To Be Human {Chapter 21}
To Be Human {Chapter 21}
Title: To Be Human
Author: fel93
Length: Chaptered (2407 words for this chapter)
Pairing: Ohmiya, Sakuraiba
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, Drama, Fantasy, Futuristic, Angst, Romance
Disclaimer: Nuh-uh, sadly, they’re not mine
Summary: What happens when Ohno gets lost, and meets someone who is not quite like him
Aiba watches through the entire process.
Of how the bead of perspiration forms between the folds of Jun’s furrowed eyebrows and then slides down slowly along his nose bridge, dangling at the tip of his nose. And then, as it is about to drop… Jun wipes it away with the back of his hand. And continues with uninterrupted focus on fixing Nino.
He thought it is really cool of Jun to have the ability to fix a robot. He wonders if this ability is a human thing and if robots are capable of that too. If he had Jun’s skills, it will be so awesome.
Because then, he’d be able to fix Sho up, to be good as new.
As Aiba is brought out of his trance, he surveys his surroundings. Jun stretches his arm out absent-mindedly towards the surface of the movable counter, fumbling around for something. Aiba stands up suddenly, picks up the pliers and places it calmly in Jun’s searching hands.
Surprised at the suddenly weight in his hands, Jun looks up.
“That’s what you were searching for right?” Aiba tilts his head curiously. Jun had just replaced the damaged wires in Nino’s hip and leg. He needs the pliers to cut off the excess wires doesn’t he?
“Oh, yeah you’re right! Thanks Aiba…” Jun mumbles, still surprised at Aiba. In no time, he slips back into focus, fixing Nino up.
Aiba looks at the digital clock on the wall, just behind Jun. It has been an hour since they’ve been brought in here. And in that hour, nobody spoke.
Since an hour ago, Ohno had not moved from his spot , standing beside Nino, holding on firmly onto his hand. He stares intently at Nino’s face, as if willing him to wake up and greet him Good Morning, where’s my DS? I need to game. like any other random day. Jun had only allowed Ohno to be there because it doesn’t interfere with his work on fixing Nino up.
Since an hour ago, Jun has been focused on his work, nobody dares to distract. Nor does anyone want to distract him. Like Ohno, they all hoped to have their friend Nino back and Jun is their only hope.
And since an hour ago, Aiba and Sho has been sitting quietly, relishing the surge of electrical energy that surges through their wires and hungry for more of the adrenaline rush that only charging brings.
Beside him, Sho shifts in his seat, still staring intently at the little metal strip slapped onto this forearm. It reads: 89%.
Aiba turns back to his own little metal strip. It reads: 99%. It flashes again. Now: 100%.
Sho’s energy level has been stuck at 89% for the last 15 minutes and he doesn’t think that it will increase any further due to the damaged that Sho had received. He is going to have to talk to Jun about it. But for now, this will have to do. They are short of time and they have to remove all evidence of their existence as soon as possible.
Aiba caught Sho’s eyes and Sho sighs in resignation.
“I think we’ll go off now!” Aiba speaks up, and whine at how loud his voice sounds in this otherwise deadly silent room.
Jun frowns even deeper at the sudden interruption. He looks up and realises that Aiba and Sho had disconnected the cords from their belly buttons and are halfway across the room, to the door.
“Oh okay! Don’t forget the surveillance room,” Jun reminds.
“Don’t worry we won’t.” Aiba chimes
“And the janitor’s room too!” Jun suddenly remembers.
“Yeah that too!” Sho replies.
“Oh! And also the file room!” Jun thinks hard for the rooms that they visited while they were here.
“Don’t worry Jun! We’ll get all of them covered!” Aiba winks and points to his head “Super memory remember? Don’t worry, we won’t miss anything out!”
Jun laughs at his own forgetfulness. How can he forget that robots remember everything? “Okay, okay. I was just worried. The higher executives have been in meeting for an hour. Their meetings usually lasts 5 hours so we only have 4 hours for everything to be done. Finish this fast! This is too important to screw up.”
