Archive of Our Own

Shin opens his eyes. 

He feels as though he had just woken up from a long, satisfying nap, the kind where you’re so well-rested that the wakefulness comes naturally and without effort—but maybe it’s precisely because of a lack of grogginess, that he immediately realizes this isn’t his bed. 

Or his room.

Come to think of it, he doesn’t remember lying down in the first place…?

“Hey there, sleeping beauty.”

Hiyori sits across from him, wearing a lab coat over his usual suit and tapping rapidly away at his computer. The steady click-click-click of his keyboard fills the room, mingling with the hum of machinery in the background. “I was just about to wake you up!” he says, bright and chipper. “Any more, and you know you’ll have trouble sleeping at night.” 

“...Oh, right.” He must’ve dozed off in the wrong room while waiting for Hiyori—the new shifts he’d picked up at the restaurant have been exhausting, after all, and Hiyori’s job tended to have irregular hours. Shin relaxes, pushing the blankets aside before sitting up. “Welcome home, Hiyori, what time did y—”

Then he looks around, really looks, and the rest of Shin’s words die in his throat as a new wave of confusion crashes down upon him.

Because this isn’t Hiyori’s room, either. 

At least, he doesn’t think it is? The clock on the wall isn’t where he expects, its space replaced by a strange mechanical panel with multi-coloured buttons. The huge double windows that he’d spent so many afternoons staring out of is entirely absent. The sofa looks as if it had been plucked out of their living room. Even their back-to-back desktop setup, which had looked deceptively normal at first glance, isn’t entirely the way it should be—not unless Hiyori had managed to buy a new set of shelves and put it up while Shin was asleep. 

Shin opens his mouth, then hesitates. He doesn’t know where to start.

He must’ve been quiet for too long, though, because Hiyori finally turns away from his computer to look at him. “Shin?”

“I, uh,” Shin rubs his eyes, but the uncanny differences persist. This bed is bigger, too; big enough to fit two people comfortably whereas he had complained just last week that Hiyori’s bed was too small for the both of them. “Did you change your chair?”

Because that sounds slightly less crazy than ‘did our windows disappear?’

Hiyori blinks back at him. “What do you mean?”

“This room isn’t…I mean,” Shin’s voice tilts tentatively upwards, making it sound like a question rather than the statement he means for it to be. “That isn’t your chair?”

Surely Hiyori knows what he’s talking about?

But Hiyori just cocks his head, staring at him inquisitively from his plain office seat, while Shin averts his gaze and makes a helpless, fluttering gesture with his hands. Although this place is similar to Hiyori’s room, all the details are wrong and he’s starting to feel a little insane with how Hiyori doesn’t seem to acknowledge it at all. “The, um, bed is also bigger,” he tries again. “And the windows…look, they’re supposed to be—”

Hiyori laughs, the sound coming out loud and jarring in this unfamiliar space. Shin shuts his mouth immediately.

“Oh, Shin. You’re still half-asleep, aren’t you?”

“Huh?”

“See, this is why I said you shouldn’t take too many afternoon naps,” Hiyori chides. He pushes back his chair, plastic wheels squeaking, and sits down beside Shin. The mattress dips as Hiyori slings an arm over his shoulder and drags him to his side. “My chair is at home, silly! And this room doesn’t have windows—not that there’s much of a view outside either way. I thought it might make you more comfortable if I modelled this place after our apartment, but you can’t expect me to get everything right on such short notice.”

“Is this not our apartment?” Shin squeaks.

Hiyori gives him a look that feels of equal parts affectionate and condescending. “All that nighttime travel really threw you in for a loop, huh? We’re on a business trip.”

We?

“Well, I’m on a business trip,” Hiyori amends. “This one was going to take a while, though, so you’re here to keep me company. And you were pretty excited about it, too!”

He smiles, wide and expectant. Shin reflexively makes himself smile back, but he feels more confused than anything.

Hiyori has always been terribly secretive about his personal life—or rather, any part of his life immediately outside of the time he spent with Shin. Even after all these years, Shin didn’t know anything about Hiyori’s family or what he did for work, apart from a nagging suspicion that he might actually be better off left in the dark. 

But if Hiyori made the offer, then it’s not hard for Shin to imagine himself jumping at the chance to be included. To be trusted. He would have been ecstatic.

He just…doesn’t remember it, though?

This is a scary train of thought, so Shin tries to focus on the practical issues instead. Hiyori had implied that they’d travelled during the night. It’s hard to tell the time here without a window or clock, but he seems to have slept through the daylight hours, so… 

“Oh,” Shin pales. “I was scheduled for work today.” 

“Don’t worry, I already called in sick for you.”

Is he allowed to do that? The general manager is pretty scary, though, so Shin won’t question it if he can avoid talking to her. “Are we going to make it back in time for my shift next week?”

“Maybe,” Hiyori says, non-committal. “But probably not. If they won’t accommodate you, you can just work somewhere else.”

He’s…probably not incorrect. There are always openings available for minimum-wage shifts, but this one wasn’t too far away from their home, and Shin had wanted to do well. Coming aimlessly out of high school with no concrete plans for higher education, it had felt like he was finally doing something useful—like he was contributing, however insignificant his wages might be compared to…whatever it was that Hiyori did, to allow them to live so comfortably. 

Hiyori pats his arm, and begins to run his thumb soothingly across the back of Shin’s tightly-clenched knuckles. “Besides, that place was working you too hard. I never did like the night shifts they pushed onto you.”

Shin had volunteered for those. “The pay is good.”

“It’s pocket change, Shin.”

Even though Hiyori probably doesn’t mean it that way, the comment still stings. Shin blinks stiffly down at his lap. Hiyori pats his arm again and stands up, pulling Shin to his feet in the same fluid motion.

“Anyways, let me show you around!”

While Hiyori’s workplace bedroom straddles an uncanny-valley type of resemblance to their real apartment, the fragile illusion shatters as soon as they step outside. The empty hallway looks like something out of a hospital or a very lonely office, with white walls and bright fluorescent lights illuminating a number of plain, identical doors. 

“We don’t have a second room for you here, so you’ll be staying with me,” Hiyori says. “That’s why I got a bigger bed, in case you were wondering.”

So they’ll be sharing a bed. That’s…fine. He had mostly stayed in Hiyori’s spare bedroom after moving in with him, but there’s been an increasing number of nights where they slept together, and Shin even liked it sometimes. “What are the other rooms for?” he asks. “Are these your coworkers’ offices?”

“Goodness, no. This floor is under my jurisdiction, so you shouldn’t run into any unwelcome faces here.”

Shin furrows his brows. Does Hiyori not like his coworkers?

“Feel free to explore, and all that,” Hiyori continues. “But most of the places here are under some level of restricted access, so you’ll need this to get around.”

Quick as a snake, his hands close around Shin’s neck, with something cold and tight snapping into place with a click. Shin freezes, instinctively reaching up but stopping just short of whatever Hiyori had put on him. 

Hiyori smiles. “Don’t look so startled. You can touch it, if you’d like.”

With hesitation, Shin skims the surface of the strange, unfamiliar object. He can’t see it, but it feels like… “A collar?”

“It’s calibrated to your biometrics,” Hiyori looks very pleased with himself. “Or the equivalent of it, in any case. Think of this as your proof of identification. I have one, too.” 

He pulls down his scarf, revealing a thin, shiny band with a tiny metal clasp. “It’s waterproof, and very high-tech! Automatic readings, datalog records…”

“O-Oh. I see.” So this is, what, the kind of workplace that gave its employees collars instead of keycards? Weird, just like Hiyori. Shin tries to smile. “So it doubles as one of those smart devices for tracking health, or something?”

“Haha! You could say that.”

Now that the moment of irrational panic has come and gone, Shin is left with a vague sense of embarrassment. “You should’ve told me first.” 

Or asked for his permission. But Hiyori only asks when he’s feeling particularly nice. 

Besides, it’s not like Shin would have told him ‘no.’

Hiyori’s probably thinking that, too, because he simply grins and steers him forward, his hand an insistent pressure against Shin’s lower back. 

It turns out that they’re on the fifth floor of an unspecified building, in an unspecified location. Hiyori hadn’t offered to tell him where. 

Shin wants to ask, but Hiyori’s avoidance of the topic is very intentional and it makes him a little afraid of what the answer might be. In any case, Hiyori tends to only talk about things at his own pace, so Shin settles for holding his hand and allowing himself to be taken on a tour.

Hiyori calls it his workplace, but it seems doubtful as to how much of the floor can actually be used for work. There are some kitchen and bathroom-like areas, clearly designed for common living, but the rest of it is devoid of people and completely bizarre. There’s more than half a dozen laboratories with operating tables and machines, which seems like it would be right up Hiyori’s alley, but a great deal of space is also allocated to the artificial mimicries of a classroom, a locker room, a busy office, and…the front of a police building? There’s even a matching car parked on fake grass beside it, but no windows to show the outside. 

It reminds Shin of the behind-the-scenes setpieces for movies, which would be silly, but some parts of the building really do look to be lifted right out of a spy film. At the center of the fifth floor is a spacious library, which opens up to an honest-to-god surveillance room with live monitor feeds stacked practically from floor to ceiling, which then connects to the initial corridor outside of their imitation bedroom through a hidden door in the wall. It’s enough to make Shin’s head spin.

“This is a lot, isn’t it?” Hiyori says sympathetically. He squeezes his hand, and helps Shin sit back down on the bed. “Want to take a break?”

“Yeah,” Shin says faintly. “Okay.”

“You look exhausted. How about you call it a day and get some rest?”

Shin isn’t tired. He’s confused and overwhelmed and a little scared, but not tired. On the other hand, it’s undeniably tempting to just close his eyes and leave his growing list of questions for later. Hiyori can be hard to keep up with and this is far from the first time he’s sprung some kind of wild idea on Shin without warning, but it’s always worked out in the past. Maybe this will make sense tomorrow, if he looks at it with fresh eyes.

“Okay,” he repeats, and tugs at the corner of Hiyori’s sleeve. “Are you coming to bed, too?”

Hiyori has no sense of personal boundaries. Sometimes, when they slept together, he would get too close and Shin would find it stifling—but right now, in this bizarre place, Hiyori is a comforting anchor of stability. 

Shin peers up hopefully, in that sweet, imploring way he knows Hiyori likes—only to recoil, squinting, as the blinding flash of a camera goes off in his face.

“H-Hiyori…!”

“Haha, sorry, Shin!” Hiyori doesn’t sound very sorry at all. “You looked so cute just now, I had to save it for later. It’s been a while since I got a new photo of you, after all!”

“Liar, you took one right after we had breakfast yesterday.” Shin pouts. It’s nothing more than a token protest; he’d long grown accustomed to Hiyori’s obsession with taking his pictures, and it’s undeniably flattering to see Hiyori smiling down at them like they were the prettiest things in the world. His cheeks flush. “I bet I was making a weird expression, too, the flash was too bright and—”

He cuts himself off. Hiyori is staring at the picture he must’ve just taken on his phone, but there’s a strange, intense look in his eyes, like he’s scrutinizing every detail for something specific. It’s a fiercely critical gaze. Hiyori wears this look sometimes, but…

It’s rare to see it directed at him. 

“Was my expression really that weird, after all?” he asks tentatively.

“Not at all,” Hiyori replies. “That’s the appeal of candid photos, you see. It captures the genuine truth.”

Shin stays quiet, unsure what to say. Fortunately, Hiyori’s peculiar mood doesn’t last; a blink and he’s smiling again, reaching up to tuck Shin’s hair behind his ears and leaving the phantom of a tender caress on his cheek.

“I’ve still got a lot of work to do,” he says. “But I can sit with you until you fall asleep. And I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

As always, he knows Shin’s anxieties without needing to be told. Shin nods, and Hiyori shifts to join him on the bed. He pulls the blankets up to his chin and squirms to find a comfortable position, settling just close enough to feel Hiyori beside him.

There’s a gentle touch in his hair, carding through the flyaway strands and massaging slowly at his scalp. Hiyori’s hand leaves a trail of warmth as it drifts down to the base of his neck, the motion almost soothing. 

Shin breathes out, and thinks of nothing.

Shin opens his eyes.

Despite the shock of it all, he sinks into a deep and dreamless sleep the minute he closes his eyes. When Shin wakes up, he feels as perfectly well-rested as he had the day before—which is strange, because he’s been prone to stress-induced insomnia over much lesser things.

Maybe he’s not as anxious as he thinks he is?

All in all, Hiyori’s workplace is nice. The computers he’d set up are the same model as the ones they have back in their apartment, and Shin can kill a couple of hours playing games during the day while Hiyori taps away on his computer and scribbles into a small blue notebook. Eventually, he takes a break and they watch a movie together, though Shin finds himself cringing at the bloody gore on screen. When a jumpscare makes him scream, Hiyori laughs and takes another picture.

It all feels astonishingly normal. As long as he doesn’t set foot outside, Shin can almost pretend that they’re just hanging out at home—and perhaps this is why it takes him almost until the end of the second day to remember he still hasn’t told his parents. 

“Oh, your parents?” Hiyori looks surprised that he’d bothered to ask, which kind of makes Shin feel terrible, too. He isn’t that much of an ungrateful child, is he? It’s just easy to get caught up in life, now that he’s living apart from them. “I’ve already explained everything.”

“What did you say?”

Hiyori shrugs. “That we went on a trip.”

He hands Shin his phone. There’s a short string of texts from just a few days ago, with Hiyori’s bare-bones explanation and his mother’s unquestioning acceptance. 

Thanks for letting us know, she’d sent with a polite little smiley face, like Hiyori was informing her of an errand he’d completed. Take care of Shin. He can be so forgetful.

So forgetful that he hadn’t even thought of telling them about it, apparently. Shin winces. Once again, he is reminded of the uncomfortable fact that he still had absolutely no recollection of actually making this trip. It’s with a hint of relief that he digs into his pocket and finds his own phone still there, the cat-printed wallpaper flashing cheerfully back at him.

“Sorry, give me a moment, I’m just gonna—”

His phone beeps, terminating the call before it even has the chance to go through. This happens again on his second try, and then the third.

Shin looks up. Hiyori is staring at him, eyes sharp and unblinking. 

“...Um,” Shin’s mouth suddenly feels dry. The fact that he hadn’t asked about this earlier is purely his own fault, but shouldn’t Hiyori have brought it up? Just in case? How the hell is he working like this? “Hiyori, why is there—”

“No signal?”

“Y-Yeah.”

Hiyori hums and writes something down in his notebook. “Didn’t I tell you? This place is under restricted access. We can’t just let anyone get in and out.”

“B-B-But—”

“Ah, but you’re an exception, of course! Since you’re with me.” 

“I can’t contact anyone like this, though?!”

“Why would you need to? Your parents didn’t ask for details. They’re always so busy, honestly…” Hiyori sighs. “I wish they’d make time for you once in a while.”

“That’s…”

“Who else are you going to call, your coworker? Didn’t take you to be the oversharing type.”

Shin looks down at his lap. Hiyori makes a consoling sound and puts an arm around his shoulder, slightly too tight to be comfortable. 

“Why don’t we watch something else? I’ll even let you pick the movie this time.”

The thing is—Shin isn’t stupid.

Admittedly, there’s a case to be made here, given that he’s allowed himself to spend an entire week cooped up in Hiyori’s supposed ‘place of employment’ and accepting his barefaced lies, but it’s really not all that bad. True to Hiyori’s claim, the fifth floor remains deserted and Shin sleeps soundly each night. Hiyori himself is very busy, but he always makes time to spend with Shin. They cook together, eat together, and Hiyori still helps him with code at the end of the day, even if that means he’d end up working far into the night afterwards. 

Shin tentatively brings it up one day, worried if he isn’t getting enough rest, but Hiyori only shoots him a bright smile in return.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head over it. I’m never too busy for you, my dear!”

And if it’s weird that he keeps pausing mid-task to write in that small blue book of his, then, well—Shin will ask about it someday, when Hiyori seems receptive to sharing his secrets.

There certainly are a lot of secrets, though. 

In the back of his head, Shin had always suspected that Hiyori was involved in some kind of shady business, and their current situation feels like proof of everything he had speculated before. Hiyori has had a ridiculous amount of money to throw around even back when they were both in school, and there was sometimes a strange, callous cruelty to him that Shin would pretend not to notice. But it can’t be anything truly sinister. 

