FicAlert! PoT> a i (Silver Pair) PG-15(ish) Pt2
Title: a i
Author: Everlind
Wordcount 50 600+
Pairing: Ohtori/Shishido (Silver Pair)
Rating: PG-15
Warnings: Drama, very mild gore, questionable ethical issues, attempts at humor, hopefully not too much OOCness. Oshitari. Kite (and his tight purple pants).
Summary: 'Can you make a robot love a human? But isn't the question: can you make a human love a robot?' (A.I. Artificial Intelligence by Steven Spielberg)
Disclaimer: The Prince of Tennis belongs to Konomi Takeshi. This story is based on characters and the universe of The Prince of Tennis, no money is being made from it.
Notes: For hazelandnuts at silver_swap 2010-2011.
a i
Dark eyes veer towards him and they both jump when their gazes knock into sudden contact.
Shishido is not sure what to do, or what to say, mostly worried at what he might say, should he open his inane gob again. Instead they sort of stare at each other. Kon starts to sit up so he backs away to give it some room.
Hovers while Kon blinks against the harsh light, seems to try and gets its bearings.
"How are you feeling?" Shishido asks tentatively, having to lick his lips to get his dry mouth to move.
Kon looks at him, head slowly turning, opens its mouth. Then it looks down its own arm, where it is braced on the table. Shishido has to smile wryly when he watches the realization sink in that it is naked. The sudden rush of color to the cheeks pleases Shishido inordinately. He can't believe it works… so… realistically. Had he not put it together with his own two hands not even twenty-four hours ago, he wouldn't ever have known. So real.
And no murdering rampage. Yet. Just extremely discomforted squirming and attempts to cover its modesty.
"Sorry about that," he mutters. "Didn't mean for you to be uncomfortable."
Of course it is, he reminds himself. You programmed it to be!
"Let me get you some clothes. Stay here," he tells it, then advances on the corner where a make-shift closet vomits clothes all over the floor, asking himself where the hell a naked android would skip off to. Somehow he's pretty sure he's not making a very glowing first impression.
It's dark, barely past midnight and besides the lamp next to the table, all is shadows. Shishido paws through the mess, hoping to locate something that'd fit it. Luckily he buys most clothes a size or two too large.
With a pair of worn sweatpants and a huge sweater, he approaches the android again. "Here," he says, softly. "The legs won't be long enough, but I'll make sure to pick something up for you tomorrow."
The modesty is rather funny, not to mention ironic since they both know Shishido… well, made him. All of him. Down to the very last detail. Suddenly this strikes him as pretty fucked up. He wonders what Kon thinks about that, if it has any opinion about it at all.
Slowly, the android pulls the sweatpants up -they are way short-, then the sweater. That done, it sits rubbing its arms, cold. It can feel that. Shishido made it able to.
Their eyes meet again and this time they hold the contact.
"Kon?" Shishido says softly, "Do you know who I am?"
The eyes are shaded as it lowers its lids, lashes dark and thick. A nod.
There's a pronounced silence.
"Shishido-san."
The sound of his own name jolts him physically. The voice is not quite what he imagined it to be, not a baritone as he planned it. A low tenor, warm and steady. Most of all he's shocked at the politeness of it. Shishido wonders at how the android seems to form a huge part of its identity autonomously. He meant it to be able to, but it surprises him how naturally some aspects form.
Kon looks at him. "Is that my name?" it asks, "Kon?"
"Uhm," Shishido goes, caught off guard. "It's what I've always called you," he offers.
"Me," Kon says, then nods. It slides to the edge of the table, swings its legs towards the ground. Shishido is painfully aware that there's so much junk on the floor it's hard to avoid treading on anything.
"Sorry about that," he says again.
He feels awkward. Somehow it is not quite happening at how he's always fantasized it would.
Toes touching the ground -long slender toes, large yet delicate seeming feet- Kon tests its balance, then stands.
Shishido looks up. And up.
Tall. Very.
Maybe he went a little overboard there. And what was he thinking giving it such light hair?
Odd.
But nice, all the same.
Kon takes up a lot of space. Shishido is very aware his apartment is small and cramped and a horrible dump and what the hell is he - are they- supposed to do now?
For all that Kon is moving, operating correctly, there's something not quite… not quite right.
"Kon," Shishido says.
The head snaps instantly towards him.
"How are you feeling?" he asks, carefully pronouncing.
A head tilt, but no answer. As though Shishido commented on the sky being red.
"Kon," he prompts, then lifts his brows to indicate he'd like an answer.
"My feet are cold," Kon answers, almost hopefully. As if liking very much to provide the exact right answer.
Shishido breathes in, searches for something that ought to bring about a clear indication of… of… "How do you feel about me?" he tries, knowing that there are endless different emotive states Kon might link to him if. If.
There's a pause. Kon seems to be thinking about it. Eventually he offers, "I don't understand. I don't feel you. We're not touching."
Shishido closes his eyes.
Dammit.
Disappointment wells up, sharp and intense, making the back of his eyes warm, his fingers tremble.
"Shishido-san," Kon says, sounding worried (because that's how I programmed it to react, Shishido thinks bitterly). "Did I answer wrong?"
"No," Shishido sighs. Opening his eyes, he absentmindedly pats the shoulder. So damn real. He forces a weak smile.
"You answered exactly as I expected."
***
They spend the night clearing the apartment. With Kon helping, it takes them about four hours, but it's clean when they finally finish. Not smelling of stale food and overtly-sweet energy drinks, the floors completely cleared. The place looks positively huge. That's an optic lie, because they have to maneuver around one other in order not to bump.
It's just that Shishido can't recall the floor being bare ever since the first day he moved in.
He yawns, hugely.
"Are you sleepy?" Kon asks, sounding interested.
Shishido nods.
This is weird. He feels unhinged and disappointed and so very, very tired.
It's been a long day.
It's been a long everything just to wind up here, empty-handed.
He sinks down on his futon, neatly laid out in the corner.
"I'm going to bed," he says, voice thick.
Kon nods. "What should I do while you sleep?" it asks.
Shishido looks at it. Tries not to let the bitterness flood into his eyes, even knowing it doesn't matter whether Kon sees it or not. Not like it cares. Still, he can't help but feel fondness there, for this thing he's made, for all the time and effort and risks and blood, sweat and tears spent over it.
This is as far as he's made it.
Not very.
He looks at the face, takes time to study its peculiarities: the dark, almost severe brows accenting brown eyes. The face is very masculine, high cheekbones and strong jaw. The nose is straight, longish, above a generous mouth. The skin is smooth, flawless, though pores detail it, fine lines etch mobility on it. Light hair, vaguely curly.
Handsome, he supposes.
And perfectly blank.
Enough, he tells himself. Enough.
Shishido looks at it and says: "Kon, shut down."
Kon shuts down.
***
Next day finds Shishido in a clothing store, tired and frowning at everything.
Does it even matter?
Kon was a failure.
That what he so desperately hoped for just didn't happen. He knew. Somewhere, he knew. He knew it wasn't possible and he knew Oishi was just seeing things that weren't there, because he spends an unnatural amount of time with that droid and he knew he was an idiot for hoping.
Yes, it is true. He did have a hand in Eiji's programming and there might be some lines on his heart-drive from questionable origins, not to mention legal content. Codes like that never make sense. If you were to disassemble it, if you were crazy enough to, it would be a load of gibberish.
There's still so much unknown about the human brain and while scientific progress has managed to theorize about what most is used for, about ten percent remains an absolute mystery.
Some say that it might be the blueprint for the soul.
Due to the large amount of ethical controversy about the subject, messing around with those ten percent (and most of the rest, actually) -especially in regard towards computer science- is strictly forbidden.
But hey, his name wouldn't be Shishido Ryou if he didn't at least… poke it.
Yes, he downloaded that obscure part nobody knows what its use is, but he adapted it. Heavily. Okay he didn't really poke it, he kinda went and mauled it. And sure, it might have been a blueprint from his soul, but by the end it was a blueprint that -he hoped- might invite the spontaneous and natural generating of one.
Idiocy.
They're machines. And that which is organic is grown, man-created, like everything else about them.
With laden hands, he takes a pair of gray slacks from the rack. Not something he'd wear, but nice. Would fit Kon, at least. That combined with a t-shirt and a button-up ought to do, right?
He doesn't quite understand why the hell he's buying clothes for it, when he doesn't actually intend to… whatever it would have been had Kon not been a failure. Fact remains that he has a badly clothed android in his apartment, which is kinda creepy, and that he can't quite… well. No matter how you look at it, Kon is one of the most realistic looking -and feeling- androids out there. The cold 'lack' all androids have is there, the emptiness, but his face and all the rest of him, well. Not to toot his own horn, but he thinks Kon might just be the best he's ever seen.
No, no question about it.
Kon's a piece of art.
The best.
And after dedicating so much time to creating it, it feels kinda cruel to leave it as it is. Not that he worries about Kon's feelings, but his own sit uneasy with it.
Which is why he shells out more for the clothes of his home-brewed android in one go than that he pays for his own whole stupid wardrobe in six months.
Time to face it. His life?
Pretty damn fucked up.
***
"Kon, activate."
Shishido watches its chest start to rise and fall, the eyes open.
Brown. Like this night.
"Shishido-san," it says, mouth curving. "Hi."
"Hey," Shishido manages gruffly.
"I am sorry I did not answer that question satisfactorily," Kon murmurs, head tilted down and apologetic.
No hunk of metal should look so sincere. Shishido flaps his hand. "There was no right or wrong way to answer it."
It's late afternoon. Skies turn steel-gray early yet, but true night holds back. Soon spring will arrive, with warmer, sun-lit days on its heels. Maybe he should go on vacation, someplace with the sun burning on his neck, sand between his toes. He thinks of that when he wanders into his shadowy kitchen.
He's got some rice and fresh vegetables. Now that he doesn't have Kon to obsess over, eating real food might not be a bad habit to pick up again. Especially after years of not eating anything that didn't come in a capsule. Maybe he didn't get too rusty. Hopefully.
Pan in hand, he flicks on the stove and rice cooker. Dicing the carrot, he wonders if he should push it and attempt curry.
Kon watches him do it. For some reason its presence is easy to ignore. Maybe he's come to terms with not having succeeded and he sees it for what it is: a fancy walking, talking can-opener. With extra options and a nice packaging. That is currently sniffing his bamboo shoot.
Shishido watches, circumspectly, still dicing away.
Putting aside the bamboo shoot, it reaches for a daikon and holds that up to its nose, too. Turns it around in his hands, finger pads rubbing. Shakes it. Puts that aside, too, and peers into the plastic bag.
