Escape velocity part 2

[catskilt]

Their next spring comes with an abundance of children yelling and laughing on their way to school. It gives Ryo awful headaches, messes him up something good, so Shige tries to be extra quiet around the apartment in return.
Ryo doesn't go out to drink as much with his colleagues anymore. "Spring's a shit season to drink," he says when Shige calls him out on it. "You'd feel like a pathetic loser if you were drinking in some hole-in-the-wall in Spring."
He comes home early instead, watches old, Chinese-pirated movies with bad subtitles instead with Shige. They sit on the couch, or someone will be sitting at the foot of it or lying down with their feet in the other's lap.
Jin and Pi come over sometimes too. They've finally found half decent - or at least half-decent according to their mothers - employment so they don't have that much free time. It's usually a Saturday or a Friday night, and Shige's sure to cook something along with Ryo when they know Yamapi and Jin are coming. (If they don't, Pi and Jin usually end up eating leftover curry instead.)
It's during one of these sort-of-weekly visits, that Shige ends up lying with his head in Ryo's lap reading a book because the other two are hogging all the pillows. Ryo looks down halfway through the movie to ask him what he thinks and finds Shige fast asleep. He stares; he never gets to see the Konpa asleep because he always wakes up before Ryo gets home (that jerk). Considering his options, he figures he probably could wake Shige up.
He doesn't, though, and instead looks down every now again to take a peek at Shige's sleeping face. Yamapi and Jin don't notice that he always looks back up with a smile.

But, well, honestly - if you had to ask Shige, he would say that life with Ryo was like being married to someone but missing a lot of the steps.
If you had to ask Ryo, he'd just say it was pretty fucking convenient.

They go shopping together that weekend, because Ryo likes Shige's company and Shige doesn't really care (well, can't really care, if you get down to the basics of things) either way. The grocery store that Ryo's always gone to is the same as it's always been, a little chilly in the produce section and smelling of cake mix and pickled vegetables in the not-produce ones.
Shige sleeps on the way home. Ryo can practically hear the quiet hum as his processors go into hibernation, as his functions stop for the moment. He doesn't think anything of it, Shige must have forgotten to charge up fully the other day.
They get back home without event. Ryo pops the lid of the trunk, starts picking up his few plastic bags. Shige walks straight past him.
"Aren't you going to help?" Ryo asks, offended.
"Its' your food," Shige half-mumbles quietly, heading up the stairs first.
Ryo frowns, but doesn't really think anything much of it until he finds Shige collapsed in the genkan five minutes later.

Ryo's eyes widen in shock; the plastic bags in his hands fall to the floor with a rustling that he ignores. He rushes to Shige's side, heartbeat pounding in his ears and not even bothering to take his shoes off. The synthskin is smooth and cold under his fingertips without a power current to warm it up, and the quiet, steady, barely-there hum of Shige's processors and preemptors that he's felt before while pressed up against Shige's side isn't there at all.
He reaches blindly for his 'link and nearly drops it as he flips it open, dialing a number that he now knows by heart.

Yamapi's woken up from an impromptu afternoon nap (naps are good for you, he'll argue - and has argued - if anyone asks) by the obnoxious blaring of some harsh-sounding pop song from his 'link. Someone must have changed it on him while he wasn't looking. He picks it up, not bothering to look at the caller ID, and answers blearily. "Hi."
"Pi," Ryo's voice says, sounding tinny and urgent and faraway, "Pi, I don't know what to do."
"I- wha?" Yamapi asks intelligently. "Wait, what's going on?" he says, sleep-muddled and tired. "What did I miss?"
"He collapsed, Pi, and I don't know what happened or what to do or what's going on and it's really freaking me out and-"
"Calm down," Yamapi says. His brain has started working again, kind of, prompted mostly by the panic in Ryo's voice. "I'm coming over, okay? Be there in five."
"Alright," Ryo agrees shakily, "see you."

