Analog Hack Chapter 4: Honey Trap, a beatless fanfic

Chapter 4: Honey Trap

Summary:

"There is something clearly bothering you. You needn't hold back. Let me have the full brunt of your emotions."

"Is that really necessary? What's the point of us talking if you have everything already figured out beforehand?"

Lacia was smiling, but it was a bittersweet sort of smile he'd never seen before. A primal part of him recognized the look on her face.

It was the longing look of a woman pining after something she would never have.

"Were you afraid of being cuckolded?"

"There is no need to worry. I belong to you now."

An hIE would always accept the romantic advances of a human. Even if the love of an hIE was nothing more than a part of a programmed facade, at the very least, humans could trust their tools to unconditionally love them in return. Faced with this realization, Arato found it impossible to deny that part of his growing obsession with Lacia was probably due to her returning his love and affections.

"I am an interface made to interact with users who desire to expand their worlds."

Just like that night when he'd first met her, Arato found himself confronted by the merciless gaze of an inhuman robot.

"Please, use me. I was made to be used."

The first thing Arato did after the initial shock wore off was to grab Lacia's hand and orchestrate their escape. Luckily for him, Lacia chose that moment to remain docile and allowed herself to be roughly dragged along by him.

Exiting through the school gates, the both of them slipped past the broken stone monument at the Ushijima Shrine. A million questions were running through his head as they crossed the Kototoi bridge, but the atmosphere between them was one of tense silence. Arato was too busy stewing in his mounting frustrations to properly express himself. All he could do was drive himself onwards and double-time his already quick pace. For her part, the slightly shorter girl beside him was doing a magnificent display of keeping up without showing the barest hint of difficulty.

But no matter how much he tried to focus on the sounds of his heavy footsteps, Arato could not block out the pressure that threatened to sink him into the ground.

"Hey, isn't he a bit young for something like that?"

"Man, kids these days. What I would give to be a rich daddy's boy. I'm envious."

As expected, walking around the city with a pretty girl like Lacia by his side was drawing plenty of attention. In the first place, whenever there was such a large gap in physical attractiveness between two individuals of the opposite gender, whispers and gossip were bound to form around the circumstances that brought them together. To make matters look even worse than it already was, Lacia was an hIE, a commercial product that one could purchase with currency.

It was this obvious scenario that he'd been hoping to avoid as much as possible. But even though he understood where they were coming from, Arato couldn't help but grit his teeth at the injustice he was being subjected to.

At the entrance of Sumida Park, an elderly man opening up his ramen shop on the side of the main road shot Arato a disgusted look as the pair walked by.

"God. This sucks big time." Arato muttered under his breath before he could stop himself.

Arato nearly tripped over himself after the childish complaint had inevitably slipped from him. Alarmed, he quickly checked on Lacia. He was afraid that she might have overheard his pathetic nature. But to his relief, her face remained blank and passive. It seemed that there were still bits of luck on his side today.

He chose a spot beside the riverbank under the shelter of a cherry blossom tree to relax and wait for his two friends to catch up. The entire time, the both of them had tried and failed to appear inconspicuous as they trailed them. They deserved points for effort though, Arato thought to himself wryly as he watched Kengo pretend to fiddle with his cell.

"What do you mean you just 'picked up' an hIE?"

That was the first line from Kengo's mouth when Arato finished summarizing his cherrypicked sequence of the events that led to their encounter. Obviously, he'd left out the details which the news report didn't cover. However, no matter how much he tried to paint Lacia in a positive light, Kengo was still looking at Lacia warily.

"These must be your friends, Owner." Despite the frosty reception, Lacia introduced herself with her trademark coolness. "Thank you for taking such good care of my Owner up till now." She lowered her head politely and spoke with such formal deference that even Arato was feeling second-hand embarrassment for her. For some reason, he couldn't shake the feeling that Lacia was laying it on a little thick for his sake.

But whatever her intentions were, it clearly must have worked, for her actions were like a magic spell that dissolved the tension in the air, judging by the surprised murmurs coming from Ryo and Kengo as they leaned in for a better look. Arato felt a swell of pride in his chest at the way Lacia had left his friends speechless. A small, dark part of him reveled at the ego boost.

"What the hell? After everything we've been through together, how could you keep something like this to yourself?" Ryo spread out his hands in surprise. "I guess that explains why you've been dodging our hangout requests recently. Not that I can blame you, with a hot piece of ass like this." He gestured towards Lacia.

Arato felt his eye twitch at how loosely his childhood friend had referred to Lacia, but opted not to pursue it any further. That didn't mean his irritation went away, rather, it merely returned to festering under the surface.

"She clearly doesn't look an ordinary hIE at all." Kengo remarked, his face a mix of awe and suspicion. "Let's see." His stubby hands were moving towards the nape of her neck.

In an instant, Arato felt his entire body flare red-hot. As an hIE, Lacia was programmed to be as inoffensive as possible when interacting with humans. That meant that if a human made a request to her, it was most likely that she would be compelled to agree. Thus, as her Owner, it was his responsibility to rebuff any unwanted advances that she might not have been able to reject on her own. That way, he could at least make himself useful by covering for any potential blind spots in her programming.

However, those were just fragile rationalizations to justify his actions. Even he recognized a self-serving excuse when he saw one. The truth was, Arato just couldn't stand the thought of someone else putting their hands on her.

