A/N: This is a Chobits/Angelic Layer crossover. Anyone who hasn't fully
seen both series, stop reading now. This will be spoilerful. As for
everyone who hasn't seen Chobits but loves Icchan.. Or everyone who's seen
Chobits and wants to know more about Hibiya-san.. This is the place for
you!
Penalty
He was slurping ramen and commanding the research center like a tall, lanky Napoleon when she first entered the room. "No, no! Don't TOUCH that!" he shrieked at one of the scientists, bopping him over the head with chopsticks, his mouth thick with noodles and a heavy Kansai accent. "Do that again and I'll have your head on a platter, and that's even BEFORE the penalty game!"
Chiitose hesitantly approached him, bowing low, clipboard clutched to her chest. "Mihara-san.. I'm-"
"The new researcher, eh?" The legendary Mihara Ichiro adjusted his glasses and looked down at her for the first time. She looked back, still at the deepest point of her bow, her eyes shining nervously behind her glasses. His own glasses gleamed, and the smile on his face hid whatever he was really thinking. "Let me see your references."
He flipped through the clipboard boredly. "Double PhDs in computer science and programming, valedictorian at Tokyo University.. Blah blah blah." He tossed it aside. "Well, do you really think you have what it takes to work on the Persocom Development Team?" He grinned. "Because this isn't playtime. This is for real."
"Y-yes sir!" She squeaked, her petite body going rigid. "I.. I do!" Her voice faltered again when she looked into his small, dark eyes. She felt herself slowly going red. Being in the presence of a legend of technological development was.. It was.. But that wasn't it.
"Let me show you something." His large hand came down on her shoulder, and he hurried her into the adjacent room, where the first-ever persocom's metal body hung, attached to thick cables.
"A computer with the shape of a human. The ability to think, reason, and communicate with humans, real-time, without any interface necessary but basic communication skills and articulation. This device will make Angelic Layer look like a child's toy, robotic legs last year's news." Mihara spoke quickly, his accent drawling the words out at key intervals. "This isn't just the cutting edge of technology. This is the future of the world." His fingers on her shoulder eased, and he turned to her at last.
"But these will be more than just walking computers. They will be real people."
Chiitose blinked. "Sir? Real people?" He nodded. "Yes. And if you don't believe that, then get out of my facility right now." He grinned, a lopsided thing that made his plain face transform. "So what do you think?"
She turned to the skeleton again, feeling her heart skip a beat. Real people.. The skeleton did look so very human. But that was just impossible, to make a computer so human-like that it was a real person. Wasn't it? "I.. I think..."
"Buu!" Mihara suddenly said. "You have to play a penalty game." He grinned at her and pulled her back into the brightly lit research room.
--------
Chiitose didn't remember the time when she first saw that picture on Mihara Chief's desk. The one of the pretty woman with the long, golden hair and her daughter. It was always turned away, towards the wall. But she did remember that her heart stopped when she first laid eyes on it. She picked it up in shaking fingers.
Ogata, the senior researcher, saw her. "Hibiya! Don't touch that!"
She hastily dropped it. It tumbled to the ground. "I-I'm sorry-" But then she couldn't stop herself. The words just slipped from her mouth. "Was that.. Mihara Chief's wife and daughter?"
"He-" Ogata stopped, and looked down at his work, unnecessarily shuffling around the papers. Chiitose's eyes widened. "He was in love with her.. The first and greatest Champion of Angelic Layer, and her daughter.. And he wanted to make a family.. With her and with Misaki-chan... But.."
Just then Mihara Chief came back into the office, and both Ogata and Chiitose had to quickly turn away and look busy in order to avoid the penalty game. But her mind raced. What had happened?
After that, when she made excuses to stay late, Chiitose saw him sometimes at his desk, slumped over, with that picture under his hand. And sometimes she thought she saw his face in the reflection of the window at night, twisted with pain.
--------
The Persocom Development Project was coming along nicely. They were at 60% functionality when abruptly, Mihara Chief called her into his office-well, more like a cubicle. A sharp glare from those dark eyes sent all the other researchers to an early lunch. Chiitose began to wonder immediately what she had done wrong, her heart racing. She clasped her hands in front of her, resisting the urge to pull at her dress like a child.
"Would you.. like to come to lunch with me?" Mihara Chief gruffly asked.
She stifled a sound. "As. as a penalty game?" she said uncertainly.