Ryo usually knows what to do in emergencies, but in this kind of emergency all he can think to do is move Shigeaki to the couch and flip frantically through the manual, hoping to find something that'll explain just what the fuck is going on.
When Yamapi knocks on the door he doesn't hear it the first time, and nearly trips the second on his hurry to get to the door. He opens it, expecting just Yamapi but finding Jin there too.
"What's he doing here?" he asks, for lack of anything better to say.
"He knows people," Yamapi explains, jerking his head at Jin.
"I am people," Jin says, wiggling his eyebrows. Yamapi elbows him in the stomach and Ryo just looks at him in that panicky, lost way that some people get. Jin deflates a little.
"Tell me what happened," Yamapi says, as Ryo opens the door wider for him and Jin to get through and he slips his shoes off in the genkan. "Did anything strange happen before hand?"
"He slept," Ryo says, "in the car. On the way home from the grocery store. I didn't think it was odd, just thought that maybe he didn't charge up all the way earlier today, or something. And he was acting weird. Like, I don't know. Different. Tired, a little. Kind of grumpy. What do you think happened?" he asked, as Yamapi purses his lips thoughtfully. "It's something that can be fixed, right? Like, just a simple reboot or a software upgrade or a-"
"Calm down," Yamapi says soothingly. "I'm sure it'll just be a little thing, nothing big. We'll bring him somewhere to check just to make sure, okay?"
"Where-" Ryo says, worried, "what do you mean?"
Jin snaps his 'link shut behind Yamapi. "I said I know people," he says. "He's free," he tells Yamapi. "Go put your shoes back on."

Yamapi carries Shige princess-style along the mostly empty (thank god, because Ryo probably wouldn't be able to deal with the weird stares they'd get, and would probably rip somebody's arm off, or something) streets because Jin is kind of fat and would probably drop him, and Ryo looks like his legs might give out anytime soon for reasons easily understandable. They follow Jin's directions, going into narrower and narrower (and sketchier and sketchier) streets until Jin tells them to stop in front of a boarded up store front that looks like it's been that way since probably World War V.
"What the hell, Jin," Ryo says, sounding like he's on the verge or laughing or crying or probably both at the same time. (In short, hysteria.) Yamapi looks at Jin disapprovingly.
Jin frowns. "Have more faith in me, guys," he says, sounding hurt, before heading round the building to the fire exit at the back. "This is the only way to get in," Jin says. "It's one of those need-to-know kind of things." He starts up the staircase, and despite the fact that it looks rusted-through in places, totally condemned (which matches the building, actually) and about to fall apart any second, Ryo starts climbing, and Yamapi, hefting Shige in his arms - the Konpa is light, it's kind of freaky - goes up too.
Jin knocks on the window on the third floor landing, peering into what looks like total darkness. It's yanked away - and the other two realize it's a blackout curtain, probably leftovers from World War V too - to reveal someone staring right back at Jin. Jin makes a face. They roll their eyes, dropping the curtain back in place before the door next to it opens.
"You should be more careful, Uebo," Jin reprimands, disapproving. "What if it wasn't me?"
Uebo rolls his eyes again. "You shouldn't be talking," he says lightly. He flicks Jin on the forehead gently. "Come on in."
The apartment, as condemned as it looks from the outside, is actually bright and kind of cozy and, most of all, habitable on the inside. Ryo sits, posture stiff, on the couch and Yamapi sets Shige down gently on it in the corner before sitting down too. Jin mostly just hangs off of Uebo's shoulder as he practically floats around the small room, setting out tea and cute little madeleines and egg rolls in a tin that might just be as old as the building.
"Make yourselves at home," Uebo says, just a little too late, as he settles into an armchair across from the couch. Jin sets himself on the arm, snagging an egg roll. "This is Uebo," he says as an introduction, taking a bite of his egg roll. He frowns. "Uebo, you have shitty snacks. You should get new ones soon."
Ueda sighs, in a way that clearly shows he's dealt with Jin and his antics before. "I'm Ueda Tatsuya." He tilts his head to the side. "You guys are...?"
"Yamashita Tomohisa," Yamapi says. "He's Nishikido Ryo. The Konpa's Kato Shigeaki."
"Model?" Uebo-Ueda asks, leaning forward a little.
"N.E.W.S 1107," Ryo fills in.
Ueda smiles faintly. "Nice model. Powerful, good simulations, great aesthetics--"
"Sorry, but can we just get to the problem?" Ryo interrupts.
Ueda frowns slightly. "The problem's already happened, hasn't it?" Ryo nods, and opens his mouth to speak. "Then slow down. Since it's already happened, trying to hurry along is just going to make a mess of things. I know what I'm doing, okay?"
"He does," Jin chirps. He's moved on to the madeleines by now. "Uebo is the best," he adds proudly.
"I'm glad you think so highly of my services," Ueda mutters dryly. He gets up, leaning on the armrest of the sofa and taking the panel off of the back of Shige's neck. Ryo doesn't even wince; at this point he's too freaked out to even notice. "Check back with me tomorrow," Ueda says, looking at the DHT port. "I'll see what I can do."

