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Four months.
Four months, since she has been transported to a world where she does not belong.
Different era, but people are the same. They talk the same, same lenses, same looks.
Being under a renowned guild master’s care draws more attention than intentional. They'd speak with interest, then turn their head towards their friends, girlfriend, boyfriend. Whispering things that she wouldn't hear.
But she does.
Does this child not know how to speak? She looks messy, she looks unsettling, it makes me uncomfortable. Why would Yasuhito-san care about this girl?
That black hair, and eyes….
Looking at her makes me feel uneasy.
Can she understand what we're saying?
……Weird.
Her hearing has always been great, but these adults won't know. Some are direct, some are subtle. But she knows how to distinguish a fake smile, forced hospitality.
Sometimes, it doesn't even take her heightened sense. Their eyes tell enough.
It's hard, but she tried to smile. She tried to laugh. She tried to speak like they do.
She'd go to viral restaurants, famous stores, arcades, pet shops, cafes, play top-selling games…
Everything, and she still couldn't be one of them.
One night, she'd paused and realized— how come, her purpose changed, to be a human, instead of an inhumane?
An analysis was conducted, and one of the possible reasons, would be she doesn't want Yasuhito to worry about her. That she's a normal person like everyone else.
That she's someone worthy enough to be taken under his wings.
He hadn't said anything— he hadn't instructed her anything— but the cycle of receiving and giving won't be complete, if she doesn't give. Two folds, ten folds of what she received. Sitting next to a warm fireplace comes with a price she has to pay.
But he had desired nothing from her. Which is why, she's trying to find an answer.
Anything. Is there truly nothing she can do? Even back then, she'd have a purpose. She'd sing, and cry for the men.
She was useful, in some way.
But now? She isn't.
As if freeloading and enjoying the perks of being spoiled wasn't enough, she'd have to bring shame to his name, too.
No matter how small, it is a dishonor to his great name.
He was just like any other guy, but special. Kuroro isn't like any other guy, but special.
Shizuku, isn't like any other girl, nor is she special.
Normalcy was a thing she'd been learning for the past few months, carefully replicated for a seamless blending. The society doesn't change much, people are still the same, she had been living in the same area, and nothing happened that would change them.
Yet it feels like, the people are moving, faster than any wheel can run. Shizuku wasn't slow— but she still couldn't catch up to them.
Oh, to be so inhumane.
‘Giving up’ was something she heard, that happened to align perfectly with her current state.
All methods fail. Shift the gears, change the protocols, countless ways to program a machine, and she still couldn't be human.
Why am I not human enough?
She wasn't a human to begin with. She was different from the moment she's born.
She doesn't possess the rights they have. She doesn't possess a heart, but a brain.
She had already been born with a different purpose.
Yes, that must be it. The clips stored in her storage, the fragments of what had been, videos of her, tears filling her rolled back eyes, sounds of pleas no different from a writhing, tortured stray cat, the smile that she was greeted with as a response, until everything turns into a blur.
When she woke up, the aching pain as a constant reminder of what she did uncomfortably sticks to her like mud. Like blood. Filth running down her veins. Tears that followed after.
As much as she'd like to forget it, she cried a lot.
Before. During. After.
Sometimes it's pleasing. Sometimes it's frustrating. Sometimes she'd be smiled upon. Sometimes she'd be hit. Waking up with different kinds of pain.
It wasn't the pain, in particular. She'd still move her limbs, her body. With fail. Things aren't demanded from her, because she will do everything that she was birthed for, a predestined purpose weaved into her strings of fate.
No one questioned it, so did she.
Her childhood was always present of pain. Sometimes it's the arms, the back, the legs, the stomach, the throat…
Or something else.
She later learned there is an object called a heart, which is what humans use to feel. Feel is…how you feel. Something that acts the exact opposite of your body. Illogical, irrational. It brings more pain than should, so much like a losing bet, never knowing what to expect.
Warm hugs feel cold, even though bodies are hot. Gentle touch feels suffocating, even though the touch is as light as a feather. Words felt like they bore into her very soul.
Because she remembers everything.
Their disappointed sounds when she'd stopped resisting. When she stopped crying. When her body didn't bend as beautifully.
When….when they look with shame, as blood trails down the palm of her hand.
If you want to die, then go die.
They're right. But she wasn't even thinking of death. She wasn't thinking of anything.
Back then, she'd cried again after years. It came with no warning, no beginning and no end.