“We won’t screw up. This is important to us too.” Sho smiles at Jun and slips out of the room, with Aiba following close behind.
Jun stares at Sho and Aiba’s retreating back for a while, before returning to work on Nino.
“I’m almost done with fixing Nino.” Jun informs Ohno.
Ohno just nods dumbly. If it’s even possible for robots, Nino looks paler than he usually is. But robots don’t have blood, Ohno reasons with himself, maybe it’s just the bright white light. With his eyes closed and his face lax from the usual smirk that Nino has on his face, Nino finally looks at peace with himself.
He’s been fighting all his life, or existence if that’s a better word, to pretend that he’s fine and coming to terms with what he’s done. Because reasonably, it’s not his fault because he had no conscious partake in the massacre that night. Fighting all his life, to pretend that he doesn’t care about the nasty things that people say about him, about him being a robot, about the massacre that he has no part in. But truth be told, Nino blames himself more than any others for what happened that night. He always blames himself, for being too weak, for losing control of his own body, to allow the monstrosity to occur. And nobody ever told him before, that it is not his fault. And being accused by Ohno, the person that matters to him, was probably the final nail in the coffin of his perception of his worth as a sentient being.
When Nino wakes up, Ohno wants to be the first one to tell him that it was never his fault, it is not his fault and will never be his fault for acting that way. He wasn’t even in control. Ohno realises that underneath the hard shell of cynicism and sarcastic remarks, Nino is even more vulnerable than normal people. All Nino wants, is to be accepted by people and when Nino wakes up, Ohno wants to be the first one to tell him that he is already accepted by people and all he has to do is allow himself to be accepted.
“When will Nino wake up?” Ohno finally speaks.
Jun looks up from Nino’s shoulder, which he is currently working on. “Preferably soon after I finish this up. It shouldn’t be long from now.” Jun flashes Ohno a reassuring smile.
Ohno nods and goes back to staring at Nino, drinking in the look of his porcelain-like skin, the mole on his chin and his pale pink thin lips.
It was after a while that Ohno suddenly speaks up again. “What do you think happened?” Ohno asks. He didn’t state explicitly about what, but Jun knows that Ohno is referring to the night of the massacre and what happened back then in the music room when Nino attacked them without reason.
Jun finishes up the last few stitches on Nino’s shoulder and stands up, stretching and groaning as he relieves his strained muscles from the tension.
“I actually know what happened.” Jun tells Ohno matter-a-factly.
Ohno looks up with wide eyes, surprised at his answer.
“The fact that you managed to get into the lab and get Nino and Sho out of their cell, means that you already know about the secret passage way with the two-way lock right? And that you and Nino already knew each other from way back?” Jun confirms.
Ohno nods vigorously. Surprised that Jun knows all that too.
“When you ran away from me, I went through Nino’s file carefully and I found this.” Jun holds up a small chip. Ohno looks at him, puzzled.
“This is a duplicate of Nino’s memory from way back when he was still in the lab.” Jun clarifies. “Remember I told you about robots being created to help out due to a labour shortage problem?” Jun asks and Ohno’s memories brings him back to the day when he first found out that Sho, Aiba and Nino are all robots. They were all sitting around, asking Jun about the history and details of being a robot. Ohno nods again.
“Nino is one of the robots created as the first prototype. He was created to help out and he was rented to your grandmother, Satoko, as a helper. That is probably how you got to know him.” The memory of a slim, dark-haired guy rescuing him when he was stuck in the apple tree resurfaces in his mind.
“Nino was rented to your Satoko and he had to go back to the lab time to time for his routine maintenance. And because Nino was the first robot to develop feelings, even though he was not programmed to because he’s the first prototype, the scientists were all very interested in him and hence, they duplicate this memory every time he came back for maintenance work for research and further-study purposes.”
This is new to Ohno. Does this mean that Nino fell in love with me even despite not being programmed to have feelings? “So all robots don’t have feelings?” Ohno asks.
