Saving Face
Title: Saving Face
Characters: Fay, Kurogane, Sakura, Syaoran, Primera, Dr. Kyle, Xing, among others.
Pairings: KuroFay, Fay selfcest, even a little SyaoSaku
Genre: AU One-shot
Rating: PG-13 (there is sex, but it is not detailed)
Summary: I watched her for a second, a fleeting thought wondering if she'd been modeled after someone as well; if there was a little smiling five year old green-eyed girl named Sakura-chan, who was just too cute for the media to leave untouched, or if I was the only one to live with a copied face. Fay’s POV, AU.
Disclaimer: They're all CLAMP's characters.
Notes: Happy Belated Birthday, Shara, and sorry I couldn't give you something better, or that it couldn’t be sooner;;;;;
It's 9:45 when my partner decides it's time for him to bother arriving for work. I'm lounging sideways in my chair chatting with Sakura, who sits on my desk and fidgets whenever I mention anything of the assistant department's recently bought Newman Laptop. When he passes my cubicle, and I tap my desk with my foot to maneuver my chair, and brightly smile at him as I turn in his direction. "Good morning, Kuro-Sunshine~!"
He frowns at me, as he always does, and steps behind the wall separating our private areas, leaving me watching only the tips of his hair sticking out over the bland gray of the office wall. "Don't you have work to do?" He asks, and I shrug, despite knowing very well that he’s unable to see it.
"Where's the fun in that, Kuro-kun?" He stays silent, as he often is whenever I ask a question that he perceives as stupid and/or pointless, and I readjust myself in my chair, sitting up. "So when shall we leave? Sakura says that the only people we have to visit today are a couple that lives together on Oakland Street."
He continues his silence for a minute longer, and eventually he steps out of his cubicle. "Let's go." I stand up and turn to follow right behind.
"Fay-san."
I look over my shoulder at Sakura. "I'm sorry, would you like to come?" She stares at me, the green of her irises rotate, focusing, and she nods, determined. I laugh lightly and hold out my hands for her. She hops off my desk, onto the chair, and up into my arms- she completely ignores my hands and instead climbs and latches onto the cloth of my shirt of my upper arm-, where she stares forward as if there’s some serious danger lurking around the corner and she’s readying herself for it. I can’t help but laugh at her, and Kuro-chan mutters something about hurrying it up.
--
The grayish-blonde haired boy gestures to the couch once he realizes who we are, with the black haired boy in tow. It turned out that these are the only people we have to visit today; two boys and a girl, according to Sakura, but we have yet to see anyone other than the teenage boys. (I had thought Sakura meant we had more than one house to visit, and honestly, I’m quite glad it turned out this way.) We sit down, Kuro-chan curiously watching the doorway of another room as I turn my full attention to our hosts. “Let’s get started then! I’m Fay D. Flourite, and this is my partner, Kuro-“
“Kurogane.”
“Kuro-chan, it’s rude to interrupt. Kuro-min.” I say, and the grayish-blonde haired boy laughs as Kurogane tch’s and says something about ‘damn annoying coworkers’. I pretend not to hear it.
“I’m Yukito, and this is…” He says, gesturing to himself and then with a pause to the black haired boy next to him, who seems to have a glare to match Kuro-kun’s but actually smiles every once in a while. (He doesn’t appear to be nearly as grumpy as the government’s puppy, either, I think, even if he has a glare.)
“Touya.” The other one finishes, not interrupting Yukito, but rather, filling in the gap. Finishing the sentence.
Hm. Cute.
Sakura makes her appearance known, as she climbs around and settles herself on my knees, facing the others. I smile at her. “Oh, I almost forgot about you. This is my laptop, named…” here, I take a breath and tap my shoulder, as if considering my options. “Hmm, what was she named again?”
The effect is immediate. She turns to me and pouts. “Sa-ku-ra!” She says, and I wait to feel the tension start to dissolve. Although Sakura is helpful when she records all voices and listens for displeasure or sarcasm, it’s really not the main reason we bring her along. She’s something like a comic relief without realizing it, where she’s upgraded enough to have somewhat of a personality- even though this little banter happens almost every house we go-, but she’s not one of the Newman models, which some people tend to think are a bit too realistic, sometimes to the point of being creepy. (The government wouldn’t pay for a Newman model anyway, though, so there’s not much loss there.)
Touya stares at her, and Yukito falls silent. It seems things might have backfired this time. I turn to Kuro-mi and notice he’s still glancing back to stare at the doorway to a room we probably won’t see. I nudge him in the side with my elbow, and he turns his attention back to the on-hand task.
I smile again. “So to start off, are there any complaints you have about the media, the government, or anything you can’t normally change?”
Yukito smiles back. “Everything’s being managed nicely, I think.” He says.
“Alright.” I say, “And you, Touya-kun?”
“The Newman model persocoms are getting too close to real.” Touya says (honestly, I think. It’s quite a popular complaint. Wasn’t I even just thinking about the Newman models?), Yukito nodding along. “It’s not like we need them to be perfect enough we can’t tell who’s human and who’s not. That shouldn’t be the point of persocom distributors.”