"N-no. As.." Was he blushing? Chiitose felt a sudden tightness in her chest as his fingers played around the edge of that photograph, turned as always toward the bare, white wall behind him. "As.. A friend."
"Friend.." She forced a smile. He was smoothing down his unruly black hair. He had to be at least in his forties, and she fresh out of her doctoral program. But here he was, gamely trying to speak like her, to suppress his exuberance and eccentricity. Just to be like her. "I'd like that."
--------
The time when he kissed her, suddenly, was burned forever onto her memory. It was after their third or fourth real date, after the lunches together at the office seguewayed into drinks after work, then into dinners together at small, private restaurants near the facility. Suddenly, as he walked her to her car, he turned to her and pulled her to him. He was still wearing that white doctor's coat he wore everywhere; hers was tucked under her arm, and she melted against him as if she had been waiting for that moment from the second she had first laid eyes on him.
(But it hadn't been since that moment. It had been since the moment when he had said that he was on a mission to make a computer into a real person. When she had first heard the passion throbbing in his voice, and the sharp intellect behind it. When she had realized why there was sadness behind his eyes.)
He curled against her, as if seeking comfort. Her arms twined up around his neck. He was far taller than she, and she felt like a little girl, and yet when he bent his head to hers, the entire world seemed to fall into place in the warmth of his slightly trembling kiss. That was when she knew for the first time that he actually cared. When they broke away, he laughed nervously and awkwardly patted her long, dark hair. "That was.. That was.."
Chiitose felt herself begin to laugh. "It was wonderful.." She pressed her fingers against his lips, and kissed him again. "It was wonderful.."
--------
They were married on a fall day, with the leaves just beginning to turn and the air still reminiscent of summer. She wore flowers in her hair and Icchan was awkward in a tuxedo. The Persocom Development Project was stalled at 78% functionality. Icchan wasn't satisfied with the way the A.I. development was coming. So he gave everyone a weeklong vacation while he and Chiitose honeymooned in Sapporo.
Those first few months were filled with the golden autumn sunshine, and Chiitose felt as if she would die from happiness. She tried immediately to start the family she saw the longing for in Icchan's eyes. She didn't tell him. She wanted it to be a surprise. She wanted to feel herself filled up with his child and tell him that he was finally going to be a father. Icchan made love to her with the tenderness and exuberance that he brought to only his work. The photograph remained on his office desk. The Persocom they were developing still didn't have a name. But Chiitose didn't care about anything but the feeling of her husband inside of her, and that look in his eyes, the thirst for a family.
It was January when she went to the doctor. She had gotten the baby she longed for at last. It would be born in September, near their anniversary. She didn't dare tell Icchan. Not with the Persocom at 82% functionality. Instead, she began to look at baby names, her heart bursting with the secret she kept.
In February, she miscarried.
--------
Cold, freezing rain poured down from the skies and clung to the tree branches in long icicles before they at last shattered and went crashing to the ground. Chiitose felt as if she would never stop crying. An ultrasound had revealed the cause of the miscarriage. She had a deformed uterus. She could never carry a child to term. She could never replace the golden-haired woman in the photograph. She could never put her own daughter in Misaki's place. She was worthless. So she sat by the window and cried, and did not go to work for three days.
She had to tell him. And when she did, Icchan's face broke. He pulled her close, but she shoved him away, hard. "How can you hold me?" she heard herself screaming. Her face was reddened and angry, her lips contorted. "How can you look at me like that?! I'm a worthless, barren-I'm trash!.."
His large hands lowered. "Chiitose-"
"I'll never be like her!" She couldn't stop herself. It was as if all the tears she had poured out over the last few days were nothing more than a drop in the ocean. The rest were flooding uncontrollably out of her heart. "I'll never be able-t-to be like-to be like what she was to you-"
The glare from his glasses hid his eyes. He adjusted them blankly and turned away from her. She watched him, her chest stabbing with pain. And then he walked out of the room, his sterile white coat flaring behind him.
--------
They did not make love anymore after that. Chiitose felt like her body was so cold to him. It was somehow his fault. His fault that she could not bear him the children he wanted. His fault that she would never have beautiful little girls with his shining eyes. So at work, she stood by the copier and numbly filled out reports on their progress to the investors that were backing the project. She could not give a machine a heart when she had none herself to give any longer. Her husband was almost never there. The Father of Angelic Layer, God of Modern Japanese Technology, had better things to do with the Persocom.
