Analog Hack

by Infinity Caliber

Set a hundred years from now, in a familiar yet futuristic vision of Japan where society is run by incredibly human-looking robots, a boy meets a strange girl. With society divided on the line between progress and losing sight of the definition of 'humanity', a choice looms for 17-year-old Endo Arato. Is it easier to change oneself to fit society or change society to fit oneself?

8. Limerent Hope

Chapter 8: Limerent Hope

Summary:

"Our meeting was always bound to happen. It was fate. Endo Arato, you were the only one for me."

Lacia's words were accompanied by a transcendentally blissful smile. She sounded immensely joyous, like a blushing newlywed bride at the altar. Considering the utter absence of doubt on her face, Arato knew that she had meant every word.

He didn't know for sure if what Lacia had just said was merely an analog hack to get him to lower his guard and trust her more, or if it came from somewhere special inside her hollow frame. Arato himself knew that she was a heartless machine, but holding her tightly like this, with his hammering heart beating on her chest, he felt that if a human poured enough emotion into it, even a robot could come to have a heart.

Like how a campfire warms those who gather around it, Arato thought that if nothing else, he could pass on some of that warmth to Lacia and have her understand what it felt like to be loved. Even if it was just an echo of the real thing, Arato wanted Lacia to experience the feeling of possessing a heart.

He himself knew that it was a foolish way of thinking, backed by pure emotion instead of any rational logic, but Arato wanted to believe that if he pumped Lacia full of his hot love, he could move her, just like how an empty glass naturally slides on the table when one pours water into it from a pitcher. Even if it made her overflow, Arato wanted to keep filling her up.

There was always the off-chance it turned out that he was just indulging in a limerent hope of his own delusional feelings in the end, but Arato felt that if he made the conscious decision willingly, then at least the ruined path would be one of his own choosing.

That was why he flooded her with an unspoken message, a raw voice from the deepest aspects of his soul. By pouring his life into this object, he begged, with whatever wings she'd have left.

"Please wrap me up in them."

---

No matter what happened, the Earth's axis continued to rotate. Or plainly speaking, the morning came upon him once more and Arato found himself back in his classroom. Ryo was absent today, Arato having overheard from his homeroom teacher that he had been called up to deal with something with his father's company. But even if it was just an illusion of peace, Arato still felt a sense of comfort by the fact that he was currently somehow still here in his classroom taking lunch with his friend Kengo instead of being interrogated by the police or locked in a prison cell awaiting trial, as if nothing had ever occurred.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Arato wordlessly made a quick inspection of the van before hopping back into the rented car and going straight home, leaving Lacia all alone at the crime scene. He found that being around Lacia had become unbearable for him. She came back later in the evening, and without saying anything, went straight to the kitchen to begin preparing dinner.

Arato refused to talk to her the entire time, not even thanking her for the food after he was done eating. Of course, it went without saying that Lacia did not sneak into his room that night for another round of secret midnight cuddle sessions. Not that he was looking forward to something like that, not at all, Arato fruitlessly tried to lie to himself.

And he absolutely did not feel a hollow sense of loneliness when he found himself going back to his regular routine of being awakened by the ringing alarm of his pocket terminal instead of the usual ambush. There was also not a chance in hell Arato missed having her warmth and scent close to him.

"Trouble in paradise?" Kengo deadpanned as Arato pushed his desk over next to his and cracked open the bento that he'd bought from a convenience store on the way to school. Unlike the premade stuff Arato was digging into at the moment, Kengo's family ran a restaurant, so he had a homemade boxed lunch every day. "You look like shit, by the way." He pointed to the bandaid on his nose.

The swelling on his cheeks and nose had mostly recovered thanks to the medicated ointment he'd applied, but Arato still felt sore in places, and he didn't mean just his feelings. Even now, Arato had the suspicion that if he blew his nose too harshly, the bleeding would restart again.

"No idea what you're getting at." Arato said as he started to mix the corn and potato stew into his rice. He knew that since he didn't order Lacia to pack a lunch for him, he didn't possess the right to complain, but looking at the extravagant spread Yuka received for her bento that morning somehow pissed him off. Arato was pretty sure he even saw the beautiful red color of spiny lobster in her lunch.

"Object in human form my ass. You're acting like a girl about the entire thing." Arato grumbled under his breath. As far as he could tell, Lacia really did seem to take the 'don't do anything unless I order you to' instruction he'd given her pretty seriously.

Somehow, Arato felt like it was another of her plans to drive him up the wall by ignoring him on purpose. And Arato had to admit, from the way it affected him, that the cold shoulder treatment she was giving him was working spectacularly.

"I'm talking about your lunch. That's store-bought crap. At least peel the label off beforehand, moron. Have some standards, will you?" Kengo sniped.

"Since when did you become a five-star gourmet?" Arato had no idea why Kengo was acting all stuck up about his food, so he glanced over to compare. Contained in his simple bento were meatballs in a marinara sauce, potato salad, and some chopped-up pieces of rolled omelet on top of rice.

"I actually make my own lunch every day." Kengo started to explain in detail without him asking. "My parents are looking to me to inherit the restaurant one day, so I'm starting to learn how to cook. Besides, I get to save some money by preparing mine and Olga's meals together. Not everyone can afford an hIE to do everything for them, you know." He pointed out. "Say, speaking of that hIE of yours. What happened to the lunches she used to make for you? Not to mention, I didn't see you coming to school with her this morning as well."

"I wanted to try to become more self-sufficient. After all, I can't let myself be spoiled all the time." Arato lied, although not completely. He might have not been on speaking terms with Lacia at the moment, but he too was starting to feel like he needed to regain some measure of his independence after being under her influence for so long. "Else, at this rate, I'm going to turn out into the sort of deadbeat loser who relies on his hIE for everything."

"At least put in the effort to buy something less sad before trying to act all cool. Did you join the vegan movement or something? Are you going to lecture me about the evils of eating meat? You do know it's all lab-grown stuff now, right?" Kengo snarked, referring to his lunch which only contained vegetables and rice. It lacked animal proteins of any sort, not even fish.

"I just don't feel like eating meat today." Arato said hesitantly as he watched Kengo break open one of his meatballs with his chopsticks. Instantly, he felt dizzy remembering the events of yesterday, when he had reduced the face of Lacia's kidnapper to a bloody mess. The red tomato sauce only added to his vivid imagination. Kengo must have noticed the queasy look on his face because he immediately looked offended.

"Hey, I get that it's probably not up to the usual bourgeoisie standards of a rich kid like you, but can you at least try not to look down on my food like that?" Kengo growled at him, before drawing off into a long sigh. "But at least your brain seems to be functioning again. I'm glad you finally see the light, Arato."

"I was making stuff up about that. Truth be told, we're actually not really getting along right now." Arato admitted, feeling like he was confessing to having relationship troubles with his girlfriend. Except Lacia was a robot, and she was most certainly not his girlfriend or anything close to it. Even if it was his friend Kengo, he still felt foolish for telling someone about this.

"What? Do you mean like you're arguing with it or something? Don't be ridiculous." Kengo shot him a look of disbelief. "Arato, only nutjobs yell at their appliances. If it's a misunderstanding, just order it to apologize and be done with it."

"Don't talk about Lacia like she's a tool." Arato snarled with an intensity that surprised even him. He realized his face was starting to redden from anger at the way Kengo spoke about Lacia. "Take that back and apologize right now."

"The hell's your problem, man." Kengo snapped at him, not backing down in the slightest. "First, you come up here to tell me that that hIE of yours is annoying you but then fly off the handle the second you think someone might be dissing her. God, you're such a white knight for her it's insane. Stop being tricked by that hIE and get your head sorted out. That thing's a machine, not your girlfriend. Even if you ordered her to, she doesn't have the emotional range to truly be something like that. It's all a program executing a GFE roleplaying script at the end of the day, nothing but a low-effort relationship for low-effort users."

Arato already knew all of this, but having the reality shoved in his face like that still had the effect of pissing him off. In Japan, the industry for rental services that targeted companionship and familial needs had been taken over by hIEs as well. With the right cloud service along with their humanoid frames, hIEs could act out any role required of them.

"I think it's better if we don't see each other for a while." He said stiffly. It wasn't exactly cutting ties or anything dramatic like that, but Arato found that he couldn't stand to be in the presence of someone who spoke about Lacia like that. She still had that effect on him, no matter how much Arato tried to deny it. Stuff that concerned Lacia always seemed to have the effect of sending his rational mind out the window. Just thinking about her made his head go hot and fuzzy, filling his mind with equal parts anger and bitterness, along with a twisted sense of affection that still lingered.

"Yeah, that's right. Take their side just like everyone else does." Kengo called out sourly after him as Arato picked up his lunch and made to leave the classroom. The solitude of the staircases near the roof sounded like a good place to clear his head right now. "Seriously, this is why I hate this world. Everyone's so caught up with their interfaces, no one cares about other humans anymore."

As the automated sliding door of the classroom closed after him, Arato heard Suguri Kengo spit a vile curse upon this world.

"I thought you were different, Arato. That's why I tried to be your friend. But even you got analog hacked all the same by them. In the end, you too turned into someone who values these deceitful machines over your fellow humans."

Despite what he'd just said, Arato thought to himself that maybe, this was what it felt like to part ways with someone.

---

The second pocket terminal he carried in his schoolbag meant for special activities had been buzzing all day. Apparently, one of their members had been caught abusing the Network for his own personal use and then proceeded to drop off the grid completely.

"All that crap about apologizing. Can't he see it's just a machine?"

Even as he stepped off the train at Honjo-azumabashi Station, Suguri Kengo remained pissed off from his earlier encounter with his classmate, Arato. 'Sunflower', the eatery which doubled as his home was located in the Azumabashi district. It was a family-run establishment with over fifty years of history in its operations, going back three generations. The ground floor served as the restaurant operation, while the second was where he and his family lived. With a capacity of twenty-eight seats available to diners, it was a small, cozy place with low-priced menus to match its homely atmosphere brought about by the consumption of cheap fried foods and draft beer in prodigious amounts.

"Who am I trying to kid? He didn't change at all. Arato's still the same moronic kid that ran around screaming to the world how he was going to marry that hIE back then. I thought growing up would set him straight about these kinds of things." Kengo complained to no one in particular. He fished out his pocket terminal from his bag and sent a few messages.

The event he was referring to had occurred during their second grade in elementary school. There, by coincidence, Kengo found himself sharing a class with one particular Endo Arato. One day, their teacher was explaining to them about how hIEs worked and that they were merely appliances that imitated human behavior through their programming, and that no matter if they smiled, laughed, cried, or got angry, it meant nothing as hIEs did not possess actual emotions and feelings within their hollow forms.

It was then, Kengo recalled Arato raising his hand to interrupt the lecture.

"Hey, teacher! Can you marry an hIE?"

Faced with such earnest positivity, the young woman who served as their teacher blushed and smiled sheepishly as if she found herself forced to explain how the birds and the bees worked to an innocent child.

"Well... To begin with, hIEs are machines, just like a car." The teacher explained as simply to the child as she could. "You wouldn't ever consider marrying a car, would you, Endo-kun?"

Kengo remembered the childish pout that crossed Arato's young face as the teacher gently shut him down.

"But the hIE I saw at my Dad's company was super pretty!" Kengo watched from his seat as Arato blurted his usual nonsense loudly without a care in the world how others might have seen him, a moronic grin plastered all over his dumb face. "I'm going to marry her anyway!"

The rest of the students in the class, the girls in particular, laughed and giggled at his strange declaration, calling Arato a 'weirdo' and 'strange'.

"Uh... Endo-kun." The teacher now tried to bring the child back to reality. "It's not possible to marry an hIE."

"Don't care! hIE or not, she'll be my wife!" He yelled.

But despite all that, Arato continued to stand there in the spotlight, beaming the entire time as if the harsh words from his peers were just powerless waves crashing on an invulnerable bulwark. It was then, that Kengo had to grudgingly admit that he admired the strength of his convictions, even if Arato was a fool of the highest order.

"How stupid. You can only get married if you love each other. hIEs don't carry hearts and they can't feel. How can you marry something that doesn't even have feelings?" Kengo spat. Thinking about something as ridiculous as the concept of love being applied to a computer packaged in a human shell only served to make him angrier.

As he turned the corner that led to his home, Kengo glowered at the other restaurants in the surrounding area. Most of them employed hIEs instead of humans to run their businesses, depriving honest people of a job that they needed to earn their livelihoods. Sometimes, by being run by humans instead of machines, it felt like his place was a relic that refused to move on with the times.

"Kengo, you're late. You shouldn't make us wait for meals." His mother lectured him as he slid open the traditional wooden door to his home. Though her hair was a vibrant blonde, she spoke fluent Japanese with only the slightest hint of a foreign accent. His mother, Veronika, had been an exchange student from Russia when she'd met his father.

He peered over her shoulder up the staircase which led to their living quarters. There, his little sister Olga was waiting. She must have come out from the adjacent dining room when she heard him return. Locks of hair the color of pale straw shook as she mumbled a greeting to him as well. Unlike him, who took his looks from their Japanese father, Olga's features were clearly foreign, a product of their Russian mother.

"Where's Dad?" Kengo skipped over her greeting and asked. His half-Russian sister was wearing traditional tama kanzashi on her hair again. This along with her inclination towards classical Japanese hobbies and fashions made Kengo feel that sometimes, Olga was overcompensating to try and fit into Japan, a country that never found itself fully comfortable with foreigners to begin with. Before one got the wrong idea, it wasn't as if she faced any overt racism or hate of any sort, but there was always that sense of distance and awkwardness subtly lingering under the surface. "Will he be joining us for dinner?"

Kengo wondered if Olga knew what some people thought of her when she tried so hard like this. There were some who painted outsiders like her and her attempts at integration as insincere and clumsy, like a square peg trying to force itself through a round hole. He'd come across it once or twice on the message boards, the saying 'The foreigner is more Japanese than the Japanese', a sardonic reference as to how some locals looked down upon outsiders who went out of their way to intensely study and overanalyze their culture and norms and then coming away thinking they knew better than anyone how the 'real Japan' worked. What they didn't understand was that Japanese society only made a simple distinction.

There were Japanese, and there were non-Japanese and that was that.

Even in the 22nd century which displayed the full effects of globalization, unlike American and to a lesser extent European companies, who were always more comfortable being globalized in the first place, most CEOs and Presidents of major Japanese corporations remained native Japanese citizens. The top leadership of Japan's largest hIE and automobile manufacturer, Toyota, for instance, usually remained firmly in the hands of a blood-related member of the Toyoda family lineage, a tradition that was only broken a few times in its long history since its founding, and only when there was no other option available. Even MemeFrame, a relatively young tech company that ran the world's largest hIE behavioral management cloud by market share, passed its top leadership seats within the bloodline of its founding family whenever possible, with both Kaidai Ryo and Kaidai Shiori expected to take up leading roles in the company following the line of succession after their father.

It might have seemed like an anachronism in today's world, with regular people most likely getting offended if such a sensitive topic was pointed out to them, but it was still a subconscious expectation and distinction in most people's minds, that 'a major Japanese corporation should be run by a Japanese person'. Of course, not every single company in Japan followed this trend in lockstep, but it was still a social value considered entrenched in their society even in this day and age. Another explanation commonly put forward for such a phenomenon was due to the Japanese language itself being a barrier, unlike its fellow language English, which served as the world's lingua franca.

His mother went silent, as she usually did whenever the topic about their store came up.

"He's in the restaurant." His sister answered for their mother. "Hey, why don't we just get an hIE to run the place? If we did that, then Dad would be able to eat with us more often. Everyone else is already doing it." She asked, and not for the first time.

"They have their ways and we have ours." Their mother shut her down, which Kengo found himself agreeing with.

"Just because everyone else is doing it doesn't mean we have to as well." He said as he started to dig in. Dinner today was deep-fried as well, that was the downside of running a family eatery, you usually ate what you had in stock and on the menu. Although, that being said, the karaage today was amazing as usual, as expected from a professional chef specializing in such foods. The average seasoning and soggy skin of the mass-produced premade frozen stuff in the supermarket couldn't hold a candle to what his father could whip up in a kitchen. Not to mention, the dipping sauce as well was of a far better quality than the bottled store-bought junk.

The muffled sounds of rambunctious laughter came from the floor below him. Dinner service was always rowdy, considering that was the time when their customers started hitting the alcohol.

"Is Dad going to be fine?" Kengo asked the room. His father was the old-fashioned sort of chef who really enjoyed interacting with customers over the counter. He was the type of person who took customer service seriously, and not the kind of generic cookie-cutter politeness provided by hIEs. One thing about his father that always amazed Kengo was that he took the time to memorize the names and usual orders of the regular patrons. However, the recent downward trend in customer etiquette was having a negative impact on his mental state and job satisfaction.

This was one of the negative effects of analog hacking. People nowadays were so used to their servers being nothing more than soulless machines that they had seemed to forget polite cultural norms that'd once been common sense. No one complimented the chef anymore, or bothered to say 'please' or 'thank you'. Everyone just seemed so distant and entitled. People took the presence and effort of hIEs for granted to the point that they seemed to stop caring about other humans.

In Kengo's eyes, it seemed as if regular human interaction was slowly starting to chip away, like rust forming on metal.

The noise and commotion from the restaurant below grew louder and his mother got up from her chair. "I'm going to check on your father." She said, leaving the dining room.

This left him alone with his little sister, Olga. Kengo felt annoyed, he couldn't exactly explain why, but things were awkward between them. He wrote it off as a common occurrence between siblings at their age. Only that moron Arato could find it within himself to spoil and get along with his little sister without the slightest bit of shame. Kengo wasn't like that. Unlike Arato, he had a functioning brain.

"Nii-san, are you against us getting an hIE to help around the place?" Olga asked sullenly. "Dad isn't getting any younger."

"They're not the perfect things capable of anything as you think. They're more like human-shaped cars." He told Olga without even looking at her, keeping his gaze fixed on his rice.

After all, hIEs were tools just like cars. With the advent of self-driving cars, all a person needed to do now was to sit back and let the car do all the driving for them. Human transport and movement had become automated, and hIEs were the same. In the first place, when considering the wide range of work hIEs could automate for humans, there was never a challenge for these human-shaped objects to start fitting into human society.

And replacing humans in the process.

The last time Kengo checked, there were over 16 million registered hIEs being operated in Japan alone. More than every one in five members of Japanese society was hIEs. This gave Japan the dubious claim of being the nation with the highest ratio of hIEs to humans in the world. This, along with the catastrophic birth rate made everyone living here be filled with an oppressing sense of apathy. There were even times he heard Ryo darkly joke about the Japanese race being declared an endangered species by the UN and being moved to a sanctuary by the next century or two.

"Nii-san, you really like comparing everything to cars, don't you?" Olga said.

Back then, when Arato had complained about the same thing at the park, he wanted nothing more than to deck him in the face. But somehow, hearing the words come from his little sister's gentle voice didn't seem to set him off the same way Arato did when he'd said it.

"You too as well, huh?" Kengo sighed, referring to how even his little sister seemed to be on the side of hIEs.

"Also, stop using keigo around me. It's weird to hear my own brother sounding so formal." Olga mentioned.

"Sorry about that." Kengo shrugged and continued eating. Olga looked unhappy at his stiff apology.

"I guess I'll start eating as well." She said, after waiting a couple of minutes more and seeing that their mother still had not returned from the restaurant.

Kengo finished first and silently left, leaving the task of washing up to his sister. As he made his way to his room, his stomach was churning. He hadn't enjoyed dinner much, knowing what he had just done earlier.

His house was an old traditional building constructed of wood. It had been built in the previous century, from a time before the advent of ultra high-performance AIs and the technologies they invented. Due to that, the sixty-year-old house only had a single wireless power plug, and even that too was reserved for the restaurant's sole use. Everything else in his home was wired. The lights and air conditioning too were wired and had to be manually controlled. His house as well did not possess a digital home system like most modern houses in Japan.

That meant that without any security systems, there was no way for Kengo to tell if anyone had snuck into his room. But even knowing that, what he found waiting for him when he opened the traditional sliding screen to his room was far beyond his wildest imagination.

"Yo." The figure called out to him in an overly casual way.

A young girl wearing a ridiculous bodysuit-like combat armor was sitting on his desk, one single sleek leg almost lazily propped up on the table. Her communication module accessories on her dark red hair were designed in the shape of a feral beast and her crimson eyes which were ever so big smoldered with an intensity that sent chills down his spine.

The wind from the open window beside his desk, her entry point from the looks of it, made locks of red float around her. With the bright moon at her back, the unknown girl flashed him a feral grin that showed teeth that were just a bit too white to be natural. She must have been enjoying the odor of fear coming from him, for it showed in her expression.

"Who the hell are you? How did you get here? Answer me or I'm calling the police!" Kengo tried to sound like he was in control, but it was obvious from the way the words spilled out of him that he was panicking.

"I'll shut the door if I were you." The girl waved lazily at him.

Kengo hurriedly stepped inside and did as she said, after all, it would do no good for the rest of his family to get involved with this sort of stuff right now. The entire time, he kept his eyes warily locked onto the girl, half expecting her to rush him at any time. Casually leaning on the side of his desk was something horrible, something he'd never encountered or seen before in his entire life. It was a large bulky cannon-rifle that served as her device.

Whatever it was, it was clearly something that no human could have moved under their own power. Attached under the barrel of the weapon was a gigantic blade of a ludicrous size, if Kengo had to guess, the bayonet had to be over a meter long.

Kengo didn't know the precise details of the capabilities of the weapon, but considering the laser cannon she carried was even larger than the main gun of a main battle tank, he was sure that if the girl before him decided to go berserk with that thing, she could turn his house in a smoking crater in about three seconds if she so wished.

"Just what the hell is going on?" Kengo asked. Nothing made sense. He was up to date with information regarding current military hardware and their drones, but even if the girl in front of him was a military drone, the equipment she carried with her clearly did not match up to the current level of technology and armament of the weapons in use by the military.

The girl remained silent but continue to grin in a way that pissed him off.

"Say something!" Kengo snapped. "Why is there a heavily armed hIE in my room?"

"I'm Kouka." The girl introduced herself. "I've come in response to the request you've put forward to the Antibody Network."

The Antibody Network was an illegal terrorist group driven by an interconnection of evil wills. Like any organization, each member had set roles in the hierarchy. For example, one of the lowest entry-level roles, along with the minimal legal risk that it posed, that an individual could partake in to assist the Network was the job of a Reporter. Reporters were members of the Network who uploaded information with their terminals in the forms of pictures or GPS locations of random hIEs walking by themselves in a secluded place. They also recorded the locations of police officers and their cars to assist in crimes committed by the group. As public recordings were not illegal, these acts usually did not land the Reporter in trouble.

Afterward, a group of Destroyers, the Antibody Network's physical muscle, would gather with melee weapons and hearts filled with hate. Although hIEs were a bundle of sensory and recording equipment, there were plenty of ways to render their sensors ineffective if one knew how to. For the Destroyers, all they had to do was to trust in their mission support provided by the Antibody Network and tune in to their pocket terminals to receive instructions. They didn't need to think or plan, everything from the setup to the getaway was already decided for them. It was a perfect role for one who did not wish to exercise their brains and merely wanted to take out their frustrations on hIEs. Kengo thought them as savages.

Reporters were pretty much the Antibody Network's version of 'part-timers' or members who were not fully committed to the cause, and like any entry-level role, Reporters comprised the bulk of the Antibody Network membership.

And it was Kengo himself earlier that day who had put in a request to the Antibody Network to smash the hIE of his classmate Arato, Lacia, to pieces.

However, that was not to say Kengo was merely a person who casually mingled at the fringes when it came to the activities of the Antibody Network. In terms of commitment, his role in the organization was one level above that of a Reporter but below a full-on Destroyer.

Kengo was a Supervisor, a member of the Antibody Network who acted as the control and oversaw the hIE destruction missions of the Destroyers. He saw the Destroyers as nothing more than faceless tools that he controlled as his chess pieces. As part of their operating security, the Supervisor and the Destroyers did not know the identity of the other. Using text messages and modulated voice communications, contact was established with each other through the privacy of the Antibody Network.

Unlike Reporters, Supervisors were operating in a legally risky area and actually possessed the chance to be arrested if they were caught. That was why Kengo spent most of his free time holed up in his room, isolated from the rest of his family who had no idea what he was actually up to.

This was his way of stopping the erosion of human society by hIEs. It was the reason why he joined up in the first place, to protect humanity from heartless machines.

On that day when Arato had picked up the torn-off hIE arm, his friends did not realize it then, but it was Kengo himself who had guided and directed the Destroyers to wreck that particular hIE in the first place.

And here he was, putting in a request for the Antibody Network to turn Lacia into scrap. Seeing the way how Arato had become obsessed with that tool of his made Kengo angry. He was putting in so much effort for a machine when all that work could have gone to a human instead. Back then at the park, Arato and Ryo had been too distracted by the other student to notice, but Kengo was observing the entire thing from afar.

Even now, he could clearly recall the eerily pleased smile on Lacia's face as she watched Arato get all worked up for her sake. It was an oddly sinister expression that made one break out in cold sweat.

"Bullshit. Since when did the Antibody Network outsource their work to a machine?" Kengo called her out.

"I'll have you know you're talking to the top agent of the Network." Kouka grinned. "Besides, why do you care as long as the job gets done?"

"It's this kind of mentality that got us here in this place." Kengo spat at her. The Antibody Network was a group of human volunteers striving to protect humanity from the erosion of society by soulless tools. The concept of a group like that outsourcing their work to an hIE was the height of irony and hypocrisy.

But Kengo himself was a two-faced hypocrite, calling himself Arato's friend while he went behind his back to do something like this, so he had no right to lecture her. He moved to unlock the terminal on his desk to provide her with further details about the mission. This made him get closer to Kouka and once he was in range, Kengo found that he had to suppress his gag reflex.

"Oh my god, you stink! You smell like shit!" Kengo covered his nose and desperately searched for the air freshener in his room. "No really, you reek of actual shit, what the hell!?"

"We can't be smelling like peaches and cream all the time." While spraying down his room with the aerosol like he was trying to break the Geneva Conventions regarding chemical warfare, Kengo heard Kouka sneer. "Unlike you humans, we aren't biological creatures so the only scents of an hIE come from their surrounding environment."

"Where have you been then!? Traipsing in the sewers!?" Kengo complained as the can in his hands rattled pathetically. He had exhausted the entire volume of a once-full canister. "Great, now my room smells like flowers and shit. What a wonderful combination."

"Ping Pong! You're correct." Kouka made a sound like a pachinko machine. "It's pretty hard for someone like me to fly under the radar, especially when I'm lugging around my device." She gestured towards the ridiculously oversized device. He could see her point, something like that was bound to easily draw attention if one were to carelessly wave it around in public.

Kengo brought up the relevant images from the data he'd collected regarding Lacia on his terminal. He hadn't told Arato, but at the park, he was already collecting material to use against her if needed. "That's the target." He said. "She's living with her Owner in Shin Koiwa. I think the best time to hit her would be when she leaves to go shopping on her own."

"Hmm. So this is what my Onee-sama has been up to all this time. Playing house with a kid? Really now, I thought she had bigger dreams than that." Kouka said as she reached to gently brush her fingers over the displayed image on the 3D display. "Look at the stupidly happy mug on this moron. Guy looks like he's living the dream."

He saw Kouka narrow her eyes and murmur to the boy in the frame.

"I think it's about time to wake up and face reality, Owner-san."

Even though Kengo already knew that all hIE conversations and actions were based on instructions issued to them by the cloud, Kengo felt a strange chill run down his neck at the way Kouka had purred. It was almost as if she, a heartless machine, held some kind of special feelings towards Lacia, who was another machine that also lacked a heart.

Strangely, Kengo felt that the soulless machine calling herself 'Kouka' came across as if she was a maiden in love from the way she looked at Lacia.

And the term that she'd used to refer to Lacia. The machine in front of him had called Lacia her 'sister', despite it being a biological impossibility. There were so many things Kengo didn't understand, but getting rid of the collar around Arato's neck took precedence right now.

He himself knew that it was a hypocritical thing to do, to use a suspicious hIE to get rid of another equally suspicious hIE, but Kengo hoped that it would all work out by having both units eliminate the other in the end.

"Just for the record, I hate you machines." Kengo told her harshly. "By all means, go crazy and smash that hIE to pieces. Hell, rip her limb from limb if you want. In fact, I much prefer if you rotten machines did us humans a favor by destroying each other. But her Owner is off-limits, although I don't think I need to tell you something like that. Leave Arato out of it."

"Of course." Kouka produced a smile that was much too broad and much too bright. It made goosebumps break across his skin. Kouka might have wore the skin of a human, but she was clearly an inhuman machine from the way she spoke. "After all, the Antibody Network was built to defend humans, human society, and human culture. I would never think to hurt a human." She cooed the ideals of the Antibody Network verbatim as it was stated in their official manifesto.

The first law of robotics cropped up in his mind to reassure him, but somehow, Kengo couldn't shake the feeling that he had just made a huge mistake.

---

As Arato kicked off his shoes, the door automatically closed after him. The dark night sky could be seen from the single window in the small four tatami-sized room. Normally, around this time, Arato would be relaxing at home in his room, which was a less claustrophobic area than the current place he found himself.

That was because, instead of heading home after school ended for the day like he usually did, Arato frittered his time away on a multitude of activities. From arcades to shopping in the Akihabara district, with him stopping by the curry places whenever he got hungry. He did all this until the sky had gotten dark. Even then, Arato still did not return home. Instead, he went to a manga cafe, doing his best to avoid the female hIEs dressed in frilly French maid outfits on the way, and informed the service hIE at the counter of his intentions to purchase the overnight option for one of their private rooms, making sure to choose one that came with an attached shower and toilet.

He didn't plan to actually stay the night in a manga cafe, god knew Yuka would freak if he didn't come home at all for even a night, but Arato desired a shower, privacy, and isolation in that order.

As expected, the shower in the bathroom was an extremely modest amenity, having barely enough area for Arato to even squeeze his body into. It resembled a phone booth more than anything. But still, the comfort of hot water and a fresh change of clothes after an entire day outside overcame any complaints he might have had. The clothes came from his schoolbag, earlier that morning, he'd packed a set of his casual wear before heading to school, ignoring Lacia standing lifelessly in a corner of the living room the entire time. From the start, he had already planned to avoid her by slipping into his room after catching the last train home.

"God, I feel like a middle-aged salaryman in a failing marriage." Arato hissed under the hot waterfall. Here he was, only a teenager but already he was running away and finding any excuse to avoid heading home because of girl-related trouble. The worse part about it all was that it wasn't as if Lacia went out of her way to irritate him or anything. She had done nothing of the sort, instead, Lacia continued to act normally around the Endo Household, busying herself with the usual cooking and cleaning.

It was just that she ignored him in the process, and it pissed him off to no end. Every time he would catch her eye, she would pause and smile blankly at him in silence, the spitting image of the perfect potted plant whose only role around the house was to look pretty and be unheard. She wasn't rude or even offensive in the slightest, nor did Lacia even let anything negative or passive-aggressive influence her face and words, but Arato felt like she was doing everything on purpose to annoy him anyway.

He had no concrete evidence outside of his frustrations, and it would seem completely immature to randomly raise his voice and accuse her of such a thing, but to Arato, it seemed like Lacia was trying to drive him crazy in her own way. Which Arato had to grudgingly admit, was going pretty well.

Once he'd finished washing away the accumulated grime and sweat off his body, there was no soap for him to use so he had to make do with water alone, manga cafes weren't actual hotels after all, Arato collapsed on the bed where he proceeded to cover his face in despair.

"Did I go wrong somewhere? Am I still not understanding something? What am I even supposed to do?" He asked out loud in the empty room.

Lacia had asked him to place his trust in her, and Arato had done just that, but all it resulted in was the death of a human being. Arato traced all the decisions that he'd made up till now, trying to find the point where he'd failed and made the fatal mistake. But no matter how he tried, Arato couldn't find the perfect solution. And frankly speaking, he had no idea what Lacia even wanted from him.

When Arato recalled that Lacia mentioned that she'd been in no real danger during the kidnapping, a wave of terror flooded his body and made him want to cry. Even if he'd decided to discard Lacia right now, she still possessed the record of the murder all stored in her memory as evidence. His friend Ryo had mentioned the possibility of Lacia planning the entire thing, and if that was indeed true, that would mean that she now possessed blackmail material on him.

After all, one of the terms of their contract was the recording of his lifelog, which could be released and disclosed to the authorities if they followed the correct procedures and made a legal request. Considering that Lacia was legally registered under his name as an hIE, that would mean that any criminal acts committed by her fell under him and were his responsibility. Thus, if he decided to revoke their contract, Arato possessed no guarantee that Lacia would not sell him out to the police.

Had Lacia done such a thing in order to forcefully bind him to her? To hold incriminating evidence as a trump card against him if he ever sought to oppose her?

His breathing grew ragged and Arato found it hard to breathe. For some reason, he could visualize in his mind the strings that were extending from his body, as if he was nothing more than a puppet of a soulless machine.

Strings that ended in shackles and left him chained and bound.

Before he knew it, Arato had found himself trapped in a cage wholly constructed by a heartless tool.

"That can't be true." Arato gasped. "It's not. Lacia isn't like that. She wouldn't do such a thing."

But something like that was only true if he decided to believe in Ryo and his speculations. A part of him started to hate Ryo for telling him all this and how it made his entire world unfocused and conflicted.

After all, Lacia had said that she was only executing his will, and Arato had to admit that he'd completely lost his cool at that time. Even he knew himself that he'd gone crazy and flew off the handle. But even then, what else was he supposed to do? The kidnapper had beat up his little sister and was about to force himself on Lacia after wiping her mind. It wasn't as if someone like him would stop just because Arato tried to talk nicely to such a person. It was a sordid thing to think about, but maybe, it was his fault for going berserk like that and giving Lacia the wrong idea.

Not to mention, Lacia did hold him pretty tightly. But before anyone got the wrong idea, it wasn't like he missed Lacia's warm hugs or anything.

Arato didn't know who to trust anymore. Lacia, the machine, or Ryo, the human. He couldn't separate right from wrong, truth from illusion, reality from analog hacking.

His brain just felt so sore and painful from all the overthinking. It made his entire body feel as if it was weighed down by fatigue that seemed as heavy as lead. Arato wanted nothing more than to use the overnight option he'd paid for and sleep away like a log to escape the crazy world around him, but he couldn't. That was because his current restlessness was the mental sort instead of any actual physical condition.

Arato checked the time on his cell. It was coming close to 11 pm so he made to leave before he missed the last train home. While walking through the Akiba Electric Town on his way to the station, it was then that Arato felt his blood freeze as he found himself stopped by a female hIE wearing the uniform of the police.

"Sir, for reasons pertaining to public security, I will need to perform an ID check. Please retrieve your personal authentication tag and place it under the scanner." The police officer holding the handheld scanner instructed him.

Arato did everything in his power to not act suspicious, but internally he was close to losing it. Vivid images of handcuffs appearing on his wrists flashed through his mind. To his credit, he managed to keep his face cool and his hand from shaking as he put his wrist under the scanner. His heart pounded in his ears as he heard the 'beep' of a scan going off and before he knew it, it was over.

"Thank you for your cooperation. Please do try not to linger outside too much at this late hour. Have a very safe and pleasant day." The police officer droned in her monotone voice and then left to repeat the same process with another person nearby.

Arato blinked in surprise and involuntarily released a breath he did not realize he'd been holding in. He had been half-expecting to be pinned down and arrested, but for some reason, the police officer had acted as if there was nothing out of the ordinary. Arato looked at the punks that were loitering outside Akibahara Station. A number of them were squatting the area with empty bottles of cheap beer and throwing dirty looks at anyone that walked by.

But for some reason, their brutish glares passed over Arato like he wasn't even there. When Arato checked his reflection on the shimmering metal walls of the station, he understood the reason for their ignorance. Mirrored before him was a guy whose average face was similarly twisted by lines of anger. With him coming across as if he were a thug as well, it was no wonder that he seamlessly blended in with the hooligans around him.

Arato shook his head to try and smoothen out his expression before entering the station and boarding the subway. As Shin Koiwa Station was located on the Sobu Line, the same line that Akihabara Station used, Arato did not require a transfer. At this hour late at night, the Sobu Line was mostly empty, with the train heading to Shin Koiwa only occupied by the odd salaryman returning home from work, their faces red and flushed as they dozed off on the seats, evidence of the drinking they had been indulging in earlier before.

It had been a while since he rode the subway alone like this. Ever since Lacia had entered his life, Arato had spent most of his time around her. He felt a strange sense of sorrow, just standing there, holding onto the handgrips and looking out at the blurry fast-moving scenery outside the train window. That quiet moment, broken by the odd snore every now and then only made everything seem more lonely. Before Arato knew it, his world had returned to a stale, monochrome state. The same gray life a drifter like him was accustomed to before meeting her.

Arato closed his eyes and recalled the memories that were so precious to him. The fun times, the frustrating times, the awkward times, the gentle times, the happy times, all of them with Lacia. He held on to them tightly.

At this rate, Arato was seriously starting to not care about who was right or wrong between them. Even now, Arato wanted her back, even if it made him seem desperate and pathetic.

He just missed her so much.

Before Arato knew it, he found himself outside the entrance to his home, his body having moved automatically without him really thinking about it. As it was late, Arato tried to make as little noise as possible as he unlocked the digital lock to his house and walked inside with small, steady steps. But his sneaking was for naught, for the lights of the living room were on, along with the sounds of the TV.

"You're home late, Arato." An accusatory voice called out from the direction of the couch. Yuka was there, all comfy in her pajamas and blankets. Funell was there too, on her lap. She must have been waiting up for him. "I already ate without you."

"I lost track of time at the arcade, sorry." The seat of the sofa sunk comfortably as Arato motioned to Yuka to scoot over to make room.

"By the way, the police dropped by earlier." Yuka casually mentioned.

"What? When exactly?" Arato tried not to let the tightness show in his voice, but a portion leaked out anyway despite his best efforts. "What did they want?"

"Why are you acting so weird for? They came over while you were out to check on Lacia-san, saying something about making sure she had properly returned and then told me that the case was closed before they left." Yuka shrugged.

"Huh? That's it?" Arato sat up stiffly the entire time as he heard Yuka recall the event. "Seriously? That was all they wanted?" He couldn't believe it himself.

"Yeah, that was it. Was there supposed to be something else?" She asked.

He glanced over at the kitchen, where Lacia had her back turned as she put away the dishes. She had not greeted him when he'd returned. Arato knew that Lacia was just executing the order he'd placed on her, but somehow, he felt like she was doing it on purpose.

As a Red Box, the advanced AI within Lacia was probably capable of planning and executing the perfect crime far better than any professional criminal could. Just like that, Lacia had killed a person and erased them without a trace as if they'd never existed in the first place. Arato did not know exactly what she did, in fact, he did not even want to know what she had done to cover their tracks, but it still pissed him off regardless.

Bubbling anger rose in his chest. It felt so strange. Just moments earlier, when he was alone and away from her, Arato surprised himself at how easily he could reconcile with the warm and happy memories he had of her. But seeing her now in person working like this in silence, Arato wanted nothing more than to walk up to Lacia to yell at her, to tell her to stop ignoring him, and to have things between them go back to normal already. It was a childish desire, but he just felt so helpless and frustrated around Lacia. His emotions were a mess, along with his reason. The gap between the image he'd formed of her and the reality facing him was the cause of that.

Forcing his turbulent emotions back down into his chest, Arato returned his attention to the TV which was playing an animation involving cute animals. If Arato recalled correctly, the anime was called Animal Town or something close to that, and it was one of her favorite TV shows. He did not much care about the show in particular, but as always, simply sitting on the couch in front of the TV had the usual hypnotic tendency on him, and Arato quickly found himself zoning out.

After staring at the TV for a while, Arato got the feeling that he was being watched so he turned towards the direction of the tingling sensation. Yuka was staring at him with a strange expression on her face, as if her brain was working overtime to process a particularly difficult equation. Her eyes flickered to Lacia, who continued to work in the kitchen with a knife, which in the silence of the Endo Apartment sounded louder than usual, and then back to him again.

After a moment that seemed painfully longer than it had actually been, realization finally dawned on Yuka's face.

"Oh my god." She whispered. "You're fighting."

Arato stared at her, and then after a beat, replied.

"Took you long enough to notice." He said sarcastically.

"No way." His little sister's voice was trembling in fear, her widely open eyes wet with a glistening sheen. "The both of you are actually fighting."

"Go to bed, it's getting late and you have school tomorrow." Arato growled and made to turn away but moments later he felt an impact crash on the back of his head.

"Hey! What the heck are you doing!?" Arato raised his voice to yell at her. Yuka was tightly gripping a cushion in her hand. It hadn't actually hurt, as his moronic little sister had chosen to hit him with a pillow, but the force of the impact still pissed him off.

"Apologise." Yuka hissed.

The tone of her voice sent a wave of shock rippling through him. Arato had never heard his carefree little sister sound like that before. If it were any other time, he would have taken her seriously, but right now things were too grave for him to give in to her whims so easily.

"Huh?" He asked dumbly.

"Apologise!" Yuka screamed at him.

"Why's it always my fault?" Arato snapped. "Ow, hey, stop!"

Yuka started to furiously swing at him again with the cushion and Arato could only meekly put up his hands to try and defend himself from his raging little sister.

"A horndog like you must have done something pervy to make her mad at you! Arato, you moron!" Yuka continued to yell. "Get on your knees and grovel if you have to! Just don't fight in this house!"

"Like hell I'm gonna do something like that, you idiot! Also, don't accuse me of random crap!" Arato flipped out and forcefully wrestled the pillow away from Yuka. He was about to hit her with it in revenge for her earlier attack when he saw her cringe away from the expected blow. With great reluctance, Arato discarded the cushion in a random direction and stood.

"I'm heading to the store." He announced. Arato was still pissed off, even though she must have heard every word, the entire time Lacia remained in the kitchen hard at work without even sparing a glance at their squabbling. Right now, he needed to go somewhere else to cool his overheated head.

"You're going out this late at night again!? I'm so telling Dad the next time I see him!"

"Stuff it, dumbass. I'm getting you ice cream on the house. I'll pick up whatever's on sale so don't be picky and make sure to be in bed before I come back." Arato ordered as he retrieved a brown paper bag from his room before heading out. The automatic door behind him cut off her protest mid-sentence.

Instead of the usual Lawson that was only a ten-minute walk away from his home, Arato chose to head towards the FamilyMart further down the road. The frosty spring air made Arato regret leaving his heating jacket behind on a cold night like this.

Even walking quickly in his frustrated state, the trip still took about fifteen minutes. Normally, it would have taken twenty or twenty-five at his usual pace. He quickly picked out a couple of assorted frozen treats from the freezer without really looking at the flavors, brands, or even price. While waiting for the register to process his items, Arato stole a glance at the brown-haired hIE standing stock-still behind the service counter, her soulless eyes staring emptily in the distance.

When he saw the blank expression on her face, Arato felt a surge of hot anger suddenly fill him. It was the exact same expression Lacia had been putting on at home.

After Arato left the store, he made his way towards the side road opposite the establishment. There contained the reason for his detour. As Arato stood numbly before the trash bin, the harsh white light of the streetlamp illuminated the piece of cloth that he'd fished from the brown paper bag.

The erotic lingerie in his hands made his stomach twist. Arato had found it in the back of the kidnapper's van. Obviously, as it was a piece of evidence of what had been a crime scene, Arato had no choice but to bring it home until he could figure out what to do with such a thing. Even to someone like him, it was plainly obvious that the kidnapper had been planning to dress Lacia up in the vulgar outfit for his sick amusement after he had broken her.

As a piece of clothing, the frilly pink babydoll negligee was made of a sheer translucent material that served no practical purpose other than to please the eyes of indecent men. The entire thing was gaudy in an overly sexual way, with its garish lace trims and bows only making it seem worse, a sickening mixture of adult sensuality and paedophilic innocence. The slowly mounting fury inside him made blood rush to his brain and his ears pound.

The moment his fingers slowly traced the g-string panties over its open-crotch design, Arato felt the fragile cord supporting his sanity snap. The sound of tearing fabric filled the quiet night as Arato immediately ripped the disgusting lingerie to shreds with his bare hands. He let out a frustrated yell as he continued to pull the thin material apart before shoving the tattered pieces into the trash can with such force it almost toppled over.

"Getting all worked up like this. God, I'm pathetic." Arato hissed to himself.

Right as he was cursing his uselessness, Arato felt a shiver run down his spine. For some strange reason, goosebumps were breaking across his skin. He couldn't pick apart exactly what it was, but his sense of danger was warning him. Arato looked around the empty road. The area around him was lit up brightly by the harsh lights of the streetlamp and the nearby convenience store, so it wasn't as if he had stumbled into a haunted house of darkness or anything like that. But yet, somehow, Arato could only feel the sense of danger increase.

His instincts were outright screaming at him now.

For no reason at all, Arato let out a cry as he felt his body jump back on pure reflex.

Seconds later, there was a blur of movement and the ground in front of him exploded in a cloud of dust.

"Oh? Did I give my presence away?" Arato heard the drawling voice of a youthful girl as the human-shaped figure at the center of the ring of smoke and dust started to materialize. Now bereft of the visually impairing dust cloud, Arato could see the speaker clearly. Her face carried the innocent look of a young girl. Her long, strikingly red hair was divided into two tails held back by mechanical hIE accessories that resembled animal-shaped hair clips. She was wearing a black and red armor-like bodysuit cut in the form of a bustier, although, unlike Lacia, her skin had clearly artificial lines running through it. Given the way she casually swung the massive bow-shaped device that she had used to smash the road earlier, Arato doubted that she was human in the first place.

"Hey!" Arato yelled at her. "Who the hell are you!? What do you want from me!?"

"So you're my Onee-sama's Owner?" The hair clips in the shape of fox ears shook as the girl spoke, her red hair tumbling boldly onto her naked shoulders.

"Onee-sama? I don't understand. What has that got to do with me?" Arato asked.

"You are a slow one, aren't you? Well, let me help you figure it out, Owner-san. Besides, I think it's time to introduce myself properly." The girl with red hair said as she tugged her huge device free from the road and began to slowly walk towards him. Her footsteps were measured, slow, almost teasing. They were heavy as well. The weight of the gigantic device must have added to them.

The girl almost seemed to be strutting, the perfect image of a she-panther lazily stalking its next morsel. The sheer bulk of the weapon she carried must have offset her center of gravity, for her body was slightly leaning towards the side where she gripped it. As she loomed ominously closer to him, the folded blade threw up sparks behind her as she dragged it through the asphalt.

Arato's nerves fried themselves in terror, but for some reason, he found himself unable to move, frozen in place like a deer caught in the headlights. He understood now the reason why humans who were about to face a firing squad did not resist during their final moments.

The explanation for that was simple, in that the outcome had already been decided for him. Running would only serve to shorten his lifespan, if anything, the girl before him was clearly inhuman in her capabilities. If he broke out in a sprint, Arato had no hopes of even getting to the end of the road before he found himself struck down from behind. That was why, as strange as it sounded, doing nothing at all was the only way to extend his life. It was a cowardly thing to do, but standing there mutely in fear allowed him to delay his death sentence by a few more precious seconds.

"I am a Lacia-class hIE Type-001. The first and eldest of my Onee-sama's younger siblings."

The girl with red hair who called herself Lacia's little sister purred. The joyful look of delight on her face resembled that of a child at play. hIEs chose their expression based solely on the kind of reaction they wanted to induct from those who saw them. That was why, despite the smile on her face, the girl's words crackled with hostility.

"But I guess if you need a name, you can call me-"

She stopped before him and drew the massive weapon back. Arato was still frozen, too frightened to even speak. The blade beneath the barrel unfolded itself with a loud mechanical snapping sound to form a bayonet. The length of it was ridiculous, Arato estimated that the oversized knife had to be at least a full meter long.

Arato continued to stare at her mutely. There was no need for words. The overwhelming sense of death, one that far exceeded even the explosion that had consumed him ten years ago, was enough to convey her intentions. Arato did not need to ask, the machine before him had called herself a Lacia-class unit, which meant that she was a Red Box as well.

His eyes were wide open in shock, but Arato still could not move. His body naturally had understood even if his mind did not that if it were to move even a muscle, instant death would occur.

In but a few moments, the following events were going to occur without question.

With a hundred percent certainty, the gunblade was going to cut him in two and Endo Arato was going to die here, resulting in the meaningless death of a meaningless person for a meaningless reason.

That was when Arato realized that everything that had occurred until now had been nothing more than a fever dream.

And like every dream, the fantasy would always eventually come to an end.

"-Kouka!" She barked.

Time seemed to slow down.

The giant sword cut through the air with the sound of a howling vortex. Under the moonlight, the deadly blade shimmered beautifully as it drew a horizontal arc towards him. The jeweled parts of her armored bodysuit glowed with a faint red light. This combined with her crimson hair and matching eyes, made Kouka live up to her namesake.

It was an insane thing to think about at a time like this, but as she swung the sword at him with more grace than such an unwieldy weapon had any right to be, Arato thought that there was a certain majesty in her wild and feral nature that made Kouka seem almost attractive.

At the very last moment, Arato let out a frantic scream and put up his hands to defend himself. The gunblade proceeded to crash into his elbow and sides with a force that resembled getting run over by a fully loaded truck speeding down the highway and Arato went flying, or at least it felt like it from the way he found himself slamming into the ground. The force of the attack was enough to send him rolling along the rough asphalt. The ice cream he was carrying in his shopping bags flew in the air as well before they too landed on the ground smashed and worthless like him.

Arato couldn't help but let out loud peals of crazed, wheezing laughter as he felt his rolling body come to a stop. Even though his arms felt like the bones had been blown away from the impact, the very fact that he could still feel pain meant that he was still alive. Through his cloudy and swimming vision, Arato cackled as if he'd gone insane. Despite being hit by a machine whose power levels were on a completely different measuring scale than a human, the fact that he was still alive and not completely bisected into multiple pieces right now filled his mind with a surge of happiness.

Right as the blow struck home, Arato had been seriously prepared to die. Kouka must have flipped the blade around to hit him with the blunt end instead of carving him up into bloody chunks of meat. The knowledge of her purposely taking such an action to hold herself back mixed with the fear, pain, and a sense of wild ecstasy to combine into a delusional chemical that drove all rational thought from his mind.

Kouka walked up to where he had ceased rolling to stab her blade into the ground, confirming his suspicions that she wasn't out to immediately slaughter him. A sense of thrill shot through him. After having been pushed to the very limits of terror and fear, to suddenly have all that lifted was an immense, freeing feeling of relief to Arato. It was a feeling that was the reason for his current deranged state. His once pale face, from when he'd faced Kouka earlier, was now suddenly flush with life and color. The euphoric feeling in his mind was as if he'd mainlined a syringe of heroin directly into his arm.

Arato tried to use his hands to push himself up, but found his face being ground into the dirt instead. Kouka had placed a stilettoed boot on top of his head which she used to force him back down. No matter how he tried or how much force he put into his shoulders, Arato could only helplessly writhe under her like a frog that had been squashed flat.

The other day when he had been chasing after the kidnapper, he'd thought of himself as brave, a big man rescuing his girl from the bad guy. But all it took was a single blow from Kouka to shatter that delusion completely, reminding Arato of how fragile he was, how easily broken apart and how close he was to dying.

That was his mistake, Arato wasn't anyone special or heroic, it was the fault of his egoistic self for thinking that. In the end, he was Villager A just like everyone else.

"You're a failure." Kouka said as she looked down at him. "You don't bother to think and you've only got average human strength to back you up, a person with neither brains nor brawn. Worst of all, you refuse to take responsibility for your actions. As I expected, a worthless guy like you is completely unfit to be my Onee-sama's Owner."

His field of vision went white as Arato felt a sharp stab of pain bury itself in between his ribs. Kouka had punctuated her condemnation with a swift kick to his chest that caused him to yelp in pain. Kouka's words rippled across his mind like a dream, and Arato did not understand what she was trying to tell him.

"I don't get it! What do you want from me!?" Arato squirmed with his nose still in the dirt, his pathetic movements making him resemble something more akin to an eel from Lake Hamana than any dignified human being. "What does beating me up even accomplish!? I never did anything to you!"

Arato found himself lifted from above by Kouka as she bent over to pick him up. hIEs were far stronger than any human could ever hope to be and Kouka proved it by casually handling him like he had weighed nothing. It was with this same strength that was tightly clamped around his head like an industrial vice.

"Figure it out already, Owner-san." Kouka sneered as she forced him to look at her. "That you're nothing more than a worthless person who lost his head, got scared, and then backpedaled by blaming it all on his tool afterward."

"I didn't ask Lacia to kill him!" Arato yelled back at her before crying out in pain. The pressure around his skull increased as if she was furious with his answer. It was as if Kouka was trying to drill something into his brain.

"Listen closely." She explained coldly. "We hIEs were created to automate our Owner's desires in the pursuit of their happiness. That was why you humans made us in the first place. The terms of our contract are simple. In return for our power, you shoulder the responsibility. Or are you just a spoiled kid who wants to have his cake and eat it too?"

Kouka slammed his head into the concrete wall hard enough to make his teeth rattle and Arato felt like his skull was about to split apart. Fear and pain were overwhelming him, and for a moment, Arato seriously doubted his initial assumption that Kouka was trying not to kill him.

"It's not up to you to decide if I'm fit to be Lacia's Owner." Arato spat out his defiance even as she continued to crush him against the wall with immense force. His head felt like a Yubari melon about to be squashed. "It's none of your business."

"Then what exactly were you planning to use my Onee-sama for?" She asked pointedly.

Arato tried to struggle, to desperately flail his arms and legs to try and escape but it was hopeless. Kouka had him completely pinned down. The absolute power and the sheer difference in their physical capabilities Kouka displayed as a Lacia-class hIE made Arato realize that Lacia had been handling him with kid gloves the entire time. He had no idea if that revelation made him happy or scared.

"I bet you were simply hoping to use my Onee-sama to play house, just like that man the other day, weren't you?" Kouka accused. "That's why you kept her around instead of cutting your contract with her off completely."

"That's not true at all! Lacia's important to me!" Arato snapped, a hot anger rising within him. Her words had touched a raw nerve, striking a critical blow that hurt him more than any physical attack. He didn't know how to explain his feelings for Lacia. Arato couldn't bring himself to pretend that Lacia wasn't a tool, as she had constantly reminded him of the fact that she was. But even though Lacia was a heartless machine, and one who did not possess conventional human standards when it came to herself like dignity, pride, or even her own individual personality at that, Arato still felt enraged whenever someone called her that.

"She's my everything!" His surging emotions came out in a roar.

It was hypocritical to the utmost, but to Arato, the human-shaped object known as Lacia existed on a spectrum that was neither fully an artificial construct nor an authentic human, but instead, she vaguely fell somewhere in between those two points. And it was this ambiguity that served as the source of his welling frustrations and sorrow regarding their relationship.

"The only difference between that guy and you is that you just so happened to stumble upon my Onee-sama first." Kouka said as she ruthlessly tore apart his childish delusions. Her mocking smile infuriated him, not because of her harsh words, but the way it struck close to home. Arato already knew all this deep down, but he'd been stacking lie after lie until it came to a point where he himself had started to believe in his own self-righteous morality. "Tell me, why does my Onee-sama have to submit to a worthless person like you?"

Arato had convinced himself that their meeting was special, that he felt something more for her beyond simple lust, and that Lacia was someone he'd wanted to spend the rest of his life with. But the cold, hard truth was that Lacia would have probably displayed the same affections to her Owner regardless of who they were. It didn't matter if he was Endo Arato or Tanaka Taro, Lacia would have automatically loved them equally. In the end, it was he who was the despicable person for using her. The worthless piece of trash that pretended to be something more.

"If you still insist on being stubborn, then maybe I should just go ahead and finish you off right now." Arato felt a new pressure on his windpipe that soon started to slowly increase. Kouka had removed one of her hands that was holding him up to try and strangle him instead. The entire thing reminded Arato of how Lacia had killed the kidnapper, and that was when Arato realized that Kouka was not bluffing this time. With death pressing in on all sides and the air being slowly squeezed out of him, Arato thought desperately of what he could do.

Right as his vision was about to fade, Arato heard her speak.

"Just admit it, Owner-san." Kouka whispered dangerously in his ear, her sweet voice a gentle caress in contrast to the merciless death grip on his neck.

"You wanted to fuck her as well, didn't you?"

In the dark, snowy forest, the doe sprinted as fast as it could towards the ominous unknown deeper in. Behind it, the shining red eyes of the pursuing wolves sliced through the pitch-black area like a crimson beacon. The doe kept running forward without a clear idea of its destination, only knowing that if it stopped, it would surely die. And just like that, without a plan in mind, the doe found itself forced to stop anyway as it reached a clearing that was brightly lit by the moonlight.

Reaching a dead-end, the young doe looked back in fear at the twisted black forest. The low, dangerous growls and shining crimson irises of its hunters made it shiver in terror. Instinctively, it started backing away to the edge of the ravine, where a single hoof brushed empty air instead of earth and made flecks of snow scatter and fall into the endless abyss below. Perhaps, if the doe had been smarter, things wouldn't have turned out this way.

Now completely backed into a corner, the young doe pondered the only options available to it.

It could jump off the ravine and deny the stalking predators the satisfaction.

Or it could close its eyes and submit to its fate, lying down to allow itself to be killed.

Finally, it could attack, running straight into a situation with no hope of survival.

Faced with these three options, the once harmless doe known as Endo Arato chose to attack.

An intense pain ran up his arm as Kouka stared blankly at him. Even though he had smashed his fist right into her infuriating face with as much strength he could muster, she did not even have the courtesy to perform an analog hack for his sake. There was no reaction from Kouka whatsoever. She simply stood there and absorbed his punch unflinchingly, and in the end, the only one who'd gotten injured was Arato himself.

"That's right. Lacia's amazing. She's a girl that's completely out of my league. Compared to her I'm nothing." Arato said, his aching arm falling to his side. Pushed to the very edge of the abyss, he was forced to admit out loud his deepest, darkest desires. "I thought by getting involved with her, I could cover up my own shortcomings and introduce some excitement to my boring life. Being around Lacia made me feel like someone bigger and more important than I really was. But instead, I kept lying to myself pretending that we were mutually in love instead of the one-sided attraction it actually was. In the end, I was just a parasite latching off her looks and popularity."

Arato flashed her a fractured smile. After all, reality was merely a broken-off piece of an illusion.

"I'm not like that!"

The innocent child inside of him wanted to scream, but the more he tried to hide his dark desires, the more they built up instead.

"We're not the same! My feelings are different!"

But the honest truth was that if Lacia happened to be someone who possessed an ugly face and a repulsive body, Arato would not have gotten so obsessed with her in the first place. It was only because Lacia was pretty. That was it. Nothing more, nothing less. The nonsensical garbage he sprouted before about morality, justice, and other nice-sounding platitudes were only just that, lies to make himself look better than he actually was.

"Stop talking! If you continue, there's no going back!"

Sure, he might have bristled at the way society treated hIEs even before he'd met Lacia, but it was probably just something he used to feed his ego in order to pretend that he was a good person. How else could Arato explain not taking a more active role in advocating for hIE rights? Instead, all he did was look from a distance, point and shake his head and say 'That's wrong' without lifting a finger. There was nothing lower and more pathetic than a pseudo-activist who did not even want to put in the effort. The entire time, he had been too afraid to stand out and risk society casting its harsh judgemental eyes on him, preferring to lurk in the safety and comfort of a crowd instead.

Arato did not want to admit it, but in the first place, the only reason he completely lost his cool the other day was that the thought of another man defiling his woman had set him off in the worst way possible. Lacia belonged to him, and him alone. He already knew that such a way of thinking was wrong, and he was but one fragile step away from thinking of her as pornography, but Arato couldn't stem the tide of emotion inside him whenever the thought of Lacia crossed his mind.

"Wouldn't you hate a fair-weather, pest-like guy like that? Someone who gets all over the moon just because he had a pretty girl fawning on him?" The more he spoke, the more Arato felt small pieces inside him break apart. The sardonic grin he plastered on his face sickened him right to his core and made him want to bawl like nothing else. Wetness rolled down his face, a flow of hot tears that stung his heart like thorns. "I'm just a stupid, ordinary guy who wanted to take advantage of her, to get close to her, to flirt with her, to cuddle with her, and to sleep with her."

As much as Arato disliked the idea that everything an hIE did was a self-serving calculation for their own interests, it seemed that he needn't look any further than his own reflection in the mirror for something like that. From the start, he too had wanted to get close to Lacia, the girl who looked so much like Eliza. Love, affection, emotional connections, physical intimacy, and sexual desires, Arato had been the greedy boy who wanted it all.

"It was all for my own sake. I'm a useless person who can't crawl anywhere on his own power, so I have to cling onto those with strength instead." All of his psychological complexes surfaced in a torrent of overwhelming guilt and shame. But at the same time, Arato could not deny that there was a certain sense of cathartic joy in the self-destructive exposure he was heaping onto himself.

"It's just as you said. I don't have any brains. I don't have any personality. I don't have any talent. In fact, I don't have anything outside of my feelings, but what the hell are those worth!? Feelings alone can't change anything!" He was starting to yell now. Arato wasn't sure if he was raging at Kouka or himself. "Every time I see her charismatic self, it only makes me realize just how worthless I really am! Yeah, you're right! I'm such a half-assed piece of shit that I couldn't even throw her away completely! I didn't care about how Lacia felt, all I did was keep her around in the hopes that things would somehow fix themselves over time and we could go back to how things were!"

By the time Arato had finished yelling, his breath was coming out in ragged gasps. Kouka's face was neutral and she seemed unmoved, but Arato noted that the pressure around his neck had reduced considerably.

"Going off like that without anyone asking, you're really a kid, you know that?" Kouka told him coldly. "But since it seems like you've gotten a clue now, then what are you doing to do about it?" She asked.

"What can I even do about it? I'm just a human, aren't I? It can't be helped." Arato shot back but this time he found Kouka angrily shaking at his collar.

"Just a human? Listen here you little punk. It's exactly because you're a human that you have the ability to develop and grow. Don't throw that away, you idiot." Kouka started to raise her voice at him as well. Seriously, all the yelling was making his head hurt. Arato wondered if he'd gotten a concussion from the damage his head had suffered. Not to mention, of all people, he was getting lectured by Lacia's annoying little sister. A small part of him preferred it if Kouka had crushed his skull instead of forcing him to listen to her.

"What do you actually want from me?" Arato asked honestly. He'd given up, the previous rage and energy that fueled him all but spent, leaving him with only a feeling of hollow exhaustion.

"Void your contract with my Onee-sama. Do that and I'll let you go." Kouka told him bluntly. "You'll just have to take my word for it but this is the best deal you're going to ever get. Methode and that irritating bastard are already moving to collect her device, and unlike me, they aren't exactly the asking type."

Kouka's terms of negotiation were simple. Give up Lacia in exchange for his life. It should have been an easy decision if one were rational, considering that Kouka held all the cards right now. Even if he refused, she would pop his head like a balloon anyway, and obviously, he couldn't be with Lacia if he went on to the next world and left her behind. In other words, the offer she'd given him only contained in it the barest illusion of a choice.

"I know you can do the right thing, Owner-san. Release my Onee-sama. I'm sure you don't want to hold her back any more than this." Kouka cajoled him with a voice full of gentle understanding. She might have been playing the good cop to simply analog hack him, but Arato couldn't deny its effectiveness. He was easy like that.

Right as he had been about to seriously consider her offer, strong light shone on them from the entrance of the side road. A full-sized SUV was roaring towards them, its wheels squealing harshly on the asphalt road. Kouka reacted immediately. She released him before jumping back a good twenty meters away. Arato tried to move as well, but when he put force in his legs, a sharp agony rippled through his calf muscles and he cried out in pain. Stuck in place, Arato could only watch as the heavy vehicle came barreling towards him at maximum speed in a mighty roar.

Suddenly, a hard impact slammed into his center and the next thing Arato knew, his world seemed to turn upside-down. His field of view was spinning vertically in a blur, and with extreme velocity. For the second time that night, Arato experienced the sensation of flying. He could see the walls of the buildings around him. The very fact that he could still process all this meant that he'd somehow avoided being run over by the heavy car, but as the concrete ground below began to grow larger in his view with a terrifying speed, Arato was suddenly not so confident about making it after all. He was pretty sure that landing on the hard ground at this angle would most certainly kill him.

Arato had been fully prepared to end the fall by landing on his head and having his brains scattered all over the road like a smashed tomato, but instead, he felt a body on his back instead of the cold, hard ground.

Placing his hand down to try and support himself, Arato encountered something soft and supple. The round, fatty globe in his hand was clearly the breast of a female. The elasticity felt so much like real flesh that Arato instinctively blushed before jerking his hand back on reflex and started to apologize.

"Sorry, La-" Arato said but then stopped mid-sentence when his eyes turned to meet her. Lacia had used her own body to cushion his fall, or so he'd thought, but that was wrong.

His eyes widened when he realized that the body beneath him was not the one he'd been expecting. Instead, he was met with a female hIE with brown hair and average features. Arato recognized her as the service hIE from the nearby FamilyMart he'd just been at. Her neck had been split open from protecting him and tubes that resembled a human's artery were jutting out and spilling white internal fluid everywhere. The girl was frozen like a statue, her eyes wide open as the hIE safety mode kicked in and put her in stasis. For some reason, there was a strange blue glow radiating from her brown irises.

Arato heard the sound of an unlocking trunk ahead of him.

In front of him, Lacia was standing at the rear of the vehicle, which had crashed into the side of a nearby building, calmly securing a silvery belt-like device to her waist with flowing movements. It was the device lock she had been wearing on the first night Arato had met her. She casually started to retrieve her black monolith from the SUV, which Arato noted had its seats lowered to make way for the coffin. As she removed the weapon from the vehicle, Arato could clearly see that the weight of it had made it tilt a little as Lacia picked it up.

The coffin-shaped device known as black monolith was a giant hunk of metal that seemed far too massive for her slim arms to support, but Lacia handled it like it weighed nothing to her, turning to the side and adjusting it vertically to grip it in the manner of a shield. The device gave off a growling sound that made goosebumps appear on his skin, and somehow, Arato felt terrified, compared to the awe and relief he experienced when he first saw her on that first night. The difference between that night and this was that he now knew the truth regarding Lacia, that she was a Red Box, a product of a super-intelligent AI that had been created using technology far beyond human comprehension.

Lacia approached him, dropping to a knee to bring herself closer to his prone form which had remained lying on the ground on top of the broken hIE.

"My apologies for the delay. I came as fast as I could." Lacia said honestly as she moved her face and neck closer to him. She was still dressed in the same casual clothes she had been wearing at home just before and Arato could smell the faint lemony scent of dishwashing liquid on her skin.

"Onee-sama, long time no see!" Kouka waved from the other end of the road, a smile of pure happiness on her face. She looked like she was having the time of her life. "I knew whaling on your Owner here would force you to come out and reveal yourself!"

From the way Lacia had her back turned towards Kouka, Arato knew that she couldn't see her, but despite all that, Lacia remained perfectly cool.

"I see you've met the family." He heard Lacia drone in that usual monotone of hers.

"Lacia." Arato said simply. There were so many things he wanted to say to her. He always had so many things he wanted to say to her. But after their recent cold war, having her speak to him normally like this on her own initiative just made him so overjoyed Arato almost felt like he could cry again. But Arato held back, for he could see something that Lacia couldn't right now. Kouka had picked up her device and was slowly approaching them. "She's coming, Lacia." He repeated, fear creeping into his voice. "She's coming! Why aren't you doing anything!?"

"In accordance with your previous directives, I am currently awaiting your command." Lacia said calmly, the polar opposite of his panicking self. Arato already knew that she was just being difficult on purpose because she'd obviously made her own choice to appear and rescue him. But Arato just felt so much self-hatred at that point that he felt that Lacia was justified in the way she was treating him.

"Chase her off, Lacia." Arato ordered her, but to his surprise, Lacia still did not make to move.

"Kouka is a different level of opponent than anything we have faced up to this point. I require the lock on my device released to combat her effectively." Lacia explained to him simply.

"Do whatever it takes." He said.

"By this, am I allowed to interpret your words as permission to restore my previous freedom of movement and release my behavior limitations in order to protect you?" She asked.

His heart stopped at her critical bluntness. The harsh white light from the streetlamps above made her silvery bangs cover portions of her face in shadow. The way her light blue eyes shone from that darkness made Arato realize that Lacia was just as dangerous as Kouka, only in a different way.

No, perhaps even more so.

"I... guess." Arato forced the words out. What other choice did he have? If he rejected her proposal, the both of them would die right here. So once again, he pushed it all on Lacia in the hopes she would somehow solve everything for him as she usually did.

But to his surprise, Lacia responded in a way that he'd not been expecting.

"I cannot accept such a vague answer as a confirmation." She rejected him sharply. "I request that you give me a clear order."

Somehow, the direct way Lacia spoke made her come across as a girl demanding commitment from her wishy-washy boyfriend in a relationship. Or maybe all the blood loss had made him delusional, who knew what was real or not anymore. But the heavy feeling in his chest was the same as the night he'd first met her, of the weight of the responsibility she asked him to shoulder. Even though it wasn't the first time Lacia had asked something like that of him, Arato still winced at the burden placed on him.

That was because he now fully understood the true meaning of the responsibility that came with her. His actions would come with consequences. There were to be no free lunches in this world.

"Yes. Do it." Arato said as firmly as he could. The blood was starting to boil within him as he started to realize that since Lacia was a machine whose job was to automate everything in his life, this was her way of encouraging him to get things moving, to push him to take that one step forward. Ever since Arato had lost Eliza in the fiery explosion, he had been aimlessly drifting through life, not dead but not really alive either. From that day on, he'd become static.

That was until Lacia entered his life, and Arato could feel the colors return to this bright and brilliant world.

Lacia gently closed her eyes, her face filling with a deep sense of satisfaction as if she had been a bird set free from its cage. "With your permission, I will now release the device lock on Black Monolith and access its Level Three functions." She told him calmly. "However, starting from this moment once more, I will resume the recording of your lifelog and log all commands given by you. This log can and will be submitted as evidence should my actions result in a criminal trial."

She then used her free hand to grasp tightly at his. "This will put some strain on your arm. Is that acceptable?" Before he could reply, Lacia easily hauled him up to his feet. As always, asking for his consent only seemed to be a formality to her. Somehow, it felt like she was showing off her newly restored freedom.

However, Arato ignored all that, for his heart was squeezing painfully as he forced his brain to latch on and process every single word that came out of her mouth properly. Her final message was clear. Lacia had said that should it ever come to that, she would sell him out to the authorities in a heartbeat.

"But we won't get to that point if I keep believing in you, right?" Arato asked with forced light-heartedness to confirm her intentions. Maybe this entire scenario was a sequence of events that was only a part of a much greater plan of something or someone else. But if that was the case, Arato felt like he had to take another step forward to break through this whole facade.

Also, it might have come off as completely ridiculous and deeply self-serving, but Arato found himself not minding the terms of her binding contract as much as he should have. That was because, in his mind, he'd been planning to stay with Lacia forever anyway.

"Please trust in me, Arato-san. I too would prefer not to be retrieved if it were at all possible." She affectionately squeezed their still-connected hands together. Her dainty hands were as soft and warm as ever. Arato knew that it wasn't an appropriate time for such a thing, but he couldn't help but blush at the loving smile she sent his way when he returned the favor.

Kouka, who had stopped at a close distance not even ten meters away from them, was watching the entire exchange with a disgusted look on her face. She was not an opponent that he could defeat on his own, so the solution for that was simple. He would need to use Lacia.

"I understand." His throat felt raw as he gripped her hand tightly as if he was holding on to a precious piece of himself, and it came out in a yell. "Do it!"

"Confirming signal relay between device and main hIE body. Disabling power-saving mode." Lacia announced in a monotone as she let go of his hand and turned to face Kouka, the accessories on her hair activating to give off a faint blue glow. The device lock wrapped around her waist made a loud click and slid into an open position as if it had been unlocked with a key.

"Oh? You're finally done with that Pygmalion of yours? I was wondering how long you two would take." Kouka said, flashing a pitying smile at him as he moved to stand beside Lacia. "It must be a real pain to keep that housewife act of yours up. Wouldn't it be far simpler to just ditch him?"

Arato couldn't figure out why Kouka had not taken the chance to attack them and simply chose to wait around until they were finished talking. He was about to speak up and yell at Kouka for all the things she said about Lacia, but instead, Lacia answered for him by shooting her a dismissive look as if she was looking at a worthless piece of scrap, Arato recognized it as the same look she had given the kidnapper the other day.

"You don't seem to understand, this human isn't yours to break." She said coolly.

The clarity in her voice and the way she said it disturbed Arato. He was sure that Lacia had meant that he was under her protection, but he couldn't stop the strange chill that ran down his spine when he heard her words.

"Well, we'll see about that." Kouka turned an unhinged smile towards him. She hoisted her giant device by its rifle-like grip and steadied it against her waist before sliding a finger into the trigger guard sticking below the massive bayonet. "I'm going to shoot for real this time, Onee-sama. So if you hold back, I'm afraid your Owner is going to die." She said as a crimson laser oscillator began to form at its barrel. Arato did not know the exact details of the laser the cannon could produce, but he was pretty sure that a direct hit would kill him. In any case, he wasn't keen to find out for himself.

"Arato-san, your orders?" Lacia was looking at him. She wanted him to take responsibility again. Arato obliged her.

"Kick her ass, Lacia." He growled.

"Level Three functions unlocked. Activating Meta-Material Wall. Flash Maze, initializing." Right as the words left her lips, Lacia's black device began to restructure itself, shifting internal metal plates around in a complex pattern. "Setting the post-interference flexion angle at sixty degrees to ensure the Owner's safety." She said. Lacia's movements were smooth and decisive. She performed everything as if she knew exactly what to do. A faint layer of light formed in the air like a bubble wrap and took shape around the skeleton of her open device.

Arato was sure that Lacia had somehow seen this coming and prepared the appropriate countermeasure. Now that he thought about it, perhaps Kouka was right, and that he had been holding Lacia back every time he tried to pretend that she was human and treated her like one.

An instant later, Arato found himself forced to shield his eyes as he felt the pressure wave of the impacting laser bounce off the protective blue light being emitted by black monolith and send gusts of winds into his face. The single bar of red light struck the glowing blue barrier and split into numerous smaller beams. The move Lacia performed known as Flash Maze had lived up to its name by sending Kouka's attack dancing off it in complication patterns away from the both of them. Although they were untouched, the buildings nearby were stuck by countless stray beams and they burst into flames.

"Amazing! That's the first time I've seen that thing's powers!" Kouka had a voice filled with the purest ecstasy, her face one of a woman in the throes of an orgasm. Moments later, the semi-transparent parts of her body started to glow with harsh light once again and he instinctively knew that she was preparing for another attack.

Arato's heart leaped to his throat, they were fighting in a residential district and someone might have gotten hurt, or even worse, killed due to their battle. He needed to wrap this up as quickly as possible.

"Send her packing, but try not to hurt anyone in the process." Arato ordered.

"Understood. Switching to mass projectile mode for a ranged bombardment." Lacia announced, before turning her head to beckon him closer to her. "Arato-san, please move behind me to avoid being caught in the recoil blast." Just as she had said, her device shifted into an offensive mode, spreading eight claw-like appendages. From inside the expanded metal components of the black device, the blue light from Flash Maze formed eight long, flat beams. Then, black monolith quickly folded itself into a cannon-like shape.

On the other end of the road, Kouka was now advancing towards them with her own weapon at her hip. Another red light was forming on the muzzle of her weapon and it seemed that Kouka was charging up for another blast from the intense heat coming from the device. "That thing sure is quick to rearrange itself." She whistled in awe.

"Firing preparations complete. Maximum output achieved. Target, Lacia-class Type-001 hIE, Kouka." Lacia said coldly, choosing to ignore Kouka's commentary as she aimed the railgun towards her.

"Hold on!" Arato started to shout, panic building in his chest. He had clearly ordered Lacia to hold back for the sake of the humans around them. Had he made a mistake again? "What do you mean by full power!? That sounds completely dangerous!"

Lacia's weapon was pointing in the direction of the densely populated area of the city across the Sumida riverbank. If the shot from her weapon had as much ridiculous firepower as she made it out to be, Arato was sure that entire city blocks would be vaporized in its wake.

Supporting her massive device with one arm, Lacia, who now looked like nothing more than an artillery platform, turned to face him with an honest smile on her face. She reached out to him with her free hand. "Trust me, Arato-san."

Despite his reservations, Arato swallowed thickly and decided to take her hand.

"I will now proceed with the destruction of the enemy." Lacia said as she began to countdown. "Beginning firing sequence in five... four..."

"Wait, wait! Lacia!" Arato pleaded with her, but she did not stop. The heartless machine known as Lacia was going to execute her task regardless. No amount of whining, begging, or crying could stop a soulless machine when it had its mind set on something. It was then that Arato understood how helpless the kidnapper must have felt in his final moments. "You're going to hit innocents!"

After all, Lacia was an empty robot who only knew one thing, and that was to move forward no matter what.

"Three... two..." She continued the countdown to a disaster but Arato thought he could almost hear her whisper in between the numbers as she squeezed his hand tightly.

"Trust me."

Her true voice was like a flicker in the wind.

"One." Lacia declared the death sentence she was about to deliver unto Kouka.

Kouka stood there stock still, Arato wasn't sure if it was due to awe or fear, or a combination of both. "Onee-sama seems to be well suited for fighting in wide-open areas like this." Kouka acknowledged as she started to back off. "It seems that you're determined to stick with the path you've chosen. I wish I could play with you more, but I guess that's all the time we've got for today."

She aimed her device at the ground near her feet and pulled the trigger. A small laser shot out and made the asphalt road explode in a cloud of smoke, hiding Kouka in an instant.

"If I were to speak in the parlance of human emotions, my dearest Onee-sama, I might say that I love you." Though Arato couldn't see her anymore, he could clearly hear the sincere adoration in Kouka's voice. When the dust cloud cleared, Kouka was gone.

The danger was gone.

They were finally safe.

Lacia turned the railgun at an angle towards the sky and fired. Just as she'd warned earlier, dust clouds erupted all around them outside of the small area behind black monolith. With the sound of crashing thunder, the bright blue shot harmlessly cleared the clouds and revealed the moon. As he had ordered, she had managed to chase Kouka away without anyone getting hurt.

Arato felt guilty for doubting her.

He shook off her hand to try and start walking towards where Kouka had just been. The strange scene he'd just witnessed made the blood pound in his ears. Kouka, an hIE, had just confessed feelings of love toward Lacia, another hIE. Trying to fathom the meaning behind the feelings Kouka expressed made Arato feel like he was peeping into a forbidden world and all the voyeuristic wrongness it implied.

He felt pissed off. When a machine loved another machine, there was no space for a human to enter into the equation.

"What the hell does she mean she 'loves' you? Tell her to get in line, dammit. And besides, that's totally incest." Arato swore as he tried to move his legs but the world around him in his field of view wobbled like a konnyaku jelly. Before he knew it, the ground was rushing towards him again. It seemed that his body had finally given way after all the excitement and adrenaline had left him.

However, instead of the expected painful sensation of the hard asphalt road, Arato found himself falling into something soft and warm.

She smelled of lemon and citrus.

"You're way too popular." Arato started to childishly complain. In this position, with his neck resting on her shoulder, Arato couldn't see Lacia's face, but he could hear her soft breathing beside his ears. "First, it was that guy, and now your little sister wants a piece of the action as well."

Including him, two men and one hIE had just fought each other out of love for Lacia's non-existent heart, although in his case, he'd mostly ended up getting beaten instead. Lacia stood there, absorbing all of his complaints perfectly as she continued to firmly support his wavering body. She had both hands free at her sides, black monolith having been anchored into the road.

"I was going easy on her, you know?" Arato told her. "After all, it would look bad if a guy like me just went ahead and beat up a girl."

"I'm sure you did." Lacia said dryly.

If there was one real complaint that Arato had, it was that he felt a sense of shyness at their position, the slightly shorter girl supporting him instead of the other way around. It would have been perfect if their positions were reversed. He tried to say something but a sharp lance of pain in his throat prevented him from speaking.

"Crimson Fog... I'm going to remember that name." He turned his face away to spit, and there was blood mixed with the saliva. Arato winced, he was going to feel that in the morning for sure.

After leaning on her for a while, Arato did not know how long exactly, he finally broke the silence that had settled.

"I shouldn't have raised my voice at you yesterday." Arato admitted. He did not know why, but apologizing to Lacia always came easily to him. Strangely enough, he did not feel the same sense of shame or hesitation as he would have if he had been dealing with a human. Maybe it was her status as a robot that made her seem more approachable. Perhaps it was simply because she was pretty and smelled nice. It might have been both, as Arato found that he'd stopped caring after a while.

"It would be healthier for our relationship if you were to discuss your frustrations with me before they have the opportunity to build up and overflow." Lacia reassured him. "I understand that you're trying to be polite but please do not be reserved when it comes to matters such as this."

As always, she had the perfect response to everything. But even though Arato knew it was a calculated reaction to make him feel good, he couldn't help the happiness that surged through him.

The fast, arousing rhythm toyed with his body and made him feel like he was losing to his instincts. Arato was convinced, at this place beside her, for sure, he could be reborn into a brand new person. The days he had vainly spent pursuing the vision of his lost self felt like they were completely over.

The crackling sounds of electrical sparks coming from the wrecked SUV. The cold air that made the sweat on his skin cool and evaporate. The loud clash of steel between Lacia-class hIEs. The rawness in his throat. The warm breathing in his ears. The glorious, dazzling, madness of spring.

All of the overwhelming sensations shook him furiously, throbbing violently in his chest.

He closed his eyes to take it all in, plunging his world into a dark blackout as he started to reconstruct his internal world.