--
It’s 12:30 in the afternoon when we get back, and I return Sakura to my desk. Her eyes flash over as she starts analyzing the voices she’s recorded, Kuro-min’s and my own included. I leave her on the desk and tell Kuro-pon that I’m heading over to another department to say that we’ve finished today’s interview, and that Kuro-chuu shouldn’t miss me too much because I’ll be right back, and when I do, we can go out and start wandering town. The second half of our job, when not interviewing, is just making sure our faces are known, making sure we’re trusted enough just by being around. I take my time walking away as he screams insults and profanity at my back. (He’d miss me~.)
I head to the ‘back up’ department, where Kyle, Xing, and their laptop, Syaoran, all go through the internet and other public places to search and see if there’s anything against what was said to us. Although it seems that when the Newman models were created, the line between what should stay in one’s mind and what’s okay to be put out for everyone to see seems to have been erased.
Needless to say, Kyle and Xing come across a lot of porn. And just sometimes, if we banter too much during a visit, or if we spend too much time trying to break the tension (and even sometimes, it’s simply from hearing the nicknames), there’s porn of us.
Kuro-chan and I.
Hm.
--
I typed absently away, stopping immediately when I heard (or thought I heard) a noise, and I swiveled my chair away from Sakura to peek over the wall separating me from a grumpy colleague of mine. Alas, though, he still wasn't to be found. I glanced quickly at the clock and sighed. It's 10:13 and the department's grumpy puppy hasn't yet arrived? How depressi-
"Hey, idiot. Stop leaning on the wall so much. You'll end up breaking the damn thing."
I put on my best pout, watching him only from the corner of my eye until it occurred to me that he wasn't alone. (Odd, I must admit. He doesn't seem to be the type of person to make friends on his own accord.) But... wait..
My eyes harden (by instinct, I might add. I think I've been around Kuro-buro too much.), my pout drops off my face and metaphorically hits the floor with a thump.
"Kuro-bon, is that-"
"You? Damn right it is. I saw it hovering about downtown with this girl," here, he moves out of the way, where I see a freshly-dyed-neon-green haired girl stand behind him, who crosses her arms and refuses to look at me "who wouldn't let me take this fucking thing," and here, he gestures at the Newman that's shifting its weight from one foot to the other and whistling silently, "back here unless she got to tag along for the ride."
I stare- I can't help it, it's me, for Gods' sakes- and I notice some differences between the Newman and myself. (Luckily.) It certainly holds a resemblance to me, but there are at least some mistakes, some slight alterations. I assume Kuro-kuro has already noticed, seeing how he holds his pride in his intuition. (Not wrongly, I might add.)
I climb off my chair, lazily giving it a kick back to the laptop. Sakura unplugs the keyboard from her, idling out to wait for further command. I turn my watch to her for just a second, a fleeting thought that makes me curious if she'd been modeled after someone as well; if there was a little smiling five-year-old green-eyed girl named Sakura-chan, who was just too cute for the media to leave untouched (or if I was the only one to live with a copied face).
I saunter over to it, the mimic of me, taking my time to examine it, until I come to a decision. I snatch one of its wrists and start heading briskly down the hall with it in tow. Sakura, who is probably thinking we’re just a little belated on our schedule, follows us and hops up to latch onto my arm again.
The green haired girl shrieks. “Where do you think you’re going with my Newman?!”
I barely pause. “I’m getting you a refund.”
She practically screams at me. “My boyfriend bought me that!”
I speed up as I hear something happen behind me; footsteps that don’t reach me, a thud, and a “Get out of the way!” I don’t look back for a long while.
When I get to the other department, I take a worried glance. Nobody followed me. (It’s just me, Sakura, and It.)
--
“Ah, Fay-kun, how nice to see you.”
I shrug, stopping at his desk. It almost runs into me, staring at me with effeminate eyes and lips that-
I am not thinking about this.
Sakura climbs further up my arm, staring at me. “Is something wrong, Fay-san?” She whispers. I pat her on the head.
“I wish I could say the same, Kyle-san.” He’s the same age I am, but because I’m perfectly content with where my job, he’s the supervisor of both my department and the backup department. “Could you watch him for a second?” I say, unceremoniously pushing It toward Kyle’s desk. “I want to drop Sakura off before we talk.”
I don’t wait for an answer, really. Sakura’s head perks up at the sound of her name, and she watches carefully as we head to the other department. I put on a bright smile as I enter. “Waahh, so big~. It’s been so long since I’ve been over here, neh~?” I wave to Xing and Himawari, the Backup Assistants, as I pass by. Himawari lightly laughs and waves back, but Xing barely glances up at me. We’ve never quite gotten along, despite my attempts to be nice.
The Backup Department doesn’t even bother with the same cubicles we have, mostly because of how everyone’s looking at mostly the same data, so the builders didn’t see any reason in putting anything for privacy. There are just desks around the room, with various people buzzing in and out with paperwork.