Until he approached her by the copier one morning and took her by the hand, his fingers warm and that big, goofy smile on his face. She looked up at him, and for the first time in a long time, she felt her heart quicken. All of the other researchers were watching, but for once, they were all smiling.
He led Chiitose into the Persocom Development chamber, and as she stepped into the dark room, she saw a little girl suspended from the ceiling, dressed in white. Her eyes went blurry with tears. The little girl raised her head, long blonde-white locks falling from her head, and opened her eyes, looking right at Chiitose. And she smiled, those beautiful dark eyes holding her parents alone in front of her. "Mama!" she exclaimed.
Chiitose put her hands to her burning cheeks and began to sob with joy.
--------
Freya, Chiitose and Icchan's daughter, was a joy. Icchan named her the first "Chobits" series Persocom, after the hiragana in Chiitose's name. But to Chiitose, the Chobits girl was a girl-not the first fully functional Persocom. Because he had given Freya to Chiitose as her child, Icchan didn't publicize the details about the Chobits series, but used the technology to begin mass production of Persocoms within two years. Chiitose felt as if the spring had come at last, and warmth returned to her body and her heart; it was woman who gives birth, yet here her husband had used his genius to give her a life, the life of her precious daughter.
Icchan seemed fully happy for the first time. With his daughter, ignoring the stares her robotic "ears" got when they were out in public, he shared with her all the joys of Tokyo in the springtime. It was at the sakura flower viewing that Chiitose, enjoying a meal with Icchan, suddenly saw Freya clasping that photograph to her chest.
"Papa," Freya asked Icchan with that directness that she always held, "Papa.. Who is this woman?" She showed him the photograph that Chiitose had burned onto her heart like a brand. Chiitose felt herself holding her breath.
Icchan's lips twitched. His eyes looked suffocated for a split second. "That is a woman that Papa used to work with, Freya," he told her, his voice almost normal. He laughed. "And her daughter. Both were Angelic Layer champions. Papa invented the game of Angelic Layer for that woman."
Chiitose felt her heart stop.
"Does Papa love that woman?" Freya asked, and for a moment, when Chiitose saw Freya looking at Icchan, she saw something in her daughter's eyes that her heart immediately rejected.
Icchan suddenly laughed again-a real laugh. "No, Freya. Papa loves Mama."
--------
Freya began to fade. At first, Icchan thought it was an OS problem, and he and Chiitose spent hours laboring on her system, trying to get back their spirited, happy daughter. But maybe it was a deeper problem, Chiitose suspected. Loneliness, perhaps? She was still the only Persocom in full functionality. And Chiitose wanted to believe that the look in her daughter's eyes was loneliness. Or rather, knowledge that she was an outsider. That made logical sense. Rational sense. It could be explained with the language that Chiitose felt comfortable using.
And so they made Elda, Freya's twin sister, second of the Chobits series. Although Icchan used almost exactly the same specifications, he tinkered with Elda, spending long hours in the lab developing some sort of special program. When Chiitose asked him about it, he laughed and said, "It's a secret. I want to make sure Elda's not exactly the same as Freya, that's all. And I want Elda to be the one through which my dream for my children comes true."
"Dream?" Chiitose would ask.
And Icchan would rest his hand fondly on Chiitose's shoulder. "I want them to be more like you."
Somehow, Freya would always be there when he said that, and Chiitose saw that expression again in her daughter's eyes, and the next day, Freya would be a little worse. All Freya could say was, "My heart hurts."
"But darling," Chiitose said, "You don't have a heart."
--------
Elda was "born" into their family soon after that. Mihara Ichiro and his wife, Hibiya Chiitose, had two Persocoms for their daughters. Their engineering was superior to those of the mass-production PCs released that year by a factor of ten. Freya improved slightly after Elda was born. The twin sisters were indeed alike, but Chiitose puzzled when she did not see that look of pain in Elda's eyes that she saw in Freya's whenever Freya looked at her husband.
One day, Freya's condition became critical. It was in the late summer, with the humidity causing everything to glisten with a slick sheen of sweat, and removing clothes didn't help the problem at all. Deep in the bowels of the lab, Icchan labored over his daughter, Elda by his side. But nothing seemed to work. She was in pain. Chiitose sobbed outside the door. How could his flawless programming be bugged in such a way that was causing their daughter such torment? And then one day, when the temperature in Tokyo reached nearly 40 degrees, Chiitose was approaching the bedroom when she heard Freya's weak voice cutting through the silence.