It rustles as it reaches inside.
"What are you doing?" Shishido asks, looking over his shoulder. The slices become rather malformed.
Kon fishes out the button-up. "These…?"
"Yeah," Shishido mumbles, embarrassed for some inexplicable reason. "Can't have you walking around with your ankles bare like that. My neighbors would be scandalized if they knew."
That makes Kon look at him, eyes wide and shocked. "You think? I am sorry, I didn't know humans don't like it when-"
"Kon," Shishido interrupts it. "That was me being sarcastic. Better get used to it."
"A sharply ironical taunt," Kon says.
Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he nods. "Perfect answer. Full marks, buddy."
Kon's mouth twitches, it happens so fast that Shishido wonders whether he imagined it. "I got used to it," it says. Right then Shishido wants to wheel on it and figure out whether his friggin' android just made a quip, but Kon opens its mouth yet again, expression distraught: "Shishido-san, watch out!"
To all carrots comes an end. Especially when dicing. Of course, there's still your fingers. Into which Shishido just cut. Deeply.
"Crap!" he yells, yanking the hand towards him before starting to shake it, useless gesture as it is, flinging blood in all directions.
There's a moment of utmost chaos with Shishido doing an ouch-ouch-crap-fuck dance, accompanied by the horrible lyrics of his cursing and Kon flapping about him and getting in his way and then suddenly grabbing his wrist. Shishido pulls and Kon yanks and Shishido pulls again, starting to protest.
An irrational stab of fear lances through him and he starts to resist, violently. But Kon is still pulling, gently enough, and then his hand is under the cold water and he gets it.
"Uhm," Shishido goes, throat constricted.
The water is cold and the edges of the cut tremble against the rush of it. For a long minute the only audible sound is the heavy splatter in the sink and their breathing. It takes a while before the water runs clear of blood.
There's a deep gash in his left index finger and a shallower one in his middle.
Kon releases him and Shishido finds himself rather hastily pulling away, cradling his chilled hand against his chest.
"Please be more careful," Kon says softly as it twists the faucet.
He can only nod mutely. His fingers pound and his hand is cold.
Catching his gaze, Kon asks, "Have you any bandaids around?"
"In the bathroom," Shishido answers. "I think."
When he moved in here he supplied the medicine cabinet with necessities like any responsible adult would. Seeing as he never opened it but once -to fetch tweezers to pluck at the more delicate wiring of Kon- he's not sure if any of it is still useable. But after rummaging around in it, Kon unearths a packet of bandaids.
"Here, better put one on to keep it clean," it tells him.
For some reason Shishido lets it do that, standing there rather numb and confused as the android bandaids the cut from a kitchen incident on his fingers.
It's too weird.
He lets Kon dress, barely. Because when it stands there, properly clothed and looking so arrestingly human and his fingers have bandaids on them, it's just too weird.
"Kon," Shishido says. "Shut down."
Kon shuts down.
***
"I want to make a female," Oshitari says at work.
Shishido tries to restrain himself from throwing something pointy and possibly lethal at him. Instead he pretends to write code. He's behind on work. The drive for it is gone. Instead he thinks he'd rather be doing simple repairs or something that will allow him to move more. His body is wasting away. He plays with the idea of picking up jogging once more and maybe even attempting to excavate his tennis racket back at his folks' place.
"You know what company policy is," Yanagi says. His android's eye is dangling out of the socket, it keeps going cross-eyed and not even Niou can figure out why.
"I am well aware," Oshitari says. "Just, it is rather curious, is it not? Why should men only be allowed to build androids with a male exterior and women only those with female parts? Kite-san, what do you"- the addition of 'and your tight purple pants' here, Shishido feels, is implied -"think of it?"
Kite looks towards him, eyebrow arching. "Because a bunch of sad bastards like you all'd probably take them for a test drive."
"I think Hanamura takes hers out for a test drive female parts notwithstanding, if ya ask me," Niou says, smirking. "Or that Oishi, you know, from first aid?" His eyebrows do a dance of innuendo. "He and his aide are awfully close."
"Their relationship is strictly professional," Inui interjects.
"Yeah, and you would know all about that sorta professional, don't ya?" Niou snickers.
Inui's glasses glint nefariously.
Shishido ducks behind his computer and pretends not to be there. He suspects a new addition to the tea by this evening, or maybe only just to Niou's cup. If they forget he's there, he might be spared.
"Shishido," Inui says.
The universe just loves proving him wrong, doesn't it?
"Yeah?" he goes, as casual as he can.
Inui smiles. Shishido doesn't like it when he does that. Last time Inui smiled at him he wound up passed out for an unknown amount of time in the lobby, during which Taki saw it fit to paint his nails pink.
"Atobe has inquired as to what your new project name will be," he informs him.
"Er," Shishido goes, rather at loss. "I dunno. Number Six?" he throws the suggestion out since the killer droid was number Five.
The silence that follows is rather pointed. Shishido peers over the edge of his screen.
"Why is it you are utterly incapable of coming up with names?" Yanagi wonders. "We all have actual names for ours. Yet yours are still just numbers."
"Well, it is the sixth one I'm making," Shishido points out.
"It might be better to think of a name for it," Yanagi presses. "If you become somewhat more attached to your work by doing so, then maybe you wouldn't be at number six while we are still working on our first."
Not even Niou has something to add to that.
Shishido bows his head, wisely clamping his lips over the rebuttal that he has finished his first android -and the only one he ever named- and has it up and running.
***
"Kon, activate."
Eyes opening, Kon says, "Good evening, Shishido-san."
"Yeah yeah," Shishido mumbles, shuffling into the kitchen and wondering why the hell he had him activate in the first place. Curling his fingers he can feel the bandaids scrunch up in his palm. The cuts throbs in thick response to his heartbeat.
"How was work?" Kon asks, trailing behind like an abnormally over-sized puppy that wants to be taken home. Or at least receive ear-scratchings.
"Same old," Shishido replies. Niou passed out in the hallway, twitching: check; Inui lurking about whilst chuckling darkly: check; Yanagi happily hammering away at his demon android: check; Hiyoshi looking martyred by them all: check; Oshitari being a pain in the ass: check. And lately this also includes Kite looking like he's either about to murder or molest you (or a little of both) whilst wearing tight purple pants: check.
The only thing that lacked was him blowing something up. Maybe he ought to have, you know, for old time's sake.
Instead he kept puttering about with his code, tennis on his mind. He suspects that if number Six does not explode or attempts to murder anybody, it might just end up pretty damn kick-ass at tennis.
"Do you think you'd play tennis, Kon?" Shishido asks, absentmindedly.
Kon hovers near the door. "I don't know," it says. "Do I?"
Touché, Shishido has to admit. "We'll have to find out, then," he answers. A plan begins to take form.
***
"Who's your tall and polite friend?" his mother asks.
Shishido roots around in the small mountain of junk he's left to gather dust.
"Some guy I know from Tannhauser," Shishido answers vaguely. "Okaa-san, where have you put my old tennis stuff?"
For all that he concocted this scheme, it is far from brilliant (no surprises there, a rather Oshitari-like voice whispers in his head). Taking your highly illegal though admittedly brilliantly crafted android out in public is a bad idea. Exposing it to your parents is an even worse one. But he felt like playing tennis and he conveniently forgot about all the rest. On top of that women are like rabid hyaenas. They can smell your fear. And dishonesty.
"Ryou," his mother sighs, nodding her chin at a rather obvious tennis racket shaped bag in the corner.
"Oh, thanks," he grunts, beginning to grin as he reaches for it.
"Does he have a name?" she presses, "He won't say."
"Sure he does," Shishido mumbles, pointedly ignoring the fact that she'd obviously like to know what it is. "I gotta go," he says instead, leaning in and kissing her forehead, before hastily hightailing it out of his old room.
He's halfway down the stairs when she calls after: "I know you're up to something, Shishido Ryou!"
"Let's get out of here," he hisses, grabbing Kon's bicep and hauling it along.
They don't even make it down the drive before she appears in the doorway and singsongs: "I would love it if your new friend would join us for dinner sometime soon. Very soon."
Bodily shoving Kon through the gate, Shishido curses under his breath. For all that she is a lovely little thing, his mother is possibly the single most devious creature walking the planet.
"Your mother is very nice," Kon says, lips curving.
"Not another fucking word," Shishido warns, the hair at his nape on end as his mother watches him flee.
"Hai, Shishido-san."
***
"You can talk now," Shishido snaps, annoyed at how literarily it takes his orders.
"Thank you," Kon says, gracious and stupidly bland and empty. "Aren't we going to play tennis?"
Shishido throws himself bodily against the door before it relents with a rusty click. "It's too dark," Shishido lies.
Okay, it is too dark and the street courts that have floodlights are too far away, but mostly he is appalled that he found it a good idea to take Kon outside and see how others would perceive him. Granted, he's pretty sure his mother doesn't truly know he saw it fit to unleash an android whose discovery might land him in jail, but she knows he did something that he shouldn't have.
On the other hand, nobody even for a moment suspected they were looking at an animated pile of electro mechanics, which goes to show how human Kon looks.
Shishido steals a glance at it. It does look like that. Human. Especially as the crisp temperature outside has brought a flush to its cheeks, the white hair disarrayed.
"Might I have a cup of water?" Kon asks suddenly.
It starts Shishido out of his meditation of it. "Water level low?" he says, handing it a mug half-filled with water from the tap.
"Yes," Kon answers, sipping tentatively. "From the walking. I haven't ever walked like that. Sweating feels odd. Should I shower now?"
Shrugging, Shishido mumbles, "If you wanna, knock yourself out. Don't drink too much water. I'd rather not open you up."
"I won't," Kon promises and demonstratively puts aside the mug before drifting off into the bathroom.
Too weird, Shishido thinks. Almost the real thing, he'd said. Almost, Jiroh'd echoed.
But not really.
***
Of all the people he's close to (not a whole lot of those, to be honest), Jiroh is the one who arguably knows his deepest, darkest secrets. That, and he phones Shishido's mom a lot, which makes for all kinds of uncomfortable scenarios.
Such as Jiroh ringing his doorbell on a Sunday morning, just as Shishido was getting ready to go for a run.
"Gooooood morning," Jiroh says, grinning.
Shishido raises his eyebrow at him.
"You're awake," Jiroh continues blithely. "Congratulations."
"Thank you," Shishido returns, voice like ice. He doesn't invite Jiroh inside either. "To what do I owe this dubious honor of having you ring my goddamn bell at nine in the morning on a Sunday?"