Another reason I stick with the job I have. Kuro-kon and I like our privacy, though we’ve only used it to our advantage once, a long time ago. (It was an interesting story; Kyle thought it would be funny to send us one of the imaginative stories that one of our clients thought of, I got the idea of trying something, and one thing lead to another. Fortunately, it was awkward and reckless, so nothing ever happened beyond that day.)
I stop at Kohane’s desk, where the little prodigy is gone, probably taking a day off to spend with her friend, Watanuki. She and Himawari talk of him often during lunch break, but I’ve never met the boy myself.
Although, it’s not Kohane I’m looking for. Her laptop, the new Newman model, sits on the desk with a screen, not even noticing us. I take Sakura off my arm and place her next to him. She ‘eep’s, a noise she seems to make only when her artificial eyes find Syaoran, and automatically, Syaoran’s screen ripples and shuts off. He sharply turns to stare at us, and then settles on staring at Sakura, who’s mimicking his surprise.
I laugh lightly and decide to leave them be. As cute as they can be once they both snap out of their little awkward moment, I have things to settle.
--
Kyle’s not waiting for me when I get back. I walked in to find him kissing It on the forehead. I frown.
He smiles at me. A million dollar smile, now, for a limited time, worth a quick punch to the face. (By Kuro-chuu. I’m not the violent one.) “I was making sure the model ran smoothly.”
“Mm, I see.” I lean forward and rest my elbows on the desk. “Well, you see, I have a complaint about this model.”
Kyle pushes the blonde bangs of the model back. The head lolls back, the Newman’s eyes watching carefully, as its mouth parts just slightly enough to make it look worried, scared. Inferior, almost.
He glances back at me, as if nothing’s wrong. “Did you just buy this, Fay-kun? It seems to be running smoothly.”
I clear my throat. “It looks a bit… familiar.”
Kyle laughs. “Does it, now?” And he strokes his thumb across its cheek, and it stares, without blinking. “Oh, how rude of me not to ask. Model, what’s your name?”
It opens its mouth, sticking out its tongue to lick its lips before a light voice rings through the air. “Fa-” and it hesitates, flickering its eyes back to Kyle. “Big Kitty.”
I tap my fingers against my cheek. “Kyle-san, why might there be a Newman model running around that looks like me?”
“There are other ways that it’s similar to you.” He gently moves his hand over the back of its head, and then moves it to under its chin. It almost leans into the touch.
I abhor the thought of what he might mean, but I don’t ignore the fact he didn’t answer my question.
“Tell me, Big Kitty, is Fay-kun your owner?”
“No, Fay-kun is not.” It leans into Kyle’s touch.
He hesitates. His voice drops in volume. “Is Kurogane-kun your owner?”
A sly smile crosses its face. It takes a quiet breathe as if it’s necessary. “No... Kuro-kon is not my owner.” His eyes easily slide over to me, watching carefully with that half smile.
Kyle sighs and shakes his head at me. “Stolen property? I thought that was beneath you, Fay-kun.”
I look away sharply and repeat my question. “Why are there Newman models that look like me?”
He shrugs. “We couldn’t resist the media.”
I can’t help it, I’ve been around Kuro-…
Kurogane (I’m not using nicknames if It does.) too long to not show my annoyance to Kyle through glaring. “It’s my face.”
“Not quite.” He lets go of its chin and slides his finger up the side of its face. “Big Kitty’s appearance has been altered enough so there is no striking resemblance between any living human and him.”
--
“Choose, Kyle. Remove it from the market, or remove me from your list of employees. It’s either me or it.”
--
I raced down the hallways, running back to my own department and even beyond. It tripped along behind me, looking around with big, frightened eyes. (Not that its eyes weren’t always big, given how effeminate they’ve made it, but it’s managed to make them even wider.)
We pass by Kurogane, who’s probably long since dealt with the girl, and he steps in front of me. “What happened?”
I try to sidestep. “I’m leaving.”
He frowns (like I didn’t see that one coming), but goes into his cubicle. I’m about to leave, when he comes back out and shows me his keys. “I’m coming.”
“Fine.”
Kurogane has a fancy black car, one of those expensive types that I could never quite name. It’s nothing I’d ever want for myself (which is why I settled with the newest version of Smart Car, although technically nowadays, all cars are ‘smart cars’. Kurogane and I take my car when we go off to do our job, but it’s only a two-seater.), but it’s quite fitting for him. Very sleek, I would think even aerodynamic, and-
That’s not important, really. I shove It into the back of the car, lock the door, and climb in the passenger’s seat. I’d really much rather be the one driving, but I know just as little of where we are headed as Kurogane. So it doesn’t matter.
He climbs into the car as well, quickly turning on the car as soon as he closed the door. Silence reigns the car for minutes on end, until “Where are we going?” echoes through.
I turn around in my seat and tell It to please just be quiet.
--
Thin hands are shaking my shoulders. “Fay-kun. Wake up, Fay-kun.” I ignore it until I get nudged roughly toward the door.
I yawn and open my eyes and the car door to find us parked in some motel parking lot. At night.
I still have yet to know where we are or how far Kurogane drove, but I know I have a Newman and a full night to figure things out.