Yamapi and Jin crash at Ryo's apartment that night, because they are more than sure that Ryo should have - and needs - the company, and Ryo's apartment is larger.
It feels empty, without Shige to chat with idly as they mill around from spot to spot. Ryo isn't up to talking at all, Jin's toned down his chattering, partially because he doesn't have anyone else to talk to but mostly because he doesn't think it feels right to talk too much, and Pi - Pi feels like he should take care of them. He's older, at least than Ryo, and Jin's immatured rather than matured.
He picks the plastic bags off of the floor of the genkan, making a face at the dust prints it leaves behind, and brings them to the kitchen area to put them away. The milk's spoiled from being left out so long (it's a good thing Ryo doesn't drink that much - and Shige doesn't drink it at all -, Yamapi figures), and one of the small jars of pickled vegetables has cracked from being dropped. He transfers the vegetables in one of Ryo's glass food storage containers, and puts it away in the fridge along with everything else that needs to be there. At this point he's known Ryo so long that he's figured out his storage system by now. Small blessings happen everywhere.
"Want dinner?" he asks the two on the couch, staring at some Zoom-in feature about some movie about a band that came out the other day. The name was something silly, if Yamapi's remembering correctly, like Eyepatch or Gauze or - BANDAGE. That was it.
"Yes, please!" Jin says, looking up from the TV immediately. (Jin's kind of a tool like that; Yamapi learned within a week of meeting him that you could get him to do almost anything for cookies, and anything for brownies. Give him free cake and he'd give you the world.)
"Not hungry," Ryo murmurs, a stark contrast.
Yamapi frowns. "Too bad, you're eating anyways. You can't live off of 42-mag current like some people can, so go eat otherwise I'll get Jin to stuff it down your throat."
"Why can't you do it?" Jin complains. Pi throws him a look. "I mean, uh, yeah, you should totally eat. Otherwise I'll make you." A beat. "Apparently."

