoid; he shouldn’t react the way humans do.
“Hi, this is your new home,” he says, offering a small smile.
The pair of artificial eyes are scanning every inch of the room from where he is sitting on the bed, which is not much, considering how small the room is compared to the lab. It’s one of the available rooms in the second floor of Kai family’s café, so there is also constant noise of people chattering from downstairs. Not to mention the traffic noises that come from the road outside the balcony.
Only once his eyes are back on Soobin that he speaks. “Are you giving me up?”
“Huh?”
“When robots like me are being relocated, usually it’s to meet their new owners. It’s not like we have a choice, right?”
His tone is monotonous, as if he is just stating a fact instead of addressing the possible situation right now. But for some reasons, the way Beomgyu is looking at him makes Soobin feel a tug in his heart. Guilt.
Before he can answer, there is a series of footsteps climbing up the staircase, followed by a cheerful greeting of a younger boy who holds sunshine in his eyes when the door slams open. The smile on the boy’s face lights up the entire room when he walks in.
“Soobin hyung, have you settled in already? Just tell me if you need anything!” even his voice fills the room to the very corner.
“Hi, Kai, sorry, I didn’t greet you downstairs, you seemed busy.”
“It’s fine, the customers can live without me. Is this—“Kai stops mid-sentence when he averts his gaze from the scientist, just to see the other male already standing right in front of him.
Just like with any other new things he discovered, Beomgyu is inching closer, staring intently at the poor human with a pair of unblinking eyes. It might be unnerving if it’s someone else, but it’s Kai, and Kai only smiles brightly at the attention.
“Are you my new human?”
“Am I?” Kai gasps dramatically, whipping his gaze back towards the elder.
Soobin only rolls his eyes before pushing Kai back out from the room, signing for the humanoid to wait for him before the door shuts behind him. They are standing near the staircase leading downstairs, far enough from the room, when he eyes the younger.
“So, that’s Beomgyu. I know this is so sudden and I didn’t get to explain the whole thing quickly, but I’m glad you would still accept him as a tenant.”
Kai shakes his head, reaching out to pat him on the shoulder. “I’m informed enough, hyung. Taehyun has been talking about this robot you fixed, saying that it’s behaving like an anomaly. He said he’s scared for you because you’ve been obsessing with it, and even more now since he’s not behaving like any other robots.”
“He did?” Soobin exhales, running a hand down his face. “You must think I’m weird.”
“Not at all. I’d be fascinated too if I were you. He just seems so… human.”
The moment his hand drops from his face, he arches a brow at the way Kai says it; full of wonder and amazement. “Yeah?”
“He’s beautiful. I understand why you’d be obsessed with him.”
With a snort, Soobin shakes his head and knocks his fist gently on top of Kai’s head. He ignores the whine that follows the action as he leans in closer. Speaking just loud enough for the both of them to hear.
“I can’t let them find out about him before I figure out what’s wrong with his AI, so can you keep him hidden for me? I promise he won’t be too much of a bother. He won’t be stepping out of the room and he will be non-activated most of the time.”
“Okay! I don’t understand your techie stuff, but I’m a good secret keeper,” Kai says, making a zipping movement across his mouth.
A sigh of relief escapes Soobin’s lips at the confirmation. Now the only thing left is to make sure that Taehyun won’t find out. Even though the blonde lives just a few doors away from where he rented the room.
At least Kai’s smile is reassuring enough to lift a part of the burden from his shoulder. He finally found someone who’s not questioning his bad decisions, and furthermore, agreed to keep his secret.
Nothing bad could come from this, right?
Oh, how he is so in for a surprise.
After leaving Beomgyu in Kai’s care, he couldn’t come to check for a few days because of the workload that bombarded him the moment he went back into the lab. He even had to leave abruptly after that warm conversation, leaving a quick instruction to switch Beomgyu off while he had to run back to the building across the place.
The good news is that he went back to his lab empty handed, facing Yeonjun who seemed confused yet relieved at the lack of the humanoid’s presence in his lab.
“I put him back in my grandpa’s garage,” he said, adding a nonchalant shrug just to make it seem believable. “You’re right, hyung. He isn't worth the risk.”
Yeonjun seems more convinced afterwards, but that also caused the elder to be pleased enough to drag him into helping him with his new big project.
It lasted for two days, and it should be okay.
Except it is not.
It’s already late into the night when he leaves the building today, and he half-expects Kai to be cleaning up his café already. Except, it’s not Kai who is cleaning up the place when he walks in. The guy is standing behind the cashier machine, looking alarmed when Soobin walks into the place with a tinkling of bells atop the doorway.
Another two seconds passed before Soobin registered what’s wrong in the place.
“Hi, hyung. Uhh, Taehyunnie said that you might be too occupied to drop by, so we didn’t really expect you to come so soon.”
What’s wrong is the presence of Beomgyu in the room.
Beomgyu, fully activated and walking around on his own will. He has a cleaning supply on his hands, deep in focus while cleaning a stain on a wooden table, when his gaze flits up and locks onto the human’s. They instantly round up as he hops up into his feet, making a beeline towards where he’s standing by the doorway.
“You’re here! I almost thought that you’ve abandoned me for real. Kai said otherwise, but there’s still a possibility.”
“What are you doing?” he doesn’t recognize his voice flowing out his own mouth when he says it, too stunned.
“I’m working here? Kai said that I could help out—“
A loud, awkward laughter interrupts them as Kai comes to join them, squeezing himself between the two to act as a separator. A hint of guilt swims inside his eyes, which are shaking subtly as he peers up at Soobin.
Soobin, who is still standing rigidly by the doorway, a hand clutching his laptop bag.
“You’re upset,” Beomgyu peeks up from behind Kai’s shoulder, tiptoeing a little as he is shorter than the male. “That calls for salted caramel mocha frappe with extra whipped cream.”
As the humanoid sprints away from the scene, it leaves him and Kai alone, with his sharp glare boring down into the boy who seems to be shrinking as his laughter dies down. “I can explain.”
He does explain as much as he could the moment they sit down, while Beomgyu is busy behind the café’s bar doing god knows what. Soobin’s eyes keep flitting towards him every time he makes a noise, worried, yet also interested in what his robot could be doing in a café’s workspace.
Kai tells him that he never managed to switch Beomgyu off since the first day of his stay there, couldn’t bring himself to do it since the other pleaded him not to. So Beomgyu had been roaming around the café for days, and as much as it almost makes Soobin’s heart fall from its socket, there doesn’t seem to be any problem other than his unannounced appearance a few minutes ago.
That, and that moment Beomgyu’s battery is drained on his second day of stay. Kai had panicked since he had never dealt with other humanoids, but he managed to secure the situation well, dragging Beomgyu upstairs and plugging him up with the device Soobin had left in the room along with the robot.
“Please don’t be mad, hyung. I couldn’t push the switch just like that. He’s so human .”
“You know he is not human, Kai-yah. You plugged him into a charger and you still think that way?” he sighs in exasperation.
“Nobody figured out that he’s not a human. Not one customer. Isn’t that something?”
“You let them meet other people?” he almost shrieks at the information, gaining attention from Beomgyu who peeks up at the two from behind the coffee machine. If he didn’t know better, he’d start thinking that the humanoid also feels guilty for doing the one thing that he’s told not to do. But he can’t feel. No matter how human he looks and how many people he has fooled into believing.