--
I follow Kurogane to Room 397, our rented room, and head directly for the bed. It follows me, and Kurogane stays near the door. “What are we going to do about this thing?”
I shrug and half-heartedly reply. “Didn’t think much beyond getting rid of it.” I glance over at the Newman in question. “And I haven’t even quite gotten there yet.”
It sulks at me and sits next to me on the bed, giving me a look similar to the one he gave me at Kyle’s desk. I get an idea.
“You think about what to do about It. I’m going to go take a shower.” Kurogane says- quieter than usual, I might add- and heads off to the shower. It gets up, and I know it’s going to try and follow him.
So I decide to put my plan in action. “Hmm, Big Kitty~.”
“Yes, Fay-kun?”
“How similar are we?”
It thinks this over for a second. “Very, I think.”
I smile. “So you’re not thick, just programmed to seem it.” I get no reaction from that. “Big Kitty,” I start, again, “Show me how similar we are.” I’m still angry that they used my face, and I’m annoyed that they thought it would slip into media unnoticed just by altering minor things. But I need to see just how close to me he is, to see if it was purely improvised and just used my looks, or if they used more data about me than I thought.
And, discarding clothes, he does. He shows me curves I thought I knew by heart, only improved, delicate, effeminate, though definitely familiar.
And then,
Well, and then he shows me delicate touches, and I forget if they’re even relatively my own or if these are just moves from the fabled fiction found by the other department.
--
I don’t know what time it was when Kurogane came out of the bathroom and was begged by Big Kitty to join us.
I don’t know what time it was when Kurogane caved.
I don’t know what time it was when the light first shone through our window, and we had to pause in our actions to be cautious of the secrecy of what we were doing.
I don’t know what time it was when I become exhausted.
I don’t know what time it is when I wake up, still worn out, and I’m rushed to put on clothes and pushed toward the general direction of the car, where I finally find peace and rest.
--
Groggily, I wake up later to find myself in the back of the car, with the car itself parked back at the office. Apparently Kurogane was too tired to drive, which left the Newman, who seemed to have had other plans about where to go.
My plan was to get out of here, get rid of the Newman, and come back to convince Kyle or some other higher up to take that model off the market.
It didn’t work too well, but that was the plan.
I yawn, open the door, and slam it shut. Honestly, I stare at it a bit before I realize that I must be more tired than I thought, to have thought that the door - a moving object - wouldn’t close on me if I tried to use it to pull myself out..
So I try again, and finally wobble out of the car. It smiles at me when I pass by to get inside, and I leave a handprint on the car window where I put my hand down to cover its face from my view. (Kurogane will probably be mad about that later, but he’d understand. Maybe.)
I head to the bathroom first, running my face under the water of the sink and brushing my hair down a bit with my fingers, and I quickly check myself in the mirror (to make sure there are still differences between me and the Newman and to make sure I don’t look like I just spent the night doing things I shouldn’t have instead of sleeping) before heading directly back to Kyle’s desk.
“Ah, so you’re back?” Is the first thing he says, watching me with what Kurogane would call a “bastard grin”.
I can’t think of a snarky response to that, so I keep my mouth shut and glare.
“That’s good; it means I don’t have to send out the police to retrieve the stolen property from you.” He fiddles with his pencil, as if this is nothing to him. “..Is there something else you want to say, Fay-kun?”
“You looked at the tapes.”
He laughs. “It’s not like you two were secretive about it.”
The door opens. Kurogane and It walk in. It heads back over to Kyle, and almost nuzzles his arm. “When will I see Primera-chan again?” it asks.
Kyle pets it on the head. “Primera-chan, hm? We’ll return you to your owner soon enough.”
Kurogane became more furious than I already was. “So you’re just going to let this damn thing walk around with his face on it, even though he complained?!”
Kyle shrugged. “Fay-kun is not part on my list of employees anymore. He’ll have to wait for a Media Interviewer to stop by his house to say his complaints, once we hire.”
“I still am a fucking Media Interviewer, so that bullshit doesn’t even work.”
“On the contrary, Kurogane-kun; you don’t get along very well with others and the one person you worked well with just quit. I think I’m going to have to let you go as well, Kurogane-kun.” He didn’t even bat an eye at making his decision. “Besides, you helped theft a Newman model. We can’t have people thinking we allow crimes to go unpunished around here, can we?”
Kurogane growled. I wanted to speak up, but exhaustion kept me from thinking of any comeback, anything to save Kurogane’s job.
It wasn’t up for debate, though, and Kyle made a gesture to shoo us out of his office. I obeyed, tired, defeated, and uncertain what to do next.
--
If I hadn’t turned around to see if I was being followed, I wouldn’t have seen Kurogane following me with Sakura and Syaoran in his arms. (Kohane will miss her Newman Laptop, the very same one she bought with her own money, but I’ll figure out a way to pay her back later.)
And if I hadn’t turned around as I was shutting the door behind me, to get one last look at the office, I wouldn’t have seen a black haired Newman I hadn’t seen before kiss Big Kitty in my cubicle.