Ryo barely picks at his food at dinner, but just shoves it around his bowl with his chopsticks until it kind of looks like he's eaten something, if you don't look at it for very long and if you're across the room. Jin's constantly twisted around from his spot at the table watching the features on that BANDAGE movie ("That Natsu guy's voice is totally awesome!" he'd protested, when Pi had called him out on it) to notice, but Yamapi does and starts to say something.
"So," Ryo says, loudly and just a bit awkwardly, "how'd you meet that fish-lips guy anyways?"
Jin whirls around from the TV and almost drops his chopsticks, because he's kind of a clumsy idiot like that. "You mean Uebo?"
"Yeah, whatever his name was," Ryo says. "He lives in a pretty damn sketchy place. And where the fuck did you come up with that ridiculous nickname, anyways?"
"From the same kind of place that Pi got his nickname from," Jin answers happily. "And, well, I met Uebo at a bar." Ryo snorts at this, muttering something that sounds vaguely like figures. "There's totally a story behind it, though!" he protests. "Okay, so, see, when I went there, there wasn't really anyone hot there except him, but the thing is," and he pauses dramatically for effect, "I thought he was a girl. So I tried hitting on him and he just laughed at me, you know?"
"So, basically, you were an idiot," Ryo comments.
"No! No, that's not the point," Jin says hurriedly, sounding offended, "I mean, wait - no, I'm not an idiot either, but you know what I mean." ("Not really," Pi says.) "Anyways, so I tried hitting on Uebo and it went kind of okay, except then after he leaned over the counter to get a drink I kind of realized he didn't have boobs. And then I was like, 'Yo, what the hell, you're not a girl!' and then he looked at me and he was totally like 'Are you serious?' and then I was like 'But you're too pretty to be a guy!' and then he laughed at me some more. And then I was like, 'What the hell, who cares anyways?' and then we fucked."
"How was it?" Yamapi asks offhandedly, taking the last bit of beef tongue before Jin can. Ryo rolls his eyes.
"It was awesome," Jin says. "Uebo's pretty damn good in bed. Except then afterwards I kind of found out he wasn't quite human, which was kind of creepy but he was hot so I didn't mind too much."
"Wait," Ryo interrupts in shock, "he isn't?"
"Well then," Yamapi says, putting more food into his bowl, "that was an unexpected plot twist."
Jin nods, wide-eyed. "Can you believe it? I mean, like, what the hell, what was he doing there by himself? It was so trippy. But yeah, Uebo's really a Konpa. I dunno why he lives by himself, or really why someone else hasn't gone and sent him back to be restructured or something, because he said something about a hardware malfunction when we first met except I was kind of drunk that night and then I was kind of hungover the next morning so I don't think I remember that too well."
"Is that legal?" Ryo asks. He finally ends up eating some of his food, distractedly. "I mean, for a Konpa to be doing...Konpa repairs."
"Uebo's good," Jin says. "And I never said anything about legal, did I?" He reaches out with his chopsticks and then stops. "Hey," he says, "who the hell took the beef tongue?" Ryo and Jin both look at Yamapi, who just sticks his tongue out at the two of them.
"Payback," Pi says, "for that time when you stole mine. You jerk. I still can't believe you did that."

Ryo wakes up at five forty three in the morning, in that way that one wakes up when you're too nervous about the day to come to stay asleep. He manages to stay in bed for another forty seven minutes, but eventually gives up on trying to go back to sleep and pads softly to the kitchen, grabbing a can of beer and sprawling over one end of the sofa.
It's seven thirty before anyone else in the apartment stirs. Ryo's beer sits on the table, half-opened, leaving a neat condensation ring on the wooden surface. Yamapi comes out of the guest room - which is really just Shige's room, and has been for a long while now - yawning loudly. He stops when he sees the back of Ryo's head over the back of the couch.
"Morning," he says quietly. It feels like a quiet morning, like a morning that you shouldn't disturb with noise.
"Morning," Ryo agrees, not turning around. "Did you just get up?"
"Pretty much," Yamapi says. "Jin's still sleeping, the lazy ass. When did you wake up?"
Ryo shrugs. "A little before six, I'm not sure. Couldn't sleep so I decided to come out here."
"I see," Yamapi says. "I'll go make breakfast - what do you want?"
"No," Ryo says, getting up, "I'll make it. You go wake Jin up."
Yamapi stares at him - Ryo almost never passes up a chance for someone else to make him a meal for once - but goes back into Shige's room anyways.
Ryo, chopping vegetables calmly in the kitchen, winces when he hears the crash of Jin falling out of bed and the inevitable swearing that comes right afterwards..

"Alright," Jin says, nursing the bruise on his cheekbone gingerly, "what's the plan for today?"
"Eat your damn food," Ryo orders, setting a bowl of miso soup in front of him. "Then we'll figure it out."
Jin eyes it warily. "You didn't put nori in it, right? Because I kind of hate nori a lot."
"Maybe," Ryo says. "Just eat it." Jin eyes it warily, but says a quiet "thanks for the food" and tries it anyways as the other two start on theirs as well.

It turns out Ryo had put nori in, a fact that Jin discovered only when he stirred his soup and promptly spat it half out onto his plate and half on the table.
"That's gross," Yamapi says, pausing with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth.
"You're cleaning that up," Ryo sighs.

"Alright," Jin says, dropping the last paper towel in the recombiner, "what time is it right now?"
"The clock's behind you," Ryo tells him. "Look yourself."
"Alright," Jin says, looking over his shoulder, "so right now it's nine thirty in the morning and we can go check on Uebo if you want to, it's been long enough."
"Let's go," Ryo says immediately, heading towards the genkan and snagging Yamapi by the collar. "Hurry up, you lazy ass."
"My ass is lots nicer than yours, thank you very much," Jin sniffs, but follows him anyways.