Jun shakes his head. “Not all robots. Just the first prototypes, like Nino. Subsequent prototypes are more human-like and prototypes X, like Aiba and Sho are just as emotional as humans, or even more, as you should have realised by now.” Ohno thinks back on how emotional Aiba and Sho had always been; when Aiba begged Jun to save Sho and reconnect his broken arm, when Aiba and Sho were so angry that they killed the mutant even though they were against harming any life forms. Ohno nods again in agreement.
“So as I was saying, Nino was your grandmother’s helper. Your grandmother adores him and treated him like a grandson but he was the only robot in the village, because the other villagers were not accepting of robots at all, despite your grandmother’s effort to make them see that robots are our friends.” Jun walks to the wall in front of them and presses on the number pad that was mounted on the wall. The projector switches on and a beam of blue light shines on the plain white wall in front of them.
“I think you should watch this, to know what happened.” Jun inserts the memory chip that he showed Ohno just now into a small slit on the number pad.
The blue beam flickered and projected on the wall, was suddenly his grandmother’s face.
“Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be in the lab?” Satoko asks, a look of surprise on her face.
“I sneaked out.” I said simply.
For a split second, Ohno thought Nino woke up. He peeks at Nino lying on the operating table and sees that his eyes and mouth are still closed in peaceful slumber. He realises that what he will be hearing were Nino’s thoughts. What he will be seeing, is what Nino saw back then.
The view swerved and little Ohno came into sight.
“So that I can play with this little fella here.” I pat Ohno’s head, and he holds up a victory hand sign, implying that both him and I had succeeded again in breaking the two-way lock in the secret passageway.
“Nino! Bring me to the marketplace please?” Ohno tugs on the hem of my shirt. He stares up at me with puppy eyes and I know that there’s no other option- to the market it is. I look at Satoko for permission and she just chuckled.
“We can’t deny our little prince of what he wants, can we?” Satoko squats down in front of Ohno and ruffles his black hair. Ohno flashes a toothy grin, jumping on the spot with excitement.
Satoko kisses Ohno’s cheeks and retrieves her purse. She took out some cash and waves them around Ohno. Ohno tries grabbing them but Satoko make sure to keep them out of reach. She laughs when Ohno pouts at her and then deliberately makes a show out of passing the money to me instead.
“Buy Ohno stuff only if he behaves!” Satoko whispers conspiratorily to me, keeping her voice just as loud so that Ohno could hear.
“Yes mam!” I gave her a two finger salute and Ohno imitates me. I laugh and heave Ohno up to sit on my shoulders.
“Be back by six! I need help with dinner!” I am already halfway through the door and I gave her a thumbs up without looking back.
“Bye bye granny!” Ohno shouts.
The present Ohno stares in wonder at the memory shown. Is this real? If it is real, then why doesn’t he have any recollection of this? It feels familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
I met Ohno a year ago and our first meeting wasn’t very conventional. He was up on a tree while I was on the ground. A year ago, the lab told me that I was rented to the town’s head since she requested for a helper and so I was just making my way to the town’s head’s home when this little boy called me for help from the tree. I was hesitant to help since it wasn’t part of my duties, and I was kind of running late. But he looked so helpless, I couldn’t not help. So I helped him down- which involved him jumping into my arms recklessly and almost knocking me off my feet. I placed him down and proceed to head to the town’s head’s home but this little boy wouldn’t stop following me. I was getting quite frustrated when he followed me all the way to the house but then I found out that the little boy was the town head’s grandson.
A tug on my hair brings me back to the present. Ohno is holding tuffs of my hair in his small hands, trying to steer me like a horse around the marketplace.
“Let’s go there!” Ohno moves around excitedly on my shoulders and I worry about him falling off.
“Okay! Calm down cowboy!” I make my way to the art store when someone calls out.
“Hey you human-imposter, why’d you steal my apple?”
To Be Continued...
Previous Chapter: {Chapter 20}
A/N: Hello! ^^ I just had to laugh for naming Ohno’s grandma Satoko xD I wrote this pretty quickly after the previous chapter because I was in the mood! :D I wanted to add a little more into this chapter before posting but I couldn't wait to update and wanted to do so before I MIA for the next few days.