The gasping for air, blurred eyesight, and ugly snot that plugs her nose was the time where she's most broken.
She wasn't thinking straight. Walk, walked. Kitchen, and then…
She did something she should've never done.
Not because of the deep scar in her left palm, no. It's the looks that burned her, judged her, like she's the most pathetic thing in the world.
The realization hits her— they were right.
She had been the most disgusting, ugliest person on earth. Not even a person, but a pest, a food thrown to the animals, meal for the savages.
Esa.
She cried, and cried— days, weeks….two weeks, five days, to be exact. What comes after was something noone would see coming—
All the houses massacred, painful screams bleeding her eardrums, vibrations from the ground prickling her skin.
Blood, flesh, corpses of what someone was. It wasn't a new sight.
The only thing that was different, it was caused by….inhumans.
Machines weren't new. But they were the biggest ones she had ever seen. Twenty…twenty seven of them spotted.
Everyone was running away for their lives, god gives a care about the souls they crushed and the bodies they trampled.
She didn't.
She'd cried again that night, aware of what was happening, too overwhelmed to do anything about it.
She didn't think about what if I just stay here and die, no. She's incapable of having such thoughts she wasn't built to have.
She had only been staring at the ground, scarred hands clawing at the invisible fragments of her broken components. It's been two weeks, and she couldn't put them back to place.
There was an ocean blocked by a dam, and it broke. The waves came crushing in, and she couldn't fix the dam. It shattered into infinite smaller pieces that she couldn't piece back together.
On that fateful day, the world around her lost everything.
Someone who doesn't have anything to begin with, but a purpose, lost nothing but that.
Though—
Just moments nearing her death, it decided to take an abrupt turn, hitting her not in the slightest. A hand was extended towards her. Human. She had no reason to take it.
Humans are selfish, so he'd take her hand anyway.
A new purpose was then granted.
.
.
.
Broken records, ugly memories. Playbacks that should've never existed, one that she'd claw her hands into her soul to remove its very existence, anomalies that do nothing but good, but…
She remembers everything.
When the smile of a man in another world she'd met faded. Scratching his neck as he turns away.
When she'd cried, again, so shamelessly in the arms of the bearer of golden eyes.
How it denies her very existence, how it reminds her of all the faults and flaws.
How it reminds her that this shouldn't be how it is.
Shizuku is not human. She's a flawed machinery, broken, broken, and….still broken, despite the years honing her being to perfection. Practiced gaze, posture, stance, all fresh in her mind.
She can burn herself with it, but something always burns hotter, scorching the very thing of who she is.
An intelligence. A child. A broken doll.
She had been no different. Surely, she had been nothing but a concept of unfeeling. Cold and unflinching. That's how it should be, that's how it is, and there can't be any other.
Machines aren't supposed to feel.
So why is she crying?
.
.
.
What seemed so blue in the sunlight
By the night was a pale green
She hated it. Hate, hate, hate, something that she shouldn't even know how to feel.
One night upon her settling down in the dormitory. She cried.
The reason was—
Something that burned more than everything else.
Yasuhito was gentle, he was kind. His being radiant, akin to a warm, cozy fireplace adventurers would stop by and soak by his warmth. A warmth like fire, but no fire nor sun could give.
But it doesn't burn her.
It was so comfortably warm that it felt illegal. It feels forbidden to even think about it, moreso to wish she could come back and feel the burning flame from his fingertips again.
The burning sensation that was felt throughout her body, yet it doesn't burn.
She'd shamefully let out thick, hot tears, droplets of water escaping the corner of her eyes, soaking through the shutted eyes and freefalled like streaming waterfall.
She crouched at the ground before dawn, before the sun even wakes up.
She does the exact same thing.
Knees hit the street made of stone, stumbling, hitting a dim streetlight just a few centimeters away. The droplets that fell painted the surface of the stone darker shades of gray, her hands soon followed next to where it falls.
She cries, but no one would hear her. She wished she couldn't, too, the sobs and gasps leaving her rotten mouth too ashaming to be uttered, too embarrassing to be heard.
Not anyone else, but her.
She'd watch herself fall apart, armor carefully built and structured, all to fall again, like bricks crashing down from a well-built wall. It's paining to no end, and no in between.
If you cry, there must be a reason.
But what are you crying for?
For everything that's lost? For how your body is flawed like no other, for how your mind is unrepairable like no other?
Or for how you knew…
That you cried and cry for nothing.