"Papa.. I love you. You are the.. one and only person for me..."
Chiitose felt her heart stop. She knew she should turn and walk away; she wanted to coat her feelings in stone once more; but what she was feeling was only heat, rushing to her cheeks and to her chest. Her hands trembled with rage and betrayal. And then she heard Icchan's voice in reply.
"I. I'm sorry."
Numbness flooded into her, in place of that heat. Chiitose turned and hurried swiftly away. It wasn't long after that when Freya stopped working.
--------
It was Icchan's wish that Elda not follow in Freya's footsteps. After the tears had dried and he had destroyed his firstborn daughter's body, he told Chiitose, "There's only one way that Elda can be saved. We need to let her go."
"Are-are you sure?" Chiitose asked, alarmed. "But.. But she's my only child.."
Icchan looked into her eyes and nodded. "She is very much like you, our Elda. She wants to find someone for herself and only herself." He grasped Chiitose's shoulders in his hands. "She needs to find for herself.. That love is not what killed Freya. But instead.. That she can indeed find someone for her and only her. They aren't machines, Chiitose. They are real. They can feel. They can hurt. And when I see Elda's eyes so sad now, I feel.. I could have been someone to love them, too." He pulled her roughly close.
"And.. I was really happy with all of us like that," he whispered into her ear, his voice raw and aching. "You are the most important thing to me in the world. You are the person for me. and only me."
--------
In March, Icchan collapsed at work one day. He was taken to the hospital and died shortly thereafter of coronary failure.
This time, there were no tears for Chiitose. She simply turned in her resignation at work and went home. Icchan had owned some apartment buildings in Tokyo, where he had set up a secondary research facility for his private use. Although that property was worth millions now after the Japan real estate boom, Chiitose just wanted to manage the apartment buildings and build herself a life that was drained free of all of those feelings from before. She wiped Elda's memory and put her out in the trash. She didn't want to see her husband anymore in Elda's brown eyes. She didn't want the mockery of her happiness together with him to haunt her anymore.
After one of her boarders found Elda and rescued her, Chiitose felt herself begin to smile again. And sometimes even laugh, gently. He had small, dark eyes, and unruly hair always in need of brushing. And in time, Chiitose was even able to look at the photograph of Icchan and herself and their beautiful twin daughters that she often laid facedown on her desk.
Penalty
He was slurping ramen and commanding the research center like a tall, lanky Napoleon when she first entered the room. "No, no! Don't TOUCH that!" he shrieked at one of the scientists, bopping him over the head with chopsticks, his mouth thick with noodles and a heavy Kansai accent. "Do that again and I'll have your head on a platter, and that's even BEFORE the penalty game!"
Chiitose hesitantly approached him, bowing low, clipboard clutched to her chest. "Mihara-san.. I'm-"
"The new researcher, eh?" The legendary Mihara Ichiro adjusted his glasses and looked down at her for the first time. She looked back, still at the deepest point of her bow, her eyes shining nervously behind her glasses. His own glasses gleamed, and the smile on his face hid whatever he was really thinking. "Let me see your references."
He flipped through the clipboard boredly. "Double PhDs in computer science and programming, valedictorian at Tokyo University.. Blah blah blah." He tossed it aside. "Well, do you really think you have what it takes to work on the Persocom Development Team?" He grinned. "Because this isn't playtime. This is for real."
"Y-yes sir!" She squeaked, her petite body going rigid. "I.. I do!" Her voice faltered again when she looked into his small, dark eyes. She felt herself slowly going red. Being in the presence of a legend of technological development was.. It was.. But that wasn't it.
"Let me show you something." His large hand came down on her shoulder, and he hurried her into the adjacent room, where the first-ever persocom's metal body hung, attached to thick cables.
"A computer with the shape of a human. The ability to think, reason, and communicate with humans, real-time, without any interface necessary but basic communication skills and articulation. This device will make Angelic Layer look like a child's toy, robotic legs last year's news." Mihara spoke quickly, his accent drawling the words out at key intervals. "This isn't just the cutting edge of technology. This is the future of the world." His fingers on her shoulder eased, and he turned to her at last.
"But these will be more than just walking computers. They will be real people."
Chiitose blinked. "Sir? Real people?" He nodded. "Yes. And if you don't believe that, then get out of my facility right now." He grinned, a lopsided thing that made his plain face transform. "So what do you think?"