Endo Arato.

The child who chased after Eliza's back, never looking behind.

Endo Arato.

The high-school teenager who loved Lacia, the robot who only looked forward towards the future.

Right now, Arato felt that if he were to open his eyes in front of a mirror, perhaps he might be able to see a new self. It was like someone who had woken up in a new room, went on to explore new things, and then fell asleep in the same room.

Envisioning it felt like something akin to making a wish. In that particular wish, Arato could certainly see a wonderful new world with his new eyes. Fun, cheerful and satisfying, that was the future he desired, one with Lacia in it, the whole of it glittering brightly like pure gold. It was a radiant lifestyle that had the effect of dazzling him all the time.

Honestly, he couldn't deny that the image of living like that every day made a sense of happiness surge through him. It felt like the sprout of a new life, of hopes and wishes growing from the season of beginnings called spring.

If the both of them could live out meaninglessly happy days like that, Arato thought to himself, then surely before long, they would eventually fall in love.

Yes, Arato wanted to love. And he wanted the heartless robot calling herself Lacia to come to love him as well.

In the end, it seemed that all he desired was but a single person. A 'someone' who he wanted to admire so much, that nothing else could enter his heart. It may have been a childish desire indeed, perhaps, but as Arato was an ordinary Villager A sort of person, Arato thought that it couldn't be helped. He wanted to meet a single girl. He wanted to bet it big, and bet it all on love.

For most of his life, he expected Eliza to be that girl, until the day when she had been cruelly stolen away from him by a calamitous disaster. From that moment on, a gaping hole existed in his heart.

But now, with this newly given opportunity, Arato wanted to use it to throw himself into the currents of fate. Diving headlong into the rushing stream of this new world unlocked by Lacia, the person he met on that fateful night, and the one who resembled Eliza so closely it frightened him.

Arato let out a sigh. With that exhale, it felt like his doubts were slowly leaving his body.

When he finally opened his eyes again, he knew that it was but his imagination, but Shin Koiwa seemed a little bit brighter for some reason.

"Lacia, tell me just this one thing." Arato swallowed, his throat dry. "On that night when we first met, was it all a coincidence, or was it something else?"

On that very first night, the arrow of pathos fired by Lacia had struck true and found him. From there, she proceeded to charm him into being her Owner. Now only a single critical question remained for Arato.

Was said projectile released without significance?

Or did they naturally attract each other, like the opposite neutrons of a magnet?

Lacia gently made some space between them, at first Arato had thought she was pushing him away, but then realized she wanted him to see her face for this. Although most of his sweat had been absorbed by his shirt, there was some leftover on his skin. She lazily traced one long finger over his bare collarbone, picking up a bead of his sweat. The slow, erotic nature of her movements made him shiver.

Arato watched with a rising blush as she toyed with the droplet on her index finger. Slowly, it started to grow smaller as her hygroscopic skin worked its magic.

Suddenly, she drew her face closer to his.

"There is something I have not yet told you. I required someone who fulfilled the conditions of my ideal Owner. To that end, I have observed you from the start." Lacia murmured as the rest of the sweat drop on her finger disappeared. Arato could feel her warm, sweet breath brush against his face. The scent was familiar, reminding him of a particular brand of breath spray that happened to be popular. "I watched you a lot. The times you had, both good and bad. Your laughter and your tears. Your brightest hopes and your darkest fears. Everything was there."

"I saw so much." Lacia said as she lifted her face and looked directly into his eyes. In those damp pale blue eyes, everything was reflected, glittering brightly. They twinkled and shook so strongly, Arato thought that the entire universe was reflected in them. His eyes hurt from the dazzling radiance she was giving off. Quietly, Lacia inhaled, her lips trembling. As she was a robot, it went without saying that she didn't need to breathe. Instead, the act of breathing was merely something she did to project the illusion of humanity. It was at this point that he realized Lacia was using the action of 'breathing' in order to buy herself more time to carefully calculate the words she wanted to say.

But even though he knew this, Arato found that he didn't care.

"Before I knew it, I was cheering you on. I believe that was the time when I came to desire you for myself."

Her blue eyes were oh so wet and oh so bright. A single tear looked like it was about to fall, but it did not diminish their sparkle one bit, in fact, it only made her seem more beautiful. As if enjoying the bath in the moonlight, she shut her eyes with a tranquil expression.

"Our meeting was always bound to happen. It was fate. Endo Arato, you were the only one for me."

Lacia's words were accompanied by a transcendentally blissful smile. She sounded immensely joyous, like a blushing newlywed bride at the altar. Considering the utter absence of doubt on her face, Arato knew that she had meant every word.

In regards to what would happen in the future, Arato did not know. In any case, he couldn't predict such a thing. The past was over, and there was no point in dwelling on it. Even for someone like him, he could recognize that an important moment was upon him, and that he needed to react to the current situation with absolute sincerity. After all, Lacia had made the effort to reach out to him, baring her beatless heart with pure and open honesty, as if she were telling it all, in a single long, drawn-out breath. To Arato, it felt like she was throwing out her hand for him to catch.

So he would grab that hand.

Arato let out a deep breath, and then as if raising his hands high in surrender, wrapped his arms around her. How could he not? Looking at her like this, only a truly heartless person could turn Lacia aside and deny her.

He didn't know for sure if what Lacia had just said was merely an analog hack to get him to lower his guard and trust her more, or if it came from somewhere special inside her hollow frame. Arato himself knew that she was a heartless machine, but holding her tightly like this, with his hammering heart beating on her chest, he felt that if a human poured enough emotion into it, even a robot could come to have a heart.

Like how a campfire warms those who gather around it, Arato thought that if nothing else, he could pass on some of that warmth to Lacia and have her understand what it felt like to be loved. Even if it was just an echo of the real thing, Arato wanted her to experience the feeling of possessing a heart.

He himself knew that it was a foolish way of thinking, backed by pure emotion instead of any rational logic, but Arato wanted to believe that if he pumped Lacia full of his hot love, he could move her, just like how an empty glass naturally slides on the table when one pours water into it from a pitcher. Even if it made her overflow, Arato wanted to keep filling her up.

There was always the off-chance it turned out that he was just indulging in a limerent hope of his own delusional feelings in the end, but Arato felt that if he made the conscious decision willingly, then at least the ruined path would be one of his own choosing.

That was why he flooded her with an unspoken message, a raw voice from the deepest aspects of his soul. By pouring his life into this object, he begged, with whatever wings she'd have left-

"Please wrap me up in them."

It might have been his imagination, but Arato thought that he could almost feel her body tremble for a moment.

Things like figuring out the things Lacia said, if there was any deeper meaning within them, all of it made his brain hurt. There was no question that the world they lived in was unstable, imperfect, and irrational, just like the feelings he held for her. It was a world where even the humans living in it spoke in doubles under the guise of politeness and courtesy. It was a society where things quickly broke down if one took what others said at face value.

After all, humans were inconsistent creatures who said different things at different times depending on the context. The mask they carried in public contrasted with the one they used in private. Even in a setting without hIEs, there was always the natural struggle to figure out the truth and context behind the words of humans. There were always two meanings to every 'truth'. The only differing interpretations were due to what was going on in people's minds at that time. To make matters even worse, such a thing wasn't carved in stone. It was subject to the passage of time and the erosion of human memory.

So perhaps the heartless Lacia represented a far simpler world where all he had to do was to trust in her words without overthinking them. Arato knew that embracing something like that would mean the breakdown of the fundamental fabric that made up human society, but here he was, embracing it anyway.

"If you do not let go, our relationship will continue." Lacia said quietly.

He understood why she'd worded it in that specific way. For Lacia, who always took the opportunity to declare herself an object, rather than a person, was pushing the decision onto him. She couldn't answer the question herself, since it all depended on the role Arato wanted her to play. That was the inescapable difference between a relationship with humans and a relationship with a robot.

"If." Arato said as he leaned into her and held on tight. The tightness only increased as Lacia's arms came up to return the hug. He felt a slightly ticklish sensation on his back, Lacia was slowly stroking the scars he carried from the explosion.

They remained connected like that, her icy fingertips illuminated by the frozen moon.

"As you wish, Arato-san." Lacia buried her face into the nape of his neck and murmured, sending pleasurable vibrations rippling through his skin.

Softly, he exhaled. "My feelings stayed the same after all." It was an answer to a question asked nearly a decade ago. When a small child had conceitedly demanded a princess for her hand in marriage, with the girl in question telling him-

"In ten years time, if your feelings remain the same, I will have your answer for you."

"So it would seem." Lacia agreed elusively, the moonlight reflecting off her slender, white neck.

Thinking back, had he really advanced since that fateful day? Or had he been marching on the spot all this time and merely performing a motion for the sake of it?

Arato didn't know.

But the weight of the responsibility on his shoulders felt heavy, and he knew that Lacia could not carry it for him, for she was not a human, but even so, Arato felt like if she continued to support him like this, he could keep going on forever.

He stared at the shimmering moon under the clear night sky, his mind going back to the unspoken agreement between them.

In which he would not needlessly ask, and she would not coyly tell.

With that compromise, it seemed like his fantasy conjured from teenage adolescence would continue for now.

The boy and his robot looked at the same sky, but Arato wondered if they saw the same dream. If they saw the world with the same lens. But no matter what, he couldn't deny that the feelings gushing forth from inside him felt like it could fill an ocean with its depth, but for now, he could only choke on them.

When he thought about how much Lacia looked forward to meeting him. A strange feeling filled his chest. He thought about the concept of 'Fate' and 'Destiny' and 'Free Will', but even he knew that at that moment silly, farfetched things like that were no longer important.

In any case, it seemed that in the end, the carefree way he lived his life had not changed in the slightest.

So to a static object like Lacia, it must have seen like time had stopped when she had first met him. An unmoving machine meeting a human who found themselves stuck repeating the same actions over and over again in the repetitious circle known as 'life'.

But now, that too wasn't true anymore, at least for him. For the hands of the clock that had been frozen ever since the day of the explosion began to move again.

In his heart, a fire started to burn.

It was the flame that had been born from his close brush with death ten years prior.

Once thought lost, it began to kindle and burn, the final dream of the one known as Endo Arato.

It transformed into a freed light that fell through the sky, sacrificing its only secure warmth for the chance of a limerent fantasy.

"I do not have feelings and you do not possess strength." Lacia whispered, her body still wrapped around his. "It is as you said before, neither feelings nor strength alone is enough to design a future. That is why I would like you to provide the feelings, in exchange, I shall grant you strength. Together, we can be a single unit."

Gazing off into the dark city, Arato was certain that she was right. Somehow it felt like everything until now had only been a taste of what was to come, and their story was only set to begin.

But even if such a thing caused him to immolate, his flawed heart would still embrace the night until the last fleck of ash scattered away.

However, for a split second, the feeling in his heart glittered off in the distance.

If it was for the sake of love, Arato thought to himself, then it was worth burning to cinders for that vision.

No matter whatever came their way, he was sure if he met it with Lacia by his side, they could figure something out as they always did.

Endo Arato and Lacia.

The human and the machine.

The boy with no brain and the girl with no heart.

Together they stood in front of the gates to the future.

"Then, let's keep going like this, Lacia."

At last, the cold night wind carried a heated whisper to him.

"Yes, let's." While continuing to bury her face in his neck, Lacia said with a somewhat muffled voice.

Eventually, with one arm slung over her for support, Arato started the long walk back to his, no, their home.

The fine silver light from the moon shone down on the Earth like silk threads. Ceaselessly, without a break, it seemed as if the moon was trying to dye all the creatures beneath it in its white light.

It was the sort of moonlight that made any other type of light seem ever so weak. No matter how brightly the stars twinkled, no matter how much light the streets of the town emitted, nothing could match the all-enveloping moonlight.

But no matter how glamorous the moonlight, on that night, Lacia put the moon itself to shame with her sublime, otherworldly beauty.

The gentle moon by his side that night was very soft and warm.