"Are you sure this is the right way?" Ryo asks worriedly. "I don't think this is the right way. I don't remember seeing this last night. You know, if we get lost I'll kill you and dump your body in that dumpster over there and blame it on Pi."
"Why me?" Yamapi exclaims.
"You were there," Ryo answers distractedly. "This had damn well be the right way, Jin. You fatass."
"It is, it is~" Jin says, brushing off Ryo's insults. "See, it's just up ahead."
They make the climb up the rusty fire escape again - with Pi and Ryo simultaneously grimacing at the state of disrepair visible in the daylight - and they stop on the third floor. Jin knocks on the window, and frowns when there's no answer.
"...'if you're here about last night's repair, just come on in,' " Yamapi reads blankly off the note on the door. " 'If you're not, then I know tae kwon do.' "
Ryo slowly turns to stare at Jin. "You're an idiot," he says.
"It's not my fault," Jin replies, sounding hurt. He tries the door knob and it opens easily, and the three troop in quietly.
The apartment is dark, lit only with the faint blue glow of a monitor tucked away in a corner someplace. Ryo looks around for Ueda, but he's not really anywhere in sight.
"Over here," they hear Ueda call, his voice wafting through an open door. "Come on in."

Ueda's room - they figure it's his room, it has a bed and everything - is even darker than the rest of the apartment, save for the harsh light of a monitor on the desk, and it takes a while for the three to adjust.
Ueda's in the swivel chair in front of the desk, turned around and facing away from the screen. Shige's sitting curled up against his legs, looking exactly like he's asleep. The monitor behind him is scrolling endless, endless streams of computer code -- all ifs and whiles and fors and nors, and none of them really get it at all. It's a daunting thing, to think of those endless, endless miles of text and think that somewhere in there, there's a problem that needs to be fixed - but nobody really knows where it could be.
Ryo swallows. "How's it going?" he asks, trying to force the words past the lump in his throat that's suddenly formed. "Any news for us?"
Ueda pushes his M2D off his eyes and onto the top of his head. The code scrolling by freezes midway through the declaration of an array. "Good and bad."
Ryo feels something that he is very, very sure is akin to getting your heart and soul crushed and diced and then blended. "Tell us what's going on, then," he says. He feels like his legs are probably going to give out on him soon.
"It's fixable," Ueda says, "that's the good thing." He turns around, leaning forward and examining the screen intently. "It looks like there's a problem with some of his advanced awareness functions - the ones that let him grow, in terms of personality, intelligence and understanding. Seems like some of them might have gotten crossed up when he was manufactured, so basically...he's defected."
"Don't talk about him like that," Ryo says quietly.
"Excuse me?" Ueda asks, looking over his shoulder.
"Shige's not a machine," Ryo says. "He's not just a robot who can act like us - so don't talk about him like one!"
Ueda smiles softly, turning back to his screen. "My apologies," he says.
"How long will it take?" Ryo asks. "For him to be fixed."
Ueda turns around in surprise. "Ah, sorry, I haven't gotten to that part then. Um, the thing is, he's fixable. But it would take a while - a long while." He sets the visor back down over his eyes, and the text begins scrolling again. "Even I'm not sure of how long it'd take - it's a tricky job, because you'd have to recode all the functions from the F5 level while still preserving the memory banks and their connections."
"Give me an estimate," Ryo says. "A rough one. That's all I'm asking."
Ueda pushes the the M2D back up his forehead, spinning around in his chair. The wires twist around and he untangles them distractedly, separating them up to the point where they're plugged into the DHT splitter in the back of Shige's neck.
"Nishikido," Ueda says frankly, "at this point, your best plan would be to special order another one."