She turned to the skeleton again, feeling her heart skip a beat. Real people.. The skeleton did look so very human. But that was just impossible, to make a computer so human-like that it was a real person. Wasn't it? "I.. I think..."
"Buu!" Mihara suddenly said. "You have to play a penalty game." He grinned at her and pulled her back into the brightly lit research room.
--------
Chiitose didn't remember the time when she first saw that picture on Mihara Chief's desk. The one of the pretty woman with the long, golden hair and her daughter. It was always turned away, towards the wall. But she did remember that her heart stopped when she first laid eyes on it. She picked it up in shaking fingers.
Ogata, the senior researcher, saw her. "Hibiya! Don't touch that!"
She hastily dropped it. It tumbled to the ground. "I-I'm sorry-" But then she couldn't stop herself. The words just slipped from her mouth. "Was that.. Mihara Chief's wife and daughter?"
"He-" Ogata stopped, and looked down at his work, unnecessarily shuffling around the papers. Chiitose's eyes widened. "He was in love with her.. The first and greatest Champion of Angelic Layer, and her daughter.. And he wanted to make a family.. With her and with Misaki-chan... But.."
Just then Mihara Chief came back into the office, and both Ogata and Chiitose had to quickly turn away and look busy in order to avoid the penalty game. But her mind raced. What had happened?
After that, when she made excuses to stay late, Chiitose saw him sometimes at his desk, slumped over, with that picture under his hand. And sometimes she thought she saw his face in the reflection of the window at night, twisted with pain.
--------
The Persocom Development Project was coming along nicely. They were at 60% functionality when abruptly, Mihara Chief called her into his office-well, more like a cubicle. A sharp glare from those dark eyes sent all the other researchers to an early lunch. Chiitose began to wonder immediately what she had done wrong, her heart racing. She clasped her hands in front of her, resisting the urge to pull at her dress like a child.
"Would you.. like to come to lunch with me?" Mihara Chief gruffly asked.
She stifled a sound. "As. as a penalty game?" she said uncertainly.
"N-no. As.." Was he blushing? Chiitose felt a sudden tightness in her chest as his fingers played around the edge of that photograph, turned as always toward the bare, white wall behind him. "As.. A friend."
"Friend.." She forced a smile. He was smoothing down his unruly black hair. He had to be at least in his forties, and she fresh out of her doctoral program. But here he was, gamely trying to speak like her, to suppress his exuberance and eccentricity. Just to be like her. "I'd like that."
--------
The time when he kissed her, suddenly, was burned forever onto her memory. It was after their third or fourth real date, after the lunches together at the office seguewayed into drinks after work, then into dinners together at small, private restaurants near the facility. Suddenly, as he walked her to her car, he turned to her and pulled her to him. He was still wearing that white doctor's coat he wore everywhere; hers was tucked under her arm, and she melted against him as if she had been waiting for that moment from the second she had first laid eyes on him.
(But it hadn't been since that moment. It had been since the moment when he had said that he was on a mission to make a computer into a real person. When she had first heard the passion throbbing in his voice, and the sharp intellect behind it. When she had realized why there was sadness behind his eyes.)
He curled against her, as if seeking comfort. Her arms twined up around his neck. He was far taller than she, and she felt like a little girl, and yet when he bent his head to hers, the entire world seemed to fall into place in the warmth of his slightly trembling kiss. That was when she knew for the first time that he actually cared. When they broke away, he laughed nervously and awkwardly patted her long, dark hair. "That was.. That was.."
Chiitose felt herself begin to laugh. "It was wonderful.." She pressed her fingers against his lips, and kissed him again. "It was wonderful.."
--------
They were married on a fall day, with the leaves just beginning to turn and the air still reminiscent of summer. She wore flowers in her hair and Icchan was awkward in a tuxedo. The Persocom Development Project was stalled at 78% functionality. Icchan wasn't satisfied with the way the A.I. development was coming. So he gave everyone a weeklong vacation while he and Chiitose honeymooned in Sapporo.
Those first few months were filled with the golden autumn sunshine, and Chiitose felt as if she would die from happiness. She tried immediately to start the family she saw the longing for in Icchan's eyes. She didn't tell him. She wanted it to be a surprise. She wanted to feel herself filled up with his child and tell him that he was finally going to be a father. Icchan made love to her with the tenderness and exuberance that he brought to only his work. The photograph remained on his office desk. The Persocom they were developing still didn't have a name. But Chiitose didn't care about anything but the feeling of her husband inside of her, and that look in his eyes, the thirst for a family.