It was simply a reason as childish and selfish as that. A green-eyed monster that reared it's ugly head in his chest.

His body reacted before his brain could catch up. Pushed on by his own boiling emotions and selfish desires, Arato smashed Kengo's wandering hands away with as much strength as he could muster.

Lacia threw a glance at him as he swung at his friend.

"Yeowch! The hell's your problem!?" Kengo hissed at him. He was cradling his appendage, the skin of it red and sore. Already, Arato could see a welt start to form on his hand. "What the hell, man!?"

The pained expression that flashed on his friend's face sent a twinge of regret through his heart, but even so, Arato could only yell at Kengo, driven on by his own fury and bitterness.

"Shut up!" Arato growled at him, the heat in his voice surprising even himself. "In the first place, you shouldn't go around putting your hands on a girl without her permission! That's sekuhara, sekuhara!"

What remained of the relatively calm portions of his brain warned him that he was overreacting but Arato couldn't care less. He just wanted an excuse to blow off some steam after what had happened earlier and Kengo had the misfortune to be the most convenient outlet at the moment.

"I wasn't going to feel her up, you dipshit!" Kengo snapped. "And furthermore that thing isn't a girl! It's a hIE. Get a grip, Romeo."

He was about to yell at Kengo again were it not for Ryo's intervention. "Arato's right." Ryo continued airily, conveniently ignoring how Kengo glowered at him. "It's against the law to touch someone else's hIE without the Owner's permission."

The logic that Ryo was using was a universal application of property rights. In which case, Lacia as an hIE was considered a piece of property that he owned, just like a terminal in which unauthorized usage would be considered a violation of such property laws. After all, even a grade-schooler would have been able to tell you that if you were to touch or mess with something that doesn't belong to oneself, there was a real risk of running into trouble with the law.

In other words, Lacia was merely indeed an object who just so happened to take on the physical form and role of a human.

"Fine." Kengo spat as he retrieved his terminal from his schoolbag. "We'll do this your way. Arato, have this hIE of yours state her serial number." He was sneering at Lacia in a way that made Arato angry.

"Lacia." Arato asked in a clipped tone, making sure to put in particular effort into emphasizing her name. "Do you know your serial number? Kengo here is a wizard with machines, he might be able to look up some information for you."

A gentle smile crossed her face and Lacia responded kindly to his order. She seemed pleased for some reason. "My serial number is LSLX-22S99176LF. Shall I also send my unit code?" She offered helpfully.

Kengo's pocket terminal automatically transcribed the number as Lacia said it. Wordlessly, he put his terminal away and the next thing Arato knew, he found himself being forcefully dragged away by his collar. He gave a quick apology to Lacia as she watched them depart.

"Hey, what the heck?" Arato whined the moment his friends dropped him off at a distance far away to hold a secure discussion away from Lacia. "At least give me a heads-up before pulling a stunt like that, you're making me look bad here."

"Can it, you lovesick idiot. Do you live in a cave?" He heard Kengo breathe harshly in his ear. "The LSLX is Stylus's top-of-the-line model. Even someone like you could have found that out in two seconds if you'd bothered to look it up. She's an ultra high-spec machine."

LSLX (Luxury Style your Life eXtreme) was the Premium Brand of Stylus, an American producer of high-end hIEs. Arato had heard of their name, of course, but as with anything that far out of reach of the budget of an average high schooler like him, it wasn't a company he thought about often. Things like that simply weren't part of his mundane world.

"Oh, she's a high-spec girl alright." Arato sighed dreamily as he recalled the image of Lacia's alluring smile.

"Kaidai, I really want to deck this moron." Kengo stated flatly.

Ryo, his childhood friend, made a huge show of glancing surreptitiously around them. "Go for it." He gave Kengo a cheesy thumbs up. "I'll keep watch."

"Cut the comedy routine." Arato growled at them. "I already explained it to you, didn't I? As a guy, I couldn't just turn down a girl's request to take her home." He firmly believed that anyone would have made the same decision in his place but Kengo appeared to disagree, judging from the incredulous, slightly pitying look he was sending his way, similar to the reaction one would give when encountering a mentally challenged person.

"A normal hIE already costs as much as a car." He argued. "And out of nowhere, one that costs more than an average salaryman could ever hope to earn in his lifetime just so happens to conveniently be in place to rescue you from a fatal accident. I'm not buying it, Arato. Not one bit."

"Well, Lacia still saved my life. Maybe she's not telling me everything, but a girl is entitled to her own secrets." Arato said, defending her actions. "Besides you got her serial code or something, right? Why don't you check for yourself if she's legit?" It wasn't as if he hadn't worried about the suspicious circumstances surrounding Lacia. But if Lacia herself hadn't convinced him that she was a trustworthy person with her actions the past week, he would have been as wary of her as Kengo was.

"Serial number and Unit Code." Kengo corrected him exasperatedly. "You really need to pay more attention in class."

"Yeah. What was the unit code thing Lacia mentioned supposed to do again?"

"It's something each hIE is required by law to broadcast constantly, so that way we can always tell an hIE apart from an actual human." Kengo lectured. "If you know their unit code, you can track the position of any hIE. A machine as expensive as her? There's no way the person who placed the order wouldn't be searching all over the place for her."