"Don't worry, Ryo-chan," Jin says soothingly on the quiet walk home, "I'm sure if you tell N.E.W.S, they'll be sure to do something about it - it'll be fine."
"I'm not going to," Ryo mutters.
Jin frowns. "What do you mean?"
"I'm not going to," Ryo repeats. "I'm not going to order another one."
"Why not?" Jin asks. "It's not like it'll be any different, you know. You could even choose the same personality, and every--"
"It's not the same," Ryo interrupts loudly. He sighs, in the awkward silence that follows. "Look, it just wouldn't be the same. The only reason why I even got a Konpa was because of you two, but if it's not going to be Shige, I don't see the point." Ryo shrugs helplessly.
"I still don't see the-"
"Don't push it, Jin."

Yamapi and Jin leave at their intersection, citing the dirty dishes that Jin left in the sink when they left the apartment the other day. Ryo nods and waves a slight goodbye, watching as the two bicker on their walk down their street.
He leaves, walking slowly and taking notice of the shops that he's always known have been there. He hasn't been in many of them before. He's not sure if he ever will, either.
"That's not cool," Shige would argue. "You have to take adventures sometimes, you know, otherwise you'd be bored out of your skull. And that's not healthy."
If Shige were here, he thinks absentmindedly, he'd probably drag Ryo around to the different stores, pointing out this and that. Telling Ryo that he should enjoy himself a little more, telling him that things like this were what made life good.
The apartment feels that much lonelier when he gets home and shuts the door behind him.

A week passes in this fashion.
Ryo still doesn't think he's ever going to get used to that feeling of emptiness in the apartment anytime soon.

"You look tired," one of his coworker says to him one day at work. "Are you getting enough sleep?"
Ryo nods. (He hasn't at all, actually.) "Yeah."
"Take care of yourself," his coworker says worriedly.
"I'll try my best," Ryo tries to say with enthusiasm.

Ryo gets a phone call from a phone number that he doesn't know some (a few, a lot? he's lost track) days later.
"Hello?" he asks, wary of a wrong number or a telemarketer or a "YOUR MOM IS A WRONG NUMBER" prank caller.
"Hi," a voice says. "Have you made a decision, Nishikido?"
"Who is this?" Ryo asks, frowning. He's fairly sure he hasn't signed up for any new credit cards or helped out any Nigerian princes anytime recently.
The voice sighs. "It's Ueda. Do you know what you're going to do? About Shige, I mean."
"About that. I'll call you back later," Ryo says instead of answering. He doesn't think he can at the moment. "Soon, I guess."
"Don't call," Ueda says as Ryo's about to hang up. "I won't answer. Come visit me instead. Anytime's fine."
"Why can't-" Ryo starts to ask the dial tone. He frowns, and looks at his caller ID before finally realizing that it's an IP address.
"Well, no wonder," Ryo mutters.

"So what are you going to do?" Yamapi asks. Jin's snoring at their feet; this isn't the first time he's fallen off the couch when drunk. Ryo stares into his beer bottle like it holds the answer to solving the square root of negative one, or something equally as impossible.
"...I don't know," Ryo admits finally. "I really don't."
"You'll have to make a decision some day," Yamapi says, absently spinning his near-empty bottle.
"I know," Ryo says, wincing as some of the alcohol splashes out messily onto his couch. "But that doesn't mean that I want to."
"If you think about it," Jin says, looking up at them blurrily - he must have just woken up, typical Jin - "there's really only one choice."
"Yeah? What's that?" Ryo asks, kicking at Jin's head for lack of anything better to do.
Jin swats Ryo's foot away easily. "You know what it is already," he says philosophically, and then takes Ryo's beer.

Ryo heads down the street and promises to himself over and over again in his head that he will never, ever, even if it was the last day on earth and everyone was fucked if he didn't, take directions from Jin again. He has to stop several times and squints to figure out if that mark on the back of some random receipt that Jin found in his wallet (and frankly, Ryo doesn't want to know what it was for) is a streak from the billfold's lining or a pen mark. He thinks he's gotten himself lost several times, and eventually (and inevitably) realizes he is when he finds himself in the middle of town. Which is nowhere near where he needs to be
"You look like you're lost," someone says laughingly. Ryo whirls around and is face-to-face with Ueda.
"Jin's an idiot," Ryo says by way of explanation. "Stop laughing at me."
"Where are you headed?" Ueda asks, eyes twinkling.
"None of your business," Ryo scowls. Ueda just looks at him patiently and shoves his hands in his pockets. "...your place," Ryo amends.
Ueda stops smiling. "You've decided, then?" he asks seriously.
Ryo hesitates. "...yeah," he says finally. "Yeah, I have."