It was January when she went to the doctor. She had gotten the baby she longed for at last. It would be born in September, near their anniversary. She didn't dare tell Icchan. Not with the Persocom at 82% functionality. Instead, she began to look at baby names, her heart bursting with the secret she kept.
In February, she miscarried.
--------
Cold, freezing rain poured down from the skies and clung to the tree branches in long icicles before they at last shattered and went crashing to the ground. Chiitose felt as if she would never stop crying. An ultrasound had revealed the cause of the miscarriage. She had a deformed uterus. She could never carry a child to term. She could never replace the golden-haired woman in the photograph. She could never put her own daughter in Misaki's place. She was worthless. So she sat by the window and cried, and did not go to work for three days.
She had to tell him. And when she did, Icchan's face broke. He pulled her close, but she shoved him away, hard. "How can you hold me?" she heard herself screaming. Her face was reddened and angry, her lips contorted. "How can you look at me like that?! I'm a worthless, barren-I'm trash!.."
His large hands lowered. "Chiitose-"
"I'll never be like her!" She couldn't stop herself. It was as if all the tears she had poured out over the last few days were nothing more than a drop in the ocean. The rest were flooding uncontrollably out of her heart. "I'll never be able-t-to be like-to be like what she was to you-"
The glare from his glasses hid his eyes. He adjusted them blankly and turned away from her. She watched him, her chest stabbing with pain. And then he walked out of the room, his sterile white coat flaring behind him.
--------
They did not make love anymore after that. Chiitose felt like her body was so cold to him. It was somehow his fault. His fault that she could not bear him the children he wanted. His fault that she would never have beautiful little girls with his shining eyes. So at work, she stood by the copier and numbly filled out reports on their progress to the investors that were backing the project. She could not give a machine a heart when she had none herself to give any longer. Her husband was almost never there. The Father of Angelic Layer, God of Modern Japanese Technology, had better things to do with the Persocom.
Until he approached her by the copier one morning and took her by the hand, his fingers warm and that big, goofy smile on his face. She looked up at him, and for the first time in a long time, she felt her heart quicken. All of the other researchers were watching, but for once, they were all smiling.
He led Chiitose into the Persocom Development chamber, and as she stepped into the dark room, she saw a little girl suspended from the ceiling, dressed in white. Her eyes went blurry with tears. The little girl raised her head, long blonde-white locks falling from her head, and opened her eyes, looking right at Chiitose. And she smiled, those beautiful dark eyes holding her parents alone in front of her. "Mama!" she exclaimed.
Chiitose put her hands to her burning cheeks and began to sob with joy.
--------
Freya, Chiitose and Icchan's daughter, was a joy. Icchan named her the first "Chobits" series Persocom, after the hiragana in Chiitose's name. But to Chiitose, the Chobits girl was a girl-not the first fully functional Persocom. Because he had given Freya to Chiitose as her child, Icchan didn't publicize the details about the Chobits series, but used the technology to begin mass production of Persocoms within two years. Chiitose felt as if the spring had come at last, and warmth returned to her body and her heart; it was woman who gives birth, yet here her husband had used his genius to give her a life, the life of her precious daughter.
Icchan seemed fully happy for the first time. With his daughter, ignoring the stares her robotic "ears" got when they were out in public, he shared with her all the joys of Tokyo in the springtime. It was at the sakura flower viewing that Chiitose, enjoying a meal with Icchan, suddenly saw Freya clasping that photograph to her chest.
"Papa," Freya asked Icchan with that directness that she always held, "Papa.. Who is this woman?" She showed him the photograph that Chiitose had burned onto her heart like a brand. Chiitose felt herself holding her breath.
Icchan's lips twitched. His eyes looked suffocated for a split second. "That is a woman that Papa used to work with, Freya," he told her, his voice almost normal. He laughed. "And her daughter. Both were Angelic Layer champions. Papa invented the game of Angelic Layer for that woman."
Chiitose felt her heart stop.
"Does Papa love that woman?" Freya asked, and for a moment, when Chiitose saw Freya looking at Icchan, she saw something in her daughter's eyes that her heart immediately rejected.
Icchan suddenly laughed again-a real laugh. "No, Freya. Papa loves Mama."