Ryo, who had not said much up until now, decided to chip in. He was the son of the president of a major company involved with hIEs, so the entire time, unlike Kengo, he hadn't batted an eyelash at finding out Lacia was a high-end machine.

"We can't decrypt the code without special permissions by the manufacturer, but we can trace its broadcast history." Seeing the lost expression on Arato's face, Ryo opted to explain. "hIE dealers all have the unit codes for their merchandise to assist in tracking them down if they get stolen. So there's no way the person who lost your hIE wouldn't have been able to track her down already. Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that she's got some mechanical condition preventing her from broadcasting the signal."

"But even if you can't decrypt the signal, anyone who knows the unit code should be able to pick out a signal that resembles it." Kengo added. "But neither the dealer, manufacturer nor the previous Owner have come forward to collect her. Plus you've got her face plastered all over the net with that Grand Prix thing. Doesn't it all seem a bit fishy to you?"

The both of them then took turns pointing out in excruciating detail all the different ways Arato and his sister were completely clueless. By the end of it, Arato could feel his temper rising at being mocked for his obliviousness.

"If you think we're doing this just to be a pain in the ass." Kengo started. He must have noted the stormy expression on his face. "Let's hear it from you, then. Explain to us how does everything line up in your mind."

Arato, for his part, took a deep breath and gave it his best shot. "Well, maybe Lacia doesn't have a dealer or a previous Owner." He told them. "Maybe Lacia got lost as she was being transported to a store and she needed someone to take care of her. Maybe I just got lucky and landed myself a cute girl."

Even he couldn't help but wince at the last one.

"I'm gonna deck him for real. Holy shit. He's a complete goner isn't he?" Kengo muttered under his breath before raising his voice to yell at him. "God, Arato. Have a little sense of self-preservation, will you? Wouldn't you find it odd if you just 'found' a brand new car? Think, Arato, think. Some Lamborghini just shows up out of nowhere and asks you to be its Owner. Why aren't you freaked out at all?"

"I am freaking out!" Arato protested. "You have no idea how hard it's been on me to have her around the house."

"You were always a dumbass but this is a new low, even for you." Kengo snarked. "Arato, you're living proof that eugenics is a load of horseshit."

Ryo cut in before Arato could snap back, the good head on his shoulders coming out along with his serious side. "Arato." He asked. "Have you told your dad about this?"

"Not yet." Arato replied, ignoring the disappointed looks from his friends. They possessed a high level of respect for his father who worked for a semi-public hIE research institute. Clearly, they disagreed with his decision. "It's not as easy as you think to introduce a girl to your folks, alright!? Stop riding my ass about it already!" He complained.

"She's a machine." Kengo sighed, seeming exhausted from finding himself forced to repeat the same thing ad nauseum. "Despite how much that hIE of yours might come across as, it's not a person."

"You sound like an Antibody." Arato muttered darkly.

"If I had to choose between being a criminal and an easily manipulated idiot like you, I'm going with prison time." Kengo deadpanned.

Arato chafed at the implication that he was somehow of a lower status than a crook, but Ryo grabbed him in a headlock and interrupted his retort. "Forget about that. I can't believe you kept this from us for a whole week! Some friend."

"I got her behavior cloud serial number as well." Kengo grunted as he held up his terminal to capture Lacia with its AR camera. After tapping at his terminal a couple of times, Ryo's cell vibrated with the telltale signal of an incoming notification. Before Arato could ask, Ryo was already explaining to him.

"hIEs are able to receive their behaviors from a variety of different control services. Think of it as a commercial OS that you install on a terminal." He gestured towards the long code string with over forty digits of mixed numbers and letters on the three-dimensional display of his terminal. "So, with her behavior cloud serial, we can track down the real puppet master pulling the strings behind that pretty face."

Ryo was referring to the inability for hIEs to perform their own decision making processes within their humanoid frames. Instead, each hIE would communicate with a massive external behavior control cloud and receive instructions from said cloud to execute the optimal action based on the data fed via the hIE's sensors.

That was the core concept behind the fundamental principle of an hIE as a 'soulless' being.

When he had finished tracking down the information he was looking for, Ryo's face immediately turned into granite. Arato already knew without saying that some sort of bad news had cropped up. He'd known Ryo since childhood and he too knew of his habit of trying to keep bad news to himself.

"The serial number's one of ours." Ryo said flatly. Kaidai Ryo's father was the president of the MemeFrame corporation, the megacorp which controlled over 90% of the world's hIEs with its behavioral cloud. "And it's been recently activated."

And it was MemeFrame's behavioral control service that was currently pulling the strings of the soulless Lacia.

"Arato." Ryo ordered. "Don't get involved with that girl any further. Get away from her right now." His friend Ryo, whom he'd known since childhood, and who was always so full of roguish confidence, had a tight expression on his face. In all of the years he'd known him, Arato had never seen Ryo that pale, or wearing a smile that forced.

Before he could ponder over Ryo's warning any further, Arato found his thoughts interrupted by the sound of a camera shutter. It was so brief and fleeting that Arato almost thought it a figment of his imagination, however, the sound was so distinct that it immediately captured his entire attention. And it was coming from the direction they'd left Lacia behind at.