"Do you want tea?" Ueda asks as they go in, kicking his shoes off and fluttering - for lack of a better word - around the apartment's kitchen area.
"Doesn't matter," Ryo says, bending to line up his shoes near the step. Or, really, just delaying what he knows is going to have to happen anyways.
"I'll make some then," Ueda says. The dishes clink together as he digs a cup out, and the water boiler steams as Ueda presses the button on it. Ryo stands there not quite knowing what he should do.
"He's on the couch," Ueda says finally, coming back and setting the mug on the coffee table.
"You're not drinking any?" Ryo asks in return.
Ueda smiles at him. "There's no point. Not human, remember?" He taps a temple. "There's just one last thing I need to do, so I'm gonna go to my room for a bit. Just tell me when you're done." He pads away to one of the doors leaking darkness into the room and shuts it behind him firmly.
Ryo finally steps out of the genkan, absentmindedly brushing its dust off his feet. Shige is on the couch, just as Ueda said, curled up in a corner and looking very much like a cat taking a nap.
Except Shige's not a cat, and this isn't a nap by any definition of the word.
"Hey," Ryo says quietly, sitting down awkwardly beside Shige. "I know you can't understand me, or even hear me, but... I'm going to miss you." He absently places a hand on Shige's upper thigh, tapping his fingers lightly. "At first...I didn't expect to like you all that much, I didn't expect for you to actually be part of my life. Did you know that?" The synths under his fingers give exactly as human flesh would. "But you did. And I sound like an idiot right now." He sighs. Shige doesn't stir. "I'm going to miss you so much," he whispers quietly. "Pi and Jin will too, I guess. And-" the words catch in his throat, "I guess I might kind of love you," he tries not to say.

Ryo knocks on the door and opens a second later to find Ueda gaming away on some MMO with his M2D over his eyes.
"I'm ready," Ryo says quietly. "I'm going to leave now, if you don't mind."
Ueda pushes the visor up. "Alright," he says, quitting the program. "I'll let you know how it goes."
He says this to an empty room.

"Aren't you going to ask Ueda how it went?" Yamapi asks on a walk the day after.
Ryo shakes his head. "I don't want to know," he says quietly. "He's gone, and that's the end of things. I guess he must be reconstructured into something totally different now." He looks up at the sky. "It's funny, isn't it?" he asks. "How something that you think is so constant in your life can be gone the next day without even a warning."
"The escape velocity," Yamapi says, "for rockets is eleven kilometers per second. That's really fast, right? They have to go that fast to escape the Earth's gravity." Ryo nods, not sure at all where Yamapi's going with this or why he even knows it in the first place. "But in the end they always come back to Earth anyways."
"I still don't know what you're trying to say," Ryo says, shaking his head.
"What I'm trying to say is," Yamapi begins, "I'm sure you'll meet him again someday." Ryo looks at him in surprise, but Yamapi just smiles, ruffles his hair and runs ahead.

fin.

(omake)
It's way-too-early on a Sunday morning when Ryo's doorbell rings. He gets up, the summer heat making him lazy and slips on yesterday's pants and the day before's shirt. Whoever's at the doorbell keeps on ringing it persistently.
"If you're either Jin or Pi," Ryo calls as he stumbles his way to the front door, "I gave you a key for a reason!" When neither of them answer, he sighs, opening the door and expecting a telemarketer or an evangelist or the creepy neighbour from next door wanting to borrow something. He squints - the sun's in his eyes.
"Ah, I'm glad you haven't moved in the past few years," his visitor says playfully. "It would have made things so much harder if you did."
Ryo's eyes widen, trying to blink the sunspots away faster. "...holy shit," he says wonderingly. "It's you. It's you, oh my god."
Shige just laughs at him in return, holding out the slim white envelope. "It's nice to see you too - oh, and Ueda sends his regards."