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The night has long settled in by the time Keito returns home, but the fluorescent lamps lighting every street give no inclination towards that fact. The city's still abuzz with the bustle of its night owls, an invitation to join in and enjoy the nightly festivities. Those invitations are meant for people like him, the individuals who return home late and worn out but not quite tired enough to sleep. But hearing that cacophony of laughter does nothing to sway his step — he has a duty to return to — so he adjusts his grip on his briefcase and carries on.
At the tail end of his journey, he finds himself in a quiet, well-kept apartment complex, an obscure retreat for the first class citizens of society who prefer living in solitude. Here live renowned lawyers, doctors, and engineers, each as wealthy and renowned as the last.
Keito hastens his steps, eager to return home after a long month out on business. Normally, he'd have refused an invite out-of-city — he's respected enough that most clients will come to see him in his office — but this was an offer he couldn't refuse. So, he'd packed his bags and prepared for a long and lonesome thirty days. But now he's home again, and can hold his beloved in his arms.
Said beloved is a robot with the body of a human, who Keito finds cradling a sleeping infant in its arms. The blond hair and blue eyes of the child are echoed in her caretaker, and upon those artificially perfected features is a look too fond to be held on something mechanical.
The robot's attention only strays from the girl when Keito whisks forward to press a kiss on its — his — cheek. It — he — giggles quietly, and turns just in time to catch those human lips with his own.
Their kiss is slow and chaste, both an I'm back and welcome home . When they part, Keito bends down to kiss his daughter's forehead, breathing her scent back into recognition.
His first words upon returning home a whisper of, "Shall I take her back to her room?"
"Yes, please."
So he scoops the girl into his arms with a surgical precision, and carries her to the nursery, a cosy little thing with glow-in-the-dark stars adhered to the ceiling. There, he carefully lowers her into the crib, and with a final kiss to her forehead, he leaves the blood-heir to the Tenshouin Conglomerate to sleep comfortably in her bed, so far away from the strife surrounding her family's name.
Neither of her fathers' families care for her; the Tenshouin family has enough on their plate without considering their dead son's daughter, and the Hasumis never considered her theirs to begin with.
When Keito returns to his own room, after stopping at the bathroom to brush his teeth, he finds the robot — his husband — laid down on their bed, motionless. Skulking forward, he takes a seat on the mattress's edge and whispers to his lover.
"Eichi?"
His husband's eyes open, but the expression held within them is empty, like the body is just an empty shell of a person. So, with a firm hand, Keito taps the base of his neck. At that Eichi blinks thrice with a stiff autonomy, lifeless, until at the fourth his eyes' vacancy is washed over by recognition for life.
There's a mischievous twinkle in Eichi's eye when he locks eyes with Keito, at once a treasure and a nuisance. Keito sighs without much real aggravation and pulls Eichi into his arms, finally decompressing as he deflates into the embrace. He says nothing, only kneading Eichi's back with his thumb, and Eichi returns the gesture by resting his chin atop Keito's forehead and stroking his hair. They sit like that for a few peaceful minutes, silent and yet loudly in love.
The silence remains when Keito pulls away to brush his fingers over Eichi's cheeks, holding his head forward so he can take in the complexion in his cheeks and the liveliness of his eyes. His hand trails down to the base of his neck, feeling the beat of his artificial pulse. Eichi only moves to lift his arms so Keito can pull his sweater off, and runs his palms down the plane of his chest, feeling the skin that he'd so painstakingly grafted unto the metal frame of his body. He's pleased to find it supple under his palms.
His smile when Eichi giggles at the fingers tickling his neck is both affectionate and clinical — even after a month out of use, his sensitivity is still in touch. For good measure, Keito traces a finger over the inside of Eichi's thigh; the way his muscles tense is nothing short of lovely. He's so wonderfully human, soft and warm and vulnerable under Keito's touch, and when the engineer presses his lips to Eichi's, he reaffirms that feeling all over again.
Just as the old Eichi — the sickly one with a real body that ached protests for life — had been Keito's muse, this new, robotic Eichi is his masterpiece. The Eichi that he lost to the whims of higher powers belongs to him now, a doll for his own pleasure and comfort.
With the air of both a physician and a lover, Keito takes a comb from their nightstand and brings it to Eichi's hair. This, too, is part of their routine, this ritualistic maintenance that never fails to put Keito at ease. Somehow, he feels like he's making up for all the times he had no control over Eichi's well-being when he was alive.
Eichi keeps still for him, his face trained into neutrality, and shoulders set up with the natural discomfort of someone being tinkered with. Keito pays it no mind.
It's only after he sets the comb down that Eichi is allowed to pull free of his grip, moving shifting off to the edge of their mattress.