--------
Freya began to fade. At first, Icchan thought it was an OS problem, and he and Chiitose spent hours laboring on her system, trying to get back their spirited, happy daughter. But maybe it was a deeper problem, Chiitose suspected. Loneliness, perhaps? She was still the only Persocom in full functionality. And Chiitose wanted to believe that the look in her daughter's eyes was loneliness. Or rather, knowledge that she was an outsider. That made logical sense. Rational sense. It could be explained with the language that Chiitose felt comfortable using.
And so they made Elda, Freya's twin sister, second of the Chobits series. Although Icchan used almost exactly the same specifications, he tinkered with Elda, spending long hours in the lab developing some sort of special program. When Chiitose asked him about it, he laughed and said, "It's a secret. I want to make sure Elda's not exactly the same as Freya, that's all. And I want Elda to be the one through which my dream for my children comes true."
"Dream?" Chiitose would ask.
And Icchan would rest his hand fondly on Chiitose's shoulder. "I want them to be more like you."
Somehow, Freya would always be there when he said that, and Chiitose saw that expression again in her daughter's eyes, and the next day, Freya would be a little worse. All Freya could say was, "My heart hurts."
"But darling," Chiitose said, "You don't have a heart."
--------
Elda was "born" into their family soon after that. Mihara Ichiro and his wife, Hibiya Chiitose, had two Persocoms for their daughters. Their engineering was superior to those of the mass-production PCs released that year by a factor of ten. Freya improved slightly after Elda was born. The twin sisters were indeed alike, but Chiitose puzzled when she did not see that look of pain in Elda's eyes that she saw in Freya's whenever Freya looked at her husband.
One day, Freya's condition became critical. It was in the late summer, with the humidity causing everything to glisten with a slick sheen of sweat, and removing clothes didn't help the problem at all. Deep in the bowels of the lab, Icchan labored over his daughter, Elda by his side. But nothing seemed to work. She was in pain. Chiitose sobbed outside the door. How could his flawless programming be bugged in such a way that was causing their daughter such torment? And then one day, when the temperature in Tokyo reached nearly 40 degrees, Chiitose was approaching the bedroom when she heard Freya's weak voice cutting through the silence.
"Papa.. I love you. You are the.. one and only person for me..."
Chiitose felt her heart stop. She knew she should turn and walk away; she wanted to coat her feelings in stone once more; but what she was feeling was only heat, rushing to her cheeks and to her chest. Her hands trembled with rage and betrayal. And then she heard Icchan's voice in reply.
"I. I'm sorry."
Numbness flooded into her, in place of that heat. Chiitose turned and hurried swiftly away. It wasn't long after that when Freya stopped working.
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It was Icchan's wish that Elda not follow in Freya's footsteps. After the tears had dried and he had destroyed his firstborn daughter's body, he told Chiitose, "There's only one way that Elda can be saved. We need to let her go."
"Are-are you sure?" Chiitose asked, alarmed. "But.. But she's my only child.."
Icchan looked into her eyes and nodded. "She is very much like you, our Elda. She wants to find someone for herself and only herself." He grasped Chiitose's shoulders in his hands. "She needs to find for herself.. That love is not what killed Freya. But instead.. That she can indeed find someone for her and only her. They aren't machines, Chiitose. They are real. They can feel. They can hurt. And when I see Elda's eyes so sad now, I feel.. I could have been someone to love them, too." He pulled her roughly close.
"And.. I was really happy with all of us like that," he whispered into her ear, his voice raw and aching. "You are the most important thing to me in the world. You are the person for me. and only me."
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In March, Icchan collapsed at work one day. He was taken to the hospital and died shortly thereafter of coronary failure.
This time, there were no tears for Chiitose. She simply turned in her resignation at work and went home. Icchan had owned some apartment buildings in Tokyo, where he had set up a secondary research facility for his private use. Although that property was worth millions now after the Japan real estate boom, Chiitose just wanted to manage the apartment buildings and build herself a life that was drained free of all of those feelings from before. She wiped Elda's memory and put her out in the trash. She didn't want to see her husband anymore in Elda's brown eyes. She didn't want the mockery of her happiness together with him to haunt her anymore.
After one of her boarders found Elda and rescued her, Chiitose felt herself begin to smile again. And sometimes even laugh, gently. He had small, dark eyes, and unruly hair always in need of brushing. And in time, Chiitose was even able to look at the photograph of Icchan and herself and their beautiful twin daughters that she often laid facedown on her desk.