Characters: Fay, Kurogane, Sakura, Syaoran, Primera, Dr. Kyle, Xing, among others.
Pairings: KuroFay, Fay selfcest, even a little SyaoSaku
Genre: AU One-shot
Rating: PG-13 (there is sex, but it is not detailed)
Summary: I watched her for a second, a fleeting thought wondering if she'd been modeled after someone as well; if there was a little smiling five year old green-eyed girl named Sakura-chan, who was just too cute for the media to leave untouched, or if I was the only one to live with a copied face. Fay’s POV, AU.
Disclaimer: They're all CLAMP's characters.
Notes: Happy Belated Birthday, Shara, and sorry I couldn't give you something better, or that it couldn’t be sooner;;;;;
It's 9:45 when my partner decides it's time for him to bother arriving for work. I'm lounging sideways in my chair chatting with Sakura, who sits on my desk and fidgets whenever I mention anything of the assistant department's recently bought Newman Laptop. When he passes my cubicle, and I tap my desk with my foot to maneuver my chair, and brightly smile at him as I turn in his direction. "Good morning, Kuro-Sunshine~!"
He frowns at me, as he always does, and steps behind the wall separating our private areas, leaving me watching only the tips of his hair sticking out over the bland gray of the office wall. "Don't you have work to do?" He asks, and I shrug, despite knowing very well that he’s unable to see it.
"Where's the fun in that, Kuro-kun?" He stays silent, as he often is whenever I ask a question that he perceives as stupid and/or pointless, and I readjust myself in my chair, sitting up. "So when shall we leave? Sakura says that the only people we have to visit today are a couple that lives together on Oakland Street."
He continues his silence for a minute longer, and eventually he steps out of his cubicle. "Let's go." I stand up and turn to follow right behind.
"Fay-san."
I look over my shoulder at Sakura. "I'm sorry, would you like to come?" She stares at me, the green of her irises rotate, focusing, and she nods, determined. I laugh lightly and hold out my hands for her. She hops off my desk, onto the chair, and up into my arms- she completely ignores my hands and instead climbs and latches onto the cloth of my shirt of my upper arm-, where she stares forward as if there’s some serious danger lurking around the corner and she’s readying herself for it. I can’t help but laugh at her, and Kuro-chan mutters something about hurrying it up.
--
The grayish-blonde haired boy gestures to the couch once he realizes who we are, with the black haired boy in tow. It turned out that these are the only people we have to visit today; two boys and a girl, according to Sakura, but we have yet to see anyone other than the teenage boys. (I had thought Sakura meant we had more than one house to visit, and honestly, I’m quite glad it turned out this way.) We sit down, Kuro-chan curiously watching the doorway of another room as I turn my full attention to our hosts. “Let’s get started then! I’m Fay D. Flourite, and this is my partner, Kuro-“
“Kurogane.”
“Kuro-chan, it’s rude to interrupt. Kuro-min.” I say, and the grayish-blonde haired boy laughs as Kurogane tch’s and says something about ‘damn annoying coworkers’. I pretend not to hear it.
“I’m Yukito, and this is…” He says, gesturing to himself and then with a pause to the black haired boy next to him, who seems to have a glare to match Kuro-kun’s but actually smiles every once in a while. (He doesn’t appear to be nearly as grumpy as the government’s puppy, either, I think, even if he has a glare.)
“Touya.” The other one finishes, not interrupting Yukito, but rather, filling in the gap. Finishing the sentence.
Hm. Cute.
Sakura makes her appearance known, as she climbs around and settles herself on my knees, facing the others. I smile at her. “Oh, I almost forgot about you. This is my laptop, named…” here, I take a breath and tap my shoulder, as if considering my options. “Hmm, what was she named again?”
The effect is immediate. She turns to me and pouts. “Sa-ku-ra!” She says, and I wait to feel the tension start to dissolve. Although Sakura is helpful when she records all voices and listens for displeasure or sarcasm, it’s really not the main reason we bring her along. She’s something like a comic relief without realizing it, where she’s upgraded enough to have somewhat of a personality- even though this little banter happens almost every house we go-, but she’s not one of the Newman models, which some people tend to think are a bit too realistic, sometimes to the point of being creepy. (The government wouldn’t pay for a Newman model anyway, though, so there’s not much loss there.)
Touya stares at her, and Yukito falls silent. It seems things might have backfired this time. I turn to Kuro-mi and notice he’s still glancing back to stare at the doorway to a room we probably won’t see. I nudge him in the side with my elbow, and he turns his attention back to the on-hand task.
I smile again. “So to start off, are there any complaints you have about the media, the government, or anything you can’t normally change?”
Yukito smiles back. “Everything’s being managed nicely, I think.” He says.
“Alright.” I say, “And you, Touya-kun?”
“The Newman model persocoms are getting too close to real.” Touya says (honestly, I think. It’s quite a popular complaint. Wasn’t I even just thinking about the Newman models?), Yukito nodding along. “It’s not like we need them to be perfect enough we can’t tell who’s human and who’s not. That shouldn’t be the point of persocom distributors.”