"Don't be so on edge," Keito scolds, and Eichi's minute frown only lasts for a second before being replaced by a smile.
"I think you're the one on edge, Dr. Hasumi~"
"And don't talk back."
But it's far too soft to be a serious chastisement, and received only a chuckle in reply.
Eichi's arms twine 'round Keito's neck, pulling him close to kiss him. Even if this is routine as well, Keito's arms still tingle with goosebumps, finding his lover as divine as the last time they'd kissed. Every part of Eichi is by Keito's design, and thusly, to his taste — that is to say that not one detail upon the man's body has been altered from when he was alive.
"I missed you," he breathes against Eichi's neck when they part, and Eichi smiles, satisfied to see the proof that his dependency on Keito isn't one-sided. "I missed you both. How was Hikari?"
"She's doing fine, her health is perfect." Keito sighs in relief. "But she missed her father."
A few months ago, Keito would've protested to be called that. He was a caretaker, not a parent, just as he was at first Eichi's master, and not his husband. But those protests aren't true anymore, so Keito just smiles.
"I brought back souvenirs. I'll give her hers in the morning."
"I'm sure she'll be happy."
"What about you, aren't you happy?"
Eichi ducks his head into the crook of Keito's neck, and says, "Yes, of course," but his voice is suspiciously absent of emotion.
Keito recognizes the apathy in his tone, it's a fault of his own. If Eichi cannot express an emotion, that means Keito didn't program him to.
"Eichi?"
Eichi doesn't answer.
"Come on, don't be a brat. You know you can't hide things from me."
The I know everything about you; I can change anything I don't like goes unsaid — neither party would exactly be pleased to admit that.
When Eichi looks up, he's pouting, and Keito wonders if he'd look angrier if he had control over his own expressions.
"I missed you," he says decisively, and then: "I've felt like crying for days."
But they both know that Eichi has no tears to shed, and not for fault of Keito's abilities. If he wanted to, he could make Eichi weep for days, but that's the furthest from what he wants — he created this robot so he could come home to the image of Eichi's smile every day, after all.
How funny, he thinks, that he provided Eichi with some fifty ways to smile but not one to cry.
"You're not allowed to complain when I'm clingy," Eichi declares suddenly, punctuating his words by wrapping his arms around Keito completely. "You programmed me to be like this. If you didn't like it when the old Eichi did it, you wouldn't have put it in my coding."
His words are a surprise punch to Keito's stomach. This new Eichi, in the confines of his own technological existence, lacks the subtlety of his predecessor—
"I'm sure that the old Eichi would've cried on your shoulder if you let him."
—but is equally bitter towards life.
All Keito can offer in response is his fingers rubbing circles into the small of Eichi's back, an answer that is neither yes nor no. Eichi lets himself be held, hiding his face in the fabric of Keito's shirt.
"I'm sorry that I'm not the old Eichi. I'm sure he would've been easier to deal with."
"Don't talk like that, you're just fine."
"You know I'm not. No matter how much you tinker with me, you'll always be dissatisfied. I'm never gonna have that thing that made you fall in love with him."
Why must Eichi do this to him? Why must Keito constantly be reminded of the time when he'd had to condense his brilliant, enigmatic Eichi into the nothing more than lines of code on a screen. Why must it always return to his attention that this Eichi is just a portrait of the real thing that was lost to time?
It'd be so easy to complain, to tell this robot to act more like Eichi, but he never does. Perhaps it's because, for every mystery he lost when he became Keito's creation, this new him strayed further and further from Keito's expectation.
"I don't mind if you're a little different from him. I didn't raise a child with the old Eichi."
"But you did grow up with him. Even if you put all your memories of him into me, it still won't change that fact."
"I know," Keito says, though the statement's doubtful. "Do you think I was wrong to create you?"
"I…" Eichi tilts his neck so his chin rests on Keito's chest, and looks his husband in the eye. "I don't know. I can see why you did, and I know that it was good for Hikari, but—"
"Do you think that it's wrong of me to be in love with this you?"
Eichi's eyes widen, and, if he had blood, Keito's sure he would be blushing. Then, he drops his head back into Keito's neck, and grumbles.
"I don't know. The old Eichi would probably be mad at you."
"Stop bringing him up. I'm talking to you ."
"What else do you expect me to say?"
How wonderful a machine he is, to argue with his creator like this, to have even earned these kinds of affections. Yet again, Keito is reminded that no matter how illustrious he becomes, he still is just an unremarkable man giving life to remarkable things.
"Maybe you could tell me if you return my feelings."
"You already know that," Eichi quips, but when he raises his head, he's smiling. "I love you," he whispers, and even though Keito knows it's all in his code, he responds, unsure of his response his for the memory of Eichi or for the machine in his arms:
"I love you."