If Hiyori is planning to do something to him, then wouldn’t he have done it by now? Even if he is lying through his teeth, there’s got to be a reason for it. 

There’s no way Hiyori would hurt him.

After all, he’s been Shin’s protector for years—ever since they met during Shin’s first year of high school, when Hiyori had appeared out of nowhere and sent Shin’s bullies scattering with a few vicious words. There had been an awe-inspiring, almost magnetic charisma to the green-haired boy who held his head high and walked into every room like he owned the place. Shin was awestruck. 

To this day, he’s never managed to figure out what had drawn Hiyori to him in return, but it’s impossible to deny the mark that he has left in Shin’s life. He was there when Shin’s parents were too busy to spend time with him, and there when his other peers grew ever-distant. Then, as they graduated and drifted towards adulthood, Hiyori had suggested that they move in together, because isn’t that what couples did? So Shin had accepted. He’d felt very mature at the time, to move out of his parents’ house and live with a partner.

Over the years, Shin’s world had narrowed with Hiyori as its sole centerpiece. It’s not exactly how he would have imagined things to go, but it isn’t…bad. 

Every relationship has its ups and downs. Hiyori took care of him, bought him gifts, and was always looking at him in a way that others never bothered to. Plain little Shin Tsukimi is lucky to have his attention—so if nothing else, Shin thought that he could at least be patient. 

He’ll be patient, and understanding, and wait until Hiyori is ready to share his reasons.

Or at least, that’s what Shin had intended to do. But the suppression of curiosity is much easier said than done.

“—eally, are the simulations not enough for you?” 

Shin clasps both hands over his mouth, muffling a gasp, and presses himself carefully against the wall. His heart races. Around the corner of the hallway and past the open door to the surveillance room, he can just barely see a tall, brown-haired woman speaking to Hiyori.

Is she his boss? A coworker? 

“I mean, honestly,” the woman continues. “What’s the point of a live trial, especially at this stage? I’m sure you of all people don’t need to be told how inefficient it is.”

“Why, yes, you’re absolutely correct!” Hiyori’s voice is chipper, but Shin can pick out an undercurrent of irritation, simmering just below the surface. “I’m completely aware. So if that’s all you came to say, Emiri—”

“Actually,” says the woman named Emiri. “I came to give you a warning.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“If you’re ferrying a message from Meister—”

“Not Meister, no,” Emiri scoffs. “Not yet. But we both know you’re on some pretty thin ice after what happened with Alice Yabusame, so why is it that you’re still here, playing make-believe? Don’t you have a ton of signatures to collect?”

“I’m working on those. These operations take time to set up, as you are aware.”

“Of course, but there’s only so many hours in a day. Your little pet is no longer a candidate, and ASU-NARO has discontinued any further memory or personality updates. Whatever you have now is just a passion project, nothing more.”

Hiyori is uncharacteristically quiet. Emiri presses on. 

“I’ll remind you again that it took no small amount of work to clean up your mess. That’s two candidates down as a result of your transgression—and possibly a lot more, if the forms don’t get done. Who knows? As you’ve so graciously proven, we all have room to fall.”

There’s another long, heavy pause. 

“My good lady Emiri,” Hiyori says, voice tilted almost theatrically. “I must say, this is an awful lot of drama for a deadline that still has a couple months to go.”

“Remind me, just how many forms have you taken care of in the previous couple months?”

“Like I said, it’s all about the setup! Rest assured that I’ve got it all handled—or, rather,” Hiyori takes a step forward, now fully visible through the crack in the door and grinning widely. “Aren’t you just rushing me along to give your next phase some extra leeway? Now, now, don’t you worry about any of that! The holy game will always be my utmost priority, even if I’m regrettably no longer able to take part in it myself.”

Emiri cackles, loud and shrill. “Only you would consider that a loss, Sou Hiyori!”

She spins around, the sound of her fading footsteps showing that she must’ve left through the stairs to the library. Shin lets out a breath that he didn’t know he had been holding, sinking down the side of the hall on weakened knees.

“You know, it’s not very nice to sneak up on people.”

Shin shrieks, almost banging the back of his head against the wall with how suddenly Hiyori appears. It’s as if he had melted out of the air like a capricious phantom, the fluttering white coat an ominous silhouette. 

“I—I’m—” Shin stammers. “I—sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

The colour drains out of Shin’s face, fueled by terror and shame alike. He knows he shouldn’t have eavesdropped. But that had been a frightfully tense conversation just now. He’s never seen Hiyori scolded by anyone before. 

“Hiyori,” he blurts out. “Are you in trouble?”

Silence stretches between them. Hiyori stares down at him, his expression unreadable. 

“I-It’s not…because of me, is it? Did I get you in trouble?” Shin presses on. It’s almost unthinkable—he doesn’t know anything!—but that Emiri woman had implied that Hiyori was wasting his time doing unimportant things, and, well, he’d spent an awful lot of time with Shin, hadn’t he? Even before they arrived at this place. Shin had often wondered how someone as talented as Hiyori could have so much time to kill doing everyday tasks with him. “Am I not supposed to be here, after all? If I’m being a bother, then—”

Hiyori kneels down, and in a single swift motion, draws Shin into his arms. Shin freezes up, breathing shallowly.

“Shin, darling,” Hiyori murmurs. “It’s very sweet of you to worry. But you don’t have to concern yourself with such things.”

“But, that woman said—”

“And what does she know? You can never be a bother to me, Shin.” Hiyori’s voice is low and warm against his ear, full of affection. “I’ll always make time for my most important person. You couldn’t make me stop if you wanted to.”

Shin melts. “Well, okay. Just let me know if I can do anything to help?”

“Of course.”

The fact is, Hiyori does become significantly more busy after Emiri’s visit. He even departs from the building at one point, citing an unavoidable business trip, though he still pauses to kiss Shin goodbye and reassure him that no one will come up to the fifth floor.

That night, Shin experiences his first bout of insomnia since this entire ordeal began. He tosses and turns, feeling miserable and confused and missing the feeling of Hiyori’s hand in his hair. 

It’s not as if Hiyori had never gone on these sort of trips before. There were times when he’d disappear for days with little notice, and Shin usually coped with it just fine. Sometimes, it even felt like a breath of fresh air.

So…why…?

Now that he’s here on his own, the silence seems too much to bear. Amidst flickering shadows, the clash of such pristine, clinical hallways and ridiculous movie-setpieces feel uncomfortably surreal. Shin curls up under their blankets, and wills for time to go faster.

He isn’t able to sleep the following night, either. In the end, Shin camps out on the chair he had dragged over to the elevators, and throws himself at Hiyori as soon as the doors open.

Hiyori makes a surprised sound that soon turns into loud, delighted laughter. “Goodness, were you waiting for me?” he drops his bags with an unceremonious crash, grinning broadly. “You’re so needy, Shin. How cute. Oh, you’re hopeless! It’s barely been two days!” 

Hooking both hands under Shin’s legs, Hiyori picks him up with ease, spinning him around and pressing a kiss to his lips. It’s dizzying, but Shin is too relieved to care. When they part, he buries his face in Hiyori’s shoulder. “That’s because you left me here alone.”

“If it would inspire such a warm welcome, maybe I should do it more often? …Haha, just kidding! As if I would ever do such a thing.”

Sometimes, Hiyori’s jokes didn’t feel like jokes. “R…Right.”

“Now, let’s go back to our room! You must be tired.”

That night, Shin curls up with his head on Hiyori’s lap while Hiyori sits on the bed and scribbles into that small blue book of his. Gentle fingers card through his hair, leaving trails of warmth. Shin is just about to drift off when he feels an uncomfortable shift of something loosening, then tightening, and realizes that Hiyori is fiddling around with his collar.

Huh. He’d almost forgotten about that thing. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Oh, just checking for some data.”

Right. It’s supposed to do automatic readings, or whatever. “Like, my heartrate?”

“Mhm…you could say that.” Hiyori’s hand skims across the collar again, then the back of his neck. “Go to sleep, dearest.”

And Shin does.

Shin opens his eyes.

It’s almost uncanny how much better he rests as soon as Hiyori returns. After a deep and dreamless sleep, Shin wakes up perfectly clear-headed each morning and passes out practically as soon as his head hits the pillow the following night. He didn’t used to have these tendencies, and it’s almost enough to make him wonder if, maybe…

…

…No, no. That’s impossible. This isn’t science fiction.

His imagination is probably just getting the best of him. Even if Shin considers himself a bit of a homebody, there is only so much time he can spend in one place, with one person, before he starts to go a little stir-crazy. And maybe Hiyori notices it, too, because he tells Shin that he doesn’t have to stay in this room specifically. “I’ve given you access to basically every place under my jurisdiction,” he says. “Feel free to look around!”

However, the artificial movie setpieces don’t seem all that interesting. Shin’s more curious about the locked door that Hiyori keeps disappearing behind. He’d assumed that it would be an additional lab, but…

“What about that other place you keep going to? At the end of the hall?”

“Oh, no, not that one,” Hiyori replies without missing a beat. “Be a good boy and stay away from there, okay?”

The temptation gnaws away at Shin. While Hiyori is busy with work, he sneaks over to the far-side door, but it’s controlled by some sort of electronic lock. A closer look tells him that the control mechanism is located separately, most likely among the numerous other protocols within the main surveillance room, but those are so clearly off-limits that Shin doesn’t dare dig any further. He backs off, and leaves it alone.

The rest of the fifth floor is the same as it’s always been. Eventually, Shin’s feet carry him back to the elevator lobby, where he finds himself pausing.

They’ve been on the fifth floor the entire time, but Hiyori had never said that he couldn’t look anywhere else…

A part of Shin is worried about getting in trouble and getting Hiyori in trouble, but then again, maybe it couldn’t hurt to try? If this place has restricted access, then it should already have locked the places that he isn’t allowed to go. The elevator isn’t like that; there’s only one button inside, and it carries him smoothly to the fourth floor. As the doors slide open to reveal a near-identical lobby, Shin hesitates. 

Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe he should have asked for explicit permission first. Maybe he should go back up, right now, and Hiyori wouldn’t even have to know.

But maybe Hiyori would be okay with it. If he really didn’t want Shin to come here, he would have said so, like the case of the locked door.

…So, it should be fine. Shin will just take a quick look. 

Stepping out of the elevator, he takes a right at the end of the hall. Shin is greeted by the sight of what seems to be a fancy art gallery, although it is evidently incomplete. Various paintings of idyllic scenery decorate the walls, framing a gaping void of large, empty spaces in between. On the far side of the wall, there is a remarkably life-like painting of Hiyori. And, standing right in front of it—

“Oh, hello there!”

Shin jumps as the girl in front of Hiyori’s picture suddenly turns around to greet him. She’s dressed like a fancy maid, with a cute, ruffled skirt and…golden syrup dripping down the side of her head?

…Is she an actor?

“Hello!” the girl repeats, and it’s only then that Shin realizes he still hasn’t answered her. “It’s been a while since anyone has visited. My name is Maple.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Maple,” Shin hastens to respond. “I’m—”

“Shin Tsukimi,” she says, smiling. “I know. Hiyori talks a lot about you.”

“He does?”

“All the time!”

“Oh.” There’s a complicated feeling in Shin’s chest, running cold and hot all at once. He wondered what kinds of things Hiyori had said about him. “That’s, um, cool. Sorry if I’m not supposed to be here. There weren’t any signs saying this floor was off-limits, or anything…” 

“That’s alright,” Maple replies. “Right now, we’re quite free to wander around as we please. Since you’ve come all this way, would you like to have some tea?” she continues sweetly. “They gave me some especially nice blends last week.”

When Maple moves, the syrup accessories in her hair and dress sway like drops of liquid frozen in motion. She’s a bit of a strange girl, and oddly disconcerting in a way that Shin can’t quite put his finger on. But her eyes are honest and kind.

“Sure,” Shin says. “Where do you want to go?”

“Hehe, just follow me!”

She leads him across the fourth floor and through a bright red door. The inside of the room is shockingly pink, practically mono-coloured from the floor to the ceiling. Shin takes a seat as Maple begins to bustle around, humming brightly to herself.

“It’s ready! Smells nice, right?”

Shin breathes in the pleasant, floral aroma. “It does. Is this chamomile?”

Maple beams at him. “You can tell?”

“Yeah, I like herbal teas a lot. It doesn’t keep you up at night, and it’s really soothing,” Shin takes a sip, feeling himself start to relax. After all the time he’d spent cooped up in that room, it’s nice to talk to another person. “Do you live here, Miss Maple?”

“Yes, I spend my time between the fourth and fifth floors.”

That’s odd, given that Shin had never seen her before. “Are you and Hiyori coworkers?”

“Coworker? No, I don’t think that’s the right word for it…” Maple taps the bottom of her chin with a finger. “Actually, Hiyori is my target.”

Uh, what?

“But the game hasn’t started yet, so that’s okay!” Maple continues brightly. “There’s still time, and I like Hiyori a lot. I’m in love with him!”

This time, Shin chokes, coughing violently into his teacup. “What? ”

“Oh, my,” Maple stands up, fishing for something in her pocket. “Here, have my handkerchief. Was the tea too hot?”

“No—I mean yes, but that wasn’t why—” Shin sputters. “You said that you—Hiyori—”

“I’m in love with him,” she confirms freely, shamelessly, as if it’s less of a personal feeling and more so just a natural fact of the world: the sky is blue, after day comes night, and there’s a beautiful girl in love with Shin’s boyfriend. “But Hiyori doesn’t like me yet.”

…Ah. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Shin tells her, and immediately feels awful about the blatant insincerity of his own words. But Maple doesn’t seem to be bothered. She simply nods, accepting the wet handkerchief he returns to her. 

“That’s alright,” she says. “We’ll get closer eventually. I want to walk with Hiyori, and live by his side, and be with him always. One day, he will look only at me.”

These are strong, passionate feelings that Shin can empathize with. He also feels this way towards Hiyori a lot of the time. But he doesn’t think he can ever say it with such certainty, not even in the privacy of his own mind. 

The truth is, it’s hard to love all of Sou Hiyori. Sometimes, when he catches sight of the monster underneath, all Shin wants to do is close his eyes and hide.

“Is that why you were staring at his picture?” he asks. 

Maple nods. “Hiyori never comes to see me, but it’s very nice of him to put up the painting.”

It doesn’t sound like Hiyori is very nice to her at all. Shin bites his lip. “Miss Maple, if you don’t mind me asking…why do you like him so much?”

He’s worried that it might be too private of a question. Maple has stopped smiling, but she still answers without hesitation.

“I was configured to love him.”

“...Configured?”

“Hiyori wrote a love program,” Maple says. “I’m a doll, you see. He changed me to the way I am now, but I don’t mind. Love is a wonderful thing.”

There’s a pit in Shin’s stomach, heavy and nauseating. “I…I’m not sure I understand.”

“Don’t you?” Maple asks. “After all, you are very much like me.”

Right in front of Shin’s bewildered eyes, the bright green of her irises flicker, fizzling in and out of existence like images on a screen before they are replaced by a deep and mournful blue. Maple starts to cry.

“The two of us are almost the same,” she sobs. “I don’t understand. Why does Hiyori spend all his time with you? What am I doing wrong?”

Shin rises to his feet, stammering. “M-Miss Maple, I don’t—”

“For a while, Hiyori even locked the elevator.” Tears stream down her face like a faucet. “It’s awful, isn’t it? Hiyori doesn’t want to see me at all. I’m nothing but a bother to him.”

Panic swells up within Shin. He’s never had to comfort a crying girl before, and right now it sounds like he’s being a part of this problem, however unwillingly—but before he can decide what to do, Maple blinks again, and her eyes turn blazing red.

“So why, why…! ”

It’s a good thing that Shin is already standing, because in the next moment, Maple grips the underside of the heavy oak table and hurls it clean across the room. 

“Why does he care so much about you?” she screams, her wails of despair now tilting into shrill, unadulterated rage. “Why?! It’s not fair! I’m the one who loves him!”

“M-M-Miss Maple, please calm down—!”