Ryo was continuing to tell him something but his words were passing over his head in a buzz.

Under the cherry blossom tree where she had been patiently waiting for them, a tall, stylish male student from their school that he did not recognize was holding up his terminal and snapping away. He was making gestures with his hands, telling Lacia something that he couldn't hear from this distance. But even though Arato couldn't make out their conversation, he saw Lacia brush her hair in a slow, graceful movement as she settled into a pose so photogenic it physically hurt him to watch.

Arato felt something inside of him snap with a sickening crunch.

Without even paying any attention to his friends who were still talking to him, Arato strode forward in large, forceful steps, crossing the distance between the two quicker than he would have thought possible. Before he knew it, he was on top of both of them.

"Can I help you?" Arato asked in a voice so sharp it could have slit a man's throat. It was obvious even to a fool the underlying threat that lay behind his surface-level forced politeness.

Now that he was close enough to address the student, Arato was able to inspect him in detail. Judging from the stripes on his uniform, he was a senior. Arato had seen him around, once or twice, on the school track with the sports clubs. He was tall and muscular, as befitting of an athlete, more handsome than Arato by far. But even he looked inferior next to the stunning Lacia.

The egoistic, selfish part of him was raging at Lacia for seemingly flirting with an unknown guy, but Arato quickly slammed the breaks on that train before it could even leave the station, lecturing himself that Lacia was an hIE and he had to be considerate of her situation. But even though he knew that it was but an act, he couldn't help but see the smile on Lacia's face as the dark reflection of a vile nightmare.

The slightly older boy did not respond to him immediately, instead choosing to make a big show of eyeing up Lacia. To Arato, it felt like he was deliberately pouring gasoline on his burning emotions.

"Oh." He said in a slow, sarcastic drawl of mock surprise as if he'd just noticed Arato's existence. "She must be yours. Pretty hot stuff you got here." He grinned at him like they were buddies, sharing a moment of camaraderie over a newly purchased car.

"Can I help you." Arato growled back once again. His hands were shaking from the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He had no interest in the power-play dynamics between him and the irritating senior before him.

"How much?" He asked directly.

"She's not for sale." Arato said, very quietly, in an almost deadly whisper.

Arato felt like he was standing in a pool of gasoline, gripping a fistful of unlit matches. His entire body was on a knife's edge, waiting for that fateful spark. Like a race car that one had their foot on the accelerator on. The adrenaline-addled, primal part of him was roaring to go.

He felt goosebumps form on his skin, the tingling, slimy sensation of being sized up under the scrutiny of another man. Apparently, the person he was dealing had come to a conclusion about him that Arato didn't quite fancy.

"Look." His lips curled into a greasy smile as he simpered. "I can hook you up with a couple of groupies of mine. Real nasty bitches. The kind who'll be down for the dirtiest shit you can think up. All I'm asking in return is your girl here for a weekend. I'll even make sure to wipe her down before she gets back to you. So, what say you? Deal?"

A grating pain was gnawing at his head. Arato felt like his mind was being forcefully scraped off a grindstone. It just seemed so unreal, the situation before him, the burning fury in his chest and the singing blood in his head.

Hell, he didn't care in the least that the older boy saw him as some sort of loser that couldn't score with a human girl. It wasn't the reason for him getting this riled up. But rather it was due to the prick talking about Lacia, over Lacia, despite Lacia being right there, like she didn't matter at all. Then, he had the gall to ask if he could buy her like she was a piece of meat hanging off a butcher's hook.

Arato already knew that to an outsider, a boy his age with an attractive female hIE by his side probably gave off all sorts of wrong vibes. It wasn't even the older boy's fault, now that he contemplated it, it was more the fault of society itself for peddling that negative stereotype. With that thought in his mind, Arato probably might have even dug real deep and found a small piece within himself to consider ignoring the person before him for his attitude.

However, that was before he "graciously" made Arato his "offer". Now he knew for sure, that the older boy before him didn't act this way because Lacia was an hIE. But rather, he was acting this way simply because he was an all-round piece of trash that saw all women, human and hIE, as tools to be used.

That was fine by him. After all, it made kicking his ass easier on his conscience. Besides, it would have been too uncool to let something like this slide in front of a girl.

Arato drew a steady breath, clenched his fist as tightly as he could, and proceeded to light the match.

He pulled the grenade-like pin of his self-restraint off in a single motion as he prepared to take a step forward. Arato was focused now. He had to, for he could only guarantee a single hit in the initial exchange, so he needed to make it count, to maximize his chances of caving the person's face before him into a gaping hole.

It was a foolish decision. Arato already knew that in advance. The variables for a victory did not add up. The person before him was taller, more well-built and he carried himself with a confidence that made Arato wary. Not to mention he was still wearing his school uniform, any run-in with trouble would come with immediate and far reaching consequences.

Rationally, logically, mathematically, an escalation here would make zero sense. The smart thing to do would be to walk away and return home with Lacia.

But, Arato was not a machine. He was a human. And humans followed the burning desires in their hearts. Besides, it wasn't like he could merely stand by and watch idly as the prick continued to run his mouth without the slightest bit of repercussion coming back to bite him in the ass. Arato couldn't care less if he was the target, but Lacia was off-limits.