Soobin is almost hit by another heart attack when the bell above the entrance door tinkles again, welcoming Taehyun who just got back from the facility. He looks exhausted, and he doesn’t acknowledge his senior’s presence at first when he waltz towards the counter.
“Thank you,” he didn’t bat an eye when he grabs the drink that was meant for Soobin from the countertop, sparing a smile to Beomgyu before he whips his gaze towards the two. A glint of surprise crosses his eyes for a split second, but he seems to be too exhausted to be dealing with this right now. “Hey, hyung. See you at work tomorrow!”
“Haha… I can explain,” Kai chimes in from his side.
After sparing Kai from another interrogation session, he secures Beomgyu in his room, watching as the male sits on top of the bed, head lowered.
“Are you going to deactivate me now?” he asks meekly.
Not this again. This must be what he used to make Kai feel guilty for thinking about turning him off.
For a split second, he is reminded about Yeonjun’s warning. How an AI can develop to be smarter than a human and finally takes over humankind. The idea seems so far-fetched, but not impossible, especially seeing something lights up in Beomgyu’s eyes the moment he sighs in defeat. As if he had succeeded in another mission.
One step of a time. Today he is getting their trusts, tomorrow he will be ruling the world with his advanced AI.
Soobin slaps himself mentally. Nonsense .
“Do you have any idea how dangerous this could be? You’re an unregistered humanoid. If they found out about you, they are allowed to take you from me.”
“Taking me from you, huh?” Beomgyu says with a smile on his lips.
“You’re so not teasing me right now. I didn’t put that in your system.”
“You didn’t put anything in my system. You don’t even know how to unlock my head.”
He hates how Beomgyu knows how clueless he is when it comes to the AI trapped inside his pretty head. The humanoid seems to think that it’s a good thing, when it’s the only thing that might cause fear in humans. The unknowing.
As if reading his mind, Beomgyu says. “If you let me walk around freely, I will give you information about my AI to help you figure me out better.”
“Do you even know how your own brain works?” he arches a brow, sceptical at the offer.
“Don’t you think I can access my own software better than you do?”
That irks him off. The only thing he had to figure out is the passcode that is blocking him from the access. He has been trying to break it for weeks, only to fail each time. He can’t act too reckless in trying out the password out of hundreds of possibilities, as there is the risk of resetting such an advanced AI that’s invented decades ago.
This could end up being either his breakthrough or his downfall. Only Beomgyu could help him figure it out.
“Fine,” he finally says, pulling a chair to sit right across from the latter. He tries to ignore the hint of smugness on Beomgyu’s face as he looks at him. Robots can’t feel smug. “Can you tell me the password?”
“Nope. Not now.”
Soobin stares at him. “I’m going to reset you.”
“You won’t, because then you won’t find out where my memories came from.”
“Memories?” he frowns at this. He remembers Beomgyu mentioning something about it back then too, but he had brushed it off quickly since humanoids are not supposed to have memories .
Memories are for humans. Humanoids only act on commands and they don’t need memories since they can access anything from the internet. Soobin should’ve started to get used to the surprises he’s had daily since he managed to fix Beomgyu, just so he won’t be this alarmed each time when he discovers something new.
Something like:
“I have memories, things that happened way before you activated me in your lab that day,” he says. “I have a past, Soobin. What does this make me?”
==
“…a threat to humankind.”
Soobin snaps out of his daze when he hears Yeonjun’s voice suddenly rise from its normal tone. He blinks a few times, realizing that he is still in the middle of a meeting with Yeonjun and other seniors in the lab facility. They are all intimidating, but the pink haired male looks like the smartest guy in the room.
“That’s what you guys are looking to make if you plan to insert an adaptive AI into war machines,” he explains further, swiping his hand across the air only for the screen behind him to switch into the next slide. “You gave them the ability to adapt and respond to enemies’ tactics in the battlefield, but what’s the guarantee that they won’t learn how to take over humans in the society as well? You heard what happened to that one project in Soviet in 2031. The killer robot going haywire?”
“But that’s decades ago, we have more knowledge now to control these machines,” another scientist chimes in.
“USA, 2067. A computer program attacking the government’s secret information, leaking it all to the public and causing impeachment and distrust among the citizens. That’s less than a decade ago, by the way.”
“I agree. We’re doing well enough without AI in the last war, so why do we need it now?” someone else says.
It’s responded by a lot of voices mixing in the forum discussion, making Soobin’s head throb. He already had enough headache about his own robot to be debating about making one for war purposes. The thought about sending Beomgyu as a smart, adaptable machine into the war just makes him sick in the stomach.
Beomgyu’s AI is complemented with memories. That’s it. It doesn’t adapt or develop into a possibility of being a killing machine.
“Artificial Intelligence is a risky business. Inventing one is easy, but until the AI experts find a way to control them, we should still stick to the rule of not tampering into that unknown zone,” Yeonjun concludes in the end.
Soobin has to pretend that he didn’t sense a deep stare thrown his way when Yeonjun said it.
There’s no mistaking that Yeonjun would be able to help him with figuring out how Beomgyu’s AI works, but seeing how apprehensive he is about the idea, Soobin can’t risk it. The least he can do is to conspicuously ask random questions during their casual exchange.
(“Do you think it’s possible to equip memories into humanoids?” he asks at one occasion, catching the pink haired male off guard in the midst of eating his tea time snack.
“Yeah, we put instructions on how to clean into cleaning robots and the whole book of laws into police robots, after all.”
“Those are like, information. How about something more personal? A childhood memory?”
Yeonjun frowns at this, momentarily distracted from his choco balls, which is enough to make Soobin sit up straight on his seat.
“Why would a cleaning robot need that kind of memory?”
He laughs awkwardly. “Right.”)
(“Which one do you think is more possible for AI to do? Inventing memories or lying?”
Yeonjun grunts in annoyance at this question, since he’s in the middle of fixing a small machine on his table. The only weakness Soobin knows he has is the inability to multitask, and he is taking advantage of this, throwing all the questions while the latter is too occupied to remember what he said later on.
He just didn’t expect that the hyung would drop his work to have his full attention on Soobin.
“Both raise an alarm, but even the most advanced AI can’t lie, Soobin-ah,” he says, eyebrows furrowed. “Remember that killer android I mentioned? He didn’t bother lying about his ability, just killed his creator once the person found out about it. Recorded in his video cam, in 4k.”
The information makes him wince. That does sound dangerous.
But for now, the most dangerous thing in the room is Yeonjun’s eyes that are fixed on him, full of suspicion. He had to find an excuse to leave the lab before the elder’s sharp mind caught up to his intentions.)
(“Is there a way to clone our memories into a robot?”
“What’s with you and these random questions?” Yeonjun snaps at last, would probably glare at him if only he wasn’t in the middle of driving.
“Just wondering. I’m brainstorming about this device connected to memories.”
“But for some reasons, they are all connected with your last AI experiment?”
He’s sharp. Soobin should’ve thought twice before he attempted to dig information from Yeonjun. Sure, he is full of knowledge, but that genius mind of his also lets him figure out when something fishy is happening.
When his question is met with silence, Yeonjun exhales a long sigh. “Feeding our memories into an AI would be risky, since there’s still a possibility of it thinking it is you . Now, if you only need to store a memory into a device, I might have what you’re looking for.”