--
It’s 12:30 in the afternoon when we get back, and I return Sakura to my desk. Her eyes flash over as she starts analyzing the voices she’s recorded, Kuro-min’s and my own included. I leave her on the desk and tell Kuro-pon that I’m heading over to another department to say that we’ve finished today’s interview, and that Kuro-chuu shouldn’t miss me too much because I’ll be right back, and when I do, we can go out and start wandering town. The second half of our job, when not interviewing, is just making sure our faces are known, making sure we’re trusted enough just by being around. I take my time walking away as he screams insults and profanity at my back. (He’d miss me~.)
I head to the ‘back up’ department, where Kyle, Xing, and their laptop, Syaoran, all go through the internet and other public places to search and see if there’s anything against what was said to us. Although it seems that when the Newman models were created, the line between what should stay in one’s mind and what’s okay to be put out for everyone to see seems to have been erased.
Needless to say, Kyle and Xing come across a lot of porn. And just sometimes, if we banter too much during a visit, or if we spend too much time trying to break the tension (and even sometimes, it’s simply from hearing the nicknames), there’s porn of us.
Kuro-chan and I.
Hm.
--
I typed absently away, stopping immediately when I heard (or thought I heard) a noise, and I swiveled my chair away from Sakura to peek over the wall separating me from a grumpy colleague of mine. Alas, though, he still wasn't to be found. I glanced quickly at the clock and sighed. It's 10:13 and the department's grumpy puppy hasn't yet arrived? How depressi-
"Hey, idiot. Stop leaning on the wall so much. You'll end up breaking the damn thing."
I put on my best pout, watching him only from the corner of my eye until it occurred to me that he wasn't alone. (Odd, I must admit. He doesn't seem to be the type of person to make friends on his own accord.) But... wait..
My eyes harden (by instinct, I might add. I think I've been around Kuro-buro too much.), my pout drops off my face and metaphorically hits the floor with a thump.
"Kuro-bon, is that-"
"You? Damn right it is. I saw it hovering about downtown with this girl," here, he moves out of the way, where I see a freshly-dyed-neon-green haired girl stand behind him, who crosses her arms and refuses to look at me "who wouldn't let me take this fucking thing," and here, he gestures at the Newman that's shifting its weight from one foot to the other and whistling silently, "back here unless she got to tag along for the ride."
I stare- I can't help it, it's me, for Gods' sakes- and I notice some differences between the Newman and myself. (Luckily.) It certainly holds a resemblance to me, but there are at least some mistakes, some slight alterations. I assume Kuro-kuro has already noticed, seeing how he holds his pride in his intuition. (Not wrongly, I might add.)
I climb off my chair, lazily giving it a kick back to the laptop. Sakura unplugs the keyboard from her, idling out to wait for further command. I turn my watch to her for just a second, a fleeting thought that makes me curious if she'd been modeled after someone as well; if there was a little smiling five-year-old green-eyed girl named Sakura-chan, who was just too cute for the media to leave untouched (or if I was the only one to live with a copied face).
I saunter over to it, the mimic of me, taking my time to examine it, until I come to a decision. I snatch one of its wrists and start heading briskly down the hall with it in tow. Sakura, who is probably thinking we’re just a little belated on our schedule, follows us and hops up to latch onto my arm again.
The green haired girl shrieks. “Where do you think you’re going with my Newman?!”
I barely pause. “I’m getting you a refund.”
She practically screams at me. “My boyfriend bought me that!”
I speed up as I hear something happen behind me; footsteps that don’t reach me, a thud, and a “Get out of the way!” I don’t look back for a long while.
When I get to the other department, I take a worried glance. Nobody followed me. (It’s just me, Sakura, and It.)
--
“Ah, Fay-kun, how nice to see you.”
I shrug, stopping at his desk. It almost runs into me, staring at me with effeminate eyes and lips that-
I am not thinking about this.
Sakura climbs further up my arm, staring at me. “Is something wrong, Fay-san?” She whispers. I pat her on the head.
“I wish I could say the same, Kyle-san.” He’s the same age I am, but because I’m perfectly content with where my job, he’s the supervisor of both my department and the backup department. “Could you watch him for a second?” I say, unceremoniously pushing It toward Kyle’s desk. “I want to drop Sakura off before we talk.”
I don’t wait for an answer, really. Sakura’s head perks up at the sound of her name, and she watches carefully as we head to the other department. I put on a bright smile as I enter. “Waahh, so big~. It’s been so long since I’ve been over here, neh~?” I wave to Xing and Himawari, the Backup Assistants, as I pass by. Himawari lightly laughs and waves back, but Xing barely glances up at me. We’ve never quite gotten along, despite my attempts to be nice.
The Backup Department doesn’t even bother with the same cubicles we have, mostly because of how everyone’s looking at mostly the same data, so the builders didn’t see any reason in putting anything for privacy. There are just desks around the room, with various people buzzing in and out with paperwork.