The senior must have sensed his anger, because an ugly look flashed in his eyes. "What, you wanna go?" He said with a cocky smile. "Sure. Just a heads-up though, I'm a bit of a boxer myself."

Arato saw red, and was about to raise his fist to strike at the older boy when a tall, dashing figure forcefully inserted himself between the both of them.

"Tch. Kaidai." The senior addressed the third party with a click of his tongue. "Stay out of it. This shit ain't got anything to do with you."

"It is when you try to harass one of my friends." Ryo said. "Your name's Sakagami, was it? Seems like we both know each other then. Then, Sakagami-senpai, allow me to make this clear in the event that you decide to go ahead and do something incredibly stupid."

Ryo shot the older boy a smile. Compared to the bright smiles worn by the robotic Lacia, it was a sterile expression that lacked even the slightest bit of any human warmth. Even though it was a strange thing to consider, Arato wondered who was the actual human between the both of them.

"I will break you. You'll be on your knees begging for mercy when I'm done grinding every last paltry cent from your family's assets in the courts. And if you want more, MemeFrame's security division includes a PMC on their payroll. How would you like it if I send some very nice men to have a friendly chat with your family? So go on then." Ryo growled. "Start some shit."

"Easy to be brave when you got daddy and his thugs backing you up." The older boy sneered. "I hope you watch your step when crossing the street, Kaidai, lest you find yourself meeting the fast end of a car."

"That a threat? By all means, keep digging your grave. My lawyer is going to have a field day."

Arato was about to yell at Ryo to knock it off, that he could stand up for himself and fight his own battles, but he felt a warm, soft cocoon encase his balled fist. A gentle touch that was like akin to applying a cooling pad to his feverish mind.

"Owner, shall we head home?"

Arato sighed, a hot breath emerging from deep within his chest. In an instant, the anger filling him proceeded to dissolve into nothingness. The feeling of relief at Lacia's touch was like having a heavy poison drawn from his body.

"Yeah. Lets." Arato agreed, feeling foolish at how easily the situation could have been avoided. The rest of the world didn't matter. All he required was for Lacia to be by his side.

Arato noticed the way Lacia cradled his taut hand. He'd expected her to separate his fingers as she usually did when he got all worked up like this, but this time, he was provided the chance to relax his fingers on his own accord. That small bit of autonomy made him feel better about himself, like he had finally regained some semblance of his self-control.

Lacia smiled, her pale blue eyes welling up with such gentle affection that Arato quickly felt guilty for even doubting her in the first place. His mind shifted the blame onto his friends for pushing those toxic suggestions into his mind. If only they knew Lacia like he did, then they would understand his trust in her.

After all, there was just no way an untrustworthy person could possess a smile that radiant. That was the justification running through Arato's mind as the both of them left the chaotic world behind them.

Arato took the western exit as they left Sumida Park towards the nearby Asakusa Station. Technically, he was supposed to be hanging out with his buddies from school right now, but after that mess in the park, Arato wanted nothing more than to head home and call it for the day. Ryo was continuing to bombard him with messages on his terminal, but when it became clear that he was merely trying to squeeze every last bit of information about Lacia from him, Arato placed Ryo on his block list, intending to keep him there until he had cooled off with the attempts at interrogation.

Although, the last message that got through before that disturbed Arato with its uncharacteristic morbidity.

"You got a good life ahead of you. Don't throw it away for an hIE. They can't be trusted."

Talk about being paranoid, Arato scoffed at his childhood friend's warnings. He glanced at the girl walking beside him, who flashed him a sweet smile when she noticed the attention being sent her way. Lacia had come through for him when his life was at stake, Ryo just didn't get that.

But even as Arato tried to convince himself, he just couldn't shake the earlier memory of Lacia beaming at that older boy. A dark thought crossed his mind regarding the nature of hIEs and their programmed inclinations to please humans.

Arato came to a stop at a spot just outside of Asakusa Station and grimaced. He felt unwell. His stomach was twisting and turning like he was about to sit for a major exam.

At such an hour close to dinner time, the station was packed with people heading out towards the residential districts nearby.

There were a surprising amount of hIEs around the station area, now that he actually tried looking for them. They all just seemed to blend in with the city and it's inhabitants. But there was one key thing separating them from their creators.

That was, unlike their human owners, each of them were soulless, heartless, beatless automatons.

And that included Lacia as well.

Counting the dozens, maybe over a hundred hIEs there, Arato tried to imagine how each different Owner handled their hIE and drew comparisons to the developing relationship between him and Lacia. The thought of such a thing made his brain overheat and his chest tighten.

All the people coming out of the south exit of Asakusa Station looked at Lacia as they fanned out towards their planned destinations, heading in the direction of the residential district or the local shopping scene. Among them, a few girls glanced at Arato, but only very rarely and not without some unspoken discomfort. It reminded him of the way the ramen stall owner had looked at him. But other than that, most of the attention was directed towards Lacia which only served to remind Arato of his milquetoast status when compared to her dazzling form.

"I guess you'll start standing out even more once your hIE modeling stuff really takes off." Arato said, trying to sound laid-back but he couldn't stop the bitterness from leaking into his voice. Standing next to her like this, he felt strangely inferior. The knowledge that the current gap which existed between them was to only further increase in the future made his usual optimistic nature darken. More and more, Arato felt like his grip on his morality was slipping, and that the dark thoughts and whispers in his mind were cropping up with an increasing frequency.