Enjoy! (:
Title: To Be Human
Author: fel93
Length: Chaptered (2407 words for this chapter)
Pairing: Ohmiya, Sakuraiba
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, Drama, Fantasy, Futuristic, Angst, Romance
Disclaimer: Nuh-uh, sadly, they’re not mine
Summary: What happens when Ohno gets lost, and meets someone who is not quite like him
Aiba watches through the entire process.
Of how the bead of perspiration forms between the folds of Jun’s furrowed eyebrows and then slides down slowly along his nose bridge, dangling at the tip of his nose. And then, as it is about to drop… Jun wipes it away with the back of his hand. And continues with uninterrupted focus on fixing Nino.
He thought it is really cool of Jun to have the ability to fix a robot. He wonders if this ability is a human thing and if robots are capable of that too. If he had Jun’s skills, it will be so awesome.
Because then, he’d be able to fix Sho up, to be good as new.
As Aiba is brought out of his trance, he surveys his surroundings. Jun stretches his arm out absent-mindedly towards the surface of the movable counter, fumbling around for something. Aiba stands up suddenly, picks up the pliers and places it calmly in Jun’s searching hands.
Surprised at the suddenly weight in his hands, Jun looks up.
“That’s what you were searching for right?” Aiba tilts his head curiously. Jun had just replaced the damaged wires in Nino’s hip and leg. He needs the pliers to cut off the excess wires doesn’t he?
“Oh, yeah you’re right! Thanks Aiba…” Jun mumbles, still surprised at Aiba. In no time, he slips back into focus, fixing Nino up.
Aiba looks at the digital clock on the wall, just behind Jun. It has been an hour since they’ve been brought in here. And in that hour, nobody spoke.
Since an hour ago, Ohno had not moved from his spot , standing beside Nino, holding on firmly onto his hand. He stares intently at Nino’s face, as if willing him to wake up and greet him Good Morning, where’s my DS? I need to game. like any other random day. Jun had only allowed Ohno to be there because it doesn’t interfere with his work on fixing Nino up.
Since an hour ago, Jun has been focused on his work, nobody dares to distract. Nor does anyone want to distract him. Like Ohno, they all hoped to have their friend Nino back and Jun is their only hope.
And since an hour ago, Aiba and Sho has been sitting quietly, relishing the surge of electrical energy that surges through their wires and hungry for more of the adrenaline rush that only charging brings.
Beside him, Sho shifts in his seat, still staring intently at the little metal strip slapped onto this forearm. It reads: 89%.
Aiba turns back to his own little metal strip. It reads: 99%. It flashes again. Now: 100%.
Sho’s energy level has been stuck at 89% for the last 15 minutes and he doesn’t think that it will increase any further due to the damaged that Sho had received. He is going to have to talk to Jun about it. But for now, this will have to do. They are short of time and they have to remove all evidence of their existence as soon as possible.
Aiba caught Sho’s eyes and Sho sighs in resignation.
“I think we’ll go off now!” Aiba speaks up, and whine at how loud his voice sounds in this otherwise deadly silent room.
Jun frowns even deeper at the sudden interruption. He looks up and realises that Aiba and Sho had disconnected the cords from their belly buttons and are halfway across the room, to the door.
“Oh okay! Don’t forget the surveillance room,” Jun reminds.
“Don’t worry we won’t.” Aiba chimes
“And the janitor’s room too!” Jun suddenly remembers.
“Yeah that too!” Sho replies.
“Oh! And also the file room!” Jun thinks hard for the rooms that they visited while they were here.
“Don’t worry Jun! We’ll get all of them covered!” Aiba winks and points to his head “Super memory remember? Don’t worry, we won’t miss anything out!”
Jun laughs at his own forgetfulness. How can he forget that robots remember everything? “Okay, okay. I was just worried. The higher executives have been in meeting for an hour. Their meetings usually lasts 5 hours so we only have 4 hours for everything to be done. Finish this fast! This is too important to screw up.”
“We won’t screw up. This is important to us too.” Sho smiles at Jun and slips out of the room, with Aiba following close behind.