Another reason I stick with the job I have. Kuro-kon and I like our privacy, though we’ve only used it to our advantage once, a long time ago. (It was an interesting story; Kyle thought it would be funny to send us one of the imaginative stories that one of our clients thought of, I got the idea of trying something, and one thing lead to another. Fortunately, it was awkward and reckless, so nothing ever happened beyond that day.)
I stop at Kohane’s desk, where the little prodigy is gone, probably taking a day off to spend with her friend, Watanuki. She and Himawari talk of him often during lunch break, but I’ve never met the boy myself.
Although, it’s not Kohane I’m looking for. Her laptop, the new Newman model, sits on the desk with a screen, not even noticing us. I take Sakura off my arm and place her next to him. She ‘eep’s, a noise she seems to make only when her artificial eyes find Syaoran, and automatically, Syaoran’s screen ripples and shuts off. He sharply turns to stare at us, and then settles on staring at Sakura, who’s mimicking his surprise.
I laugh lightly and decide to leave them be. As cute as they can be once they both snap out of their little awkward moment, I have things to settle.
--
Kyle’s not waiting for me when I get back. I walked in to find him kissing It on the forehead. I frown.
He smiles at me. A million dollar smile, now, for a limited time, worth a quick punch to the face. (By Kuro-chuu. I’m not the violent one.) “I was making sure the model ran smoothly.”
“Mm, I see.” I lean forward and rest my elbows on the desk. “Well, you see, I have a complaint about this model.”
Kyle pushes the blonde bangs of the model back. The head lolls back, the Newman’s eyes watching carefully, as its mouth parts just slightly enough to make it look worried, scared. Inferior, almost.
He glances back at me, as if nothing’s wrong. “Did you just buy this, Fay-kun? It seems to be running smoothly.”
I clear my throat. “It looks a bit… familiar.”
Kyle laughs. “Does it, now?” And he strokes his thumb across its cheek, and it stares, without blinking. “Oh, how rude of me not to ask. Model, what’s your name?”
It opens its mouth, sticking out its tongue to lick its lips before a light voice rings through the air. “Fa-” and it hesitates, flickering its eyes back to Kyle. “Big Kitty.”
I tap my fingers against my cheek. “Kyle-san, why might there be a Newman model running around that looks like me?”
“There are other ways that it’s similar to you.” He gently moves his hand over the back of its head, and then moves it to under its chin. It almost leans into the touch.
I abhor the thought of what he might mean, but I don’t ignore the fact he didn’t answer my question.
“Tell me, Big Kitty, is Fay-kun your owner?”
“No, Fay-kun is not.” It leans into Kyle’s touch.
He hesitates. His voice drops in volume. “Is Kurogane-kun your owner?”
A sly smile crosses its face. It takes a quiet breathe as if it’s necessary. “No... Kuro-kon is not my owner.” His eyes easily slide over to me, watching carefully with that half smile.
Kyle sighs and shakes his head at me. “Stolen property? I thought that was beneath you, Fay-kun.”
I look away sharply and repeat my question. “Why are there Newman models that look like me?”
He shrugs. “We couldn’t resist the media.”
I can’t help it, I’ve been around Kuro-…
Kurogane (I’m not using nicknames if It does.) too long to not show my annoyance to Kyle through glaring. “It’s my face.”
“Not quite.” He lets go of its chin and slides his finger up the side of its face. “Big Kitty’s appearance has been altered enough so there is no striking resemblance between any living human and him.”
--
“Choose, Kyle. Remove it from the market, or remove me from your list of employees. It’s either me or it.”
--
I raced down the hallways, running back to my own department and even beyond. It tripped along behind me, looking around with big, frightened eyes. (Not that its eyes weren’t always big, given how effeminate they’ve made it, but it’s managed to make them even wider.)
We pass by Kurogane, who’s probably long since dealt with the girl, and he steps in front of me. “What happened?”
I try to sidestep. “I’m leaving.”
He frowns (like I didn’t see that one coming), but goes into his cubicle. I’m about to leave, when he comes back out and shows me his keys. “I’m coming.”
“Fine.”
Kurogane has a fancy black car, one of those expensive types that I could never quite name. It’s nothing I’d ever want for myself (which is why I settled with the newest version of Smart Car, although technically nowadays, all cars are ‘smart cars’. Kurogane and I take my car when we go off to do our job, but it’s only a two-seater.), but it’s quite fitting for him. Very sleek, I would think even aerodynamic, and-
That’s not important, really. I shove It into the back of the car, lock the door, and climb in the passenger’s seat. I’d really much rather be the one driving, but I know just as little of where we are headed as Kurogane. So it doesn’t matter.
He climbs into the car as well, quickly turning on the car as soon as he closed the door. Silence reigns the car for minutes on end, until “Where are we going?” echoes through.
I turn around in my seat and tell It to please just be quiet.
--
Thin hands are shaking my shoulders. “Fay-kun. Wake up, Fay-kun.” I ignore it until I get nudged roughly toward the door.
I yawn and open my eyes and the car door to find us parked in some motel parking lot. At night.
I still have yet to know where we are or how far Kurogane drove, but I know I have a Newman and a full night to figure things out.