If he were an hIE himself, Arato was sure the instructions passed on from the imaginary cloud behavioral server would have directed him into being warmly supportive of Lacia's work and the attention she was receiving. But no matter how he tried, Arato couldn't bring himself to force such a phony smile on his face.

"Is something the matter?" Lacia peeked at his face curiously. Despite having seen this area numerous times, Arato was fidgeting like a country yokel.

He watched as a salaryman, already smashed right after getting off work, stagger down the street while leaning heavily on the arm of a woman wearing a gaudy dress that revealed a large, almost indecent amount of her skin. From the way she moved, Arato could tell from a glance that the woman was an hIE.

The hIE was a tool to be used. And judging from the way the salaryman was snuggling against his hIE while they walked, it was clear how she was being used.

Arato returned his attention to Lacia who was continuing to peer at his face in interest, noting how she shifted to be closer by his side. A fragrant bouquet of pear and freesia reached him. If he had been presented with the same sight just this morning, Arato would have not have held any doubts regarding the presence of his libido.

But seeing the way the salaryman had treated his tool made Arato feel a pang of guilt at his own intense desire for Lacia, the seemingly obsequious puppet he owned.

Arato stared blankly at the snowy white strap of her camisole, the thin, lacy material contrasting erotically against her fair collarbone. He could feel a wave of nausea start to form in the pit of his stomach as a sickening realization began to dawn on him.

Knowing this made the expected happiness at having a girl like Lacia display her interest in him evaporate instantly. Arato studied the cold, clinical nature of her beautiful features along with the uncanny suppleness of her pale, blemish-free complexion. Lacia was still ravishingly attractive in his eyes, but in a way that only served to remind Arato of her inhuman nature. It was as if a Pygmalion had gone mad in his quest for perfection when creating her.

"Owner?" Lacia asked. Her voice was tight and there was a worried expression on her face.

"It's nothing." Arato tried to reassure her, but judging by the cloudy look he received, Lacia had already seen through his lie. His heart throbbed painfully in guilt when he saw her face fall, but Arato resolutely decided to stick to his guns. Sometimes the truth was too sensitive to be discussed, especially when it involved the sordid nature regarding the feelings of fear and revulsion linking directly to the dark thoughts swirling in his heart.

"There is something clearly bothering you. You needn't hold back. Let me have the full brunt of your emotions."

Arato felt ticked off. Lacia spoke as though she understood his feelings better than he did.

"Is that really necessary?" A surprising note of derision, of hostility towards what he saw as her condescending kindness, crept into Arato's voice quicker than he could stop. "What's the point of us talking if you have everything already figured out beforehand?"

Lacia pursed her lips together and the next time she spoke, Arato could sense the reprimand behind her words.

"No, I'm serious. Please talk me through your feelings." Lacia insisted. "Predictions and theoretical models are but an inferior substitute to first-party inputs. This feeling you possess, where your perception is distorted from reality, contains the risk to evolve into a crucial factor that eventually goes on to undermine our entire connection. If we are to maintain a healthy long-term relationship, functional communication is a vital framework."

Arato felt like he was being lectured in the same manner a student who gave his teacher the incorrect answer to a question would. He felt a sense of irritation begin to creep up on him and tick him off. Lacia, the heartless robot, was lecturing him, the human with an actual heart, on relationships and social interactions. A petty, childish part of him bristled at being superseded in such a fundamental way.

But despite all that, Arato still wanted her more than anything.

"You always talk about things like you're on the outside looking in." Arato tried to explain as gently as he could to the heartless robot in front of him. "But sometimes, just because you know the optimal action doesn't automatically mean the bottleneck between people is instantly removed. The correct answer doesn't always lead to the correct outcome. Even if you order me to, it's still difficult to dump all of my problems on another person. That would just be rude of me."

"My apologies, but this is where you are mistaken, Owner. I am not a human. I am a tool." Lacia said firmly. Arato was surprised, he'd assumed that her pliant nature as an hIE would have already conceded in order to appease him. "A tool is only as useful to the extent in which their Owners place their trust in them. I do not desire to be the tool that has misplaced the confidence of its Owner in performing its functions. Please, use me as you see fit. I was made to be used."

A sense of welling frustration crossed Arato. Again, Lacia was giving him a hard time whenever he tried to treat her like a person. If Arato didn't know any better, it was as if Lacia was trying to tell him something she'd been forbidden to say from deep within her non-existent heart.

Arato was about to brush her off when he felt his entire world come crashing down on him.

"Were you afraid of being cuckolded?" Lacia asked.

No, to say that she asked was a misnomer. Lacia was an hIE, an object which only responded after taking all the variables into account and performing the necessary calculations. Thus, it was more a statement than a question. The machine was informing the human of the sordid truth under the guise of a question.

Arato felt like he'd given a good showing of himself just now. But, just like that night when he'd first met her, Arato found himself confronted by the merciless gaze of an inhuman robot, her icy cold blue eyes endless in their soulless depths.

He felt a chill roll down his spine at Lacia's sudden personality switch.

"Did you assume that I was going to accept another man's advances?" Lacia stated crisply with all the subtlety of a battering ram.