“Hiyori even allows you to live with him! I wish I could live with him…” Suddenly, her voice drops. “I wish…I wish…oh, that’ll be wonderful…”

Maple clasps her hands together and closes her eyes. When she opens them, they’ve returned to their mild, gentle green. 

“Living with Hiyori must be like a dream,” she says. “You are very lucky, Shin.”

Shin gapes at her, speechless, from where he had been cowering against the wall in terror. Maple looks around the room before making a little ‘oh!’ sound, as if surprised by its current state of ruin.

“I’m terribly sorry. Everything has spilled, it’s such a mess…I’ll go pour you another cup!”

“N-No!” Shin yelps. His legs are shaking uncontrollably, stomach twisting like he might throw up. “I mean, you don’t have to go through the trouble! I-I should probably, um, go.”

Immediately. Right now. Before he ends up in pieces like that table.

“Oh, alright,” Maple looks disappointed. “Until next time, then. Please come visit me again!”

Yeah, right, not when she can probably snap him in half over her knee without even trying! Shin forces on a wobbly smile, mumbles an apology, and flees from the room as quickly as he dares. Once outside, he breaks into a run.

What the hell was that?! 

The way Maple’s eyes had changed, as if corresponding with her extreme mood swings, is distinctively not human; even if someone wore contacts, they wouldn’t be able to change it so quickly. She described herself as a doll, saying that Hiyori ‘configured’ her with a ‘love program,’ but that’s ridiculous. Maple had seemed so real. She spoke with Shin and interacted with him like a normal person, not a robot.

Can mere ‘dolls’ do such a thing? A shiver runs up Shin’s spine as he remembers Maple’s words.

After all, you are very much like me. The two of us are almost the same.

They aren’t the same at all. There’s no telling exactly what Maple is, but Shin knows he had a perfectly normal life before being dragged into whatever Hiyori’s got going on in this place. Shin is just an average guy. The type you can find anywhere on the street.

…Right?

Coming here was a mistake. He needs to get back to Hiyori. But Shin had fled from Maple’s room without considering much more than the need to get away, and this floor had been brand new territory in the first place. By the time he realizes that he’d gotten lost, it was too late. He can’t even tell where he’d come from. This new room is almost completely dark. 

Shin grips at his scarf, trying not to panic. He takes a step forward. 

“Ow…!”

His leg slams against the edge of something sharp and sturdy. Shin hits the ground hard, and this time his eyes fill with tears. 

Hiyori would probably call him a crybaby if he saw him now, but Shin can feel that he’d scraped through the skin of his palms and he’s exhausted from everything that had happened over the past week and a half. Maybe Maple’s unexpected freak-out was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, but…he doesn’t want to be here anymore. 

It hurts. It’s lonely. He’s tired of this. Shin wants to do his best to be accommodating, but how much longer will he have to stay? Hiyori won’t tell him anything, and his coworkers are even more erratic than he is. Shin wants to see other people again. He misses his parents. 

Did they really not care that he hadn’t contacted them, all this time?

Caught up in his own misery and self-pity, Shin doesn’t notice the approaching footsteps until someone abruptly switches on the lights that he’d failed to notice. He yelps, squinting.

“Eek! I didn’t mean to startle you—it’s just, I heard someone fall…”

Before him is a woman with long, green hair. She’s wearing a lab coat, like Hiyori, but her lips are quivering like she’s about to start crying, too. Shin scrambles to his feet hastens to wipe his eyes, feeling embarrassed as she looks at him in surprise.

“Ahh, it’s you…Hiyori’s…”

Does Hiyori talk about him to all his coworkers? Shin squirms. “I-I got lost. I didn’t mean to. I was trying to get back to the fifth floor, after…”

After making a lovesick robot angry, or something like that. He isn’t even the one who broke her heart. Shin sniffles. “Do you know where the elevator is?”

“The elevator? Yes, yes.” But the woman takes a step forward, a strange curiosity in her big, watery eyes. “This is quite exquisite work, yes…especially since he did it all by himself. I wonder if he managed to extract it properly…”

“Um,” Shin’s mouth is dry. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“How long have you been here?” the woman presses on. “Wandering about, all by yourself.”

She takes a step forward. Shin matches it with a corresponding step back, anxiety and dread curdling in the pit of his stomach when, suddenly—

“Hands off, Namida.”

“Hiyori! ” Shin cries. He dashes past the woman, almost tripping over several of the room’s gigantic black boxes in his haste. He throws his arms around Hiyori, clinging on with all his might and nearly breathless with relief. “Thank goodness, Hiyori, I was so…!”

“Were you scared?”

Shin buries his face in Hiyori’s shoulder and nods without looking up. Hiyori wraps his arms around him, drawing Shin to his chest as if to block out the rest of the world. 

“Oh, Shin,” he murmurs. “I only took my eyes off you for a moment, and look what’s happened. You just can’t do anything by yourself, can you?”

“I—I’m sorry—”

“So helpless, Shin,” Hiyori says in a low voice. He presses a kiss into Shin’s hair. “So hopeless. But I love you that way.”

Shin can’t help it. He begins to cry, knees buckling until Hiyori is supporting most of his weight. He’s barely aware of the fact that Hiyori and the other woman had begun to talk.

“I was only looking, Hiyori. I was curious.”

“Don’t you still have Rio to work on? Go be curious somewhere else. There is such a thing as personal privacy, you know.”

“Yes, but,” the woman’s voice trembles. Not from fear; this is excitement. “What did you do with the final memory? Were you able to stabilize it? If you let me help, I can—”

“Nottttttt interested!” Hiyori drags the word out, sneering. “Keep your gloomy hands off my project. Come along now, Shin.”

In a daze, Shin allows Hiyori to steer him through the halls and back up the elevator to the fifth floor. He practically collapses onto the sofa as soon as they get there, palms stinging. In the back of his mind, he notes that he’d broken the skin badly, but there isn’t any blood. 

“So, darling, how was your little adventure?”

Shin swallows soundlessly. He’s afraid to look up.

“Aww, don’t make that face.” The couch dips as Hiyori sits down beside him. Shin tenses, but all Hiyori does is put an arm around his shoulder, tucking Shin to his side and stroking his hair rhythmically. “There, there. I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re not?”

“To be completely fair, I didn’t tell you not to go to the fourth floor,” Hiyori acknowledges, in what seems to be a rare moment of candour. “And I was interested to see what you might choose. In any case, it’s fine now. All’s well that ends well, or so they say!”

But this isn’t fine at all. Shin’s bottom lip trembles. “I think I made your coworker upset.”

“Who, Maple?” Hiyori rolls his eyes. “That girl really is quite troublesome, it’s like there’s no getting away from her! I should lock the elevator again. If she goes on a rampage, she might run out of battery for a while and stop bothering me.”

So she really is a robot. When Maple first told him about her affections for Hiyori, Shin had been relieved to hear that they were one-sided. But right now, Hiyori is just being cruel.

Besides, if he was really the one to create the love program…

Shin sniffles. “Why did you make her love you, if you didn’t love her back?”

Hiyori sighs. “Shin…”

“Why did you configure her to—”

Hiyori pinches him. “I heard you the first time, don’t repeat yourself,” he says. “Oh, Shin. You poor, marvellous fool.”

“Maple was really sad,” Shin whispers. “She was crying.”

“Yes, and she’s just a doll,” Hiyori answers, voice as plain as if he’s simply talking about the weather. “Everything in this facility has to serve a purpose. What a fantastic idiot I would be, if I allowed an Obstructor’s so-called autonomy to get in my way!” he laughs, cackling sharply as if the concept made for an especially funny joke. “If I wanted to, I could write another program to make her happy all that time. Nothing but cloud nine all day, every day! Would that make you feel better?”

“No, that’s not what…” Shin struggles to find the words. “Hiyori, you made her love you.”

“Then, do you want me to love her back?”

Shin suddenly feels very cold. “What?”

“Do you?” Hiyori repeats, honey-sweet. He releases him abruptly, jade-green eyes wide and gleefully boring into Shin like knives. “If I fall in love with Maple, I might abandon you without a second thought. Who knows? Humans can be fickle. When someone’s feelings change, it doesn’t take much for yesterday’s treasure to become tomorrow’s trash.”

But Hiyori is the only person he knows here. Shin’s trembling hands fly up, grasping desperately onto Hiyori’s coat in a white-knuckled grip. He can’t breathe.

“N-No, I—” It’s hard to even speak past the all-consuming fear sweeping over him. The world is spinning in front of his eyes. “I didn’t mean to, I—please, I wasn’t—”

“Then you don’t need to pretend to care about Maple, do you?” Hiyori cuts him off. “These are such shallow sympathies anyway. In this facility, we all have our roles to play. Maple is just playing hers. That’s the way this world should be.”

Shin’s eyes water. “Then why am I here?”

“You’re keeping me company, of course!”

Hiyori isn’t even trying to make it sound convincing this time. Shin opens his mouth, but the fear lingers; he can’t find the courage to call Hiyori out on his lies. Hiyori must know it, too, because his smile stretches wider, almost too wide for his face. 

“If you really want to know, you should grab the truth with your own hands.”

He’s giving Shin another chance, almost daring him to ask. But Shin doesn’t have it in him to push any further. Exhausted from the day’s ordeals and bitterly ashamed of his own weakness, he bursts into tears again. 

“H-Hiyori, can we go back?”

“Go back where?”

“Back home,” Shin hiccups. “To our old apartment.”

Hiyori laughs and pulls him back into his arms.

“Don’t be silly, Shin. Home is wherever we are together.” He kisses Shin deeply, swallowing his sobs. “And I will always, always, bring you home.” 

Shin spends the rest of the evening stewing in uncontrollable anxiety, so it feels like a laughable irony that he somehow passes out as soon as he lies down, and wakes up with no trace of fatigue as always. He’s also not in bed alone—there’s an intimate familiarity to the arm around his waist, and a steady heat against his back. Hiyori is practically plastered against him, breathing softly.

Shin opens his eyes, feeling numb. 

If he closes them, can he still pretend that he’s tagging along on a business trip?

But maybe this is his punishment for turning a blind eye for so long. Shin has had a hunch about it for years, that whatever Hiyori was doing must be related to the shadier undersides of the world. He knew that Hiyori kept things from him. But he never asked. 

Not that Hiyori would’ve told him, either way.

He knows some of these things now. But he doesn’t know enough. In any case, it’s doubtful how much his newfound awareness is really worth; whatever Hiyori had done to get him to this place, all signs point towards him being effectively stuck until further notice. There are no windows, and the elevator hadn’t given him an option past the fourth floor. Their computers aren’t connected to the internet. His phone has no signal.

…Maybe his parents will call the police? 

Shin sighs, shifting to get into a more comfortable position, but he must have moved too much because Hiyori soon begins to stir, too. He yawns, then stretches, then presses a kiss against the nape of Shin’s neck, just below the metal collar.

“Mhm…good morning, Shin.”

Hiyori’s voice is a deep rumble, still husky from sleep. Shin pulls the blanket up to his face and mumbles vaguely into the fabric. 

It’s a lukewarm response, but Hiyori doesn’t seem to mind. He yawns again and gets out of bed, but pauses to tuck the blankets back around Shin. A gentle hand ruffles his hair.

“Feel free to rest for a bit longer. I’ll go make breakfast, okay?”

When Shin eventually drags himself up, he finds the table set with his favourite corn potage. Hiyori works while he eats, simultaneously scribbling away into a book and chattering happily about how he’d managed to sneak some extra ingredients into the soup because Shin needs to put more meat on his bones. It’s a thoughtful gesture, so full of genuine care and affection that it makes Shin’s heart hurt. 

In moments like this, the Hiyori who had laughed so harshly and threatened to abandon him feels like nothing but a bad dream. Hiyori can be very kind when he tries, and Shin had spent years telling himself that this part of Hiyori is the real him. But it’s hard to keep believing that after everything that’s happened yesterday.

Later, as they gather up the dishes, Hiyori tells him that he needs to take care of another job.

“How long will you be gone?” 

“Maybe a day or two? About the same as last time—I don’t want you getting too lonely, after all,” Hiyori grins. “Do you need anything before I leave? The elevators will be locked, so you don’t have to worry about any unwelcome visitors.”

Shin stares down at the sink full of warm, soapy water. 

“I fell and hurt my hands yesterday,” he says. “In the room with the black boxes.”

“Oh?” Hiyori hums. “If there’s a wound, you should keep it dry.”

Shin wordlessly lifts his hands from beneath the water, showing Hiyori his smooth and unblemished palms. He watches closely, but Hiyori’s smile doesn’t change.

“Looks just fine to me! Aren’t you glad, Shin?”

“...Yeah.”

He would be if his hands were actually fine, but Shin had been so, so sure that he’d scraped through his skin yesterday. Although it hurt a lot, there wasn’t any blood, so he had prodded tentatively at the wound—but what his finger touched was not the warmth of human skin but something cold and hard, tingling like static. Maple’s words echo back at him.

After all, you are very much like me.

Shin had been too squeamish to take a closer look after that. He’d chosen to take the coward’s way out and went to sleep with his palms stinging, but with morning came perfectly smooth skin and no hint of the injury having ever existed. 

As good as new.

Now, the anxiety eats away at him, to the point where Shin has to actively stop himself from thinking about it because he’s afraid to start spiralling into hysterical assumptions. He holds himself together long enough to see Hiyori off at the elevators, forcing a wobbly smile as he stands on his tiptoes to kiss him goodbye. 

Then, Shin marches back into their room and boots up Hiyori’s computer.

His hands shake at first, but Shin forces himself to continue. Hiyori had been especially nice to him this morning and it’s making him feel extra awful for snooping around behind his back, but this place has too many secrets and Hiyori had never been forthcoming even on the best of days. If he really wants to know, then he’ll have to take the initiative.

Logging in isn’t difficult; Hiyori had pinned up a list of passwords in his room before, and Shin can still remember most of them. Making sense of the computer’s contents, on the other hand, is a much bigger challenge. The files are an ungodly mess of half-finished code, photos he’d taken of Shin, and even copies of old homework from their high school days that Hiyori had failed to delete. Unsure of what to look for but desperate to find something, Shin begins to comb through them one by one, casting nervous glances at the door the whole while. 

He locates a number of documents about human memory and artificial intelligence, which mostly just confirms what he already knows about Hiyori’s interest in such matters. All in all, these are too jargon-heavy for him to understand the specificities. As the clock ticks away into the afternoon and Shin progressively gains confidence that Hiyori isn’t about to suddenly appear and catch him in the act, he practically turns the fifth floor upside down in a mad search for information. Hiyori’s computer confirms that the facility is a site for various classified research projects, but it’s locked into its own internal systems and doesn’t have any way of contacting the outside. The rest of their living areas are completely unremarkable. 

The backroom laboratories, too, are pristine. Like they haven’t been used in a long time.

In a fit of desperation, Shin even circles back to the movie-setting areas, but they’re as empty and artificial as they’d always been. He’s only able to confirm that the elevator is locked, just as Hiyori had promised, and that there aren’t any emergency exits or staircases. It’s late into the evening by the time he finally collapses back onto the sofa, panting from exertion but with very little to show for his efforts.

This can’t be all. 

There has to be another clue here somewhere. Anywhere!

But the only place he still hasn’t checked is the room at the end of the hall, which Hiyori had specifically singled out as being off-limits. Even now, Shin is filled with trepidation at the thought of going directly against Hiyori’s instructions, and it takes almost half an hour before he finally gathers enough courage to make his way to the surveillance room. He finds the control mechanism of the electronic lock within the main computer, hidden under layers of extra programs and restricted permissions.

Shin bows his head, mumbles an apology, and gets to work.

Hiyori has taught him everything he knows about programming, but this is a double-edged sword; Shin is intimately familiar with Hiyori’s own habits and quirks, and he sees them scattered everywhere in the code like little cracks of vulnerability. It’s a slow, tedious process, but he presses stubbornly on. As the hours fly by and time passes into the early hours of dawn, he disables each obstacle one by one, until—

“Finally—!”

The mixture of triumph and relief is almost enough to make him feel lightheaded. Letting out a little cheer, Shin shoots to his feet and practically runs all the way down the hall. But his excitement only lasts until he actually arrives in front of the newly-unlocked door, when the gravity of the situation sinks in. 

This is it. Once he looks inside, there’ll probably be no turning back.

But Hiyori will probably be able to tell that he’d meddled with his systems, anyways—in which case he might actually be more disappointed if Shin came so far only to back down in the end. If nothing else, Shin should at least get what he came for. He’ll apologize on his knees later, if Hiyori wants him to. 

Taking a deep breath, he pushes the door open.

The inside of the room is dark and smaller than he had expected with the only source of light being a number of monitors, all mounted across the wall and running rapid lines of code by themselves. Shin takes a few cautious steps forward. 

[ now running s. 17894…17895…17896… ]

These are…programs? 

Dozens of them, all running simultaneously with the muted video footage playing at an accelerated speed. Shin inches closer, trying to get a better look, then freezes.

Because these are videos of him.

Hiyori shows up in a lot of them, too, and many of the scenes take place right in their apartment. But there are also other glimpses of Shin sitting in class, Shin working in a convenience store, Shin sitting at the dinner table with his parents—all various situations that Hiyori was not present for and could not possibly have filmed. Shin sways a little, feeling faint but rooted in place with petrified horror as he watches the videos continue to roll with his whole life laid out on gratuitous, voyeuristic display.

He sees the two of them beneath the cherry blossom tree in the school courtyard, where Hiyori had kissed him for the first time. He sees himself lying sick in bed while Hiyori bustles around, fussing over him like a mother hen. He sees a younger, green-haired girl that he doesn’t remember ever meeting, smiling brightly as she pulls him by the hand. 

“A-Aah…aaahhh…”

A tiny whimper bubbles up within him. Shin begins to backtrack, trying to get away from the monitors, but the room is still dark and he trips over something on his way out. Something rolls across the ground in front of him. 

It’s a human arm. 

Shin wants to scream, but the sound is stuck in his throat. Panicked, he stumbles in the other direction, but then something crunches under his feet and—god, he doesn’t even have the courage to look down this time, yet it feels like his hands are moving without his input, reaching for the switch on the wall and flooding the room with light and—

Another arm. Three legs. Several torsos. An entire collection of body parts, pale and thin and awkwardly lanky with the ribs showing like Shin knows is the case for his own body, all piled up in the corner like toys with a disembodied head balanced precariously at the top. Shin sinks to the ground, unable to tear his eyes away from the teal-green hair and empty blue eyes of the doll that so perfectly mirrors his own. It’s like looking in a mirror.

The two of us are almost the same.

Maple’s words replay in his head. Shin curls in on himself, dry-heaving. 

He doesn’t want to believe this. Hiyori can’t have—he can’t be—

“What are you doooing?” 

There’s a shadow blocking the door. Shin holds his breath, unable to move nor find the words as Hiyori crouches down beside him.

“Shin, my dear…you didn’t think this through very well, did you?” Hiyori lets out a slow, dramatic sigh, and lays a hand on Shin’s shoulder. The weight of his touch feels disproportionately heavy. “Now, I realize that I’m the one who told you to grab the truth with your own hands, and I’m very proud of you for getting this far! But if you were going to take action, shouldn’t you have been prepared for what you might find?”

Shin tries to answer, but all that comes out of his mouth is a thin, reedy whimper. It’s a pathetic sound that only makes Hiyori smile wider.

“Speak up, sweetheart.”

“I—” he can barely get the words out. “Hiyori, I—these body parts, they—”

“They belong to you, yes,” Hiyori confirms. “Or rather, they probably will at some point. I made a few extras just in case you ever needed it, haha!” 

Reaching forward, he plucks a disembodied hand off the ground and turns it over. There’s a deep cut across the center of its palm, exposing the wires underneath its artificial skin.

“The pain was bothering you, wasn’t it? So I switched it out with a new one.”

And then he’d pretended not to know the difference, when Shin asked him about it in the morning! Was Hiyori just waiting for him to figure it out himself? Shin averts his eyes, opting to stare down at his own hand instead. Even now, it looks real. It feels real.

Isn’t he real?

Shin wraps his arms around himself, shaking uncontrollably. “W-What did you do to me?”

“No need to sound so accusing! I was being considerate, you know—though, if you want your old hand back, we can make that happen, too.”

Hiyori’s hands whip out in a blur, gripping Shin just below the wrist. Then, before Shin can push him off or even protest, Hiyori tightens his grip and gives a twist—

And the appendage simply pops off.

The hand detaches from his arm easily. Smoothly. Without any pain. But Shin screams anyways, flailing wildly and trying to push Hiyori away with his remaining hand.

“No, no, no no nonono no—”

“Come now, Shin! Be reasonable!” Hiyori raises his voice to be heard over Shin’s hysterical wails. “That didn’t even hurt! The technology has already been tested, and it’s perfectly functional. I’ve replaced some of my own parts, too. If you don’t believe me, just think about—oh, I know,” he brightens. “I’ll show you!”

Shin watches in horror as Hiyori raises a hand to his own eye, digging his fingers carelessly into the left socket. He presses in deeper and deeper, until the eyeball begins to bulge, then finally pops out with a disgusting squelch. 

“See? You can switch these out anytime.”

He holds it out like a grotesque gift. Shin gags and scrambles back along the floor. Hiyori’s remaining right eye crinkles in amusement before he pushes the left back into its socket, where it spins several times before refocusing.

“There we go! Easy-peasy.”

“...ay from me.”

“Pardon?”

Shin finally finds his voice. “Get away from me! ”

He bolts for the door, but Hiyori is much faster and stronger than he is. A short tussle later and Shin lands flat on his back, panting raggedly with both arms pinned above his head. Hiyori straddles him, brows furrowed.

“Really, if you would just calm down for a moment—”

Shin kicks out with both feet, thrashing, but Hiyori is an immovable weight on top of him. He can’t move. He can barely breathe. Shin feels as though he’d been trapped in a nightmare, but this time, he knows Hiyori won’t be there to comfort him when he wakes up. 

Right now, Hiyori is the nightmare itself.

“Shin,” Hiyori’s voice had dropped, too. He traps both of Shin’s wrists with one hand and probes roughly at his throat with the other. “You’re very cute when you’re scared, but I’m not going to repeat myself. Either calm yourself down, or I’ll do it for you.”

“Don’t touch me,” Shin sobs. “D-Don’t, don’t—”

Hiyori sighs. His fingers slide along the nape of Shin’s neck, just below the collar, and presses down. “Well, if you insist.”

And the world goes black.

Shin opens his eyes.

There’s a split second of calm, muted serenity, as if he had just woken up from a nap and everything else feels very far away. But then everything comes back to him, all at once, and he gasps as he abruptly jerks up into a sitting position.

Or at least, that’s what he tries to do. 

But nothing happens. Shin strains his arms, which feels neither restrained nor hurt, but it’s as if his entire body has suddenly become dead weight. He can’t even turn his head. His eyes are just about the only thing that will still move, but from where he’s lying, there isn’t much to see other than the bright fluorescent lights on the ceiling. There’s also a mechanical beeping sound in the background, somewhere out of sight.

This…isn’t the same room as before. He sucks in a slow, shaky breath.

“Hey there, sleeping beauty.”

Hiyori steps into view, holding his phone. Click. 

Shin’s body won’t let him flinch, so the most he can do is shut his eyes against the blinding flash of the camera. “I’ve always wanted to see what kind of expression you’d make for the holy game,” Hiyori says. “This isn’t quite the same, but it’s still very nice.”

There’s a visceral, hungry intensity to his gaze, like he’s observing a specimen pinned beneath the microscope and pulling it apart piece by piece. Slowly, leisurely, Hiyori circles around to Shin’s other side and snaps a second picture, staring dreamily at the screen. 

Click, click.

Shin whimpers, finding that he can still move his mouth. “Why am I here?”

“Hmm? Like I said, you’re here to keep me company—”

“Not that,” Shin chokes out. His whole body feels cold, fear and anger and confusion curdling together into a sickening mass at the pit of his stomach. “We were in the other place just a moment ago, a-and,” he falters, voice cracking. “And then, you…”

“Ah, right.” Hiyori lowers his phone, and steps out of Shin’s line of vision. “You were getting too agitated, so I turned you off for a while.”

Such a light, casual tone for such awful words. Shin can hear Hiyori’s footsteps, circling around to the back of whatever he’s lying on, but he can’t see anything—nor can he move, as Hiyori’s fingers slide down the nape of his neck. 

It’s hard to breathe.

“Don’t be scared, Shin.” Hiyori’s voice is mild. Pleasant. “A reboot is meant to help you process things, so you don’t get overwhelmed—similar to how real people feel after a good night’s sleep. There’s a button you can press, right about…here.” His hand pauses. “I’ll show you how to do it later.”

Why would he even want to do something like that? Shin can feel his eyes starting to water. “Hiyori, I can’t move.”

“That’s because I disconnected your motor control systems below the neck,” Hiyori says easily. Then, he laughs, but without seeing Hiyori’s face, Shin has no way to tell if he’s actually amused or irritated. “You were flailing around so much, I was afraid you might hurt yourself—didn’t quite see that coming, oops! You were never so feisty before. But don’t worry, I’ll turn it on again once you’ve calmed down properly. You’re going to be okay.”

He says that, but just what part of this situation can be considered okay?  

A blink, and he’d woken up in a completely different room. There’s no way to tell how much time has passed. Shin can admit to letting Hiyori control a great deal of his life even before this, maybe more than he should have ever allowed, but for Hiyori to turn him off like an object and take away his movement on a whim is just—

“Oh, dearest, don’t cry,” Hiyori’s hands are on his face, now, wiping away his tears with a gentle caress. “This is nothing so dramatic, really. It doesn’t hurt. You don’t feel any different from before you found out, do you?”

He doesn’t, not physically, but that’s not the point. “A-Am I really a doll?”

“Are you hoping that I would deny it?” 

Yes. No. Maybe? At this point, Shin doesn’t think he’ll believe it even if Hiyori said he isn’t. But that doesn’t make the truth any easier to accept, either. “Are you a doll?”

Hiyori smiles. “I’m the same Sou Hiyori you’d always known, if that’s what you’re asking. Although it’s true that I’ve given some parts of myself away and exchanged them for machinery,” he leans in and points at his eye, which makes Shin grimace. “There’s still plenty of human parts left in me! I haven’t crossed the 50% threshold yet, haha. Maybe next year?”

“Then, am I—”

“But it’s not the same for you. Your body was created inside this facility. The day you woke up was the first day I turned you on.” As quickly as hope arises, Hiyori dashes it without hesitation—yet, when Shin bursts into a fresh wave of tears, he wipes them away softly and without impatience. “Oh, Shin. You would rather hear a gentle lie, even now? You were the one who went snooping in the first place.”

“I didn’t know what I would find!”

“Don’t lie,” Hiyori says. “You had some idea of what the truth might’ve been, but you were afraid. You actually tried to avoid thinking about it, didn’t you?”

Shin has no retort against that, so he falls silent, staring miserably at the ceiling. Hiyori continues to stroke his hair. 

This is a nightmare. He wants to wake up. And Shin should hate this—he should hate Hiyori’s touch, hate Hiyori, but—

Despite everything, the soft, rhythmic motions still soothes him somewhat. He’s reminded of the times Hiyori had comforted him after a bad day at school, when he’d listen patiently to Shin’s worries, offer him encouragement, and all the other countless little moments in between. There were days when he found Hiyori’s touch oppressive and suffocating. But most of the time, it meant something gentle and kind.

Slowly, Shin’s breaths even out, the hitched sobs quietening into quiet sniffles. Hiyori’s hands are warm, even now. He wishes it can always be like that.

“Feeling better?”

Shin bites his lip. “Can you turn on my m…m-motor control…”

He still doesn’t want to say the words out loud. But Hiyori simply nods and gives him a pat on the cheek. “As you wish.”

There’s a quiet hum as some sort of machine boots up. Shin feels a slight tingling sensation around his neck, not unpleasant, like static electricity from a fuzzy sweater. It only lasts a handful of seconds before there’s a tiny click and the sound of something hitting the floor. 

“All done! You can move again.”

He doesn’t feel any different, but surely enough, when Shin tries to sit up this time, he does so without difficulty. His hand has also been reattached. Gingerly, he eases himself upright and takes in his surroundings.

By the looks of it, this has to be one of Hiyori’s backroom labs. Shin had been lying on an operating table, and there’s an unfamiliar machine nearby with some cables, now discarded haphazardly on the ground. Shin’s stomach curdles as he realizes that they must have been attached to him mere seconds ago. 

Hiyori is standing close to him, close enough for Shin to touch. Close enough for Hiyori to touch him. Shin’s eyes automatically fly to the door, but it’s on the far side of the room.

He looks back at Hiyori. Hiyori smiles, watching.

Waiting.

Shin swallows. “...Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” Hiyori responds, bright and chipper. “I do prefer to talk this way, you know, and I think it’ll be much more comfortable for you as well. Now, you look like you probably have some questions?”

“Am I…allowed to ask?”

“The cat’s already out of the bag, isn’t it?” Hiyori says. “You took action a lot faster than I thought you would. We might as well get it out of the way.”

Even if he says that, it’s hard for Shin to know where to start. This whole situation still feels surreal, like maybe if he just closed his eyes hard enough then it would all go away—but if he’s a doll, then the normal life he yearns to return to had never existed in the first place. There is nowhere for him to go. No possibility of escape.

Shin takes a deep breath, and forces himself to look at Hiyori’s face. “What…am I?”

If Hiyori is disappointed that he’d begun the conversation by retreading old grounds, he doesn’t show it. “You’re a doll of Shin Tsukimi.”

“...You mean, a doll who thinks he is Shin Tsukimi.”

“You are Shin,” Hiyori says. “There’s no need to overcomplicate this. I’ve put a lot of work into the accuracy of your AI, after all—just look at the simulations! Data doesn’t lie, and you are nothing if not statistically consistent.”

Hiyori sounds proud, but it all seems so…impersonal. Shin thinks of the video screens, with the numbers running up to the tens of thousands and featuring scenes that he doesn’t even remember. “Is that what was running in your secret room? AI simulations?”

Hiyori nods, looking pleased that he’d made the connection. He begins to speak faster, as he often does with subjects of interest. “When it comes to AI development, digital simulations are just about the only way to do it—real-time testing would take too long, and not to mention all the unexpected factors you’d have to take into account! It’s just not feasible. Simulations are the winner of efficiency, no doubt, though I would argue that it can also be useful to take a more hands-on approach at times.” He makes a vague gesture at Shin, but moves on without elaborating. “Now, I realize that this might feel a bit strange, but you can rest assured that I wouldn’t get the details wrong! You’re still you. I made sure of it.”

“But if you m…” Shin still can’t bring himself to say these damning words out loud. “If you worked on…me, that means you made me the way I am. You configured my behaviour.”

“I programmed the algorithm for your personality, certainly.”

Shin’s palms are beginning to sweat. “Then why did you make me this way?”

Hiyori tilts his head. “Because that’s the way you are, of course.”

“Yeah, but,” Shin tries again. “What’s the point?”

For once, Hiyori doesn’t seem to be able to follow his train of thought. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that.”

“I mean, you told me a bunch of lies and acted like we were still at home!” Shin cries. “We basically spent two weeks playing make-believe. I’ve just been sitting around because I don’t even know what you wanted me to do in the first place, and you never asked, but I could’ve—or rather, you could’ve made me think anything. You could’ve made me do anything.” He shudders at the thought, almost reeling from the terrifying implications of his own words. “So why this? Why bother with the charade?”

The next part feels like glass in his throat, but Shin forces himself to continue. “If you configured Maple to love you, then what was I configured to do?”

Was he configured to find comfort in Hiyori’s touch? To be dependent on him? 

To love him?

But Hiyori just blinks, and this time he looks genuinely puzzled. “Well, why would you compare yourself to Maple?”

“What do you mean, why?” Shin falters. “She’s a doll, too! Maple said that we were alike.”

“And you believed her, based on what?” 

“I—” he’s supposed to be the one asking the questions here, but now Shin feels totally off-balance again, floundering in place. “I just—she’s right, isn’t she?”

“Oh, Shin,” Hiyori shakes his head and sighs. It’s an exasperated, mocking sound. “Maple doesn’t understand anything. Not really. The two of you are completely different, and it’s not as if I even wanted her on these floors in the first place! She would have gotten in my way, so the love program was a strategic choice. That’s what I needed from her.”