--
I follow Kurogane to Room 397, our rented room, and head directly for the bed. It follows me, and Kurogane stays near the door. “What are we going to do about this thing?”
I shrug and half-heartedly reply. “Didn’t think much beyond getting rid of it.” I glance over at the Newman in question. “And I haven’t even quite gotten there yet.”
It sulks at me and sits next to me on the bed, giving me a look similar to the one he gave me at Kyle’s desk. I get an idea.
“You think about what to do about It. I’m going to go take a shower.” Kurogane says- quieter than usual, I might add- and heads off to the shower. It gets up, and I know it’s going to try and follow him.
So I decide to put my plan in action. “Hmm, Big Kitty~.”
“Yes, Fay-kun?”
“How similar are we?”
It thinks this over for a second. “Very, I think.”
I smile. “So you’re not thick, just programmed to seem it.” I get no reaction from that. “Big Kitty,” I start, again, “Show me how similar we are.” I’m still angry that they used my face, and I’m annoyed that they thought it would slip into media unnoticed just by altering minor things. But I need to see just how close to me he is, to see if it was purely improvised and just used my looks, or if they used more data about me than I thought.
And, discarding clothes, he does. He shows me curves I thought I knew by heart, only improved, delicate, effeminate, though definitely familiar.
And then,
Well, and then he shows me delicate touches, and I forget if they’re even relatively my own or if these are just moves from the fabled fiction found by the other department.
--
I don’t know what time it was when Kurogane came out of the bathroom and was begged by Big Kitty to join us.
I don’t know what time it was when Kurogane caved.
I don’t know what time it was when the light first shone through our window, and we had to pause in our actions to be cautious of the secrecy of what we were doing.
I don’t know what time it was when I become exhausted.
I don’t know what time it is when I wake up, still worn out, and I’m rushed to put on clothes and pushed toward the general direction of the car, where I finally find peace and rest.
--
Groggily, I wake up later to find myself in the back of the car, with the car itself parked back at the office. Apparently Kurogane was too tired to drive, which left the Newman, who seemed to have had other plans about where to go.
My plan was to get out of here, get rid of the Newman, and come back to convince Kyle or some other higher up to take that model off the market.
It didn’t work too well, but that was the plan.
I yawn, open the door, and slam it shut. Honestly, I stare at it a bit before I realize that I must be more tired than I thought, to have thought that the door - a moving object - wouldn’t close on me if I tried to use it to pull myself out..
So I try again, and finally wobble out of the car. It smiles at me when I pass by to get inside, and I leave a handprint on the car window where I put my hand down to cover its face from my view. (Kurogane will probably be mad about that later, but he’d understand. Maybe.)
I head to the bathroom first, running my face under the water of the sink and brushing my hair down a bit with my fingers, and I quickly check myself in the mirror (to make sure there are still differences between me and the Newman and to make sure I don’t look like I just spent the night doing things I shouldn’t have instead of sleeping) before heading directly back to Kyle’s desk.
“Ah, so you’re back?” Is the first thing he says, watching me with what Kurogane would call a “bastard grin”.
I can’t think of a snarky response to that, so I keep my mouth shut and glare.
“That’s good; it means I don’t have to send out the police to retrieve the stolen property from you.” He fiddles with his pencil, as if this is nothing to him. “..Is there something else you want to say, Fay-kun?”
“You looked at the tapes.”
He laughs. “It’s not like you two were secretive about it.”
The door opens. Kurogane and It walk in. It heads back over to Kyle, and almost nuzzles his arm. “When will I see Primera-chan again?” it asks.
Kyle pets it on the head. “Primera-chan, hm? We’ll return you to your owner soon enough.”
Kurogane became more furious than I already was. “So you’re just going to let this damn thing walk around with his face on it, even though he complained?!”
Kyle shrugged. “Fay-kun is not part on my list of employees anymore. He’ll have to wait for a Media Interviewer to stop by his house to say his complaints, once we hire.”
“I still am a fucking Media Interviewer, so that bullshit doesn’t even work.”
“On the contrary, Kurogane-kun; you don’t get along very well with others and the one person you worked well with just quit. I think I’m going to have to let you go as well, Kurogane-kun.” He didn’t even bat an eye at making his decision. “Besides, you helped theft a Newman model. We can’t have people thinking we allow crimes to go unpunished around here, can we?”
Kurogane growled. I wanted to speak up, but exhaustion kept me from thinking of any comeback, anything to save Kurogane’s job.
It wasn’t up for debate, though, and Kyle made a gesture to shoo us out of his office. I obeyed, tired, defeated, and uncertain what to do next.
--
If I hadn’t turned around to see if I was being followed, I wouldn’t have seen Kurogane following me with Sakura and Syaoran in his arms. (Kohane will miss her Newman Laptop, the very same one she bought with her own money, but I’ll figure out a way to pay her back later.)
And if I hadn’t turned around as I was shutting the door behind me, to get one last look at the office, I wouldn’t have seen a black haired Newman I hadn’t seen before kiss Big Kitty in my cubicle.