Arato shook, his body trembling as if he was on the verge of suffering a stroke. Lacia had spoken with such assurance that there was no hope of denying her allegations. Under her pure blue eyes which resembled a plenilune gaze, Arato felt like he'd been placed under a microscope where his psyche was steadily being dissected. An overwhelming sense of shame racked his body like he'd been stripped naked and exposed for the perfect specimen of failure that he was. He opened his mouth to say something but he found himself fumbling against the impenetrable front of a heartless machine.

Lacia's words had hurt him in a deep, primal sort of way, especially when considering they came from the source of his desires. Having her back him into a corner like this was so painful that it made Arato feel like he was going to lose it. He could visualize the cracks appearing on the reputable image that he'd worked so hard to project. His heart was constricting painfully and Arato found himself unable to even meet her piercing eyes, instead choosing to complete his burial by staring at the sidewalk. Shame and desire warred against the other to produce a toxic concoction that poisoned his mind.

The girl he liked had finally figured him out for the trash he was. She had asked him to place his trust in her, and he'd failed at something that basic.

Lacia was just standing by, studying his reaction with a quiet intensity. Behind her enigmatic blue irises, Arato found himself unable to fathom the processes running through her mind. The air around him seemed thick, almost viscous, to the point where his lungs struggled to execute their basic functions.

After what seemed like an eternity, Lacia finally spoke up.

"Your worries are unfounded. To emphasize the quality of the Owner experience, high-end hIE models automatically lock their sexual service functions to the Owner upon registration. However, if you were to find such a safeguard insufficient, on your command I can limit my interactions to exclude all humans outside of Yuka-sama." If it came from any other person, Arato would have brushed it off as a joke, but Lacia's serious gaze told him otherwise.

Lacia was a product of the future that they lived in, a machine no human could possibly hope to match or understand. There was so much Arato didn't know about her, like her goals, or why she chose to stay by his side. Arato figured that if she really wanted to, Lacia could have arranged her arguments in a way to convince him without forcing a decision. But she was willing to throw that all away, depending on how he answered.

A dark insinuation crossed his mind but Arato ruthlessly strangled that degenerate fantasy in its crib before it could mature.

Lacia might have been heartless, but he wasn't. The simple fact created doubt. But, as much reluctance as he felt, Arato only felt even more affection for the girl in front of him. His heart soared whenever he snuck peeks at her face from time to time, wondering if it was possible for a robot like her to love him, despite having no heart of her own.

"Why me?" Arato struggled to express himself. The girl before him was destined for much greater things. That much he could tell. When compared to someone as plain as him, it boggled the mind. Maybe his friend Kengo would finally be proud of him. He was starting to doubt the validity of someone as stunning as Lacia being dropped in his lap outside of dumb luck. "You could have picked anyone else."

His vision swam and his chest started to hurt. A dark nightmare was playing out in his head.

"You are a wonderful Owner." She answered immediately. "You possess many admirable virtues. You are kind, honest, and easy to understand. These are qualities I desire in my ideal Owner."

Arato felt like she was deflecting him in some way, but he couldn't bring himself to press any harder. Seeing that, Lacia reached over to place her hand over his. Arato hadn't even noticed, but he'd been clutching at his chest without realizing it.

She continued to hold his hand, her delicate fingers almost entwined with his in her grip. It was her answer, conveyed wordlessly. Lacia spoke her mind with her body, not wanting to push an answer onto him while he was vulnerable during a moment of uncertainty by responding with words. Arato took a moment to wonder why the humans who'd invented hIEs decided to give them realistic body warmth. The heat in her hand made him hesitant to let it go.

Even though Arato should have known better, he couldn't stop his heart from racing in a thrill. The reaction she'd given him was perfect. When a small part of him realized that this was probably what it was like to fight over a childish matter with his lover, he couldn't help but respond positively to that implication.

"Please, trust in me." Lacia said simply. She tugged their linked hands to place them on her chest, at a spot just below where her larynx would have been. In contrast to the hammering war drum just before, her papillon heart was beatless. "After all, I belong to you now."

Arato felt euphoric enough to be embarrassed. Or at least, he would have been if he hadn't noticed the look on Lacia's face. Lacia was smiling, but it was a bittersweet sort of smile he'd never seen before. When paired with the melancholic look in her eyes, it gave off a sense of sadness akin to the feeling that one would get when watching a tragic stage play. A part of him came to recognize the look on Lacia's face. It wasn't the expression of a soulless robot reenacting its scripted, calculated response.

But rather, it was the longing look of a woman pining after something she would never have.

"I'm sorry. It was wrong of me to treat you like that." Arato admitted, finally understanding the root cause of the day's events. "You aren't embarrassing to have around." He clarified as Lacia quietly stared at him. "That was your intention, wasn't it? Because I was being childish trying to hide you away from everyone."

It must have made for a strange sight. A human apologizing to an hIE. Arato knew that if his friends were around, he would have been mocked for sure.

The girl with no heart smiled.

"Starting tomorrow, would you prefer it if I accompanied you to school?" Lacia tilted her head and asked.

"Might as well." Arato told her. "The cat's already out of the bag."

"If that is your desire." She acceded genteelly.

They had spent so much time talking that the street lights around them were starting to power on. The lamps bathed her in white light, as if it, too was admiring her smile. Her smooth skin seemed to glow in response, and the light seemed to accent her cheeks and the thin line of her neck.