Jun stares at Sho and Aiba’s retreating back for a while, before returning to work on Nino.
“I’m almost done with fixing Nino.” Jun informs Ohno.
Ohno just nods dumbly. If it’s even possible for robots, Nino looks paler than he usually is. But robots don’t have blood, Ohno reasons with himself, maybe it’s just the bright white light. With his eyes closed and his face lax from the usual smirk that Nino has on his face, Nino finally looks at peace with himself.
He’s been fighting all his life, or existence if that’s a better word, to pretend that he’s fine and coming to terms with what he’s done. Because reasonably, it’s not his fault because he had no conscious partake in the massacre that night. Fighting all his life, to pretend that he doesn’t care about the nasty things that people say about him, about him being a robot, about the massacre that he has no part in. But truth be told, Nino blames himself more than any others for what happened that night. He always blames himself, for being too weak, for losing control of his own body, to allow the monstrosity to occur. And nobody ever told him before, that it is not his fault. And being accused by Ohno, the person that matters to him, was probably the final nail in the coffin of his perception of his worth as a sentient being.
When Nino wakes up, Ohno wants to be the first one to tell him that it was never his fault, it is not his fault and will never be his fault for acting that way. He wasn’t even in control. Ohno realises that underneath the hard shell of cynicism and sarcastic remarks, Nino is even more vulnerable than normal people. All Nino wants, is to be accepted by people and when Nino wakes up, Ohno wants to be the first one to tell him that he is already accepted by people and all he has to do is allow himself to be accepted.
“When will Nino wake up?” Ohno finally speaks.
Jun looks up from Nino’s shoulder, which he is currently working on. “Preferably soon after I finish this up. It shouldn’t be long from now.” Jun flashes Ohno a reassuring smile.
Ohno nods and goes back to staring at Nino, drinking in the look of his porcelain-like skin, the mole on his chin and his pale pink thin lips.
It was after a while that Ohno suddenly speaks up again. “What do you think happened?” Ohno asks. He didn’t state explicitly about what, but Jun knows that Ohno is referring to the night of the massacre and what happened back then in the music room when Nino attacked them without reason.
Jun finishes up the last few stitches on Nino’s shoulder and stands up, stretching and groaning as he relieves his strained muscles from the tension.
“I actually know what happened.” Jun tells Ohno matter-a-factly.
Ohno looks up with wide eyes, surprised at his answer.
“The fact that you managed to get into the lab and get Nino and Sho out of their cell, means that you already know about the secret passage way with the two-way lock right? And that you and Nino already knew each other from way back?” Jun confirms.
Ohno nods vigorously. Surprised that Jun knows all that too.
“When you ran away from me, I went through Nino’s file carefully and I found this.” Jun holds up a small chip. Ohno looks at him, puzzled.
“This is a duplicate of Nino’s memory from way back when he was still in the lab.” Jun clarifies. “Remember I told you about robots being created to help out due to a labour shortage problem?” Jun asks and Ohno’s memories brings him back to the day when he first found out that Sho, Aiba and Nino are all robots. They were all sitting around, asking Jun about the history and details of being a robot. Ohno nods again.
“Nino is one of the robots created as the first prototype. He was created to help out and he was rented to your grandmother, Satoko, as a helper. That is probably how you got to know him.” The memory of a slim, dark-haired guy rescuing him when he was stuck in the apple tree resurfaces in his mind.
“Nino was rented to your Satoko and he had to go back to the lab time to time for his routine maintenance. And because Nino was the first robot to develop feelings, even though he was not programmed to because he’s the first prototype, the scientists were all very interested in him and hence, they duplicate this memory every time he came back for maintenance work for research and further-study purposes.”
This is new to Ohno. Does this mean that Nino fell in love with me even despite not being programmed to have feelings? “So all robots don’t have feelings?” Ohno asks.