Jiroh's eyes narrow and his teeth show. "Recent contact with my sources have given me a good reason to believe you have activated your android."
"Oh my god," Shishido groans, widening the door because postponing the inevitable is useless. "She actually phoned you?"
"Yup," Jiroh goes cheerfully, squeezing through the narrow gap Shishido reluctantly made. "Apparently you showed up with an abnormally tall and kind young man in tow, looking for your tennis rackets. She seems under the impression that your new friend"- he makes air-quotations here -"is responsible for you getting somewhat of a normal life again. It gives her despairing heart hope, Ryou."
"I am sure it does," Shishido grumbles, standing back as Jiroh casts about his apartment, like a particularly determined Jack Russell looking for a bone.
When he eventually finds it, he goes "Oh Ryou," in a very, very disappointed tone. "You still throw a sheet over him? He's… he's turned off isn't he? Please tell me he is."
"Of course it's turned off, you jackass," Shishido replies. "Besides, would you like seeing a motionless humanoid thing pointed at you while you try to grab some shut-eye? I recall you were freaked out by your brother's E.T. plush, not to mention they had to take down Transformers poster because you thought Megatron would come and eat you while you slept."
"Decepticons are evil,"Jiroh answers enigmatically. Then continues in a different voice, "May I look?"
"Sure," Shishido answers and sits on his desk chair as Jiroh pulls the sheet away.
Then he simply stares for a while, standing very, very still. Shishido loses interest and wanders off to make tea, unsure what the whole big deal is. The water has just finished boiling when Jiroh joins him, leaning against the counter next to him.
"You did it," he says softly.
"Not really," Shishido answers softly as he adds the tea leaves. "There's nothing inside but that which I programmed there to be."
The leaves release a strong grassy odor as they steep. Shishido tastes it again, that bitter aftertaste of disappointment, along with the sharp tang of green tea.
"I've never seen anything like him," Jiroh whispers. "Congratulations. He's beautiful."
"You make it sound as though I became a mother," he answers, lip curling. The idea makes him vaguely nauseous.
"Your choice of role-model, not mine," Jiroh says quickly, hands up in a 'I-know-nothing' sort of way.
That deserves an elbow nudge. A sharp one. Jiroh rubs his ribs, but grins regardless. They settle into companionable silence again.
"Isn't it a little like that?" Jiroh wonders after a while, when they are prudently nipping at their cups.
"Heh, no, not at all." Shishido answers, honest.
While he knows how Kon works, exactly, intimately and inside-out and then some, when it is activated… there's a distance. However odd that might be, but it is there and Shishido prefers it that way. It's easier to deal with, that way.
"I want to see him activated," Jiroh says. "Not right now. But soon."
Shishido thinks. Then nods, slowly.
"Alright."
***
"Kon, activate."
He's pulling his sweater over his head and re-emerges to the sight of Kon standing and stretching. It easily reaches the ceiling.
"Hi," Kon goes, bobbing his head. "How was work?"
The image of Inui standing over his activated android (codename: Viper) cackling: "It's ALIVEEE!" resurfaces. He could've happily gone on without ever having to witness that. On the other hand Viper -or, as Inui revealed, Kaidoh- doesn't seem to have achieved successful and complete soul-driven AI either. That and it looks creepy.
Small mercies.
"Nothing special," Shishido says, wondering whether he has any sort of meat to dunk in his bamboo rice.
As usual, Kon follows him.
Stands around while Shishido finds a packet of meat of unknown origin and decides to take his chances. Yet today ignoring it is hard. Especially when Kon just stands there, apparently hopeful (it isn't Shishido knows. It isn't!) and a little shy. He manages to ignore it while he cooks, but when he starts to eat and Kon perches itself as unobtrusively as an one-hundred and ninety-three centimeters tall android with white hair can be on the edge of a chair, he relents.
"Inui -he's my colleague- activated his android today," he mumbles awkwardly.
Kon's eyes snap up sharply. "Oh," it goes, intonation wavering. "What was it like?"
"Kaidoh?" Shishido snorts. "Sulky, bad-tempered. I dunno."
Reminds me of Shishido on his better days, Oshitari has seen it fit to announce. Shishido had thrown a wrench at him.
"Kaidoh…" Kon repeats softly.
Right then and there Shishido halts his chopsticks-to-mouth motion midway. His skin crawls. The pipes click and groan. His rice steams. He stares at Kon, eyes wide.
"Is Kaidoh," Kon hesitates, swallows. "Is he official?" it adds at last.
Their eyes meet. Somehow Kon knows enough from what is plastered all over Shishido's face. Its gaze drops and it looks away.
Barely audible, it asks, "Is that why I don't have a real name?"
His chopsticks clatter indecently loud as they hit the ground.
Kon starts and stands up so fast the chair topples back. The crash reverberates through the place. "I am sorry," it apologizes. "That was an inconsiderate question, I-I know I am not supposed to… to exist. Sorry, please, let me help-" and it crouches down to the ground to help Shishido clean the mess.
Shishido isn't so much concerned about the spilled food as he is trying to come to terms with what just happened and what it might mean. If it means anything at all. Machine learning, he decides. Of course. This isn't any indication that-
No.
It isn't.
Kon mops up rice grains, "I am sorry." it whispers yet again, sounding wretched.
Shishido shakes his head, looks at it closely. It isn't, he repeats to himself. Somehow that steadies him. "No, it's alright," he murmurs. "Don't worry. Here give me that and stand up."
Unable to resist a command from him, Kon gives the sullied cloth and stands up.
Shishido rises, too. "No, that is not the reason," he tells it. He washes his hands at the sink, before adding as casually as he can: "Would you like a name?"
Silence.
Turning, Shishido tries to keep a firm grasp on reality. Almost but not quite, he repeats to himself. It isn't. Nevertheless he's arrested by the expression he sees there.
They just look at one another for several minutes.
"A real name?" Kon asks, voice small.
He nods.
A knife-sharp intake. Blinking furiously Kon nods, too, once and shaky. "Yes. I'd like that," it breathes.
Shishido smiles, pats its arm awkwardly. "We'll think of one tomorrow, okay? It's getting kinda late."
That seems to rouse it. "Of course!" it gushes. "Sorry, I forget you need sleep."
Knowing the routine, it walks towards the corner of the room and sits down. It looks eager and happy. Like a neglected child receiving a sweet.
Something twists, sharp and acute inside of him.
It isn't, he tells himself harshly. It isn't.
"Kon-" he begins, authoritative.
But the android interrupts, looking up at him. "Thank you," it says, voice reverent.
Jiroh was right. It shouldn't have been activated. Ever.
"-shut down." he finishes.
Kon shuts down.
***
He leaves Kon deactivated for a week first, then two.
Three.
He goes to work and pretends to be busy. Oshitari seems to suspect he isn't. Takes a Master at slacking off to recognize the feeble crumbling of resistance to its flighty seduction in another.
Witnesses Yanagi activate his android. It spurts into life cackling, eyes flooding red and hair wild. It gets shut down right after. Kite seemed disappointed he didn't get to shoot it.
Shishido takes up jogging again. Hates himself when he all but collapses on his first try, disgusted that he's let himself become so much as useless pudding. The very same day he joins the gym and starts doing sit-ups and push-ups.
There's inquiring noises from Jiroh as they eat at Tensai Tarts. Shishido ignores them and challenges him to a game of tennis instead.
He loses 0-6.
So he asks it again the next day. And the day after that, too. And the day after… and after.
A month passes.
There's a layer of dust on the sheet. It piles up in the hollows and Shishido sees the crude shadowing of skull in it, when his eyes pass over it too fast, or when he tries to sleep.
He goes to work and he pretends.
Atobe asks what his progress is.
Shishido looks at all the lines of code he's written and feels ill.
There's only one word written there, over and over.
A name.
***
His palms are moist.
Shishido doesn't understand why, but he's frightened of it. Yet he also wants to, needs to, a compulsion that he can't quite resist, longs to see it activated, hear it talk.
Wonders whether it will recognize him now. He changed. Strong, healthy. Too skinny by far, worse than before, but what remains is mostly muscle and tendons. His skin glows and he finished against Jiroh in a 3-6 game yesterday.
He feels both more alive and less connected, less real and less himself than he has in ages.
Dammit.
"It isn't," Shishido whispers to himself.
Breathes in.
And out.
"Kon…" he starts, then pauses and corrects deliberately, speaking with great care as though his hands are holding something fragile:
"Choutarou, activate."
He hasn't removed the sheet. There's some struggling and coughing as it gets tangled in it, dislodging a month's worth of dust. When they manage to remove it, its fair hair stands on end.
"Shishido-san," it says, voice flush with pleased surprise. "I-"
He interrupts it. "Like it? Is that- is it okay?" Stops, cross with his stupid mumbling. Then adds rather harshly, "Your name."
"My name," it repeats.
The smile that spreads is instantaneous and blinding. Shishido flinches away like a spooked horse.
His heart ceased beating right there and then. It hurts.
"My name."
Despite that, despite Shishido thinking wildly: 'I've lost it!' they look at one other.
"Choutarou."
Shishido nods, weakly. He has no words.
"I like it," Choutarou says.
Then he smiles.
***
Carefully avoiding looking at it for just yet, Shishido raps his knuckles against the doorframe.
Oishi looks up, mind clearly still preoccupied until he sees Shishido standing there. "Shishido!" he exclaims, smile wide and inviting. "Haven't seen you in a while. You look good. Much better than you haven been for a while. Bit tired though, how have you been sleeping?"
Not at all, Shishido thinks darkly. To Oishi he says: "Poorly."
Oishi advances on him, full of doctor-like intentions, then falters when he sees the look in his eyes. "What's wrong?" he asks, worried.
Now Shishido forces himself to look at it.
Breathes in, jaw clenching. Corrects himself.
Look at him.
"I need to look at Eiji," he says, voice soft.
Eiji looks back, steady.
"Alright," he says.
***
Shishido feels for the first time in his life horridly uncomfortable in his own damn house. He's lived in his trusty shoebox for years, but now he's acutely aware that it is -literally- not much larger than just that.
Especially with not only him (and Choutarou's carefully hidden and inert form in the corner, under a pile of everything he owns), but also Eiji and Oishi shuffling inside.
Eiji knocks a cup from the table.
It falls and Shishido braces himself for the smashing finality when the porcelain'll meet the ground.
"I don't think so!" Eiji says, moving so fast it's unbelievable, a roll and a shimmy as he catches the cup before it is even half-way. He stands up and sticks his tongue out at it, "Neh-neh!"
Oishi gives Shishido an apologetic look.