“But…”

“You were configured to be Shin Tsukimi,” Hiyori says. “Nothing more, nothing less. That’s what I need from you.”

Even if Hiyori means what he says, it’s not as if he ever bothered to get a second opinion, and a doll with artificial thoughts won’t be able to tell either way. Shin drops his gaze, fists clenched and digging tiny crescent-shaped imprints into the skin of his palms. 

“You…really didn’t change anything about me?”

He hates how small his voice comes out, quivering and weak. Hiyori steps closer, laying a hand on Shin’s shoulder.

“I would never. If you aren’t you, then there would be no point—and even if you won’t believe what I say, you can still look inside your own memories for proof. What’s the last thing you remember, before coming here?”

“I…” Shin hesitates. “I was coming back from work. I was tired.”

“And the sudden shift to this facility didn’t really make sense, right?” Hiyori prompts. “You said it yourself, that it was obvious I was lying.”

Slowly, Shin nods.

“So then,” Hiyori says. “Why do you suppose I left things this way? It would’ve been no inconvenience to fabricate a memory of our travels from home, to give authenticity to my story. You wouldn’t have questioned anything if I’d done that.”

The pit of Shin’s stomach goes cold. He hadn’t considered how easy that would be. 

“I chose not to give you any false memories because I didn’t want you to be incorrectly influenced by them, no matter how slight that chance might have been.” Hiyori continues to speak. His grip tightens over Shin’s shoulder, claw-like. “You’re special to me, Shin. I love you as you are, and I’d never let anything get in the way of that—not even my own desires.”

Not too long ago, such romantic sentiments would have been enough to send Shin over the moon. Now, he just feels sick. 

Shin buries his face in his hands, but there’s no way to hide from Hiyori’s persistent presence by his side. When he nudges at the small of his back, Shin still finds himself obeying as a reflex, sliding off the operational table to stand on wobbly legs.

“That was a lot, wasn’t it?” Hiyori’s voice is softer now. He wraps an arm around him. “You poor thing. Why don’t we go back so you can lie down and rest?” 

Shin can’t bear to look at him, nor the sympathetic expression he is surely wearing. “Hiyori, just tell me,” he pleads. “Why am I here?”

Hiyori takes Shin’s hand, rubbing his thumb lightly across his knuckles. 

“I’ve already told you,” he says. “But you don’t seem to believe me.”

Shin shakes his head in disbelief. The fact that Hiyori is still sprouting excuses, even now, is almost worse than the situation itself. If he’s being used for something, if Hiyori has even the slightest bit of sincerity left for their relationship, then the least he can do is come clean. 

What was the explanation he’d given—that you’re here to keep me company? It’s absurd. 

Not even Shin is naive enough to believe such a thing anymore. And maybe it’s that sense of betrayal, mixed with anger and hurt, that finally gives him the will to snatch back his hand and shove Hiyori away. Hiyori is forced to let go, looking surprised, as Shin glares at him with watery eyes.

“If you’re going to lie, then I can walk on my own!”

Hiyori’s expression closes off, becoming icy cold. For a brief, terrible moment, Shin thinks he is going to lash out—but then the moment passes, and Hiyori doesn’t do anything, so Shin ducks his head and hurries out. Hiyori’s footsteps soon follow as they proceed down the empty corridor and towards their ever-familiar bedroom. 

Here, Shin passes the door and tries to keep walking—only for a larger hand to close around his wrist and pull him back.

“None of that now. It’s getting late.”

“But I—” 

“Why don’t we go to bed?”

So this is the limit of his leniency. “I’m not sleepy,” Shin protests, and tries to pull his hand away. But Hiyori’s grip tightens, clamping down like a vice.

“Of course not,” he says. “I didn’t code that function into you yet.”

Shin freezes, swaying on the spot. All at once, he remembers how he’d been unable to sleep while Hiyori was gone on his business trip. How he’d otherwise sleep dreamlessly no matter how upset he’d been during the day, and wake up without fatigue. 

How Hiyori would stroke his hair and touch his neck every night.

Reeling from the realization, he’s too slow to react as Hiyori guides him back in through the door and locks it behind them. “Then, every night I went to sleep, I was actually…”

“You were turned off, yes,” Hiyori confirms. “But it feels a lot like sleeping, doesn’t it? See, it would have been time-consuming to include a program to mimic the sleep cycle in its entirety, so I found a shortcut and programmed your reboots to function like a good night’s rest for a human. It should have been pretty refreshing.”

He’s smiling again, slow and deliberate. Shin takes a step back, clamping both hands defensively around the back of his neck. He tries to remind himself that Hiyori is almost never physically forceful.

“D-Don’t turn me off again.”

“No need to be so nervous. It won’t hurt.”

“It doesn’t matter! I don’t want it!”

Maybe he’s being irrational. Maybe it doesn’t matter, if it’s something Hiyori has done lots of times already. But right now, all Shin can think of is how frightening it had been to blank out at a single touch, left to someone else’s mercy, and wake up entirely paralyzed. 

“Hiyori, please,” he repeats, almost begging. “I don’t need something like this.”

“Shin, I programmed the reboot for a reason. Since your AI mirrors a human’s psyche, you’ll become mentally fatigued if you don’t rest.”

“I don’t care!”

“Would you rather wait for the circuits to overheat from simulated stress, then?”

“I…I don’t…”

“Besides,” Hiyori interrupts. “What do you suppose will happen once you run out of battery?”

Shin pales. “What?”

“You came pretty close, during that time I had to take a trip,” Hiyori continues. “After all, these batteries are only meant to hold about two days’ charge at a time. I’d usually plug you in every night, so I thought I might come back to find you collapsed somewhere, haha! But even if that happened, I’d only have to charge you up again. You’ll never even know. It’s not as if you’d never fainted before, back when you were still flesh and blood.”

Shin tries to put some distance between them, but this time he bumps against the bed, knees buckling. Hiyori looks even taller like this, looming over him like a dark shadow. 

“So, what will it be? Do you want to go to sleep like a good boy, or would you rather wait and find out how it feels to fade slowly?”

Shin’s voice is stuck in his throat, unable to offer an answer. Hiyori takes another step forward. When he reaches out to him, Shin squeezes his eyes shut and flinches and—

A gentle hand ruffles his hair.

“Justtttt kidding! Of course you can charge yourself up during waking hours, too. If that’s what you want, I’ll show you how.”

Hiyori reaches past him and begins to dig through the space between the bed and the wall, pulling out a couple of long, sturdy cords that had previously been hidden under the sheets and blankets. Shin is left half-crumpled against the pillows, shivering uncontrollably and trying to catch his breath. 

“Here we are. Now, if you just touch this here…”

He grabs Shin’s hand, dragging it to the back of his neck. There’s a tiny bump under the skin there, so subtle that Shin probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it if he’d found it on his own—but when Hiyori presses down, there’s a click. A small compartment opens, allowing Shin to trace out the shape of an electric socket.

I…really am a doll, huh.

“Just so you know, running out of battery doesn’t actually feel like anything,” Hiyori murmurs. “So don’t get too stressed about it. Want me to plug you in?”

“I’d rather do it myself, if that’s okay…”

He gets the feeling that hadn’t been the answer Hiyori had wanted, but he still hands him the plug. Carefully, Shin presses it in. A slight tingling sensation is only the indication that he is now connected to the wires in the wall like a household appliance. 

“How long do I, um, need to charge for?”

“Just an hour or two,” Hiyori says. “But it really is quite boring. Are you sure you want to stay up the whole night?”

“...I’m sure.”

Once again, it’s clearly not the answer Hiyori wanted to hear, but Shin twists his hands into the blankets and stands his ground.

“Well, suit yourself.” After a moment, Hiyori shrugs. Then, before Shin can even breathe a sigh of relief, he drops down on the bed beside him and begins to pull off his socks. “But I’m going to get some shuteye.”

“N-Now?!”

“Weren’t you the one who’s been telling me to stop working so late?” Hiyori responds brightly. “I’ve still got some human parts, so I do need my eight hours a day!”

As if he’s ever slept a full eight hours, even back when they were in high school! Shin gapes at him, but Hiyori is already moving to take off his shirt, so it’s clear that he’s not joking. Shin tries to get up, but then the cord jerks him back and—oh, right. 

Until the charging finishes, he’s stuck. Which is probably why Hiyori had chosen today, of all days, to ‘go to sleep’ early.

With reluctance, Shin moves over to his side of the bed and burrows under the blankets as if they might serve as a shield. He can still feel Hiyori shuffling around, and the sound of paper pages flipping—but it doesn’t last long, and soon the familiar weight of Hiyori’s arm settles over him, pulling him to his chest.

“Goodnight, Shin.”

Shin mumbles incoherently into the blanket. Hiyori hadn’t bothered to turn off the bedside lamp, so he’s left staring at the wall until Hiyori’s breaths even out. 

Shin doesn’t have lungs anymore, but he’s breathing, too—or at least, it feels like it. If he holds his breath, would it not matter, or will the system knock him out through simulated oxygen deprivation? What else can this mechanical body go without? Left alone, the echo of his own thoughts seems unbearably loud.

How long has it been? Ten minutes? 

Twenty? 

Shouldn’t there be a way for him to check his own charging status? But he’d forgotten to ask.

In the end, Shin resorts to counting numbers inside his head. Although he loses track a few times, too anxious to properly concentrate, he eventually reaches a point where he can estimate that an hour or two had likely passed. Pulling the blankets back carefully, he disconnects the plug and begins to extract himself from Hiyori’s hold.

It’s not an easy task. Hiyori holds him far too closely, as usual, and his grip only grows tighter the more Shin tries to move away. But despite all odds, he doesn’t wake up even when Shin manages to escape, crawling down to the foot of the bed and dropping down to the floor. 

It feels like Hiyori would surely hear him with how heavily he’s breathing, too, but nothing happens. Shin stands up on wobbly feet and circles over to the bedside table. Hiyori’s small blue book is there. 

For the first time, Shin is close enough to read the tiny label on the upper right corner.

Shin Tsukimi AI Test Data.

After everything that’s already happened, this isn’t too much of a shock. But the queasiness of it all still makes Shin want to throw up. He forces himself to open the book before he can chicken out, skipping rapidly to the more recent entries.

[ Shin really liked the new smoothie. He’s growing fond of citrus fruits, but still likes strawberries best when it’s in season. ]

[ The collar looks good on Shin. I mustn’t set it too tightly. ]

[ During the movie today, Shin spent the entire time peeking out from behind his fingers, but he still watched the whole thing with me. Maybe he deserves a reward? ]

[ When his code finally worked, Shin was so excited that he jumped out of his seat and cheered. So cute! ]

…Is this what Hiyori had been writing the whole time? But it’s just a diary record of their past two weeks together. How can it possibly hold any value as test data? 

[ When Shin saw me, he once again gave me a smile, and playfully said good morning. ]

Shin blanches. This had been the morning before he went down and met Maple. Back when everything still felt normal. All he’d done was greet Hiyori, and yet…

There’s a rustling sound. Shin jumps, clutching the book guiltily to his chest, but Hiyori is just turning in his sleep—in the absence of Shin’s presence, Hiyori had grabbed onto his discarded pillow instead and curled all around it, snuggling into the soft fabric.

Hiyori always holds him too tightly. Sometimes, it’s stifling. 

But his embrace used to make Shin feel safe, too.

There’s a lump in his throat. Blinking rapidly, Shin turns back down to the book. He flips to an older entry instead.

[ Shin Swept by Eternal Wind, Smile Beaming ]

This is the title of a poem—and what follows are entire pages of love poetry, all penned in Hiyori’s handwriting and brimming with passion. This time, tears well up in Shin’s eyes. 

If this is how Hiyori feels, then…why…?

Hiyori, who knows Shin’s likes and dislikes like the back of his hand. Hiyori, who always pushes Shin into doing things he doesn’t want to do. Hiyori, who pins Shin’s smiling photos up on the wall and stares at them like priceless treasures. Hiyori, who speaks cruel and frightening words just to watch Shin turn pale with anxiety. 

Hiyori, whom Shin doesn’t understand at all.

What does he want, really? Does Hiyori truly care—and if he does, why would he treat him like this? Sobbing quietly, Shin sinks down to the floor and buries his face in his knees. With Hiyori asleep, there is no one to offer him comfort.

It’s a long, lonely night.

Without a window for natural lighting, the only way Shin can keep track of time is through the digital clock glowing in the dark. Briefly, he thinks about leaving the room, though there isn’t any point to wandering around outside, either. The night is also growing chilly, leaving him shivering in his single-layered shirt and staring longingly at the blankets on the bed. But he can’t go back without waking Hiyori.

Eventually, Shin curls up into a tiny ball on the couch and begins to scroll through his phone. It hasn’t been updated since his first day in this facility, but there’s a certain comfort in looking back on his old texts with other people. 

Mom, dad, I miss you, he types, but of course it doesn’t send.

Besides…they aren’t really his parents, are they?

Hiyori might insist that he is Shin Tsukimi, but his parents won’t recognize a machine for a son. Shin had always felt isolated in this place, cut off from the outside world, but it’s only now that the true gravity of things set in. This isn’t just a matter of temporary confinement.

The normal life that he’d yearned to return to had never existed in the first place. It doesn’t belong to him. Inside this facility, he is trapped. Outside of this facility, there is nowhere to go. Other people might know of the boy named Shin Tsukimi, but Hiyori is the only person who knows about the pathetic, lonely doll who is too scared to sleep. 

If he disappeared tomorrow, only Hiyori would care.

…At least, Shin hoped he would. 

The rest of the hours pass in a catatonic blur. He’s vaguely aware of when Hiyori begins to wake up, but Shin doesn’t want to go check on him. He flops over so he can lie face-down on the couch to avoid looking at Hiyori.

Eventually, footsteps approach, and he hears Hiyori sigh. 

“Shin, don’t be so stubborn. You could’ve gotten sick lying here, you know?”

“Machines can’t catch colds,” Shin mumbles without lifting his head. 

“But that fragility is an important part of your charm! And physical symptoms can be simulated, so…ah, now there’s an idea. Perhaps I should create a program.”

Contrary to the flippant lack of sympathy in his words, Shin feels a blanket draping over his body a few seconds later, tucked into place by Hiyori’s careful hands. He holds still, refusing to react, and waits until he hears the door close before sitting up and pulling the fabric closer. The blanket is soft and warm. It smells like Hiyori. 

He shouldn’t be finding comfort in this anymore, but…

Eventually, he drags himself up, leaving the blanket behind as he trudges to the door. Poking his head out into the hall, Shin notices a savoury scent wafting from further down. The kitchen lights are on.

“Come and have breakfast, Shin!”

Hiyori’s voice drifts from the kitchen, too, uncannily perceptive of Shin’s every move as usual. Shin can’t even imagine how Hiyori had known he’d be in the hall to hear him at this exact moment, but he’s so thoroughly exhausted that he can’t find it in himself to make a big deal out of it. He steps inside warily, skirting around the edge of the room. 

There’s miso soup and tamagoyaki laid out on the dining table, along with a small bowl of white rice. Nutritious, but light enough that it won’t upset Shin’s stomach. He knows it will be to his taste—Hiyori hadn’t always been good at cooking, but he’d improved by leaps and bounds during their second year of high school, when Shin began to stay over more and more often. By the time he moved in with him, he could admit to liking Hiyori’s cooking more than his own mother’s.

But a doll doesn’t really need to eat, does it?

“What are you just standing there for? You must be hungry.” 

Hiyori is in front of him now, still wearing an apron and smiling brightly. He looks so harmless like this. 

Shin allows himself to be guided into his seat. The polite thing to do would be to thank Hiyori, but what comes out of his mouth is, “What happens when I eat food?”

Hiyori blinks. “What brought this on, all of a sudden?”

“I was just wondering.”

“Well, I suspect that the specific ins and outs of the engineering will likely bore you,” Hiyori says. “But the short answer is: nothing much, really. Your system will process and dispose of anything it doesn’t need. Organic parts are easily broken down.”

“So I don’t need to eat or drink?”

“Of course not,” Hiyori replies. “It’s not as if the machine uses food as fuel.”

He says that so casually, as if he doesn’t even see the contradiction between his own words and the table full of food currently laid out before them. Shin twists his hands into his scarf, trying to keep his breaths steady. 

Ah, but it’s not like machines need to breathe, either. “Why did you make it possible for me to eat, but not sleep?”

“It would have been far too noticeable if you couldn’t eat or drink the whole time you were here, don’t you think?” Hiyori points out. “Even you would have suspected something before the end of the day. Plus, I did program the reboot to serve a similar purpose to sleep, so don’t act like I neglected that function entirely! But technicalities aside, what it mostly boils down to is…I guess, I wanted you to keep eating your favourite things.”

“...What?”

“You’re a picky eater, Shin, but you’d look really happy whenever I did find a recipe you liked,” Hiyori says. “It would have been a shame to take those moments away.”

This is all…so, so unfair. 

How can Hiyori say that with a straight face? Who cares about food, at this point, when everything else is…already…

“Now, eat up, it’s getting cold!” 

Withering under the intensity of Hiyori’s gaze, Shin picks up the spoon and takes a sip of the miso soup. Nothing feels physically different, but he can imagine the soup sliding down along artificial tubes and hitting the bottom of his stomach with a clang. Liquid, sloshing lifelessly against the sides of a hard container. Dirty and stained, like the dishes and pots he’d washed at the restaurant. 

Miso soup isn’t greasy, but some of the other stuff he’d eaten over the week definitely is. Who is going to wash out his insides? 

Shin tries a bite of the rolled omelette next, but solid food makes him feel even worse. And it just goes downhill from there, because then he starts wondering what exactly is simulating the sensation of nausea, and how the food scraps will inevitably rot, and how Hiyori will probably have to dig around his organs when it’s time for a new part, and—

“Hiyori, I…don’t think I can…”

A subtle guilt twists in his chest. Hiyori’s homemade meals had always seemed like an extension of his affection towards Shin, and it feels terrible to reject that. But after everything that’s happened, to go through the motions of an ordinary breakfast seems tactless at best and intentionally upsetting at worst. Hiyori had to have known how uncomfortable he’d be.

Not to mention, isn’t this entire situation by Hiyori’s design in the first place?

“I don’t think I can eat,” Shin finally whispers. “This is…scary, Hiyori. Everything is. I’m trying to wrap my head around it, I really am—but sometimes, I think…when you pretend that we’re still living a normal life, it makes it harder.”

Silence stretches between them without a response. When Shin peeks up a few seconds later, he finds Hiyori simply staring at him, not even blinking.

…Ah. He’s made Hiyori upset. 

Shin winces, a reflexive need to apologize right on the tip of his tongue—but then he catches himself, because this is far from the first time Hiyori had used silence to pressure him into changing his mind, and the fact that he’s doing it now spurs a flash of resentment so strong that it momentarily overshadows everything else. 

Why does Hiyori get to be upset when he’s the one who lied in the first place? Why does Hiyori have to keep pushing when Shin’s entire world is already falling apart, shrinking down to the size of a single isolated building?

It’s not his fault that he feels too sick to eat. It’s not. 

Pressing his lips into a firm line, Shin swallows his apology and directs his gaze down to his lap instead. Even without looking, he can feel the weight of Hiyori’s stare—and while he knows better than to actually try to win a staring contest with Hiyori, it’s much more doable to simply keep his mouth shut and let them both stew in this awful silence. 

If he has to deal with this, then Hiyori does, too. Slowly, a full minute passes. 

Two minutes. Three.

“...Oh, Shin. I do wish that you would’ve told me earlier, if it was bothering you so badly.”

Miraculously, it’s Hiyori who speaks first. Shin breathes out a sigh of relief, looking up, and immediately realizes this is another mistake as Hiyori’s expression hadn’t changed at all. He’s still staring straight at him, lips pressed in a hard, unnerving line.

“Why don’t we talk about it now?” he continues. 

“A…About what?”

“About whatever is worrying you,” Hiyori says.

This is an open opportunity and an invitation—but now, more than ever, conversations with Hiyori feel like stepping on eggshells, full of hidden lines in the sand and ominous implications. Shin squirms in his seat, hesitating. 

Why are you here with me, he wants to say. And not the real Shin?

In all the years they’d known each other, Hiyori rarely left him alone for more than a couple days. He’d always joked that he couldn’t bear to be apart from Shin. But they’ve spent almost two weeks in the facility, at this point. Although it’s possible that Hiyori had gone to see the human Shin during his ‘business trip,’ Shin’s gut feeling tells him that is not the case.

If Hiyori is actively choosing to spend his time with a doll, then…could it be that…

The thought alone is enough to make Shin break out in cold sweat. He begins to fiddle with his scarf again, twisting his hands into the well-worn fabric. “You, um, said that you didn’t give me any fake memories.”

“That’s correct.”

“Then, can I ask if I’m missing any memories? Like, if everything is up to date…”

“If you’re asking to be updated with new memories from the outside, then no, that won’t work.” As expected, Hiyori sees right through his roundabout wording immediately. “Even if there was anything for me to give you, how confusing do you think it would be to simultaneously recall your time within this facility while also remembering those same days as being spent somewhere else? The human mind—and by extension your programming—could never reconcile such a contradictory experience with the rules of its own internal logic.”

This response is straightforward, yet vague. Hiyori had given him a lot of factual information, but he’d purposefully avoided the core of Shin’s question. “If it exists, I’d still want to—”

“The final memory is not fit to be integrated,” Hiyori interrupts. “It’s imperfect.”

Shin closes his mouth. He’s suddenly reminded of that strange, green-haired woman who’d looked at him with such interest before Hiyori chased her away.

What did you do with the final memory?  

He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but if even Hiyori is calling it final…

Shin’s next words are barely a whisper. “What do you mean?”

“I’m saying that the memory itself is unstable,” Hiyori says. “It is, by nature, a very peculiar experience that is difficult to replicate, and thus difficult to study. Sometimes, it can cause unpredictable results when integrated into AIs. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

Mutely, Shin shakes his head. Hiyori smiles.

“Good boy. Now, if there are no more questions, won’t you help me clean up?”

Shin stays long enough to help Hiyori with the dishes as requested, but excuses himself immediately afterwards to slink away to the inner shelves of the library, where he knows the surveillance camera won’t get very good footage—no that he has anything to hide, necessarily, but it feels better to pretend that he still has some semblance of privacy. Hiyori doesn’t come after him, so maybe he’s busy with work. But it’s all just a temporary escape in the end, and not a very good one either; the most Shin can do is waste the daylight hours away before he’d have to return and charge himself up in their room.

And that’s exactly what happens come evening, as the two of them settle into bed and Shin tries not to think about how Hiyori is squished too close again. For all the times Hiyori had made fun of Shin for being needy, it actually feels like he’s the clingy one between them.

The lights are off this time, leaving him in the pitch dark. Counting that initial night where he’d stayed up to hack into Hiyori’s AI simulation room, this would be Shin’s third consecutive day without sleep. A peculiar weariness is starting to creep in, and in the back of his mind Shin recognizes this as the ‘mental fatigue’ Hiyori had referenced. But he can’t allow himself to be turned off again.

Will he need to do this tomorrow as well? And the day after?

Is this…going to be the rest of his life?

Inside this facility, he is completely and utterly reliant on Hiyori. Outside this facility, Shin might as well not exist. 

He’s stuck with a single person, and he’s not even sure if that person cares.

The future stretches out in front of him like an endlessly gaping void, pulling him under and swallowing him whole. And all Shin can do is sink.

Of course, Hiyori doesn’t let Shin run off again on the second day—but he doesn’t make him do much of anything else, either. They sit down in front of the computer and bring up Shin’s half-finished coding project at one point, but his concentration is a long-lost cause and it feels ridiculous that Hiyori is still pretending to tutor him when none of these skills are ever going to matter ever again. Shin will never need to apply to another job. He will never be allowed to talk to another person outside of this facility. 

Many of the things that used to define ‘Shin Tsukimi’ had been taken away, leaving only the parts still connected to Hiyori; sometimes, he’s not sure if he feels much like himself at all. Everything about this doll was constructed for him, but without his consent or input. Can he really take ownership for these thoughts if the algorithms were constructed by someone else?

“Shin, are you listening? This is the same problem you encountered earlier.”

“...Right. Sorry.”

Saying ‘no’ is never easy, so Shin goes along with it half-heartedly, but this only seems to make Hiyori irritated, too. He snaps at him a couple times for making mistakes and eventually disappears into his simulation room, which suits Shin just fine as he takes this opportunity to charge himself up early. This way, he figures that he'd be done by the time Hiyori comes to bed so then maybe he can just spend the night on the couch again—but then the clock ticks away, past midnight, and Hiyori doesn’t come back at all.

Which is fine. Great, even. He wonders if Hiyori is busy.

He…wouldn’t leave, would he?

Not without telling Shin?

Given how much effort he’d put into coming up with ways to avoid being in close proximity with Hiyori, this all feels woefully ironic and more than a little pathetic. Shin feels stifled. He feels lonely. He doesn’t particularly want to be near Hiyori right now, but he doesn’t know what he’d do if Hiyori ever abandoned him, either. 

Was he always like this?

Or maybe it's just how Hiyori sees him.

That line of reasoning feels a bit like an excuse, like he’s whining I can’t help it, Hiyori made me this way, but it's also a profoundly disturbing thought in and of itself. Can a person really be recreated with something as simple as prior observation?

Real people grow and change. But, if this is all based on Hiyori's perceptions...

Even in Hiyori’s normal programming work, Shin can identify his habits and tells scattered throughout the code like fingerprints. People leave aspects of themselves in their work all the time, even if unconsciously, so who’s to say that it isn’t the same with AIs? Shin doesn’t really want to consider such a thing, because that would imply he isn’t even able to trust his own thoughts—which, if nothing else, still felt natural. But his mechanical body had felt natural, too, right up until Hiyori twisted his hand off and revealed that he’d needed to stick himself with a plug every night. 

If he were to guess, Maple would probably consider her thoughts ‘natural’ as well.

The rest of the night passes, tortuously slow. Shin should have taken advantage of the peace and quiet that comes with being left alone, but he can’t relax at all. Finally, in the following afternoon, he gives in to his own increasing anxiety and steps out into the hall. 

But he needn’t have worried—outside their room, one of the backroom labs’ lights are on, with various tinkering sounds coming from inside. Satisfied with simply knowing that Hiyori is still around, he starts to backtrack.

“Shin, could you come give me a hand?”

How does Hiyori always know where he is? Shin grimaces, but it’s too late to pretend that he hadn’t heard anything. He reluctantly makes his way to the lab, peering in warily. 

“What do you need?”

“Come closer!” Hiyori has his back turned to him, elbow-deep in some sort of machine. Nuts and bolts are scattered around him like confetti. “I’ve been working on this alllllll night, so you’re just in time. Can you go to the back and turn this on for me?”

That seems simple enough. Shin enters the lab and obediently circles around to the other side, and waits for Hiyori to extract his arm before flicking the switch. The machine beeps, shuddering as it hums to life—but it’s from here that he notices a familiar piece of furniture, stashed behind the machine and previously out of sight.

“Great!” comes Hiyori’s voice. “Now push the operating table over and lie down.”

Too late, Shin realizes that this is the same room he’d previously woken up paralyzed in. He drops his hands as if he’d just touched hot coal. “You…!”

You tricked me, he wants to say, but Hiyori hadn’t actually lied about anything. At this point, it’s practically Shin’s own fault for not seeing this coming. “Hiyori, if you’re going to turn my motor control system off again—”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Hiyori cuts him off with exasperated impatience. Not bothering to wait for Shin, he begins to drag the operating table out instead, kicking aside spare parts and locking its plastic wheels in place. From closer up, Shin can see the bags under his eyes and the wayward curls of his dishevelled hair, but Hiyori still seems to have plenty of energy, and he’s talking very quickly.  “I only did that to stop you from hurting yourself. Besides, that’s not even its primary function! I only need to collect some data this time, so rest assured that you’ll retain full functionality of your limbs.”

As far as reassurances go, it’s a pretty bad one. When Shin takes a step back, Hiyori instantly pivots to block his way. He considers him for a moment, taking in Shin’s flight-ready body language before raising a finger and tapping it against his chin.

“Still not convinced? Let’s put it this way, then…I discovered a critical system error yesterday, so we’ll need to hook you up to the machine to fix it!”

Shin gapes. “Wha—you made that up just now!”

“Did I?”

“You obviously did?!”

Hiyori shrugs. “It’s up to you if you want to take that chance. Just don’t come crying to me if you find yourself shutting down, okay?”

In the end, it’s not much of a choice at all. Shin reluctantly climbs onto the operating table, holding still as Hiyori hooks up a couple of wires to his collar and opens up another port on his wrist that Shin hadn’t even known existed. None of these things hurt, but he still flinches when Hiyori connects him to the electric cable. 

“Don’t be so jumpy,” Hiyori says. He’d turned away and begun to type into the machine, with words flashing across the screen too quickly to take in. “Your readings are all over the place. They’re completely inconsistent with what you had before.”

“...Sorry.”

“If I really wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t need the machine to do it.”

“I know,” Shin says miserably. 

The two of them lapse back into silence, save for the rapid click-click-clicks of Hiyori’s keyboard. As much as Shin had dreaded being on the operating table again, the actual experience proves to be somewhat underwhelming—he can feel nothing and do nothing, which mostly just leaves him staring restlessly at the ceiling. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Hiyori, fully engrossed by whatever is going on with the machine. There’s a deep, pensive frown on his face as he contemplates the data.

As he contemplates Shin.

Shin is no stranger to the critical or even disappointed gaze of other people’s scrutiny, but the way Hiyori is doing it now feels different somehow. And, if he really thinks about it…

Maybe this is the way Hiyori had been looking at him, ever since he woke up as a doll.

“...Hey, Hiyori?”

“Yes?”

“If you wanted my data to be consistent, why didn’t you just make me like that in the first place?”

Hiyori shakes his head. “We’ve been over this.”

“Won’t you humour me? Please.”

“There is little else to elaborate on,” Hiyori says. “I programmed you exactly as you are—nothing more, nothing less.”

This is the line that Hiyori had drawn, and the one he’d refused to cross when telling Shin about his missing memories. Shin had spent a lot of time dancing around these invisible limits, sometimes because of Hiyori, and sometimes because he himself is afraid to hear the answer. But they can’t continue living in limbo forever. 

If Hiyori doesn’t want to talk about it, then he has to be the one to push.

“But how would you know for sure?”

The sound of typing pauses. Shin inhales deeply and clenches his fists, focusing on the sharp stinging sensation to give himself courage.

“What exactly are you comparing me to, Hiyori?”

Finally, Hiyori turns to face him. He’s still smiling, but the line of his lips has become hard and artificial, like a mask stretched into the shape of human skin. 

“So this is what you want to talk about? After all the time you’ve spent avoiding me, refusing to look at me...” Stepping away from his computer, he approaches Shin with quiet steps. Hiyori’s fingers are warm and claw-like, feather-light as it skims across the surface of his face. “Ah, how ungrateful. What am I to do with you, Shin? I’ve already given you everything you need, but you keep fixating on unnecessary things.”

Shin swallows. “I…need to go back home, too.”

“You want to go back home,” Hiyori corrects. “And I’m afraid that is no longer possible.”

“Like how it is no longer possible to compare me to the real Shin?”

The words are out of his mouth before he can even think about it. Part of Shin is shocked by his own audacity—but then, Hiyori goes very still, and Shin knows he’s struck bullseye. An eerie blankness settles over Hiyori’s face before he begins to smile again, wider and wider, looming over Shin and leaning in until their noses are almost touching.

“Ah, Shin...” 

The grip of his fingers tighten, digging into the skin of Skin’s cheek and making him wince. He can’t look away even if he tries.

“You blossom so beautifully under pressure.”

Abruptly, Hiyori lets go. Shin recoils and pushes himself back up into a sitting position, brushing aside the electric cords and breathing heavily. He holds his arms close to his body as he watches Hiyori begin to pace back and forth with a growing, almost manic energy.

“For two weeks, you accepted whatever explanations I gave you. The self-delusion was remarkable, really—and then you made a horrendous fuss about the replacement of a single hand, but look at you now! We didn’t have to talk about this! It really is a shame that we had to lose our seats in the holy game.” 

Hiyori is facing away and only half-speaking to him, half to himself. Then his head whips around, the sharpness of the motion making Shin flinch. “I had plans, you know! Even with you, Mister Zero Percent, I had high hopes for what we could accomplish together. Emiri thought it was all a grand joke—you make your strategies despite all evidence to the contrary, she says!—but she doesn’t understand. None of them do.” His voice drops. “We could have been such wonderful partners, my brave little coward.”

Had, but not have. Could have, but no longer. 

Shin clasps his right hand over his left to stop himself from shaking. “Please…don’t talk about things I won’t understand. This isn’t what I asked.”

“You always did need things to be spelled out for you,” Hiyori agrees. “Very well. You are correct: I can no longer draw new comparisons between you, and the real Shin.”

Ah. 

So his human self really…is…

An involuntary shiver runs through Shin, but the confirmation doesn’t shock him as much as he thought it would. Deep down, maybe he’d already realized that this was the only explanation that made sense—that this was the only conceivable reason why Hiyori would choose to spend his time with a doll instead of a person. 

“But it doesn’t matter. I don’t need a comparison,” Hiyori continues. “I’ve had years to observe each and every aspect of your personality. No one knows you better than I do.”

Hiyori speaks clearly and decisively, like he always does. But for the first time, Shin also catches an undertone of tension in his voice—something fraying and defensive, like a string pulled taut. He chews on his bottom lip.

“I…think so, too.”

This isn’t a lie. It isn’t even an exaggeration. “Sometimes, it feels like you know me better than I know myself,” Shin admits. “And that’s why I thought maybe I wouldn’t be able to tell, even if I turned out to be different from the real me. But…”

He hadn’t wanted to keep thinking about this at first. But Hiyori had just touched on it as well, however briefly—taking a deep breath, Shin looks up and stares him right in the eye.

“...Can you?”

Hiyori’s expression twists. There’s a brief, vindictive satisfaction in knowing he’s the one who’d forced this reaction out of Hiyori, that he’s gotten the better of him for once—but then Hiyori takes an erratic step forward, and Shin is catapulted right back into terror as he shrinks away from those long, spidery fingers. 

For a moment, he imagines them closing around his neck. Squeezing. Throttling the artificial windpipes that Hiyori had probably put into place himself.

But in the end, Hiyori does no such thing. This is a gentle touch, reminiscent of those precious after-school memories they can never return to; a phantom of moments now simulated as data inputs. Gradually, his scrunched-up shoulders loosens, and Shin doesn’t move as Hiyori painstakingly traces the lines from his cheek, to his nose, his lips, and finally the delicate strands of his eyelashes.

“...Even now, you manage to surprise me,” he murmurs. “What a perplexing conundrum you’ve made of yourself, Shin.”

The anger from earlier has faded. Now, Hiyori mostly just seems…tired. He sighs and leans forward until his head comes to a rest against Shin’s shoulder. 

“I suppose I would have grown bored of you, if you were any different,” he continues, softer still. “You were so contradictory. Always something new to discover. I’d wondered, sometimes, what it would have been like if the two of us could leave on our own.”

“...Leave, and go where?”

“Anywhere,” Hiyori says. “I would have taken you to all your favourite places. All your least favourites, too. Top ten destinations for elopement, darling!” He laughs a little but quietens quickly, sounding wistful. “But that could never have happened.” 

There’s something here, a whisper of something so delicately honest and open and vulnerable in a way that Hiyori had never allowed himself to show before, and Shin desperately wants him to continue. Slowly, tentatively, he raises his arms and tries to wrap them around him the same way Hiyori had comforted him so many times in the past. 

But that must have been the wrong move, because Hiyori stiffens and draws back immediately, his back ramrod-straight as he stares at Shin with eyes so cold that Shin can’t help but start to second-guess himself. 

Still, he makes one last attempt. “Why couldn’t we?”

“Excellent question. Let’s see…why don’t you tell me? ” Hiyori smiles again, but the tilt of his lips is bitter and sardonic. “We can consider our current situation a trial run. Think it would have gone well for the real you, Shin?”

Shin swallows. “I don’t know.”

“That’s unfortunate, then.” Hiyori turns away. “Neither do I.”

For a brief fleeting moment, it had felt like he might finally get a glimpse into Hiyori’s strange, secretive heart. But now the moment has passed. Shin’s chance is gone.

And Hiyori is further away than ever. 

Not physically, since he’d just relocated into another lab down the hall. But Hiyori had left without even bothering to disconnect him and slammed the door on his way out, pointedly signalling that Shin is no longer welcome to follow him. Thinking back, this might have been the closest they’d ever come to a full-blown argument. 

But he has the right to know, doesn’t he? About himself.

His real self.

In a way, this feels like the final nail in the coffin; a confirmation that the return to ordinary life is forever out of reach, even for his human counterpart. After carefully unplugging himself from the machine and turning it off, Shin steps out of the room. He hears sounds from one of the other labs, where Hiyori must have gone, but the door is closed with only a sliver of light peeking out from under the cracks. 

Shin lingers in front of it, tugging at the fraying ends of his scarf. He hadn’t meant for their conversation to end on such a hostile note. He still has other questions. Hiyori might not be interested in talking, but…

It feels awfully unfair to be left alone, at a time like this. 

Maybe he should go back to their bedroom and wait? Shin hesitates again, but before he can decide either way, the door to the surveillance room at the other end of the hall opens.

“Shin, good afternoon!”

“M-Miss Maple?” He does a double take. “How did you…”

“The elevators unlocked a little while ago, so I came to see Hiyori!” Maple smiles, bright and friendly. Her eyes are green again. “Emiri also wanted me to remind him that he isn’t supposed to keep it locked. She said it makes it troublesome for other people to get around.”

Shin had only ever seen that woman once. He still isn’t sure what her relationship is with Hiyori. “Oh. I can…um, pass on the message.”

“That’s okay, I’ll tell Hiyori myself.” Maple’s eyes sweep over the empty hallway, quickly zeroing in on the correct door. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen him, after all!”

She takes an excited step forward. And it would have been easy to scurry away, because this isn’t even his business to begin with and he’s honestly kind of scared of Maple—but then, Shin thinks about the stormy expression Hiyori had worn as he left, as well as how Maple had violently flown off the handle over something innocuous the last time they talked.

“Actually, um,” he blurts out. “Now isn’t a good time.”

Maple pauses. “Why not?”

“Hiyori’s working on a project. He locked himself in that room and didn’t even have time to sleep, so it must have been really important…I don’t think we should interrupt him?”

It should have been alarming how easily he’d mixed the truth and lies together to offer a plausible excuse, but Shin tells himself it’s for a good cause. If Maple goes to see Hiyori right now, Hiyori will definitely snap at her. When he inevitably hurts her feelings, will she lose her temper again like last time? What if she hurts Hiyori? 

No one will benefit from such an outcome. 

Clear reluctance plays out across Maple’s face. “It won’t take long…I can be quick about it.”

“Hiyori’s in a hurry, too, and he hasn’t come out since last night,” Shin pushes back. “We shouldn’t interrupt him right now, but I can let you know as soon as he’s done. I-If you want.”

The last part comes out more like a suggestion rather than the confident statement he wants it to be, but Shin’s palms are beginning to sweat from how nervous he is. Relief rushes through him when Maple finally relents, shoulders slumping. 

“If Hiyori is very busy, then I suppose I shouldn’t get in the way.”

“I’m sure he’ll be finished soon.”

“I hope so, too,” Maple sighs. “It’s been so long, I just…”

Looking at her crestfallen expression, Shin’s chest twists with an odd combination of pity and kinship. Hiyori had insisted that he shouldn’t compare himself to Maple, but the fundamental parallels are undeniable there. The two of them are far more similar than they are different.

Dolls, trapped in a lonely facility. Artificial beings, hopelessly dependent on Hiyori whether he’d meant to make them that way or not…

“Miss Maple, do you…think you can tell me about him?” 

Maple blinks. “About Hiyori?”

“Yeah. Until I came here, I had no idea the kind of life Hiyori led when we were apart, or what he did for work, or…” Shin shrugs, gesturing at the space around them and smiling weakly. “Any of this stuff. Even now, I’m not sure exactly what this place is supposed to be.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“Hiyori doesn’t tell me much,” Shin says. “Living here, you must have seen a side to him that I didn’t.”

He can tell that this is the push Maple had needed, because her eyes light up and she preens just a little bit. “I don’t know everything, either, but I can tell you what I do know?” she offers, visibly cheering up. “We can swap stories!”

“I’d like that.”

Shin shows her to the kitchen, and makes her tea based on what he manages to dig up from the cabinets. It’s just the quick instant stuff, poured into ordinary mugs instead of the expensive silverware she has, but Maple looks pleased all the same. 

“The others don’t usually stay long enough to chat,” she tells him. “This is the first time someone else has made tea for me.”

The sense of pity returns, accompanied by an undercurrent of guilt. After all, Shin isn’t offering to have tea for its own sake, either, but he does want to be kind to Maple. Despite how badly she’d scared him last time, it doesn’t seem like she’d meant to do it. Maybe Maple can’t help having such emotional outbursts, just like how she can’t help her obsession for Hiyori. “What other blends do you like? I’ll make it properly next time.”

“Oh, I like to try all sorts of different kinds! One time, Hiyori brought me this box…”

She begins to recount a story of the time Hiyori had given her an assorted tea set as a gift, though in the end, it mostly sounds like he had done it to get her off his back. “It’s too bad that he only stayed for a day,” she pauses, smile fading. “Hiyori came back when he had to, but he was always in a hurry to leave and go back outside.”

“Does he like working here?”

“I think he does. Hiyori loves his research, and he thinks highly of what we do. He was in very good standing here, before…”

She stops awkwardly, as if unwilling to say anything that would cast Hiyori in a negative light. Shin thinks of the conversation he’d overheard with Emiri, and how condescending she had been when referencing Hiyori’s so-called transgression. “Before what?”

At his prompting, Maple begins to speak again, though she still looks slightly uncertain. “I was not privy to all the details, but…a little over two months ago, there was an accident outside. Three candidates were involved, and two were disqualified. Hiyori also came back at that time, but he was angry, and didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

This has to be related to the ‘holy game’ Hiyori keeps mentioning, but that’s not important right now. “Did he stay after he came back?”

“It was the longest he’s stayed in years,” Maple nods. “For a while, I don’t think he was actually allowed to leave, but I didn’t get to see him, either. Almost no one did, because Hiyori locked his lab and began working on something by himself—it was only about two weeks ago that he came out, which is…”

She trails off, looking at Shin. 

“...I see.”

Two weeks ago was when Shin had woken up here for the first time and he definitely doesn’t remember a two-month absence from Hiyori before that, which means…

This ‘accident’ is probably the point where his human memories had stopped.

“Are you okay, Shin? You’ve turned pale.”

“S-Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize!” Maple exclaims, and begins to stand up. “If you’re not feeling well, then you should get some rest. I won’t keep you any longer.”

Shin stands up, too. “Sorry about this,” he repeats. “After you came all the way up…”

“Well, it’s only one floor,” Maple says, smiling. “I hope to visit much more in the future! And you can come visit me too. Let me know when Hiyori is free, okay?”

“...Yeah. I will.”

Hiyori had called the final memory ‘imperfect.’ Shin can certainly imagine why, especially if it truly is as final as its name suggests. But he also feels like he’d exhausted his other options at this point; even if Hiyori is willing to tell him more, he’s already proven his second-hand recounts to be vague at best and misleading at worst. If this final memory can be the last missing piece he needs, then Shin needs to see it with his own eyes. 

In a way, he feels like he owes it to his human self to know.

Now, it is nighttime again. Hiyori still hasn't come out of his lab. Shin paces in front of the door for a while, trying to decide what to say, but his nerves only grow worse with every passing minute. Finally, he gives in and simply raises his hand to knock.

“...Hiyori?”

There’s no response. Shin can hear some faint tinkering noises if he presses his ear to the door, but nothing else. He tries again.

“It’s, um, getting late. Maple stopped by earlier and asked to see you. It’s okay if you’re too busy, because I can ask her to wait, but…” he twists his hands into the scarf, swallowing dryly. “I was just wondering…if you’re alright.”

Shin waits, counting down the seconds to a full minute, but is eventually forced to fill the silence on his own. “Please…make sure to get some rest, okay? Since you said that your body is still human and all. But you’ve been in there all day, Hiyori, and…you didn’t even get any sleep last night, or come out to eat, or anything, and now you’re not talking to me, so I…”

He stumbles over his words, not wanting to acknowledge that part of Hiyori’s self-imposed lab lockdown must have been specifically to avoid him. Shin’s next words come out feebly, barely a whisper. “...I’m worried about you.”

Out of all things, the last part is ironically the easiest to say. They’re true, honest words—because even if the last couple of days have been a terrible ordeal that frequently left him frustrated, resentful, and frightened of Hiyori, Shin knows without a doubt that he still cares. He’s not sure he knows how to stop.

Even in the memories that he can no longer return to, Hiyori had been an immeasurably large part of his life. Now, he is the only part left. 

“Do you want me to bring you anything? Food? A glass of water…?”

Still nothing. It’s possible that Hiyori is waiting for him to apologize, but will that really make things better? It’s hard to imagine an undefined eternity of playing house with Hiyori, pretending to live a normal life like he’s actually alive. It’s even harder to imagine that Hiyori would be satisfied with such a simple thing. 

What will happen if Hiyori gets bored of him?

An involuntary shiver runs through Shin. He closes his eyes, inhaling deeply, and forces himself to turn around. 

Step by step, he returns to the AI simulation room at the end of the hall.

This time, the door swings open easily at his touch. Shin flips on the light switch, resolutely looking away from the pile of disembodied doll parts stacked across the far side of the room. The monitors on the wall are still playing an endlessly looping reel of his simulated life, now scrolling through s. 18979 with no signs of stopping. But there’s also a smaller monitor on a table in the corner, connected to a keyboard with a mass of wires disappearing into the wall.

Shin bends down and begins to type into the computer. To his surprise, it opens and grants him access to the files without issue; even after he’d broken through the security in the surveillance room, it appears that Hiyori hadn’t bothered to change his codes. Maybe he doesn’t care if Shin snoops any further. Maybe he wants him to do it, seeing as how he hadn’t even bothered to lock this room again. 

Briefly, Shin falters. Is this another one of Hiyori’s mind games? Is he playing right into his hands? Is he—

…No. He can’t let himself get dissuaded so easily. 

Shaking his head to keep focused, Shin redoubles his efforts to sort through the mass of computer files. He’s tired of having to keep guessing at Hiyori’s intentions, which is precisely why he needs to find the truth on his own. After speaking with Maple, it seems certain that the key to his questions lie with the so-called accident from two months ago. 

What really happened to his human self, back then?

The sheer amount of data in the computer is nothing short of staggering. It’s a small mercy that, unlike Hiyori’s personal laptop in their room, this one is all clearly labelled and separated into dozens of different categories, which prevents Shin from being overwhelmed and he continues to comb through the memory files with morbid fascination. 

Age. Date. Time of day. Location. 

Accompanying figures. Presence of third parties.

Primary emotion. Secondary emotion. Other associated emotions. Implied sentiments.

This is his entire life and then some, distilled into neat, clinical descriptions and numbers on a screen with more detail than Shin can recall for himself. How much work must this have taken? It’s tempting to try clicking into some of the files to take a closer look, but he resists the urge—right now, only one memory matters.

He finds it eventually, buried deep under other files and lacking most of the detailed labels associated with other memories. This one simply states the date, leaving the rest ominously blank. It hasn’t been modified since its creation.

With shaking fingers, Shin sets the computer up for transfer and feels along the side of his wrist, opening the latch for the small hidden port like he’d seen Hiyori do for him earlier that morning. It slides smoothly open, showing a perfect match for the cables on the computer. 

This is it. The last genuine thing left of Shin Tsukimi. It might be the proof to his own existence, and the answer as to why Hiyori had chosen to bring him back as a doll. 

Or it might be nothing at all. Maybe he’s got the wrong file. Maybe he’s not even supposed to use the port on his wrist, and maybe memory data should be transferred differently, but by god Shin doesn’t know anymore and he just needs to do it before his nerves fall apart entirely. Screwing his eyes shut, he jams the cable into his wrist and presses enter and—

it's

it's a

it’s a beautiful day!

beautiful and sunny and warm like the best kind of weather, warm enough that he doesn’t even need his scarf but he wears it anyways out of habit—and hiyori is going on a business trip, he’s leaving, he says it’s only for a week but—

(a week without hiyori sounds lovely!)

(a week without hiyori sounds lonely.)

“oh, don’t make that face!” hiyori kisses his forehead, grinning, “it won’t take long at all, my dear, you know i can’t bear to be apart from you—”

A blink, and the memory flickers, seamlessly filling in with additional context. They’re at a cafe. They were going out to lunch before Hiyori had to leave to catch his train, but then an urgent call came in from his coworker, so Hiyori had wandered over to a quiet corner while Shin went to grab their drinks from the counter.

When he got back, there was someone new at their table.

“—and not just this one!” a man, frenzied, slamming his fists down against the plastic tabletop. dyed blue hair. scattered papers. “so, so many photos…!!”

“she’s a friend,” hiyori insists. “they’re simply photos from an outing—”

“then what are all these documents?! death game plans? participant lists?!”

the blue-haired man shouts again, louder and louder. other patrons are backing away from the unchecked aggression. aren’t these papers from hiyori’s briefcase? 

what’s going on?

hiyori had always protected him. at a time like this, he should…!

“um, e-excuse me! there must be a misunderstanding, so please calm dow—”

“are you with him, too?” the man whirls around. “are all these insane things true?!”

“h-huh? i’m sorry, i-i don’t know what—”

“don’t play dumb with me!”

“i'm not, i swear! please don’t threaten my friend!” 

“then answer me! what are you bastards planning to do to reko?!”

“shin,” hiyori steps forward, too, reaching for him. “get back, this isn’t—”

“ANSWER ME!!”

the man lunges. the papers go flying. instinctively, he tries to shield hiyori, but then the man knocks him aside and the world tilts, and—and—

ah

he’s falling.

A blink, and the memory flickers. It’s a beautiful day. Beautiful and sunny and—

so, so cold. it hurts. ah, it hurts. he can’t breathe. 

“SHIN!!”

hiyori’s voice, from somewhere above. shin opens his mouth but can’t make a single sound. something wet bubbles past his lips, spilling down his chin and—

“shin!” footsteps. hiyori is here now. warm hands touching his face. it hurts. something is sticking out his chest. “shin—fuck, why did you—this wasn’t supposed to—”

red all over. pressure around the wound. it hurts to move. hurts to breathe. 

it hurts. it hurts. it hurts.

“…h-hurts…”

“well of course it hurts you stupid fool, you should’ve thought of that before getting involved!” hiyori snaps. “you’ve ruined everything, you—you—!”

he’s angry. hiyori’s angry, but he can’t speak, can’t apologize…

it hurts. hiyori’s on his phone, calling emergency. more pressure. it hurts. the world spins. hiyori’s face is pale as he presses down with his scarf to stem the bleeding, but it soaks through in seconds. it hurts. this is the first time he’s seen hiyori so panicked. it hurts. 

it’s cold.

“shin?” hiyori demands, his voice coming from very far away. “SHIN! pay attention—stay awake—help is coming, alright? look at me.”

it’s dark, too.

“LOOK AT ME!”

something wet drips onto his face. but the sky had been so bright and clear today. it takes all the strength he has to open his eyes again, but this is not rain, it’s—

oh.

hiyori is crying.

“don’t you dare die. not like this! NOT LIKE THIS! you’re mine—MINE, you hear me? shin! you’re not allowed to die in such a worthless place!”

“…”

“at the very least, i should’ve been the one to—” hiyori’s voice cracks. “don’t go. not like this.”

“hi…yo…ri…” 

“look at me, shin!”

“…so…rry…” 

hiyori curls around him with an unsteady sob, cradling him in his arms and holding him as if he could keep him there through sheer force of will. shin can no longer see the sky. the beautiful sunny day fades away, but…

here in hiyori’s embrace, it’s still very warm.

A blink, and the memory flickers, shattering like glass as the world snaps back into place all around him. Harsh fluorescent light shines down from above. In front of him, the computer beeps loudly. 

ITHURTSITHURTSItHurtsIthurts it hurts it no longer hurts the pain isn’t real nothing is real it used to be real it’s him it used to be him but now it’s—

Shin’s legs buckle as he collapses onto the floor, clutching at the phantom pain in his chest and gasping for breath. The sudden movement wretches the cord free from his wrist. When he brings his hands up to his face, his trembling fingers come away wet.

In that memory…Hiyori had been crying, too. For him. 

All this time, Shin had been wracking his brains to come up with a reason why Hiyori would want to keep him around like this, but…

“You’re here to keep me company!”

Hadn’t Hiyori said that from the very beginning?

“I’ve already told you, but you don’t seem to believe me.”

He…wasn’t lying?

It’s a dizzying realization—that things could really be so simple. That there was never any ulterior motive. Looking back, this would mean all the unremarkable, everyday things they did together was not an elaborate charade, but time spent with each other for its own sake; Hiyori really had just wanted to live out those bygone days again, side by side, while Shin scrutinized his every action for foul play and imagined shadows where there were none. He’d been quick to assume the worst, wrapped up in his own self-centered anxieties, but Hiyori…

...Hiyori must have been so lonely, all this time.

What had he even been afraid of? Breathing raggedly, Shin stumbles back to his feet and out into the empty hallway.

“H-Hiyori?”

The other laboratory door is open now, but the lights are off and the insides empty. Shin looks in the kitchen and common living areas, too, but they’re all equally deserted, bringing a surge of panic. He skids to a stop before the surveillance room, throat feeling tight.

“Hiyori!”

He couldn’t have left, could he? Shin hesitates, then turns and runs back down the corridor. There’s one last room he didn’t check—by far the most obvious one, in retrospect. Relief floods through him when he bursts through the bedroom door to find Hiyori standing at their bedside table, holding the AI test data book. His lab coat is wrinkled, hair sticking up in unruly curls and ponytail slightly askew. Surprise flits across his face.

“Shin, what—”

The rest of his words cut off with an oof as Shin slams into his midsection, throwing his arms around Hiyori and clinging on tightly as he can. The force of their collision pushes Hiyori off his feet and sends them both toppling down on the bed, but Shin refuses to let go.

“I’m sorry, Hiyori!”

Being with Hiyori feels scary. Being with Hiyori feels safe. In the past, Shin had struggled with that duality, never certain of which feelings really dwelled within Hiyori’s heart—but he has proof, now. The final memory cannot possibly be fake.

The way Hiyori had cried, holding him so tightly in those last moments, is proof enough. In a way, it should have been obvious: this is the same Hiyori who looked after him, cooked his favourite foods, and wrote sappy love poetry in the privacy of his AI data book. They’d laughed together. Lived together. He’d brought Shin back from the dead. 

No matter what else Hiyori might have done, this has to be the real him.

“I’m sorry. I really am.” His heart feels full to burst. Tears drip down his face, soaking into Hiyori’s shirt. “Waking up in this place, being a doll…it was all so much, Hiyori, but you...you were never lying to me. I understand that now.”

Slowly, Hiyori’s arms come up to wrap around him in return, rubbing circles into his back and stroking his hair. “You saw the final memory?”

“I know I wasn’t supposed to, but I had to know. I…” Shin sniffles. “I’m sorry I left.” 

The phantom pain in his chest has faded. But even when Shin thinks back on the worst of it, when he’d been lying broken and impaled and bleeding out on the ground, he can’t recall a single trace of regret in those dying thoughts.

Because he’d protected Hiyori, hadn’t he? 

The real Shin had loved Hiyori enough to throw himself in harm’s way and he’d died bravely, protecting the one most important to him. While no one may ever know for sure whether the personality algorithms of his artificial doll are exactly the same…at that moment, he feels that their feelings matched up perfectly.

This is what ‘Shin Tsukimi’ chose to do, and to know that is enough.

“I’m sorry I left,” he repeats, softer now. “But I won’t do it ever again. From now on…let me keep you company.”

Although Hiyori doesn’t respond, his grip tightens, almost to the point of bruising. Shin winces but ignores it the best he can—it’s not so bad if he considers it proof of Hiyori’s feelings. Even if it’s sad to think that he might spend the rest of his time within these solitary walls, his present circumstances are not Hiyori’s fault. 

After all, the alternative is for him to not exist in the first place. Hiyori is already doing his best, so it’s okay as long as Shin doesn’t have to be alone. “Show me around this place again,” he implores, trying to convey the sincerity of his promise. “I know I made a big deal out of everything before, but…I’m sure I can learn to live here, if I try. I want to help you.”

Finally, Hiyori lets out a dry chuckle. “Shin, you don’t even know what it is that I do.”

“You can teach me, like you taught me how to code, and swim, and everything!” Shin insists. He does his best to channel his momentary determination into bravado, and maybe it works because Hiyori laughs, this time, and the sight of his smiling face makes Shin break into relieved giggles, too. “I’ll learn quickly, I promise. We can get started tomorrow, after—wahh—!”

The world tilts as Hiyori suddenly flips them around, pinning Shin down on the bed beneath him. His hand traces a line down Shin’s cheek.

“Slow down, sweetheart. You’ve become so enthusiastic, all of a sudden—dare I call it a complete attitude change? Not that I’m complaining, mind you…”

“I just—” It’s hard to shake off old habits. Shin’s voice becomes a squeak under the intense stare. “I understand, now!”

“Do you?”

Hiyori is smiling again, crooked and disconcertingly wide. One of his hands is wandering, sneaking over Shin’s shoulder and moving upwards in a slow, deliberate crawl.

Ah—

A familiar fear jolts through him. Hiyori must notice it, too, because he starts to smile even wider. Shin swallows. His arms are free, and Hiyori isn’t actively exerting force to hold him down this time. He might be able to push him off if he wants.

But that’s not what he came here wanting to prove. Taking a deep breath, he tilts his head to the side and grabs Hiyori’s hand, guiding it directly to his neck.

“Stop trying to scare me. It’s—fine, alright? It’s fine.” His voice quivers a little at first, but Shin’s voice grows stronger as he continues to speak. “I want to go to sleep tonight.”

“Shin, you do realize that would involve turning you off.”

“I know.” And that’s okay, because if Hiyori had ulterior motives then he would have done it already; he would’ve done it quickly, without giving Shin the opportunity to refuse. Shin swallows again, and forces the rest of the words out. “I want to go to sleep tonight, and then in the morning, I want to eat the food that you’ve made for me. I…just need to get over it, right? Since you’ve worked hard to make all of this possible.”

This is evidently not what Hiyori had expected to hear; he falters, lips parted but providing no answer. Shin seizes the opportunity to keep going. “I want to get better at cooking so I can make something for you, too,” he looks up, meeting Hiyori’s eyes with his own imploring gaze. “I want to watch movies together again. I want to keep working on code with you. I want to learn more from you, and more about you, and I want to learn more about your work so I can useful and you won’t have to stay up so late. I might not like everything about this place, but...” Shin takes a deep breath. “I know I still want to live with you, Hiyori.”

Hiyori doesn’t say anything.

“...See?” Shin says, more softly this time. “I understand.”

He feels rather proud of himself, to have been able to put all those feelings into words at last. But when Shin tries to catch his eye again, it’s Hiyori who ducks his head, looking away.

“Shin, you really are…” he makes a quiet little sound in the back of his throat, almost like a laugh but not completely. “I wonder if this is what you would have said.”

This again. Shin had been the one to force this into their conversation last time, so he can’t really fault Hiyori for bringing it up, but… “I think so.”

“Hmm. Feeling confident?”

“I can’t prove it to you,” Shin says. “Just like you can’t prove it to me. But…I really, really do think that this is the choice I would have made.”

Hiyori doesn’t answer right away. His head drops until he’s resting against Shin’s shoulder, with shaky little puffs of air coming up against his collarbone with each exhale. Shin shivers.

“Hiyori...?”

“It’s nothing,” Hiyori murmurs. “You just…continue to surprise me, that’s all.”

He pulls back, but before Shin can get a good look at his face Hiyori is leaning down again, pressing their lips firmly together. Shin’s eyes flutter closed as he melts helplessly into the kiss, deep and slow and wonderfully, achingly gentle. 

When they part, Hiyori rolls off of him and onto his side of the bed, pulling Shin into his arms. He tugs the blanket over them.

“Ah—shouldn’t we change first?”

“Later,” Hiyori says. “I’m tired today.”

Figures. This is his second day without sleep, after all. Shin relents and settles into place, tucking himself close against Hiyori’s chest.

It won’t be easy, he knows. There are still other questions he needs to ask, and tomorrow is sure to bring a whole new host of challenges that he hadn’t considered before. But they can take this one thing at a time—for now, Shin is content to enjoy the warmth as Hiyori’s hand slides tenderly through his hair, lingering on the back of his neck. Shin presses a shy kiss against him in return, lips brushing over the thin material of Hiyori's shirt and above the beautiful heart that he's finally come to understand.

“Goodnight, Hiyori.”

He hears Hiyori sigh. And then, there is nothing at all.

Sou watches, as Shin opens his eyes.

These are familiar movements, from the way Shin stretches up with a lethargic yawn to the way he rubs lightly at his face. Even if the AI doesn’t truly feel the grogginess of awakening, the practiced motions remain—and Sou drinks in the sight like a parched man before the oasis, leaning in close to the computer screen so as not to miss a single detail.

Not so long ago, he’d observed these movements taking place right in front of him. Now, the doll is nothing more than dead weight in his arms—and he should’ve gotten rid of it, really, because what’s the point when even the AI has been wiped and reset? 

But letting go is a difficult task.

Up on the screen, the new Shin begins to look around the simulated room, those lovely blue eyes wide with growing confusion. So far, so good; all in all, this has been a fascinating experiment. But a singular result doesn’t mean much. For a scientist, true value lies in consistency.

Will the new Shin choose to accept his lies? Probably. 

Will he go down to the fourth floor and foolishly extend his sympathies towards Maple? Almost certainly.

The questions are endless. The possibilities are endless. Sou can already anticipate some of the answers, and he knows this new AI is also likely to discover his true nature in a similar time frame. However, the real point of differentiation comes down to the final memory. 

If they do everything all over again, will Shin still make him that same perfect promise? 

Every single detail matters, but this is the most uncertain of all because it is so far removed from all the observational data he’d collected before. What other experiences can he compare this to? How many times will it take to get an acceptable margin of error? The margins he had before were clearly unacceptable, but that just means he needs to do better, to find what the real Shin would have done. Looking down, Sou brushes his fingers across the soft, cold cheeks of the doll in his arms. Shin is still smiling, just as he had when he went to sleep.

Belatedly, he thinks, I should have gotten a picture. 

Sou pulls out his phone, craning his neck to try and get the right angles, but the moment has already passed and it doesn’t feel the same anymore. Maybe he’ll need to put the doll back into bed and set the mood first? He can still fluff up the pillows. Arrange the blankets. Tuck the comforter under Shin’s chin, the way he does every night.

Make it look real.

But there are so many tests to run in the meantime. New tests. More accurate tests. He’s already wasted so much time, and Emiri will be on his back soon enough. With a sigh, Sou puts his phone away, though it’s significantly harder to tear his gaze away from the doll’s sweet, sleeping face. Maybe he will take a proper photo next time, once he’s confirmed that the AI truly is behaving correctly. This one had been...tempting. But he was also too unpredictable, after managing to breach a topic that Sou was certain he’d never have the courage to confront. 

“...Always something new to discover, my dear.”

Perpetually anxious, yet willing to give Sou his wholehearted trust. Too timid to look others in the eye, yet brave enough to live the memory of his own death and come out smiling. Sou supposes that’s what had drawn him to this meek, doe-eyed boy in the first place—but as impressive as his little existential deduction had been, Shin was still wrong about one thing. 

The line of Sou’s mouth hardens as he turns back to his computer and abruptly lets go of the doll, allowing it to clatter lifelessly to the ground.

Data doesn’t lie. Statistics don’t lie. 

And Shin is nothing if not statistically significant.