“Oh?” That perks up his interest, despite the idea being far from what he needs to figure out the system behind Beomgyu’s AI. Perhaps he could have another use for it.)
==
The device Yeonjun gives him is in the shape of sunglasses. They look pretty fashionable, especially when worn by the hyung who’s always keeping up his good look even when he’s just working in his lab for hours.
When he puts it on Beomgyu, he breaks into a smile at how adorable the look is – the big pair of glasses covering half of Beomgyu’s small face, perched on top of his nose and making him go cross-eyed in order to register the device.
“You won’t find data about this anywhere on the internet, this is Yeonjun’s new invention.”
“He referenced this model from an old Gucci’s glasses. Not original at all.”
Soobin snorts at the comment, pressing a button on the frame of the glasses. “Okay, conjure a memory. Anything you want to show me.”
“There are a lot. Every day I can tap into a new one.”
This makes him frown. Just how many did the creator had inserted into this humanoid’s system? That’s a lot of efforts put into a single artificial brain.
He finds the answer a little later, as he lies down on his bed with the very same sunglasses perched on his face. His eyes glaze over as he watches the scenes unfold before them. They are all vivid, yet decorated with an edge of vagueness that reminds him of tapping into his childhood memories. It’s a good invention.
A terrifying one, too.
In the span of a few minutes, he sees flashes of memories as seen through Beomgyu’s eyes. There are too many of them, varying from a mundane one like picking a slice of his favourite pizza, into a more intricate one like receiving a diploma. As he fast forward through the files of memories (he filled up the whole capacity, over one terabyte provided by the memory card), he is filled with memories from his childhood up to adulthood.
His earliest memory, crying on his fourth birthday because his best friend wasn’t present. Entering elementary school, becoming a vice president of the fifth grade. Middle school. Music. Playing guitar with his friends, joining a band. High school, studying so hard droplets of tears fall onto his notebook. Caught flu on the day before an important exam. A first kiss, finding out he’s not into girls. Moving to a bigger city as he entered University. Trying out his favourite ice cream for the first time – the salted caramel flavour melting onto his tongue.
That’s the last thing Soobin registers as he’s already ripping the glasses off his face, sitting up on his bed and panting as he tries to make sense of what he just saw.
Beomgyu is not just an AI.
He has a series of prominent memories made to shape him up like any other human. But humanoids do not grow up. They are not born like humans, and if these are only fabricated memories the creator made just to put into his product, Soobin is sure he won’t see memories of people calling out for Choi Beomgyu!
The name haunts him when he falls asleep that night, restless and confused.
It’s still there, hanging on the tip of his tongue even as he wakes up the next morning, with only one destination in mind. He has to find out what Beomgyu actually is before anyone else does, because he might not be what everyone thought he is.
There is something more about Choi Beomgyu that he has to discover before anyone else does.
==
The intention is there, but he is too late.
He knows that his biggest fear has materialized into reality the moment he sees Yeonjun’s face when he enters the building that morning. The irritated face, laced with confusion. He has a thousand questions in his face when he drags Soobin into a quieter area of the lobby.
“What the fuck did you do with my glasses, Choi Soobin?” he asks in a hushed tone. “Do you know that all beta devices are connected to the facility’s cloud?”
Colours drained from his face the moment he realised that. Yeonjun didn’t mention that it’s a government-approved beta product. But he should’ve known. He’s been in this line of job for years, knows all the rules, yet he still managed to fuck up.
“Did you… did you access the data?”
“Me, and this guy who’s responsible to review the data input. He reported about a huge upload with a different kind of brain wave. Digitized information, Soobin.”
He takes a deep breath, shutting his eyes tightly. What had started with a good intention ended up being a setup for Beomgyu.
“Did he figure out… I mean, about my…” he can’t even say it.
A scientist with an above-average IQ, rendered speechless from fear.
“Not yet, but I did because guess what, that’s the name of your humanoid. Did you keep your humanoid activated for long enough for the AI to start inventing memories?”
“There is no way he can invent all of those!” he says defensively.
Yeonjun lets out an incredulous scoff, just before a corner of his lips quirk up in a challenging smile. “If you’re so sure, why don’t you bring him in so I can examine him?”
“You can’t do it. I’ve been trying to crack the password for months and—“
“Bring him to me,” Yeonjun snaps. “Or an official letter from the government will make you do it.”
He really wants to argue. The least he could do is to shout back at Yeonjun to stop telling him what to do. But he knows the hyung is right.
As a new wave of fear settles inside his chest, he wonders if it comes from the thought of losing Beomgyu, or the possibility of Beomgyu being an actual threat to humankind just like how Yeonjun predicts it.
Either way, he can feel Beomgyu starts slipping out from between his fingers. No matter how hard he tries to grasp him, there is no choice than to let go.
==
“Why are we going back here?”
The question slips past Beomgyu’s lips the moment they enter the building. Just like any other time he is replaced into a new place, his eyes start to scan around the vicinity, taking in whatever caught his eyes and looking up the identity of each personnel in the lobby.
“You like being in the café better? Who would have thought?” Soobin says with a teasing edge on his voice.
Beomgyu didn’t pick it up, averting his focus back on his human instead. “I can’t really say that I like something better than the other, but I guess if I were human, you’d say I’m happier being there. More people around.”
“You really like humans.”
“It depends. I don’t like the people here,” he says truthfully, because just like Yeonjun said, robots can’t lie or beat around the bush. They say something just as it is, and that’s one of the things Soobin finds endearing about being around his humanoid.
As if he had a list of them.
(“ Soobin, you look terrible today.”
“Soobin, Taehyun has a crush on you, but you’re married to work, aren’t you? And he will be too, soon enough.”
“The old man from your workplace was talking about you this morning, so I told him not to be rude. Kai scolded me, but don’t you think it was the right thing to do, Soobin?”
“You’re really good at what you do, Soobin .”)
“Soobin!”
It took him another second to realize that the voice didn’t come from his memory anymore. It’s from Beomgyu himself, who is seeking for his attention as they stand before the elevator, waiting for it to come down.
“Yes?” he finally responds, blinking a few times to clear the ghost of Beomgyu’s voice from his head. Why is he already imagining his voice when the guy is still around?
“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?”
“Why do you think so?”
“I got relocated to Kai’s place because Choi Yeonjun wanted me gone, so I can’t see why we can just walk into the place so casually like this, unless we are meeting him,” Beomgyu says, eerily accurate that Soobin can’t affirm to that. A lump lodged in his throat. “You’re going to give me up?”
“That won’t happen. Yeonjun is a genius and he is just going to take a look into your system, okay? Try to crack your password since I can’t do it.”
“They will get rid of me if I turn out to be as dangerous as they thought, right? And then you can’t do anything about it.”
There’s no fear in his voice, which is just to be expected as humanoids cannot feel emotions. Yet the only thing Soobin wants to do is to draw the smaller male into his arms, protect him from whatever is waiting for him. In his head, he is grabbing his cold hand and pulling him away from this place, away from everyone who might cause him harm.
The reality is that Soobin is a coward, and he can’t say anything even as they walk into the elevator to go up the building. As they face the slowly closing door, he notices Beomgyu’s eyes locked with a little girl’s. The one he met the first time he ventured out of the lab.
“It’s unfair, Soobin. You’re not the only one who is tampering into AI.”
He finds the girl’s eyes as well, before his own pair widens at the implication, but Beomgyu refuses to elaborate about it. The humanoid is not talking for the rest of their trip towards Yeonjun’s lab. It’s so unlike him who always has something to comment about.
The corridor is silent as they walk, devoid of any other humans, until they stop at the location.
“This is it,” he says as he gives a knock on the door, just before he turns his attention back at the humanoid.
Soobin starts missing his robot already before he even loses him.
“Soobin?” Beomgyu calls out, staring straight at the white door that’s greeting him back with silence.
“Yes?”
“The password is 1205.”
That’s the last thing he hears from Beomgyu before the door swings open and he is welcomed into the lab. Yeonjun gives him a smile. A friendly, yet apologetic one. It’s enough of a sign that he is not welcomed there.
This could be the last time Soobin sees him, and Beomgyu is not even looking at him anymore. Any trace of him disappears the moment the lab’s door is closed between them.
==
“The password is my birthday, Kai-ya, what are the odds?”
After dropping Beomgyu by the lab, Soobin couldn’t bring himself to concentrate on his own work. He ended up going down and back to Kai’s café after butchering the dream projection device he was assembling.
Thankfully, the younger one is nice enough to accompany him even through the rush hour.
“He was made by your grandpa right? Maybe…”
“Nope, no chance. He was dead in the technology war before my parents even met.”
Kai thinks for a while, resting his chin on top of his palm. The thinking goes on for a little too long that he starts nodding off, leaving the scientist rolling his eyes and sipping on his coffee.
It’s his usual favourite, the salted caramel frappe Beomgyu usually made for him when he came to check up on him every night. The first sip didn’t bring the pleasant sweetness he used to associate with this flavour of the coffee this time. There’s only the bitter aftertaste that ruins his mood further.
“How is it that a robot makes coffee better than you do?” he jokes, just to drag Kai out of whatever caused him to be quiet.
Just like Beomgyu, Kai is another presence in his life who just won’t stop talking. He finds it strange that he has to be the one coaxing the younger to talk this time.
“Robots have better accuracy than we do!” Kai says defensively, grinning along with him, just before his smile fades again. The deep lines of thought on his forehead appear again. “Though I never actually taught him how to make it. You have these troublesome details on how much sugar to put and how much coffee to balance it and while I can’t memorize it each time, he did it so naturally.”
“Maybe he looked it up on the internet.”
“Trust me, your taste is peculiar. I thought you put it into his system, but then I remember you saying that you couldn’t get into his brain system, so it’s more confusing.”
Soobin came to the café for some reassurance, but he left the place with more questions instead.
The more things he learns about the humanoid, the more questions show up. He just hopes that Yeonjun will be better in figuring out how the humanoid works. After all, he is not attached to Beomgyu likes he does.
This is it. The moment he realizes that he might start developing attachment to a presence of a certain black haired male. One that has silver electricity in his veins instead of red blood. One that talks enough to make it up for the two of them.
He can already see how lonely his days will be if the facility really takes Beomgyu away from him.
==
Soobin is floating in his artificially induced sleep when he’s rudely woken up by a rapping on his door. His eyes snapped open, greeted by the cloud of chamomile gas around his bed that he inhales before he removes himself from bed. A red light forming the shape of 02:42 blinks steadily from his bedside table.
The last time someone comes over by his apartment at this hour of the night is the night his mother passed away. That’s why he is not so excited to drag himself out of the bed to answer the door.
“It’s me, Soobin. Get your ass here quickly. I can’t be seen!” Yeonjun whispers-yells into the intercom. As if the whole thing is not recorded by the service and the building’s security system already.
But the moment Soobin peers into the intercom’s display, he’s tongue-tied at the sight of another presence standing next to the pink haired male.
He is greeted by a pair of arms wrapped around his waist and something rushing against his chest right after he lets the door slide open. He stares down at the tufts of black, fluffy hair, just before the owner tips his head back and peers up at him with a smile.
A smile that materializes from his restless sleep. Beomgyu.
“Finally, a friendly face and not Yeonjun’s annoying frown.”
He is still stunned by the greeting. His head is clouded by slumber. It's not his fault that he is not registering the two’s presence in his place until Yeonjun comes in and locks the door. The male is staring up at him with worrisome eyes.
“He is nothing but a series of bad news, Soobin-ah.”
That’s what wakes him up, finally registering the cold metallic body pressed against him. It’s not as cold as the look Yeonjun gives him, though. The look that could only mean a start of a nightmare.
==
The bad news Yeonjun delivered could have been a nightmare that finished the moment the sun rises again. If only Soobin’s mind didn’t tend to make him self-destruct at that late of the night, and he ended up making the worst choice.
In his defense, the whole thing was too much to take at 3AM. Even Yeonjun still lets his incredulity seep into his voice when he recounts his finding.
Is it really his fault, that the first thing he did after the daylight hits the ground is to drive away?
There is nothing much he can do to escape the grip of the facility as it has enough resources to track him down, but the least he can do is to try taking Beomgyu as far away as possible from their reach. The thought of their intrusive hands flipping the pages of precious memories planted in his humanoid’s head makes him sick in the stomach.
But Beomgyu is here. Eyes alight with fascination as he watches the street from the passenger seat’s window.
Soobin just wishes he realized earlier that not even the most intelligent AI could mimic the way Beomgyu’s eyes express his feelings.
Feelings . Such a ridiculous concept to be associated with a humanoid.
(“It’s not just an anomaly or a developing AI, Soobin. This is more serious than that,” Yeonjun started with that once they’ve settled down, sitting at the dining room’s table. His phone is projecting a transparent layer of screen in the air between them, displaying a detailed research paper from 2020. “We had a discussion about this, remember? Japan’s experiment of transferring consciousness into a non-living being. It was a failed one, some faulty codes that destroyed the scientist’s consciousness while the item only retained broken pieces of it? Guess what they salvaged at the end: Memories.”
Soobin started to feel an ill sensation in his chest at this point, his mind piecing up the puzzle pieces, giving him a sense of the ‘bad news’ the senior was about to drop onto him.
“I analysed his brain wave and tapped into his system. There is no system, Soobin-ah.”
There is no system, because his brain works the way human brain cells do. All the synapses and stimuli running through them, replicated into the intricate machine trapped inside the metallic head.
There is no system because Beomgyu’s brain was not artificially made. )
“So… how did you end up here?” Soobin questions into the silence of the vehicle, interrupting the soft classical tune softly flowing from the car’s music player. His eyes stay on the deserted road even as he feels a pair of eyes on him.
“You brought me here.”
He laughs at the obvious answer. “No. How did you end up here, in this metallic body decades after you died?”
Beomgyu stares at him for what feels like too long, he might start assuming that the robot had malfunctioned from the lack of answer registered into his system. But there is no system that made up the humanoid’s brain. It’s only Beomgyu and his consciousness transferred from his human body.
“I only remember the bus accident, thinking that I’d give anything to make the pain stop. Then the next thing I saw was you, inside that lab,” he said, eyes blank as if he was playing the particular memory inside his head. “No pain. Not even a drop of blood left in my body.”
(Yeonjun seemed distressed as he laid out his hypothesis to the now fully-awake scientist who was sitting on the chair with dishevelled hair and a dazed look on his face. Everything sounded so bizarre. Soobin should probably question if Yeonjun had been drinking before coming over. But then he caught Beomgyu walking towards them from a corner of his eyes, and everything made sense.
The idea that Beomgyu was not an artificial intelligence made by his grandfather, and that he was an actual living being whose consciousness was stolen from him to be inserted in this metallic body.
No one knew about it simply because Beomgyu had been stuck in a dysfunctional humanoid body, discarded in the forgotten corner of a nameless scientist’s garbage.
“… so I did some digging based on the details provided by this guy, and I found him. Choi Beomgyu.”
Soobin snapped out of his daze when the floating screen displayed a photo of Beomgyu. Except this Beomgyu was very much alive and happy. In the picture, he was with his friends at the beach. His clothes are wet and sandy, yet that didn’t hold him from smiling at the camera. He looked alive .
The picture file was captioned Seoul, summer 2019.
“Choi Beomgyu died a year after this picture was taken.”)
“Did you know?” Soobin asks at one point. By this time, the sun is already higher up in the sky, and they crossed the border of the cold capital city into a friendlier looking town.
Beomgyu hums in question. “I know a lot of things, but I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”
“That you’re actually not something artificially made? You’re actually alive, and you have all these emotions you learned from a machine.”
“Not exactly, no. I had access to all the memories and information stored in my head, but I didn’t start recalling them until I was introduced to the emotions,” he had his eyes on Soobin for the whole time as he said it, and the human couldn’t stand another minute of not looking at his driving companion. His gaze flicker towards the male briefly, wondering how the pair of artificial eyes could look so solemn under the bright morning sun. “I could feel these jolts of emotions like humans, but I couldn’t grasp onto them. They are fleeting sensations. A privilege. I couldn’t sense things the way I used to either – no sense of touch, taste, or smell.
You can’t really say that I’m alive, Soobin.”
His fingers tighten on the steering wheel, the way his chest cavity tightens around his heart. He can’t imagine how Beomgyu must be feeling, to be conscious, yet trapped in a metal body that restricts him from feeling and sensing things like humans do.
It was his fault that he couldn’t do a good job fixing him.
“You always do that, fixing me.”
“It’s my responsibility, since I’m the one who found you.”
When their eyes meet again, it’s Beomgyu’s turn to avert his gaze first. A poorly masked ghost of memories swimming in the pair of eyes.
“Have you ever considered that maybe, I didn’t want to be fixed?”
(“What should I do?”
Soobin was the one who broke the silence after the revelation. Each information was absorbed into his brain, making it ache with the weight. As he looked at the senior who always had an answer to his question, it became apparent that this time, no amount of experience could help Yeonjun figure things out with him.
“It’s one thing to tell you to inactivate a potentially harmful artificial intelligence, but to shut down an actual human consciousness? A living thing?” Yeonjun’s voice rose at the end, until he realized it a second later. A hand slapping over his mouth as he leaned his weight onto it. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Can we just keep him hidden just the way I did it all this time? No harm if the facility never found out.”
At that point, Yeonjun’s face morphs with guilt that’s painted all over it. He brings both his hands up to cover his visage. Palms digging into his closed eyes. “That’s where I fucked up, Soobin-ah. I shouldn’t have given you my memory glasses, or brought him into my lab. I’m sorry.”
The answer is obvious enough. There is no way Beomgyu can go back into hiding because the facility must be aware of him already by now. Being an important asset to the facility, all the data from Yeonjun’s computer is collected by the higher ups, and once they found out about a successful experiment of transferring consciousness, they won’t let it go into a waste.
“They will want to take him in, right?” Soobin asks.
“Yes,” confirms the elder quickly. “But it’s not humane. There is a reason why the experiment was bound to fail back then. Imagine how many people would be ruined as a test subject, especially since we don’t have the actual scientist who made Beomgyu here. The risk is too great for a morally detestable experiment.”
“Morally detestable,” Beomgyu chimed in for the first time ever since the two started discussing about him as if he was not in the room. Even they had forgotten about his presence. Yeonjun jumped on his seat as he turned to face the humanoid who was sitting next to him the whole time.
Still, he was smiling. Eyes void and unnerving.
“I’ve been called a lot of things, but that’s the most creative one.”)
The weight of Beomgyu’s words still sits on Soobin’s chest even as they have dissipated into the air between them.
He never put himself in the humanoid’s point of view for he thought that Beomgyu was simply a machine. A humanoid without any feeling. A possible artificial intelligence that started from a blank slate the moment he was activated in his lab that day.
The reality hits him only now, how scary it would be to be Beomgyu who woke up in an artificially made body that day. How awful it was for him, to be the only one who’s aware of the memories and fleeting emotions he owned, an anomaly of what a robot could be.
There are instances of people wanting to live forever, prolonging their lives as much as they could until they grow old and their bodies wither. Yet they stayed human.
They are not made into a bunch of metals.
“I—“Soobin is about to break the silence again, an apology already sitting on the tip of his tongue, when he caught a quick movement of Beomgyu’s hand shooting towards the steering wheel.
His words are lost in a gasp, sealed by his gritted teeth as the car makes a sharp turn when Beomgyu tugs the steering wheel towards his direction.
They almost crashed into the side of the road, only prevented by Soobin’s foot flooring the brake. His body is suspended by his seatbelt before he could crash against the wheel.
“What’s wrong with you?” he snaps, glaring at the humanoid who stares at him quietly, unfazed by the fact that they almost crashed out of the road.
“I want to visit this one place.”
“Do you know what situation we are in right now? They might show up on our tail anytime soon. Do you want to be taken into their lab, dissected and experimented on?” he is on the verge of yelling at this point. The pressure of the situation starts to pull at his sanity, testing it.
He doesn’t know why he is so scared, like he is the one who’s at stake instead of this consciousness of a stranger living in a humanoid he accidentally found.
(“You need to take him away, Soobin-ah. They will come for you anytime soon. They always caught up quickly.”
Surprisingly, it was Yeonjun who came up with the idea. The Yeonjun who always goes by the rules of the facility, who is always loyal to the ethics.
“I don’t know what to do. They will find us anyway, right? They have access to every inch of the country,” he grabbed onto his own hair, messing it up with his fingers as his brain works on full force.
As he looked up to Beomgyu, he caught him staring. Witnessing Soobin’s slow succumbing into his breakdown.
He was going to lose Beomgyu.
His breathing started to pick up from anxiety when Yeonjun stood up and grabbed onto his shoulders, gathering his focus to stare up at the pink haired male.
“Then get the fuck out of here now. Would you let him get taken away without a fight, or at least do something to prevent it?”)
Beomgyu shakes his head, staying calm despite Soobin’s panic.
Because of the sharp turn, they had missed the road they were supposed to take towards their destination. A ghost town without much technology touching it. The government wouldn’t have an easy time finding them there. And Beomgyu was made aware of it since they started the drive.
“Can we, for once, do what I want?” says the humanoid.
Guilt coils around Soobin’s throat this time, realizing that he has done everything without questioning what Beomgyu wanted. Even as he and Yeonjun had the discussion, they never included the latter.
What difference would it make between him and the government they are running away from, if he can’t even give Beomgyu the one thing he wants to do?
Seeing the firm resolution slowly melting away from Soobin’s face, Beomgyu reaches out to place his cold hand atop his own. The gentle fingers give a comforting squeeze on his hand that was clutching tightly around the wheel.
“I want to see the ocean.”
==
The sea is a ruthless place out of season.
As the vehicle stops, Soobin is already losing the other male, cursing under his breath as he quickly turns off the machine to follows suit. It doesn’t help that the wind starts beating down on his frame the moment he steps out, while the humanoid is not affected at the slightest.
Instead of the clear water and bright weather always present at beaches during summer time, the colours dull out significantly in late autumn. Nobody is in the vicinity save for the two. The pale colours of the water and sky, topped with the lack of other people and noises gives off a depressing vibe.
Beomgyu’s face says differently.
This is the most emotions Soobin has ever seen on the usually stoic complexion. The gleam in his eyes as he stares far into the horizon. The slow spread of his lips into a smile, faltering only as the spike of emotion expires and he falls back into the emotionless routine again.
There’s an intruding thought, that Soobin could stare at him forever.
“Why did you want to come here?” he questions, gathering Beomgyu’s focus back at him at last.
“I want to know if it feels the same as back then…” when I was a human hangs unspoken from his sentence.
“Does it?”
Beomgyu stares at him with unblinking eyes. “Isn’t it too early to say?”
That’s when he realizes that it might be a little insensitive to ask, especially since he should’ve known better about Beomgyu’s inability to feel.
He can’t feel the cold breeze that is hitting Soobin’s cheek and tousling his hair right now, nor can he feel the sand under his feet even as he runs barefooted along the damp sand, avoiding the ripples of ocean waves that are chasing after his feet.
He is numb to everything the beach has to offer, yet he is the one who tries to make Soobin feel better about the whole thing.
Because there is no way Soobin can smile with the presence of danger still looming over them.
Anytime now, a group of armed men would charge into this deserted place and come for them. For Beomgyu. Even as he shuts his eyes, he can hear Yeonjun’s last warning to him right before his departure.
“I trust you, Soobin-ah. But if he ever falls into the facility’s hands, I’m going to reset him by my own hands.”
He knows that Yeonjun is more than capable of doing that.
“What are you thinking about?” Beomgyu pries him away from his deep thoughts, just like how he always does it whenever he feels extra annoying at the lab. Except this time, his smaller frame is crashing against Soobin, and he has his arms full of the humanoid.
“Nothing. Everything. You.”
A tilt of head. A questioning gesture. “Your mortal human brain can’t possibly handle that much.”
“Ouch?”
A spark of playfulness crosses Beomgyu’s face in a fleeting flash, disappearing just as quickly as it appears.
“Soobin, can you do me favour? Another one.”
If he keeps looking at him like this, Soobin is terrified that he might start granting all his wishes. “Try me.”
“For one day, until the sun sets, can you treat me like a human?”
Human version of Beomgyu has too much energy for Soobin to keep up with.
It starts with something as innocent as collecting seashells from the sand (“No! They always make the seashells look pretty and pastel but the ones that I found look so basic?”), to mistaking one of the seashell with a tiny crab (“Please tell me that it’s not climbing up my arm and into my shirt right now.” “It is, actually.”), and followed by them discarding the pile of seashells just to chase each other with a tiny crab in their hands (“You’ve exceeded your running speed limit! Choi Soobin, you are not supposed to be running this fast!” Beomgyu yells at him, in which Soobin breathlessly replies with a shrill scream of “It’s a fight or flight response!”).
Eventually they end up calling a truce, mainly because Soobin is hyperventilating from adrenaline. He feels tears brimming in his eyes, as he chokes on the sharp intakes of breath filling his lungs.
“Your heart rate was getting dangerously too fast. You might pass out if we keep going.”
Soobin is still catching his breath, lying down on his back and squinting at the brightness of the sky above him. It’s only when Beomgyu joins him, squatting down and blocking the sunlight off his eyes that he looks at him again.
“Are you sure that my accelerated heartbeat is caused by the running and not just because of,” he gestures to the space between them, only to have the latter huffing at the implication behind it.
“Your heartbeat is always steady when you’re with me. Don’t lie and act like you’re in love with me.”
“I didn’t say that!” Soobin says defensively, feeling his heartbeat picks up in pace for real this time.
An amused glint crosses Beomgyu’s face for a split second, as he supports his chin on a palm, gazing down at the human with full interest. “Now it changes. Are you in love with me?”
“I am.”
Beomgyu freezes at the answer. His eyes grow dazed for a few painful seconds, reminding him of the first few moments of his reawakening. Those moments Beomgyu claimed as his brain short-circuiting from the inability to find words to describe his ‘creator’.
Soobin’s fingers close around a handful of sand before he flings it towards Beomgyu’s face, watching as the robot sputters and falls on his butt. The sound of his laughter is carried by the wind, overshadowed by the sound of waves hitting the rocks.
It sounds like a faraway dream. A shadow of memories floating from Beomgyu’s past and materializing into the present.
Except, Soobin is not supposed to be a part of this, just like how Beomgyu is not supposed to be a part of this world in the future.
Nothing can be done other than to enjoy their borrowed time, pretending that the ending is not drawing closer.
Human version of Beomgyu keeps sadness so deeply inside him that it might have been the cause of his limited emotional ability. The capacity is maxed out by the sorrow and anger; the urge to lash out at the world for making him this way.
It’s shown in the way he walks into the water, that short moment Soobin left to grab his phone from his car. It’s the longest two minutes run into the beach the moment he spots Beomgyu walking suspiciously close to the boundary between wet sand and water.
Closer and closer. Never stopping.
When Soobin reaches him, the wave is hitting his feet, burying them in water up to the calves.
As soon as the water touches his skin, silver sparkles of electricity shoot up from the connection, making crackling noises under the salt water. It would have been fatal, since Beomgyu lost his balance from his feet shutting down. The cables under the metal plates short-circuited and malfunctioned, sending his body to collapse.
It’s his luck that Soobin seizes him from behind just in time before his whole body splashes into the water.
“What are you doing?” he shrieks, dragging Beomgyu away from the water that is chasing after them.
They collapse a safe distance away from the water, sand sticking uncomfortably to the wet lower part of their bodies. Silver of electricity still crackles on Beomgyu’s feet, and Soobin is cursing under his breath as he tries to salvage the system.
Not like he can do anything without his tools. He is useless without the technology provided by the facility.
And he has the audacity to act like he can run away from them.
As the silver electricity fades away completely from the entirety of Beomgyu’s legs, Soobin slumps forward, laying his forehead onto his cold knees.
Unresponsive. Damaged. He has failed Beomgyu once again.
“You can’t fix me all the time, Soobin.”
He lifts his head at the call of his name, and really. He wants to be furious, can feel it deep in his belly already. He wants to lash out at the humanoid who is acting like it’s not a big deal that his legs are broken now.
“I can fix you. I just need the resources,” he says, breath hitching as his brain starts picturing the damage, trying to estimate the corrosion that would be caused by salt water the longer they wait. He ends up just snapping his gaze towards the latter, glaring at him with more frustration than anger. “Why won’t you just let me fix you?”
“You can fix the metal plates or cables all you want, but you can never really fix me.”
Soobin blinks at him. The weight of his words seeps into his chest, coating his beating heart with burning toxin, making it ache in a way that is not soothed even as Beomgyu smiles at him.
“What?”
“My legs are broken, and I’m not even hurting. I couldn’t feel the water. Couldn’t feel cold even when you keep wrapping yourself up with your thin coat.”
“Beomgyu…”
“I cannot feel you !” his voice rises up slightly as he cuts the human off, making him stare at the broken down male with bulging eyes. “I can’t feel your touch… can’t feel you under my fingertips when I touch you.”
As he says this, he reaches out to touch Soobin on his cheek. The cold fingers gently brush along the expanse before cradling his face.
“But you’re here. I need you here,” he whispers, can’t recognize his own voice that sounds too desperate for his own liking.
How did he end up here? When did the need to fix a broken humanoid and prove himself as a capable scientist turn into a physical need to have Beomgyu by his side?
But Beomgyu is not even looking at him, shaking his head as he stares at the water that is playing chase with the sand.
“I’m never really here, Soobin. No matter how much we pretend that I’m alive, I’m already dead.”
“No—“he starts, complains ready to pour out, only to vanish into the air like a smoke. Blown by the autumn wind that’s still beating down on them hard.
Only that he can’t feel the cold wind anymore. It’s warm in comparison to the finality in Beomgyu’s eyes. The firm resolution that sends the message across to his scientist before he could voice his words.
A death sentence he puts upon himself, as well as Soobin, as the words coil around his neck and choke him with the pain they inflict.
“You’ll have to let me go.”
Choi Beomgyu as a human wants to give up.
Soobin can’t understand why the thought makes him ache so much that he feels like his legs are the broken ones. As he carries Beomgyu on his back, he can feel the cold metal under his hands, reminding him that everything is just an illusion, and Beomgyu’s consciousness is trapped inside the cage of this body he loathes.
“Aren’t you curious about my creator?”
“What about them?”
“He loved me a lot.”
“I’m sure he did. He made you so beautifully,” he exhales shakily, then inhales more pain. “It must be so hard back then, to make a body that works as well as yours, but he managed to do it.”
He can feel it now, jealously, replacing his blood throughout his system. How could he be jealous of someone he never met? Especially when the person should’ve been dead already after all these years.
“You must have loved me a lot too, Soobin. After all, you’re the one who brought me back to life.”
“I failed you.”
They stop at the end of the pier, setting Beomgyu down to sit on the wooden surface before he joins. The statement only stings further as he stares at the pair of malfunctioning legs.
Even until the end, he can’t protect his humanoid.
His thoughts are ripped away from the drench of guilt when he feels Beomgyu’s hands on his cheeks. “You made a perfect humanoid, but even the best scientist can’t create a perfect human vessel, Soobin-ah.”
He lays his hand atop of Beomgyu’s, meeting his gaze again. He wonders when the last time he saw the smile laced with happiness instead of sorrow like they do at the moment. If only he had known earlier than his emotions are real…
“Was it a mistake, bringing you to my lab?”
A scoff. “If it was, then it’s the best mistake you’d ever make. After all, you’ve given me a chance to love you.”
“What—“
“I do love you. I can analyse that much, from how my emotions react to you, how my wills are interlaced with yours, and how my head cavity is filled with thoughts of you.”
“Then why?” Soobin sounds desperate now, his hand clasped over Beomgyu’s.
A smile forms on Beomgyu’s lips again, but this time it’s more genuine. Their locked hands are brought down so that they are rested right atop of Beomgyu’s chest. It’s hard, filled with coils of metal cables instead of a beating human heart.
“You deserve to be loved by someone whose heart beats for you.”
The sun is going down by the time they hear another sound. There’s only a little light left, right in the bottom of the horizon, while everything else is painted dark blue. Getting darker and darker. A distant sound of a helicopter blade is ignored as they are deep in their little game of perfection.
That’s it, until Beomgyu gives his hand a squeeze. “It’s time.”
“Time,” he laughs dryly. “I wish I had invented a device to stop time.”
“Would you trust me if I said that I could see the future?”
His smile is more of an amused one this time, deciding to humour him. “Yeah?”
“You will invent something better. Something that will lead you to me again.”
“I almost believed that for a moment.”
The helicopter noise is getting louder. They’ve found him, ready to land on the sandy path and charge them. He mildly registers a voice booming from the air, calling out his name in warning.
It’s easy to ignore the danger closing onto them as their eyes locked, and Beomgyu gives him a smile of pure happiness. He’s being drawn closer, as his hand works under the fabric of the humanoid’s coat to find a hidden area on the small of his back. His Achilles’ heel.
As his fingers found the button, he hears footsteps drumming towards them, followed by cocking of guns. He shuts his eyes to not let them distract him, focusing on the way Beomgyu’s lips brush along his cheek, finding his earlobe and whispering softly just as his shaky hand presses into the reset button.
“We will meet again, Soobin-ah.”
==
The trip to the deserted beach sounds like a daylight nightmare.
Soobin won’t be surprised if the whole thing was something planted in his head by Memory Planter, made to fuck up with his brain – just the way they would punish criminals for their crimes. The only thing that convinces him that it was real is the ghost of lips pressing to his cheek, warmth lingering on his back, and the feeling of cold artificial skin under his fingertips.
Another thing that makes it more real is waking up inside a cold solitary room. He remembers the splash of water after he pushed Beomgyu into the salt water, followed by arms seizing him and electric zap to his neck.
He broke Beomgyu for good.
“It’s supposed to happen, hyung,” Taehyun tries to comfort him when he is allowed to visit. All hushed voices under cameras and speakers panning on them. “If you hadn’t done it, they would’ve crushed his consciousness anyway. In worse ways.”
The thought makes him shudder, finally lifting his gaze to meet the blonde’s.
“It’s whatever now, Taehyun. I should’ve listened to you and hyung when you guys told me to stop working on him.”
Taehyun stares at him for what feels like forever, the silence settles between them, filled by the sound of an invisible clock ticking down.
“Do you really think so?”
Soobin arches a brow at that, casting his gaze down when he catches a movement of Taehyun’s hand.
A familiar pair of glasses is pushed towards him. The model is different. It looks so much like a normal pair of glasses. Rimmed with metal frames that make them look so much like a pair of reading glasses.
“In case you want to read,” the younger says, eyes shaking subtly as his eyes flit up towards the camera catching their every move. “Maybe that way, you can understand what’s really happening.”
“What are you guys planning?” he asks warily. Wearily.
“Just give a sign, and Yeonjun hyung will help you with that one project we talked about.”
Once Taehyun leaves, the solitary room is filled with more questions. Huge texts floating in the air, urging him to find the answers. The answers he knows will be provided by the glasses left on the table.
Upon a single look, Soobin knew that the pair of glasses is a modified version of Yeonjun’s invention. But he is unaware of what they are holding when he puts them on, letting the memories flood into his vision again.
Beomgyu’s memories.
They are the lost memories that fill the gaps between the ones he saw the first time Beomgyu had recorded them. The sound of pure happiness behind Beomgyu’s laughter. His hand is constantly being held throughout the series of memories flashing by in quick successions, and he could feel the warmth seeping into him through the contact, settling into his chest cavity and filling it with so much love his heart might burst.
These are the lost memories of Beomgyu’s creator. The person who had tried to save the last bit of Beomgyu’s life in despair, but didn’t manage to complete the prototype due to the lack of technology advancement in that era.
But the person didn’t fail to make Beomgyu the happiest man on earth in these memories. He can see it from the reflection of the bus’ window that shows the light in Beomgyu’s eyes as he speaks.
(“You’re so sure already that you wanted to marry him? It hasn’t been a year.”
“Would it be funny if I said that I knew it was him from the first day?” Beomgyu says, exhaling a dreamy sigh and kicking his legs playfully as his friend gives him an incredulous look. “He cried the first time he saw me. Can you believe that? How many people are brought to tears at the first sight of you, and end up hurting you in the end?”
“Not even one normal person would cry upon seeing me, seriously, Beomgyu. What the fuck? He’s so dramatic.”
Beomgyu only laughs at the comment. Nothing can get into the lovesick puppy’s head at this point.
“Well, he said it was the rain, but you could see it in his eyes, you know?”
“See what?”
“The look,” he says firmly, as if it makes sense. “It was almost like he had lost me once in our previous life, and now that he found me again, he will never let me go.”
The friend stares at him before exhaling a long breath. “You two share that same dramatic brain cell, that’s why you two are meant to be together.”
“Thank you!”
As Beomgyu smiles to himself, he is thinking of the person. His creator. His lover. The person he promised to marry.
And then the scene changed to the view of the first time they met.
Beomgyu was working a morning shift in Starbucks, grumbling to himself while memorizing the new recipe of the seasonal special – the salted caramel frappe. The drink is completed with whipped cream topping, placed proudly atop the counter, when the door slams open.
Enter a guy who looks miserable, wet from head to toe. As if he hadn’t made enough mess with the trail of water he left on the doorway, he just had to walk the rest of the way towards the cashier, facing Beomgyu who tried his hardest to suppress his glare.
Once he got a clear view of the stranger, his heart dropped because of the absolutely heartbroken look in his eyes. The sudden droplets of tears that filled his pair of eyes before they rolled down his cheek, joining the dots of rain water on his face.)
Soobin’s heart drops for an entirely different reason.
The person Beomgyu saw that day. The person who was soon to be his lover. His fiancé. His creator. The person was an exact copy of him, wearing the same outfit he is wearing right now.
“What the fuck?”
Before he can get over his surprise, he is dragged back to the scene in the bus. The air is not lighthearted or pink with love anymore, because there were people screaming, and Beomgyu is holding tightly onto the handle of the bus to not get thrown.
This was the last memory. The day of the accident.
The footage blacked out with a headlight of a truck zooming towards the bus, then a crash. Soobin’s name being the last thing on the tip of his tongue before everything went black.
Soobin’s heart races inside his chest as he pries the glasses off his face, almost crushing the frame in his hand as he tries to make sense of what he just witnessed.
The creator whom Beomgyu was in love with. The scientist from seventy years ago who put the unfinished prototype of Beomgyu’s humanoid vessel in the garage of his grandparents’ house decades ago.
It’s him.
==
(Epilogue)
“How does that work, exactly?” Taehyun starts to wonder a little later.
After the incident with Soobin and his humanoid at the sea, he’s been made busy by Yeonjun to steal Soobin’s invention from his lab, assisting the pink haired male who pulls three sleepless nights just to perfect the machine.
The time machine Soobin never got to finish because it was deemed illegal.
“He’s already a criminal anyway, might as well make it official,” Yeonjun had claimed when Taehyun asked.
Even as they finished the portable time-machine (a watch, can you believe that?), and he delivered the device to Soobin’s solitary jail and almost got into trouble for being the last person who visited the scientist before his tragic disappearance, he still couldn’t understand it.
Tragic disappearance; because he left the formerly pristine clean room torched.
The good news is, it had to work. He must have travelled back in time before because that’s the only way Beomgyu’s humanoid body could be made in that year.
“It’s a complete circle, Taehyun-ah,” Yeonjun finally gives in after his one too many lonesome wonderings.
He grabs a presentation pen, drawing a circle in the air between them in red mark. He marks an x on a part of it. “This is the time Soobin found that humanoid prototype in the garage, and here,” he draws another mark on the other side of the circle. “Is where he built that prototype in the past, after travelling back in time.”
The explanation only makes Taehyun frown, his brain slowly absorbing the information.
“Which one happened first, then? What caused the other to happen?”
“That’s like asking which one exists first between chicken and egg,” he rolls his eyes, then waves his hand to wipe away the red marks he drew in the air. “All we know is that Soobin must be where he wants to be right now.”
Yeonjun pauses for a bit, before his lips curl into a boyish grin. “Not where. When .”
“I’ll just have to trust you about that, hyung,” Taehyun says in the end, deciding to just be content with the explanation.
It was a risky operation, because Yeonjun is only 100% sure about his theory once he gets a proof. The proof being the picture he cropped from an old social media that was famous and functional during that time. Something called Facebook .
He is looking at the picture right now, staring at the date that marked five years after Beomgyu’s supposed death. Their elated smiles are shining through the 2D image. Yeonjun is just happy to be a part of the team that made it happen.
Whatever went down in that time of history, whether the accident really took place or not, Soobin is not going back to the present time.
The ending is unclear, but Yeonjun is just going to assume a happy one for those two.
They deserve at least that much.
==
(Soobin starts to regret having taken the watch from Taehyun the moment he sets the room alight with a loud bang. He is being jerked from where he was sitting. His body being pulled from every direction, eliciting a small scream just before everything is muted.
And then there comes the crash, as he finds himself falling face first into a puddle of water in a pavement. His head is still disoriented as he gets on his feet.
As if the harsh landing is not enough, the weather presents him with a cold drizzle. Morning autumn wind beats him down as he runs down the street in search of shelter.
Before he knows it, he is stumbling into a place. A quiet coffee shop with a little bell above the door. No one pays him any attention as he walks into it, shivering under his wet black shirt – the prisoner outfit.
That’s when he caught someone looking at him from behind the counter. A frowning male with apparent dislike in his face.
It takes him three seconds to register the face in his disconcerted head, connecting it with a name he remembers from a distant future.
“Beomgyu,” he whispers to himself, knowing that the male didn’t catch it, too busy eyeing the trail of water Soobin brought with him into the place. But he couldn’t care less about it. He can’t pry his gaze away from the barista.
The living, breathing version of Beomgyu who is able to show his dislike without having it taken away from him a split second later. The real version of Beomgyu.
“Sir, are you okay?” His voice sounds sweeter, dripping with concern. The creator hadn’t got his voice right for the humanoid, but then Soobin doesn’t think anyone could get it right.
Just like how the humanoid’s eyes couldn’t capture the beauty of Beomgyu’s actual eyes. If Soobin had liked the pair of artificial eyes in Beomgyu’s humanoid vessel, it’s safe to say that he is falling for them right at this second. Even the amount of stars they hold couldn’t compare to the ones filling his stomach.
They are peering at him with concern and curiosity, before rounding up in surprise. “Are you… are you crying?” he says, stifling a gasp. “Oh my god, do you need me to call the police? Ambulance?”
His hand is already backing away from the counter to reach for his phone, but Soobin is quicker as he caught his hand, gathering Beomgyu’s attention to him again. It’s warm. Soobin can feel the pulse under his skin, and it takes everything for him not to climb over the counter and pull the human into his arms.
A wet laughter sounds from his throat instead, as he blinks away the tears in his eyes, masking them as droplets of rain from outside.
“I’m okay, sorry. My brain glitched for a second.”
“Huh?” Beomgyu tilts his head to a side, the confused puppy he is.
“Trying to find a word to describe how beautiful you look to me. It’s scientifically impossible.”
He can make out the subtle pink colour that fills Beomgyu’s cheeks at his statement, just before a few packets of sugar are thrown to his face.
A very same pick-up line to start another beginning.)