Pretending not to see the horrible fondness in those dark eyes, Shishido clears his throat and says: "Glad to see you're putting Oshitari's skeleton to good use."
Silence.
Eiji frowns at him. Oishi looks as though he'd like to, but forgives Shishido because idiocy is something you're born with and are unable to help having.
Alright. Not the smoothest conversation starter he's ever thrown out there. Running a hand through his hair and wincing, he mutters something about making tea and escapes into the kitchen.
Back in the other room, he can hear Eiji mutter, "How rude!"
When he re-enters, he tries again. "Here," he says, handing Oishi tea. Then, to Eiji he adds, "Cup of water?"
Eiji tilts his head, considering.
"A little bit," he admits after a moment. "Because I wanna be polite."
"Er," Shishido goes.
"Unlike some," Eiji adds under his breath.
"Eiji!" Oishi reprimands him, but mostly out of principle.
"What?" he counters. "He doesn't ask you what color underwear you're wearing, does he? Che!"
"I'm sorry about that, alright?" Shishido says, not meaning it much but wanting to soothe the snippy android's frazzled contacts. "Besides, it's true."
Eiji purses his lips, then nods, reluctantly.
Shishido nods also and then lowers himself to the ground, cross-legged. It annoys him a little that they hesitate to follow suit, mostly because the lack of a couch has never made him self-conscious before. Once on the ground, Shishido hooks Eiji up to his laptop. It is clear that this causes more discomfort to Oishi than it does to Eiji.
Not hard to guess why.
Eiji still looks human and for intents and purposes he is, somehow inside there, for inexplicable reasons Shishido is attempting to find out. But when he sits there, the hatch in his chest wide open and a couple of cables stuffed in there… it serves as rather painful reality-check. Admittedly, Shishido has to concede being impressed by Oishi's nerve. It's clear the sight of it has him more than just a little uneasy, but he watches. Makes himself to.
"Tell me if it feels weird or hurts," Shishido murmurs.
"Sure," Eiji says.
Shishido has to admire that also. His confidence even now, chest laid open, hooked up and ready to have his code downloaded. No shame.
"Don't you need to check the drive in his…" Oishi swallows, "head?"
Grinning a little wryly, he mutters, "Seeing as you don't like me popping open his chest, I think you would like it even less if I opened his skull. Besides -thanks Eiji- he is cooperating beautifully. He's already put me through."
"This is weird," Oishi says.
Shishido scrolls through the code. No major changes. Then again, someone like Inui or Yanagi might have better luck on this front. Oshitari even. It looks okay to him, but he just hasn't got what it takes to really know what to look for. Not without conducting nearly a decade of research as he did for Kon.
Choutarou.
"Eiji?" Shishido murmurs, "May I have access to your heart-drive?"
They look at each other. Eiji's eyes are large and wide, delicately lashed.
"Sure," Eiji says again.
Oishi stands up and moves to busy himself in the kitchen. With him out of the way, Shishido pretends to lean close on pretext of peering at something, while he murmurs. "Can you remember?"
Inside of the robot, a small led light flickers rhythmically. The synthetic lungs inflate and deflate, everything moves and works, repeating endless cycles to provide him with energy and support.
Head tilting towards him, Eiji whispers, "They shut me down for the night. Approximately fifty-three days ago. And I dreamed."
Shishido's heart hammers urgently. "What did you dream of?" he asks.
"Oishi," Eiji answers. "I dreamt of Oishi."
This is too much. Too private. Shishido casts his eyes down, to his hands.
"What will I see when I look at your heart-drive, Eiji?" he whispers.
"Me."
He nods and reaches inside. He could press that button. The final shut-down. He could reach in and grab, hard, then pull even harder. All he does is disconnect the cables, as careful as he can. Closes the hatch and then watches as all traces of its existence melt away.
"What about my heart-drive?" the android asks, a little anxiously.
Rolling the cables, Shishido answers with a slight smirk: "Looks just fine to me."
Oishi clatters about with pots and knives in the kitchen, while Shishido and Eiji share a secret smile.
"Thank you," Eiji says.
Standing up, Shishido grins and offers a hand. Eiji takes it and gets hauled to his feet. "No problem."
Shishido feels really good and noble about himself for about two hours. He helps Oishi devour the food he cooked with the limited supplies his fridge relinquished, chatting amicably. He finds himself liking Eiji, like you like another person. Someone who you might call a friend someday. That is until -just as they are preparing to leave- he goes "What a mess," and tweaks one corner of the slew of clothes and other objects covering Choutarou, dislodging them all in one go.
Shishido can only close his eyes, virtuously trying not to berate himself for not bashing Eiji's heart drive to smithereens when he had the chance, while the other two stare at the android curled up in the corner. It does not take a mastermind to figure out that said android is not supposed to be there.
"Oops," Eiji goes, chuckling nervously and biting his lip.
Oishi looks at him. "Oh, Shishido," he says.
***
"They won't tell about me, will they?" Choutarou asks. The wind buffets his hair in all directions.
Unlike Shishido, whose default look is rather as though he just rolled out of bed and into his clothes (which is exactly the case most of the time), Choutarou's hair looks outright disastrous. Rain and wind and cold make him look as though he's got a Brillo pad taped to his head.
Shishido swings his racket, slowly, demonstratively.
Choutarou mimics it.
"They won't," Shishido assures him. After all if Oishi tells on him owning an illegal android, Shishido'll tell about the person that lives inside his android aide, the person he didn't inform the company about. Also, it's Oishi. That alone makes Shishido rather confident his secret is safe, even if Eiji hadn't been Eiji.
Again, he swings his racket, demonstrating how to hit a serve. "You got that? Wait, no- your hand ought to be- ah."
He'd rather not come so close, let alone touch him, moving those hands for him and guiding him through the movements. But he'd also rather not tell Choutarou about Eiji and his soul. Shishido has no doubts about, not when he still isn't completely sure about what exactly Choutarou has.
Especially not when the idea of Choutarou having something frightens him like the monster in the closet frightens small children.
His spine aches with the need to bolt when Choutarou says: "Like this?" moving his arms himself, but with Shishido's hands cupped over his to show.
"Well done," Shishido says, withdrawing as soon as they have gone through the sequence. His skin burns and tingles.
For all that can be said for Eiji's inner humanity, Choutarou still feels more like one. Even Shishido can't tell the difference. Mostly because Choutarou has more physical flaws, unlike Eiji, who is still a little too perfect. No unevenness, smooth, flawless skin, perfectly symmetrical.
When he touches Choutarou, the texture of his skin varies. Like just now, the backs of his hands rougher against his palms, but where their cheeks rubbed only softness and warmth. Neither is he perfectly symmetrical. Shishido knows he isn't, because he built him not to be.
Eiji still is.
To see him learn this, tennis, with the unnatural capacity of a super-computer… it ought to smash that illusion, but it doesn't. Nobody should be able to hit serves at such a speed, a physics defying speed, but when Choutarou does it, leaving Shishido standing there with his jaw dangling, but then smiles -and fist pumps!- well, what isn't painfully human about that?
"Should I hit a little slower for you, Shishido-san?" he calls, hand cupping around his mouth lest the wind blows his words away.
Shishido is briefly tempted to march over there and smack him around the ears for his cheek, but he loves challenges and faced with one so honest and simple like this? Yeah.
"No fucking chance, Choutarou!" he yells back, grinning.
It kinda sucks that Choutarou learns like a computer does: instant, hard facts, which -like a computer- he links flawlessly to only that which is required. Shishido only needs to grunt his way through a smash once, which Choutarou sees, registers and copy/pastes almost instantly, only ten times more effective.
It annoys Shishido, because who can win against something not only intellectually but also physically superior?
So he's losing, and badly, against something that plays tennis for the first time and he hates it, resents it and fights it.
With all his considerable determination backing it up.
And somehow, sometime during their 2-5 score Shishido starts to gain, teeth bared and eyes blazing.
His blood pumps like liquid hot fire through him and his breath is expelled in harsh pants. Each time his racket connects with the ball, the impact shoots up his arm and his racket sings sweetly as he angles, creating more spin.
Before Kon -Choutarou-, his passion was tennis. In his wildest dreams he'd become a famous player, conquer the world. He was never interested in computer sciences besides the fact that cool games somehow tied into that. But then he thought of Kon, dreamed up his concept and everything from then on, his energy and will and drive and all he was, was poured into creating him.
And yet here he is. They are, playing as though their lives depend on it and Shishido never has to question whether the fierce joy he sees in Choutarou's eyes is something he programmed.
He might've put it there, but not by typing lines of code.
The ball sings and it starts to rain. Shishido's sweats freely, for all his working out he's not pushed himself like this, hasn't found anything worth pushing himself so far for.
He dashes up to the net and uses his rising - so simple, really- and scores the last point.
It took his all and he hasn't moved like this in ages, smoother and cleaner and with that edge, that very last extra and he won, in the end, but he had to fight for it with everything in him. He feels so good.
So alive.
Himself, more than ever.
Shishido laughs, free and up to the skies. It starts to pour, cool drops splattering on his face. He breathes, tastes the beginning storm on his lips. And when he praises Choutarou, the other grins back at him, as flushed and proud as a thirteen year old boy.
They walk up to the net to shake. He feels a man's hand in his: broad and strong, with long, nimble fingers tickling at his wrist.
"Good game," he says, between pants. His heart races, pumping blood faithfully. It beats like a too-large butterfly near his breastbone, meaty wings batting about.
Choutarou smiles back, rather fiercely himself. "I'll beat you," he says.
"But not today," Shishido counters.
"Not today," Choutarou echoes.
They pack up with the rain starting to pour. It ought to feel cold, but Shishido seems to burn from the inside out, body still working to manage the strain of the game.
Purely accidentally, Choutarou and he reach for the bag with their gear at the same time. They knock heads (which really hurts, cause Choutarou's skull is about as hard a steel), but Choutarou also bumps into his chest.
"Sorry," Shishido mumbles, distracted.
But Choutarou flinches, hard and wild. His eyes are round and shocked as he gapes at Shishido -not at his face but lower. A hand comes up to grip the soaked fabric clinging to his chest, squeezing convulsively until the rain dribbles from between his fingers. His hair sticks in pewter-hued loops to his forehead, eyes haunted like shadows.
"You okay?" he asks, worried.
"I'm… fine." Choutarou manages, still staring at whatever it is below his face.
"Alright," Shishido agrees, voice skeptical. "Lets head back, huh?"
"Home," Choutarou says.
Still treading on clouds, Shishido just grins and says, "Yeah."
....back to part 1! OR ...on to part 3!
Comment on last part, please.
Author: Everlind
Wordcount 50 600+
Pairing: Ohtori/Shishido (Silver Pair)
Rating: PG-15
Warnings: Drama, very mild gore, questionable ethical issues, attempts at humor, hopefully not too much OOCness. Oshitari. Kite (and his tight purple pants).
Summary: 'Can you make a robot love a human? But isn't the question: can you make a human love a robot?' (A.I. Artificial Intelligence by Steven Spielberg)
Disclaimer: The Prince of Tennis belongs to Konomi Takeshi. This story is based on characters and the universe of The Prince of Tennis, no money is being made from it.
Notes: For hazelandnuts at silver_swap 2010-2011.
a i
Dark eyes veer towards him and they both jump when their gazes knock into sudden contact.
Shishido is not sure what to do, or what to say, mostly worried at what he might say, should he open his inane gob again. Instead they sort of stare at each other. Kon starts to sit up so he backs away to give it some room.
Hovers while Kon blinks against the harsh light, seems to try and gets its bearings.
"How are you feeling?" Shishido asks tentatively, having to lick his lips to get his dry mouth to move.
Kon looks at him, head slowly turning, opens its mouth. Then it looks down its own arm, where it is braced on the table. Shishido has to smile wryly when he watches the realization sink in that it is naked. The sudden rush of color to the cheeks pleases Shishido inordinately. He can't believe it works… so… realistically. Had he not put it together with his own two hands not even twenty-four hours ago, he wouldn't ever have known. So real.
And no murdering rampage. Yet. Just extremely discomforted squirming and attempts to cover its modesty.
"Sorry about that," he mutters. "Didn't mean for you to be uncomfortable."
Of course it is, he reminds himself. You programmed it to be!
"Let me get you some clothes. Stay here," he tells it, then advances on the corner where a make-shift closet vomits clothes all over the floor, asking himself where the hell a naked android would skip off to. Somehow he's pretty sure he's not making a very glowing first impression.
It's dark, barely past midnight and besides the lamp next to the table, all is shadows. Shishido paws through the mess, hoping to locate something that'd fit it. Luckily he buys most clothes a size or two too large.
With a pair of worn sweatpants and a huge sweater, he approaches the android again. "Here," he says, softly. "The legs won't be long enough, but I'll make sure to pick something up for you tomorrow."
The modesty is rather funny, not to mention ironic since they both know Shishido… well, made him. All of him. Down to the very last detail. Suddenly this strikes him as pretty fucked up. He wonders what Kon thinks about that, if it has any opinion about it at all.
Slowly, the android pulls the sweatpants up -they are way short-, then the sweater. That done, it sits rubbing its arms, cold. It can feel that. Shishido made it able to.
Their eyes meet again and this time they hold the contact.
"Kon?" Shishido says softly, "Do you know who I am?"
The eyes are shaded as it lowers its lids, lashes dark and thick. A nod.
There's a pronounced silence.
"Shishido-san."
The sound of his own name jolts him physically. The voice is not quite what he imagined it to be, not a baritone as he planned it. A low tenor, warm and steady. Most of all he's shocked at the politeness of it. Shishido wonders at how the android seems to form a huge part of its identity autonomously. He meant it to be able to, but it surprises him how naturally some aspects form.
Kon looks at him. "Is that my name?" it asks, "Kon?"
"Uhm," Shishido goes, caught off guard. "It's what I've always called you," he offers.
"Me," Kon says, then nods. It slides to the edge of the table, swings its legs towards the ground. Shishido is painfully aware that there's so much junk on the floor it's hard to avoid treading on anything.
"Sorry about that," he says again.
He feels awkward. Somehow it is not quite happening at how he's always fantasized it would.
Toes touching the ground -long slender toes, large yet delicate seeming feet- Kon tests its balance, then stands.
Shishido looks up. And up.
Tall. Very.
Maybe he went a little overboard there. And what was he thinking giving it such light hair?
Odd.
But nice, all the same.
Kon takes up a lot of space. Shishido is very aware his apartment is small and cramped and a horrible dump and what the hell is he - are they- supposed to do now?
For all that Kon is moving, operating correctly, there's something not quite… not quite right.
"Kon," Shishido says.
The head snaps instantly towards him.
"How are you feeling?" he asks, carefully pronouncing.
A head tilt, but no answer. As though Shishido commented on the sky being red.
"Kon," he prompts, then lifts his brows to indicate he'd like an answer.
"My feet are cold," Kon answers, almost hopefully. As if liking very much to provide the exact right answer.
Shishido breathes in, searches for something that ought to bring about a clear indication of… of… "How do you feel about me?" he tries, knowing that there are endless different emotive states Kon might link to him if. If.
There's a pause. Kon seems to be thinking about it. Eventually he offers, "I don't understand. I don't feel you. We're not touching."
Shishido closes his eyes.
Dammit.
Disappointment wells up, sharp and intense, making the back of his eyes warm, his fingers tremble.
"Shishido-san," Kon says, sounding worried (because that's how I programmed it to react, Shishido thinks bitterly). "Did I answer wrong?"
"No," Shishido sighs. Opening his eyes, he absentmindedly pats the shoulder. So damn real. He forces a weak smile.
"You answered exactly as I expected."
***
They spend the night clearing the apartment. With Kon helping, it takes them about four hours, but it's clean when they finally finish. Not smelling of stale food and overtly-sweet energy drinks, the floors completely cleared. The place looks positively huge. That's an optic lie, because they have to maneuver around one other in order not to bump.
It's just that Shishido can't recall the floor being bare ever since the first day he moved in.
He yawns, hugely.
"Are you sleepy?" Kon asks, sounding interested.
Shishido nods.
This is weird. He feels unhinged and disappointed and so very, very tired.
It's been a long day.
It's been a long everything just to wind up here, empty-handed.
He sinks down on his futon, neatly laid out in the corner.
"I'm going to bed," he says, voice thick.
Kon nods. "What should I do while you sleep?" it asks.
Shishido looks at it. Tries not to let the bitterness flood into his eyes, even knowing it doesn't matter whether Kon sees it or not. Not like it cares. Still, he can't help but feel fondness there, for this thing he's made, for all the time and effort and risks and blood, sweat and tears spent over it.
This is as far as he's made it.
Not very.
He looks at the face, takes time to study its peculiarities: the dark, almost severe brows accenting brown eyes. The face is very masculine, high cheekbones and strong jaw. The nose is straight, longish, above a generous mouth. The skin is smooth, flawless, though pores detail it, fine lines etch mobility on it. Light hair, vaguely curly.
Handsome, he supposes.
And perfectly blank.
Enough, he tells himself. Enough.
Shishido looks at it and says: "Kon, shut down."
Kon shuts down.
***
Next day finds Shishido in a clothing store, tired and frowning at everything.
Does it even matter?
Kon was a failure.
That what he so desperately hoped for just didn't happen. He knew. Somewhere, he knew. He knew it wasn't possible and he knew Oishi was just seeing things that weren't there, because he spends an unnatural amount of time with that droid and he knew he was an idiot for hoping.
Yes, it is true. He did have a hand in Eiji's programming and there might be some lines on his heart-drive from questionable origins, not to mention legal content. Codes like that never make sense. If you were to disassemble it, if you were crazy enough to, it would be a load of gibberish.
There's still so much unknown about the human brain and while scientific progress has managed to theorize about what most is used for, about ten percent remains an absolute mystery.
Some say that it might be the blueprint for the soul.
Due to the large amount of ethical controversy about the subject, messing around with those ten percent (and most of the rest, actually) -especially in regard towards computer science- is strictly forbidden.
But hey, his name wouldn't be Shishido Ryou if he didn't at least… poke it.
Yes, he downloaded that obscure part nobody knows what its use is, but he adapted it. Heavily. Okay he didn't really poke it, he kinda went and mauled it. And sure, it might have been a blueprint from his soul, but by the end it was a blueprint that -he hoped- might invite the spontaneous and natural generating of one.
Idiocy.
They're machines. And that which is organic is grown, man-created, like everything else about them.
With laden hands, he takes a pair of gray slacks from the rack. Not something he'd wear, but nice. Would fit Kon, at least. That combined with a t-shirt and a button-up ought to do, right?
He doesn't quite understand why the hell he's buying clothes for it, when he doesn't actually intend to… whatever it would have been had Kon not been a failure. Fact remains that he has a badly clothed android in his apartment, which is kinda creepy, and that he can't quite… well. No matter how you look at it, Kon is one of the most realistic looking -and feeling- androids out there. The cold 'lack' all androids have is there, the emptiness, but his face and all the rest of him, well. Not to toot his own horn, but he thinks Kon might just be the best he's ever seen.
No, no question about it.
Kon's a piece of art.
The best.
And after dedicating so much time to creating it, it feels kinda cruel to leave it as it is. Not that he worries about Kon's feelings, but his own sit uneasy with it.
Which is why he shells out more for the clothes of his home-brewed android in one go than that he pays for his own whole stupid wardrobe in six months.
Time to face it. His life?
Pretty damn fucked up.
***
"Kon, activate."
Shishido watches its chest start to rise and fall, the eyes open.
Brown. Like this night.
"Shishido-san," it says, mouth curving. "Hi."
"Hey," Shishido manages gruffly.
"I am sorry I did not answer that question satisfactorily," Kon murmurs, head tilted down and apologetic.
No hunk of metal should look so sincere. Shishido flaps his hand. "There was no right or wrong way to answer it."
It's late afternoon. Skies turn steel-gray early yet, but true night holds back. Soon spring will arrive, with warmer, sun-lit days on its heels. Maybe he should go on vacation, someplace with the sun burning on his neck, sand between his toes. He thinks of that when he wanders into his shadowy kitchen.
He's got some rice and fresh vegetables. Now that he doesn't have Kon to obsess over, eating real food might not be a bad habit to pick up again. Especially after years of not eating anything that didn't come in a capsule. Maybe he didn't get too rusty. Hopefully.
Pan in hand, he flicks on the stove and rice cooker. Dicing the carrot, he wonders if he should push it and attempt curry.
Kon watches him do it. For some reason its presence is easy to ignore. Maybe he's come to terms with not having succeeded and he sees it for what it is: a fancy walking, talking can-opener. With extra options and a nice packaging. That is currently sniffing his bamboo shoot.
Shishido watches, circumspectly, still dicing away.
Putting aside the bamboo shoot, it reaches for a daikon and holds that up to its nose, too. Turns it around in his hands, finger pads rubbing. Shakes it. Puts that aside, too, and peers into the plastic bag.
It rustles as it reaches inside.
"What are you doing?" Shishido asks, looking over his shoulder. The slices become rather malformed.
Kon fishes out the button-up. "These…?"
"Yeah," Shishido mumbles, embarrassed for some inexplicable reason. "Can't have you walking around with your ankles bare like that. My neighbors would be scandalized if they knew."
That makes Kon look at him, eyes wide and shocked. "You think? I am sorry, I didn't know humans don't like it when-"
"Kon," Shishido interrupts it. "That was me being sarcastic. Better get used to it."
"A sharply ironical taunt," Kon says.
Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he nods. "Perfect answer. Full marks, buddy."
Kon's mouth twitches, it happens so fast that Shishido wonders whether he imagined it. "I got used to it," it says. Right then Shishido wants to wheel on it and figure out whether his friggin' android just made a quip, but Kon opens its mouth yet again, expression distraught: "Shishido-san, watch out!"
To all carrots comes an end. Especially when dicing. Of course, there's still your fingers. Into which Shishido just cut. Deeply.
"Crap!" he yells, yanking the hand towards him before starting to shake it, useless gesture as it is, flinging blood in all directions.
There's a moment of utmost chaos with Shishido doing an ouch-ouch-crap-fuck dance, accompanied by the horrible lyrics of his cursing and Kon flapping about him and getting in his way and then suddenly grabbing his wrist. Shishido pulls and Kon yanks and Shishido pulls again, starting to protest.
An irrational stab of fear lances through him and he starts to resist, violently. But Kon is still pulling, gently enough, and then his hand is under the cold water and he gets it.
"Uhm," Shishido goes, throat constricted.
The water is cold and the edges of the cut tremble against the rush of it. For a long minute the only audible sound is the heavy splatter in the sink and their breathing. It takes a while before the water runs clear of blood.
There's a deep gash in his left index finger and a shallower one in his middle.
Kon releases him and Shishido finds himself rather hastily pulling away, cradling his chilled hand against his chest.
"Please be more careful," Kon says softly as it twists the faucet.
He can only nod mutely. His fingers pound and his hand is cold.
Catching his gaze, Kon asks, "Have you any bandaids around?"
"In the bathroom," Shishido answers. "I think."
When he moved in here he supplied the medicine cabinet with necessities like any responsible adult would. Seeing as he never opened it but once -to fetch tweezers to pluck at the more delicate wiring of Kon- he's not sure if any of it is still useable. But after rummaging around in it, Kon unearths a packet of bandaids.
"Here, better put one on to keep it clean," it tells him.
For some reason Shishido lets it do that, standing there rather numb and confused as the android bandaids the cut from a kitchen incident on his fingers.
It's too weird.
He lets Kon dress, barely. Because when it stands there, properly clothed and looking so arrestingly human and his fingers have bandaids on them, it's just too weird.
"Kon," Shishido says. "Shut down."
Kon shuts down.
***
"I want to make a female," Oshitari says at work.
Shishido tries to restrain himself from throwing something pointy and possibly lethal at him. Instead he pretends to write code. He's behind on work. The drive for it is gone. Instead he thinks he'd rather be doing simple repairs or something that will allow him to move more. His body is wasting away. He plays with the idea of picking up jogging once more and maybe even attempting to excavate his tennis racket back at his folks' place.
"You know what company policy is," Yanagi says. His android's eye is dangling out of the socket, it keeps going cross-eyed and not even Niou can figure out why.
"I am well aware," Oshitari says. "Just, it is rather curious, is it not? Why should men only be allowed to build androids with a male exterior and women only those with female parts? Kite-san, what do you"- the addition of 'and your tight purple pants' here, Shishido feels, is implied -"think of it?"
Kite looks towards him, eyebrow arching. "Because a bunch of sad bastards like you all'd probably take them for a test drive."
"I think Hanamura takes hers out for a test drive female parts notwithstanding, if ya ask me," Niou says, smirking. "Or that Oishi, you know, from first aid?" His eyebrows do a dance of innuendo. "He and his aide are awfully close."
"Their relationship is strictly professional," Inui interjects.
"Yeah, and you would know all about that sorta professional, don't ya?" Niou snickers.
Inui's glasses glint nefariously.
Shishido ducks behind his computer and pretends not to be there. He suspects a new addition to the tea by this evening, or maybe only just to Niou's cup. If they forget he's there, he might be spared.
"Shishido," Inui says.
The universe just loves proving him wrong, doesn't it?
"Yeah?" he goes, as casual as he can.
Inui smiles. Shishido doesn't like it when he does that. Last time Inui smiled at him he wound up passed out for an unknown amount of time in the lobby, during which Taki saw it fit to paint his nails pink.
"Atobe has inquired as to what your new project name will be," he informs him.
"Er," Shishido goes, rather at loss. "I dunno. Number Six?" he throws the suggestion out since the killer droid was number Five.
The silence that follows is rather pointed. Shishido peers over the edge of his screen.
"Why is it you are utterly incapable of coming up with names?" Yanagi wonders. "We all have actual names for ours. Yet yours are still just numbers."
"Well, it is the sixth one I'm making," Shishido points out.
"It might be better to think of a name for it," Yanagi presses. "If you become somewhat more attached to your work by doing so, then maybe you wouldn't be at number six while we are still working on our first."
Not even Niou has something to add to that.
Shishido bows his head, wisely clamping his lips over the rebuttal that he has finished his first android -and the only one he ever named- and has it up and running.
***
"Kon, activate."
Eyes opening, Kon says, "Good evening, Shishido-san."
"Yeah yeah," Shishido mumbles, shuffling into the kitchen and wondering why the hell he had him activate in the first place. Curling his fingers he can feel the bandaids scrunch up in his palm. The cuts throbs in thick response to his heartbeat.
"How was work?" Kon asks, trailing behind like an abnormally over-sized puppy that wants to be taken home. Or at least receive ear-scratchings.
"Same old," Shishido replies. Niou passed out in the hallway, twitching: check; Inui lurking about whilst chuckling darkly: check; Yanagi happily hammering away at his demon android: check; Hiyoshi looking martyred by them all: check; Oshitari being a pain in the ass: check. And lately this also includes Kite looking like he's either about to murder or molest you (or a little of both) whilst wearing tight purple pants: check.
The only thing that lacked was him blowing something up. Maybe he ought to have, you know, for old time's sake.
Instead he kept puttering about with his code, tennis on his mind. He suspects that if number Six does not explode or attempts to murder anybody, it might just end up pretty damn kick-ass at tennis.
"Do you think you'd play tennis, Kon?" Shishido asks, absentmindedly.
Kon hovers near the door. "I don't know," it says. "Do I?"
Touché, Shishido has to admit. "We'll have to find out, then," he answers. A plan begins to take form.
***
"Who's your tall and polite friend?" his mother asks.
Shishido roots around in the small mountain of junk he's left to gather dust.
"Some guy I know from Tannhauser," Shishido answers vaguely. "Okaa-san, where have you put my old tennis stuff?"
For all that he concocted this scheme, it is far from brilliant (no surprises there, a rather Oshitari-like voice whispers in his head). Taking your highly illegal though admittedly brilliantly crafted android out in public is a bad idea. Exposing it to your parents is an even worse one. But he felt like playing tennis and he conveniently forgot about all the rest. On top of that women are like rabid hyaenas. They can smell your fear. And dishonesty.
"Ryou," his mother sighs, nodding her chin at a rather obvious tennis racket shaped bag in the corner.
"Oh, thanks," he grunts, beginning to grin as he reaches for it.
"Does he have a name?" she presses, "He won't say."
"Sure he does," Shishido mumbles, pointedly ignoring the fact that she'd obviously like to know what it is. "I gotta go," he says instead, leaning in and kissing her forehead, before hastily hightailing it out of his old room.
He's halfway down the stairs when she calls after: "I know you're up to something, Shishido Ryou!"
"Let's get out of here," he hisses, grabbing Kon's bicep and hauling it along.
They don't even make it down the drive before she appears in the doorway and singsongs: "I would love it if your new friend would join us for dinner sometime soon. Very soon."
Bodily shoving Kon through the gate, Shishido curses under his breath. For all that she is a lovely little thing, his mother is possibly the single most devious creature walking the planet.
"Your mother is very nice," Kon says, lips curving.
"Not another fucking word," Shishido warns, the hair at his nape on end as his mother watches him flee.
"Hai, Shishido-san."
***
"You can talk now," Shishido snaps, annoyed at how literarily it takes his orders.
"Thank you," Kon says, gracious and stupidly bland and empty. "Aren't we going to play tennis?"
Shishido throws himself bodily against the door before it relents with a rusty click. "It's too dark," Shishido lies.
Okay, it is too dark and the street courts that have floodlights are too far away, but mostly he is appalled that he found it a good idea to take Kon outside and see how others would perceive him. Granted, he's pretty sure his mother doesn't truly know he saw it fit to unleash an android whose discovery might land him in jail, but she knows he did something that he shouldn't have.
On the other hand, nobody even for a moment suspected they were looking at an animated pile of electro mechanics, which goes to show how human Kon looks.
Shishido steals a glance at it. It does look like that. Human. Especially as the crisp temperature outside has brought a flush to its cheeks, the white hair disarrayed.
"Might I have a cup of water?" Kon asks suddenly.
It starts Shishido out of his meditation of it. "Water level low?" he says, handing it a mug half-filled with water from the tap.
"Yes," Kon answers, sipping tentatively. "From the walking. I haven't ever walked like that. Sweating feels odd. Should I shower now?"
Shrugging, Shishido mumbles, "If you wanna, knock yourself out. Don't drink too much water. I'd rather not open you up."
"I won't," Kon promises and demonstratively puts aside the mug before drifting off into the bathroom.
Too weird, Shishido thinks. Almost the real thing, he'd said. Almost, Jiroh'd echoed.
But not really.
***
Of all the people he's close to (not a whole lot of those, to be honest), Jiroh is the one who arguably knows his deepest, darkest secrets. That, and he phones Shishido's mom a lot, which makes for all kinds of uncomfortable scenarios.
Such as Jiroh ringing his doorbell on a Sunday morning, just as Shishido was getting ready to go for a run.
"Gooooood morning," Jiroh says, grinning.
Shishido raises his eyebrow at him.
"You're awake," Jiroh continues blithely. "Congratulations."
"Thank you," Shishido returns, voice like ice. He doesn't invite Jiroh inside either. "To what do I owe this dubious honor of having you ring my goddamn bell at nine in the morning on a Sunday?"
Jiroh's eyes narrow and his teeth show. "Recent contact with my sources have given me a good reason to believe you have activated your android."
"Oh my god," Shishido groans, widening the door because postponing the inevitable is useless. "She actually phoned you?"
"Yup," Jiroh goes cheerfully, squeezing through the narrow gap Shishido reluctantly made. "Apparently you showed up with an abnormally tall and kind young man in tow, looking for your tennis rackets. She seems under the impression that your new friend"- he makes air-quotations here -"is responsible for you getting somewhat of a normal life again. It gives her despairing heart hope, Ryou."
"I am sure it does," Shishido grumbles, standing back as Jiroh casts about his apartment, like a particularly determined Jack Russell looking for a bone.
When he eventually finds it, he goes "Oh Ryou," in a very, very disappointed tone. "You still throw a sheet over him? He's… he's turned off isn't he? Please tell me he is."
"Of course it's turned off, you jackass," Shishido replies. "Besides, would you like seeing a motionless humanoid thing pointed at you while you try to grab some shut-eye? I recall you were freaked out by your brother's E.T. plush, not to mention they had to take down Transformers poster because you thought Megatron would come and eat you while you slept."
"Decepticons are evil,"Jiroh answers enigmatically. Then continues in a different voice, "May I look?"
"Sure," Shishido answers and sits on his desk chair as Jiroh pulls the sheet away.
Then he simply stares for a while, standing very, very still. Shishido loses interest and wanders off to make tea, unsure what the whole big deal is. The water has just finished boiling when Jiroh joins him, leaning against the counter next to him.
"You did it," he says softly.
"Not really," Shishido answers softly as he adds the tea leaves. "There's nothing inside but that which I programmed there to be."
The leaves release a strong grassy odor as they steep. Shishido tastes it again, that bitter aftertaste of disappointment, along with the sharp tang of green tea.
"I've never seen anything like him," Jiroh whispers. "Congratulations. He's beautiful."
"You make it sound as though I became a mother," he answers, lip curling. The idea makes him vaguely nauseous.
"Your choice of role-model, not mine," Jiroh says quickly, hands up in a 'I-know-nothing' sort of way.
That deserves an elbow nudge. A sharp one. Jiroh rubs his ribs, but grins regardless. They settle into companionable silence again.
"Isn't it a little like that?" Jiroh wonders after a while, when they are prudently nipping at their cups.
"Heh, no, not at all." Shishido answers, honest.
While he knows how Kon works, exactly, intimately and inside-out and then some, when it is activated… there's a distance. However odd that might be, but it is there and Shishido prefers it that way. It's easier to deal with, that way.
"I want to see him activated," Jiroh says. "Not right now. But soon."
Shishido thinks. Then nods, slowly.
"Alright."
***
"Kon, activate."
He's pulling his sweater over his head and re-emerges to the sight of Kon standing and stretching. It easily reaches the ceiling.
"Hi," Kon goes, bobbing his head. "How was work?"
The image of Inui standing over his activated android (codename: Viper) cackling: "It's ALIVEEE!" resurfaces. He could've happily gone on without ever having to witness that. On the other hand Viper -or, as Inui revealed, Kaidoh- doesn't seem to have achieved successful and complete soul-driven AI either. That and it looks creepy.
Small mercies.
"Nothing special," Shishido says, wondering whether he has any sort of meat to dunk in his bamboo rice.
As usual, Kon follows him.
Stands around while Shishido finds a packet of meat of unknown origin and decides to take his chances. Yet today ignoring it is hard. Especially when Kon just stands there, apparently hopeful (it isn't Shishido knows. It isn't!) and a little shy. He manages to ignore it while he cooks, but when he starts to eat and Kon perches itself as unobtrusively as an one-hundred and ninety-three centimeters tall android with white hair can be on the edge of a chair, he relents.
"Inui -he's my colleague- activated his android today," he mumbles awkwardly.
Kon's eyes snap up sharply. "Oh," it goes, intonation wavering. "What was it like?"
"Kaidoh?" Shishido snorts. "Sulky, bad-tempered. I dunno."
Reminds me of Shishido on his better days, Oshitari has seen it fit to announce. Shishido had thrown a wrench at him.
"Kaidoh…" Kon repeats softly.
Right then and there Shishido halts his chopsticks-to-mouth motion midway. His skin crawls. The pipes click and groan. His rice steams. He stares at Kon, eyes wide.
"Is Kaidoh," Kon hesitates, swallows. "Is he official?" it adds at last.
Their eyes meet. Somehow Kon knows enough from what is plastered all over Shishido's face. Its gaze drops and it looks away.
Barely audible, it asks, "Is that why I don't have a real name?"
His chopsticks clatter indecently loud as they hit the ground.
Kon starts and stands up so fast the chair topples back. The crash reverberates through the place. "I am sorry," it apologizes. "That was an inconsiderate question, I-I know I am not supposed to… to exist. Sorry, please, let me help-" and it crouches down to the ground to help Shishido clean the mess.
Shishido isn't so much concerned about the spilled food as he is trying to come to terms with what just happened and what it might mean. If it means anything at all. Machine learning, he decides. Of course. This isn't any indication that-
No.
It isn't.
Kon mops up rice grains, "I am sorry." it whispers yet again, sounding wretched.
Shishido shakes his head, looks at it closely. It isn't, he repeats to himself. Somehow that steadies him. "No, it's alright," he murmurs. "Don't worry. Here give me that and stand up."
Unable to resist a command from him, Kon gives the sullied cloth and stands up.
Shishido rises, too. "No, that is not the reason," he tells it. He washes his hands at the sink, before adding as casually as he can: "Would you like a name?"
Silence.
Turning, Shishido tries to keep a firm grasp on reality. Almost but not quite, he repeats to himself. It isn't. Nevertheless he's arrested by the expression he sees there.
They just look at one another for several minutes.
"A real name?" Kon asks, voice small.
He nods.
A knife-sharp intake. Blinking furiously Kon nods, too, once and shaky. "Yes. I'd like that," it breathes.
Shishido smiles, pats its arm awkwardly. "We'll think of one tomorrow, okay? It's getting kinda late."
That seems to rouse it. "Of course!" it gushes. "Sorry, I forget you need sleep."
Knowing the routine, it walks towards the corner of the room and sits down. It looks eager and happy. Like a neglected child receiving a sweet.
Something twists, sharp and acute inside of him.
It isn't, he tells himself harshly. It isn't.
"Kon-" he begins, authoritative.
But the android interrupts, looking up at him. "Thank you," it says, voice reverent.
Jiroh was right. It shouldn't have been activated. Ever.
"-shut down." he finishes.
Kon shuts down.
***
He leaves Kon deactivated for a week first, then two.
Three.
He goes to work and pretends to be busy. Oshitari seems to suspect he isn't. Takes a Master at slacking off to recognize the feeble crumbling of resistance to its flighty seduction in another.
Witnesses Yanagi activate his android. It spurts into life cackling, eyes flooding red and hair wild. It gets shut down right after. Kite seemed disappointed he didn't get to shoot it.
Shishido takes up jogging again. Hates himself when he all but collapses on his first try, disgusted that he's let himself become so much as useless pudding. The very same day he joins the gym and starts doing sit-ups and push-ups.
There's inquiring noises from Jiroh as they eat at Tensai Tarts. Shishido ignores them and challenges him to a game of tennis instead.
He loses 0-6.
So he asks it again the next day. And the day after that, too. And the day after… and after.
A month passes.
There's a layer of dust on the sheet. It piles up in the hollows and Shishido sees the crude shadowing of skull in it, when his eyes pass over it too fast, or when he tries to sleep.
He goes to work and he pretends.
Atobe asks what his progress is.
Shishido looks at all the lines of code he's written and feels ill.
There's only one word written there, over and over.
A name.
***
His palms are moist.
Shishido doesn't understand why, but he's frightened of it. Yet he also wants to, needs to, a compulsion that he can't quite resist, longs to see it activated, hear it talk.
Wonders whether it will recognize him now. He changed. Strong, healthy. Too skinny by far, worse than before, but what remains is mostly muscle and tendons. His skin glows and he finished against Jiroh in a 3-6 game yesterday.
He feels both more alive and less connected, less real and less himself than he has in ages.
Dammit.
"It isn't," Shishido whispers to himself.
Breathes in.
And out.
"Kon…" he starts, then pauses and corrects deliberately, speaking with great care as though his hands are holding something fragile:
"Choutarou, activate."
He hasn't removed the sheet. There's some struggling and coughing as it gets tangled in it, dislodging a month's worth of dust. When they manage to remove it, its fair hair stands on end.
"Shishido-san," it says, voice flush with pleased surprise. "I-"
He interrupts it. "Like it? Is that- is it okay?" Stops, cross with his stupid mumbling. Then adds rather harshly, "Your name."
"My name," it repeats.
The smile that spreads is instantaneous and blinding. Shishido flinches away like a spooked horse.
His heart ceased beating right there and then. It hurts.
"My name."
Despite that, despite Shishido thinking wildly: 'I've lost it!' they look at one other.
"Choutarou."
Shishido nods, weakly. He has no words.
"I like it," Choutarou says.
Then he smiles.
***
Carefully avoiding looking at it for just yet, Shishido raps his knuckles against the doorframe.
Oishi looks up, mind clearly still preoccupied until he sees Shishido standing there. "Shishido!" he exclaims, smile wide and inviting. "Haven't seen you in a while. You look good. Much better than you haven been for a while. Bit tired though, how have you been sleeping?"
Not at all, Shishido thinks darkly. To Oishi he says: "Poorly."
Oishi advances on him, full of doctor-like intentions, then falters when he sees the look in his eyes. "What's wrong?" he asks, worried.
Now Shishido forces himself to look at it.
Breathes in, jaw clenching. Corrects himself.
Look at him.
"I need to look at Eiji," he says, voice soft.
Eiji looks back, steady.
"Alright," he says.
***
Shishido feels for the first time in his life horridly uncomfortable in his own damn house. He's lived in his trusty shoebox for years, but now he's acutely aware that it is -literally- not much larger than just that.
Especially with not only him (and Choutarou's carefully hidden and inert form in the corner, under a pile of everything he owns), but also Eiji and Oishi shuffling inside.
Eiji knocks a cup from the table.
It falls and Shishido braces himself for the smashing finality when the porcelain'll meet the ground.
"I don't think so!" Eiji says, moving so fast it's unbelievable, a roll and a shimmy as he catches the cup before it is even half-way. He stands up and sticks his tongue out at it, "Neh-neh!"
Oishi gives Shishido an apologetic look.
Pretending not to see the horrible fondness in those dark eyes, Shishido clears his throat and says: "Glad to see you're putting Oshitari's skeleton to good use."
Silence.
Eiji frowns at him. Oishi looks as though he'd like to, but forgives Shishido because idiocy is something you're born with and are unable to help having.
Alright. Not the smoothest conversation starter he's ever thrown out there. Running a hand through his hair and wincing, he mutters something about making tea and escapes into the kitchen.
Back in the other room, he can hear Eiji mutter, "How rude!"
When he re-enters, he tries again. "Here," he says, handing Oishi tea. Then, to Eiji he adds, "Cup of water?"
Eiji tilts his head, considering.
"A little bit," he admits after a moment. "Because I wanna be polite."
"Er," Shishido goes.
"Unlike some," Eiji adds under his breath.
"Eiji!" Oishi reprimands him, but mostly out of principle.
"What?" he counters. "He doesn't ask you what color underwear you're wearing, does he? Che!"
"I'm sorry about that, alright?" Shishido says, not meaning it much but wanting to soothe the snippy android's frazzled contacts. "Besides, it's true."
Eiji purses his lips, then nods, reluctantly.
Shishido nods also and then lowers himself to the ground, cross-legged. It annoys him a little that they hesitate to follow suit, mostly because the lack of a couch has never made him self-conscious before. Once on the ground, Shishido hooks Eiji up to his laptop. It is clear that this causes more discomfort to Oishi than it does to Eiji.
Not hard to guess why.
Eiji still looks human and for intents and purposes he is, somehow inside there, for inexplicable reasons Shishido is attempting to find out. But when he sits there, the hatch in his chest wide open and a couple of cables stuffed in there… it serves as rather painful reality-check. Admittedly, Shishido has to concede being impressed by Oishi's nerve. It's clear the sight of it has him more than just a little uneasy, but he watches. Makes himself to.
"Tell me if it feels weird or hurts," Shishido murmurs.
"Sure," Eiji says.
Shishido has to admire that also. His confidence even now, chest laid open, hooked up and ready to have his code downloaded. No shame.
"Don't you need to check the drive in his…" Oishi swallows, "head?"
Grinning a little wryly, he mutters, "Seeing as you don't like me popping open his chest, I think you would like it even less if I opened his skull. Besides -thanks Eiji- he is cooperating beautifully. He's already put me through."
"This is weird," Oishi says.
Shishido scrolls through the code. No major changes. Then again, someone like Inui or Yanagi might have better luck on this front. Oshitari even. It looks okay to him, but he just hasn't got what it takes to really know what to look for. Not without conducting nearly a decade of research as he did for Kon.
Choutarou.
"Eiji?" Shishido murmurs, "May I have access to your heart-drive?"
They look at each other. Eiji's eyes are large and wide, delicately lashed.
"Sure," Eiji says again.
Oishi stands up and moves to busy himself in the kitchen. With him out of the way, Shishido pretends to lean close on pretext of peering at something, while he murmurs. "Can you remember?"
Inside of the robot, a small led light flickers rhythmically. The synthetic lungs inflate and deflate, everything moves and works, repeating endless cycles to provide him with energy and support.
Head tilting towards him, Eiji whispers, "They shut me down for the night. Approximately fifty-three days ago. And I dreamed."
Shishido's heart hammers urgently. "What did you dream of?" he asks.
"Oishi," Eiji answers. "I dreamt of Oishi."
This is too much. Too private. Shishido casts his eyes down, to his hands.
"What will I see when I look at your heart-drive, Eiji?" he whispers.
"Me."
He nods and reaches inside. He could press that button. The final shut-down. He could reach in and grab, hard, then pull even harder. All he does is disconnect the cables, as careful as he can. Closes the hatch and then watches as all traces of its existence melt away.
"What about my heart-drive?" the android asks, a little anxiously.
Rolling the cables, Shishido answers with a slight smirk: "Looks just fine to me."
Oishi clatters about with pots and knives in the kitchen, while Shishido and Eiji share a secret smile.
"Thank you," Eiji says.
Standing up, Shishido grins and offers a hand. Eiji takes it and gets hauled to his feet. "No problem."
Shishido feels really good and noble about himself for about two hours. He helps Oishi devour the food he cooked with the limited supplies his fridge relinquished, chatting amicably. He finds himself liking Eiji, like you like another person. Someone who you might call a friend someday. That is until -just as they are preparing to leave- he goes "What a mess," and tweaks one corner of the slew of clothes and other objects covering Choutarou, dislodging them all in one go.
Shishido can only close his eyes, virtuously trying not to berate himself for not bashing Eiji's heart drive to smithereens when he had the chance, while the other two stare at the android curled up in the corner. It does not take a mastermind to figure out that said android is not supposed to be there.
"Oops," Eiji goes, chuckling nervously and biting his lip.
Oishi looks at him. "Oh, Shishido," he says.
***
"They won't tell about me, will they?" Choutarou asks. The wind buffets his hair in all directions.
Unlike Shishido, whose default look is rather as though he just rolled out of bed and into his clothes (which is exactly the case most of the time), Choutarou's hair looks outright disastrous. Rain and wind and cold make him look as though he's got a Brillo pad taped to his head.
Shishido swings his racket, slowly, demonstratively.
Choutarou mimics it.
"They won't," Shishido assures him. After all if Oishi tells on him owning an illegal android, Shishido'll tell about the person that lives inside his android aide, the person he didn't inform the company about. Also, it's Oishi. That alone makes Shishido rather confident his secret is safe, even if Eiji hadn't been Eiji.
Again, he swings his racket, demonstrating how to hit a serve. "You got that? Wait, no- your hand ought to be- ah."
He'd rather not come so close, let alone touch him, moving those hands for him and guiding him through the movements. But he'd also rather not tell Choutarou about Eiji and his soul. Shishido has no doubts about, not when he still isn't completely sure about what exactly Choutarou has.
Especially not when the idea of Choutarou having something frightens him like the monster in the closet frightens small children.
His spine aches with the need to bolt when Choutarou says: "Like this?" moving his arms himself, but with Shishido's hands cupped over his to show.
"Well done," Shishido says, withdrawing as soon as they have gone through the sequence. His skin burns and tingles.
For all that can be said for Eiji's inner humanity, Choutarou still feels more like one. Even Shishido can't tell the difference. Mostly because Choutarou has more physical flaws, unlike Eiji, who is still a little too perfect. No unevenness, smooth, flawless skin, perfectly symmetrical.
When he touches Choutarou, the texture of his skin varies. Like just now, the backs of his hands rougher against his palms, but where their cheeks rubbed only softness and warmth. Neither is he perfectly symmetrical. Shishido knows he isn't, because he built him not to be.
Eiji still is.
To see him learn this, tennis, with the unnatural capacity of a super-computer… it ought to smash that illusion, but it doesn't. Nobody should be able to hit serves at such a speed, a physics defying speed, but when Choutarou does it, leaving Shishido standing there with his jaw dangling, but then smiles -and fist pumps!- well, what isn't painfully human about that?
"Should I hit a little slower for you, Shishido-san?" he calls, hand cupping around his mouth lest the wind blows his words away.
Shishido is briefly tempted to march over there and smack him around the ears for his cheek, but he loves challenges and faced with one so honest and simple like this? Yeah.
"No fucking chance, Choutarou!" he yells back, grinning.
It kinda sucks that Choutarou learns like a computer does: instant, hard facts, which -like a computer- he links flawlessly to only that which is required. Shishido only needs to grunt his way through a smash once, which Choutarou sees, registers and copy/pastes almost instantly, only ten times more effective.
It annoys Shishido, because who can win against something not only intellectually but also physically superior?
So he's losing, and badly, against something that plays tennis for the first time and he hates it, resents it and fights it.
With all his considerable determination backing it up.
And somehow, sometime during their 2-5 score Shishido starts to gain, teeth bared and eyes blazing.
His blood pumps like liquid hot fire through him and his breath is expelled in harsh pants. Each time his racket connects with the ball, the impact shoots up his arm and his racket sings sweetly as he angles, creating more spin.
Before Kon -Choutarou-, his passion was tennis. In his wildest dreams he'd become a famous player, conquer the world. He was never interested in computer sciences besides the fact that cool games somehow tied into that. But then he thought of Kon, dreamed up his concept and everything from then on, his energy and will and drive and all he was, was poured into creating him.
And yet here he is. They are, playing as though their lives depend on it and Shishido never has to question whether the fierce joy he sees in Choutarou's eyes is something he programmed.
He might've put it there, but not by typing lines of code.
The ball sings and it starts to rain. Shishido's sweats freely, for all his working out he's not pushed himself like this, hasn't found anything worth pushing himself so far for.
He dashes up to the net and uses his rising - so simple, really- and scores the last point.
It took his all and he hasn't moved like this in ages, smoother and cleaner and with that edge, that very last extra and he won, in the end, but he had to fight for it with everything in him. He feels so good.
So alive.
Himself, more than ever.
Shishido laughs, free and up to the skies. It starts to pour, cool drops splattering on his face. He breathes, tastes the beginning storm on his lips. And when he praises Choutarou, the other grins back at him, as flushed and proud as a thirteen year old boy.
They walk up to the net to shake. He feels a man's hand in his: broad and strong, with long, nimble fingers tickling at his wrist.
"Good game," he says, between pants. His heart races, pumping blood faithfully. It beats like a too-large butterfly near his breastbone, meaty wings batting about.
Choutarou smiles back, rather fiercely himself. "I'll beat you," he says.
"But not today," Shishido counters.
"Not today," Choutarou echoes.
They pack up with the rain starting to pour. It ought to feel cold, but Shishido seems to burn from the inside out, body still working to manage the strain of the game.
Purely accidentally, Choutarou and he reach for the bag with their gear at the same time. They knock heads (which really hurts, cause Choutarou's skull is about as hard a steel), but Choutarou also bumps into his chest.
"Sorry," Shishido mumbles, distracted.
But Choutarou flinches, hard and wild. His eyes are round and shocked as he gapes at Shishido -not at his face but lower. A hand comes up to grip the soaked fabric clinging to his chest, squeezing convulsively until the rain dribbles from between his fingers. His hair sticks in pewter-hued loops to his forehead, eyes haunted like shadows.
"You okay?" he asks, worried.
"I'm… fine." Choutarou manages, still staring at whatever it is below his face.
"Alright," Shishido agrees, voice skeptical. "Lets head back, huh?"
"Home," Choutarou says.
Still treading on clouds, Shishido just grins and says, "Yeah."
....back to part 1! OR ...on to part 3!
Comment on last part, please.