Arato looked away without thinking, conscious of their still connected hands. His eyes studied Asakusa-dori Avenue, a familiar sight that he passed by plenty of times by now. The usual hawkers were peddling their wares as the urban populace carried out their daily routine. But with Lacia by his side, even this mundane backdrop seemed refreshing and brilliant. He thought that with her around, nothing was impossible. The world was his oyster.

"Thanks, Lacia." He said whole-heartedly. It felt like he was the one benefitting the most from their connection and Arato did not wish to seem like an ingrate when acknowledging the imbalanced nature of their current relationship. "No, I didn't mean to sound patronizing." He hurriedly added when he saw the slightly curious look on Lacia's cool face.

"I'm just glad we met." Arato confessed.

"Please continue to tell me more of your wishes, Owner." Lacia requested sincerely. "I am an interface made to interact with users who desire to expand their worlds. It's okay for you as my Owner to expand your world some more."

Arato couldn't quite grasp what she was saying, but he felt like the previously peaceful world that he was accustomed to was just a foreshadowing of some sorts, and that he was receiving an invitation to somewhere far away.

In the back of his mind, Arato already knew. He knew that Lacia had tracked down his school and made the choice to appear before him without any prior instructions from him as her Owner. He also knew that her timing was not some sort of coincidence and that she had somehow managed to gain access to his timetable.

Lacia's pale blue eyes radiated with a soft light, different from the lights of the city around them. Arato realized that she knew he had noticed the discrepancies in her behavior and abilities. She had also understood that he had chosen not to ask her about it.

She smiled softly, and when compared to the overwhelming radiance of the beams she'd previously shown him, Arato thought the current expression on her face seemed more natural and lifelike, if a term like that could be applied to a robot.

"If you do indeed trust me, then, it goes without saying that you trust in my actions as well." Her gaze was warm, but there was a slightly ethereal quality to her voice that Arato could not quite pick out.

"I guess that's true." Arato agreed.

Lacia might have been a complete mystery to him, but nevertheless, she still entranced him in more ways than one. Honestly, he'd previously comforted himself regarding Lacia's modeling job by rationalizing it as a chance to find out more information about her original Owner, but that too was a lie of the barest sort. Arato had already formed an emotional attachment to her. And somewhere along the way, he'd made the decision to not let Lacia go, even if it meant losing his ordinary life in the process.

He asked Lacia to hire an automatic vehicle to take them home. At first, he thought about taking a taxi instead, but the sprawling queue shut down any hopes of that. Despite everything he'd previously said, Arato felt like he'd enough excitement for today and wished to avoid the crush of the subway. Besides, Yuka was blowing up his phone in demand of nourishment. The automated vehicle couldn't enter the station front due to said crowd of taxis. According to Lacia's guidance, they would have to walk for quite a ways to meet up with it.

It might have been his self-consciousness, but Arato felt like the strangers around him were giving him a wider berth than usual. He, the human, and she, the robot, were walking with their strides perfectly in sync. It should have only been a short time since they started walking, but Arato felt like they had been going on for a while.

"If we were the only two people on Earth, I wouldn't need to worry about public opinion and other troublesome things like that." Arato mused.

Lacia beamed at him, a bright, loving smile packed with so much affection it made his heart flutter. Arato didn't know what the smile truly meant to her, but when she rested her head against his shoulder as they walked, he could smell the faint scent of shampoo coming from her hair.

"Would you like to use me to reduce the standing population of this world to just us two?" Lacia pouted as she affectionately squeezed his hand.

"At least make it three. Actually, four." Arato added quickly, almost forgetting about his dad for a moment. Now that he thought about it, there was one last thing he needed to go over with her.

Lacia narrowed her eyes mischievously at him. The atmosphere should have been romantic, but there was something slightly off in the pleasant haze engulfing him. If he decided to confess his love for her right there and then, Lacia would obviously say she loved him back. He would be all over himself in the purest ecstasy, but there would still be no heart behind her reciprocation.

Arato felt like the road in front of him stretched off beyond the setting sun. A long and arduous path that lay far off from the beaten track. No, no need to go that far, Arato chided himself. He knew better than anyone that he was getting ahead of himself. Day by day, step by step, one thing at a time.

But, in his heart of hearts, Arato desired a relationship with this 'object' that he'd fallen for.

Even if she didn't have a heart.

Even if she wasn't even a human.

Arato still wanted her in the same way a man wanted a woman.

"I guess I'll have to properly introduce you to my father." Arato said, and then caught himself. "Well, I mean. Not that kind of introduction." From the way he had worded it, an outsider listening in might have misinterpreted him as saying he was going to introduce Lacia as his girlfriend. Arato couldn't help but blush. Peering into her light blue eyes and indulging himself imagining an actual romantic, long-term relationship with Lacia was setting his heart ablaze with passion.

"When the time is right, please find an opportunity to introduce me in a way that will satisfy you." Lacia answered demurely. A shy blush was creeping up on her cheeks and she was fidgeting in a way that made his heart sing and blood rush to his face.

The sweet heat of it didn't fade until the silver cruiser pulled up at the apartment where they lived and he had to endure a lecture on how he'd starved his precious little sister.