Jun shakes his head. “Not all robots. Just the first prototypes, like Nino. Subsequent prototypes are more human-like and prototypes X, like Aiba and Sho are just as emotional as humans, or even more, as you should have realised by now.” Ohno thinks back on how emotional Aiba and Sho had always been; when Aiba begged Jun to save Sho and reconnect his broken arm, when Aiba and Sho were so angry that they killed the mutant even though they were against harming any life forms. Ohno nods again in agreement.
“So as I was saying, Nino was your grandmother’s helper. Your grandmother adores him and treated him like a grandson but he was the only robot in the village, because the other villagers were not accepting of robots at all, despite your grandmother’s effort to make them see that robots are our friends.” Jun walks to the wall in front of them and presses on the number pad that was mounted on the wall. The projector switches on and a beam of blue light shines on the plain white wall in front of them.
“I think you should watch this, to know what happened.” Jun inserts the memory chip that he showed Ohno just now into a small slit on the number pad.
The blue beam flickered and projected on the wall, was suddenly his grandmother’s face.
“Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be in the lab?” Satoko asks, a look of surprise on her face.
“I sneaked out.” I said simply.
For a split second, Ohno thought Nino woke up. He peeks at Nino lying on the operating table and sees that his eyes and mouth are still closed in peaceful slumber. He realises that what he will be hearing were Nino’s thoughts. What he will be seeing, is what Nino saw back then.
The view swerved and little Ohno came into sight.
“So that I can play with this little fella here.” I pat Ohno’s head, and he holds up a victory hand sign, implying that both him and I had succeeded again in breaking the two-way lock in the secret passageway.
“Nino! Bring me to the marketplace please?” Ohno tugs on the hem of my shirt. He stares up at me with puppy eyes and I know that there’s no other option- to the market it is. I look at Satoko for permission and she just chuckled.
“We can’t deny our little prince of what he wants, can we?” Satoko squats down in front of Ohno and ruffles his black hair. Ohno flashes a toothy grin, jumping on the spot with excitement.
Satoko kisses Ohno’s cheeks and retrieves her purse. She took out some cash and waves them around Ohno. Ohno tries grabbing them but Satoko make sure to keep them out of reach. She laughs when Ohno pouts at her and then deliberately makes a show out of passing the money to me instead.
“Buy Ohno stuff only if he behaves!” Satoko whispers conspiratorily to me, keeping her voice just as loud so that Ohno could hear.
“Yes mam!” I gave her a two finger salute and Ohno imitates me. I laugh and heave Ohno up to sit on my shoulders.
“Be back by six! I need help with dinner!” I am already halfway through the door and I gave her a thumbs up without looking back.
“Bye bye granny!” Ohno shouts.
The present Ohno stares in wonder at the memory shown. Is this real? If it is real, then why doesn’t he have any recollection of this? It feels familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
I met Ohno a year ago and our first meeting wasn’t very conventional. He was up on a tree while I was on the ground. A year ago, the lab told me that I was rented to the town’s head since she requested for a helper and so I was just making my way to the town’s head’s home when this little boy called me for help from the tree. I was hesitant to help since it wasn’t part of my duties, and I was kind of running late. But he looked so helpless, I couldn’t not help. So I helped him down- which involved him jumping into my arms recklessly and almost knocking me off my feet. I placed him down and proceed to head to the town’s head’s home but this little boy wouldn’t stop following me. I was getting quite frustrated when he followed me all the way to the house but then I found out that the little boy was the town head’s grandson.
A tug on my hair brings me back to the present. Ohno is holding tuffs of my hair in his small hands, trying to steer me like a horse around the marketplace.
“Let’s go there!” Ohno moves around excitedly on my shoulders and I worry about him falling off.
“Okay! Calm down cowboy!” I make my way to the art store when someone calls out.
“Hey you human-imposter, why’d you steal my apple?”
To Be Continued...
Previous Chapter: {Chapter 20}
A/N: Hello! ^^ I just had to laugh for naming Ohno’s grandma Satoko xD I wrote this pretty quickly after the previous chapter because I was in the mood! :D I wanted to add a little more into this chapter before posting but I couldn't wait to update and wanted to do so before I MIA for the next few days.
Enjoy! (: