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She didn’t like needles.
Aiko stumbled through the factory. The smell was everywhere; the smell that made her stomach roar, that something deep and primal in her demanded she follow. Up the stairs. Down them. Sometimes she stopped. Paused. The patterns in the pipes, in the walls, snagged some loose fragments of her and held it there a moment, just long enough to make her still.
She let out a moan. The light didn’t hurt her eyes, but it did still strain them just a bit. She blinked. She was a machine made to move. To live until the very sun burnt out… possibly the universe. She’d have lived long enough to see it, but she didn’t. Karen killed her…
Sometimes she would see something she recognized, not that she really understood what that even meant anymore. Just feelings with vague visions she could no longer understand… Sometimes she could focus enough to say a few words, but who were they for? Sometimes she knew it was Karen. It was newer now… but it lingered at times. She would see it… and then not. It hurt, and would have been scary if she had any sensation of fear in her…
She heard something, her head turning to it. Though only hers this time. The smell was overpowering from food, she turned her simple mind but it was another familiar thing. She felt her mind trying to understand, to push herself; this was important. She didn’t know why, but it was. She stopped, and the shape stopped. It was a familiar shape.
“A-Aiko?”
That sound meant something. Aiko’s mind focused as best it could. The details sharpened; a sad, horrified and pitying face. It stepped back, and Aiko tried to say something. “H-h-hey Kurumi…. Is it… Is…”
Head hurt, head hurt a lot. Easier to slip back into the hunt. The smell was making it easy. She needed it. Warm, taste… for some reason her mind conjured the image of a Meat Bun. She didn’t even understand it beyond it being a source of it. “Is that you… Is that.. Is that really you?”
Aiko blinked slowly. “H-hey Kurumi… is it… did I miss practice again?”
Kurumi wasn’t afraid anymore, she just looked sad. Aiko’s mind was barely together. She knew somewhere there should be MORE but it just wasn’t there. What could…
“... Do you remember that week? T-The blood test?”
Aiko’s eyes widened. “I-i know we h-h-have to but i-i-I don’t like… I don’t like n-needles…” the memory faded back… fear didn’t have a place in her mind but…
“Aiko, I’m going away now.” Kurumi said, gingerly putting a hand on Aiko’s shoulder. Aiko felt… something she hadn’t felt in a long time. “I missed you. I never thought I could say this but… Goodbye.”
“G-goodbye.” Aiko replied almost automatically, but something seemed so final in her mind. Kurumi embraced her. Something wet and cold slid down on the worn and ratty clothes Aiko wore…
Some part of her struggled to remain. It hurt so much. “I-I-I’ll see you tomorrow… I’ll see you again…” Aiko barely got out. Kurumi left, smiling and gently leaving her friend again for the last time…
Aiko blinked… and the incident was forgotten. She began to shuffle and moan around the factory once again.
She didn’t like needles.
She had a friend… whatever that was.
Aiko stumbled in the factory, the smell was everywhere, the smell that made her stomach roar, that something deep and primal in her being demanded made stumble, up stairs, down them. Sometimes she’d stop and pause. The patterns within it tricking some fragments of her mind into making her pause.
She let out a moan. The light didn’t hurt her eyes. She blinked. She was a machine made to move. To live until the very sun burns out… possibly the universe. She’d have lived long enough to see it, but she didn’t.
Part 2
Aiko was outside now. She was lured there with specific sounds; the sounds from the Academy. That and a familiar smell.
She was afraid of needles. She walked slowly. The scent had grown differently lately, but it didn’t matter. That primal part of her needed it. Others were moving. Shambling, but they were drawn away by different, odder sounds.
Eventually, she was drawn into a small building. Five bowls laid out with hot steaming liquid there… she walked to it… and then fell to her knees, face first to feast. At a window on the edge, Makoto Kagutsuchi and Kurumi Wendy watched. First was Aiko, then was Waruna, Yoshiko, and lastly Kurane… and then Karen.
All were equal in death, each of them eating the miracle ramen without concern or care of how. At least they know it’s too hard to touch by hand…
“... Was it necessary to cook it?”
“Yes, actually. The only way to get the smell, alongside the audio. I had to do quite a bit of thinking about it, actually.” His mask sat on the sill beside him — she'd asked him to keep it on, on the walk over. He'd said nothing to that. Just took it off anyway, once they'd arrived.
“I can’t exactly get outside psychologists, sociologists or anthropologists in here… because they’d be eaten, but I’m sure beforehand they could have written much.”
Kurumi just watched… Aiko would glance at her, her face dripping with broth and noodles being slurped up like entrails. It reminded her less of zombies and more of… cattle. Karen shouldn’t be literally caught dead eating like that. She wondered if they even had enough awareness to stop themselves. Aiko was still afraid of needles, still seemed to think she was stuck on her school days…
“Will they remember this?”
“Hmmm? Well, probably not if that’s a comfort. This is brand new science, after all. We’re not even supposed to exist.” Makoto’s fists tightened for a moment, just a moment. “But the research we have managed to start suggests there are methods… the question is just what we can make of them…”
Kurumi couldn’t take her eyes off of them… It was hard for her to believe that they all died so soon. Sure, Waruna, Yoshiko and Kurane had killed Karen, and Karen had murdered Aiko. She never thought she’d see them again, and after her investigation there, seeing them as mindless corpses… Aiko, barely holding onto her faculties…
“Have you heard of the Ship of Theseus Paradox?” Makoto asked dryly. “I’ve been considering making it a required theory to understand in Kanai Ward.”
Kurumi paused, looking at Makoto and trying not to hear or look at her schoolmates struggling to eat. “It’s a thought experiment right? If you take apart a boat and replace every part as you go along, do you eventually have a new boat, or is it the same?”
“And if you build a new boat from all those parts is it the same boat or something new?” He nodded. “Close enough, I suppose. That’s what we are, isn’t it?”
“I still try not to think too hard about it.” Kurumi admitted, which seemed to earn her the full attention of Makoto. It was the middle of the afternoon, whatever that actually meant in Kanai Ward, but in the darkness of the Restricted Area, in the observation room recently constructed for workers and researchers to properly help the Homoculi… it seemed black as midnight for the moment.
“Is that so?” Makoto asked, not uncritically, just a bit bemused.”I have given it a lot of thought myself. It’s half the reason I didn’t tell everyone the first chance I got… You’re not everyone, after all.”
Kurumi looked down to the floor. Beneath them, more of the dead shuffled blindly. Not a lot, and they would be dispersed… but… “Is that Aiko, your friend?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. She looked at her again, despite it… Aiko regarded Karen for a moment, and the ramen bowl spilled over. Was it fear or anger in her eyes?She lifted a hand to the back of her head, before it dropped. The others were almost finished, lapping up broth like dogs before they seemed to look at one another, really look…
“Aiko died to her homonculus, you as well… you’re both copies. All the same memories and habits, just before that week… that is one week of difference.”
Kurumi didn’t want to look. It was pathetic in a miserable sense. “W-We’re alive, we-”
“One of you is.” Makoto gently put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “But that’s not the same as being Kurumi or Aiko, or Karen, or Waruna is it? Who are you, really?”
“... is that why you brought me here?”
“Well… it’d be irresponsible without you understanding the risks.” Makoto replied smoothly. “You know what happens when you face the sunlight now. What happens if you don’t get a taste of human meat… or a substitute.”
Kurumi almost vomited at the thought… but the ramen was good. So were the Meat Buns. A part of her hated she couldn't deny it. “I do everything I can to protect the Homonculi, because-”
“‘You love the city you live in,’”
“Not my words but… well you are remarkable at getting close enough.” He smiled. “We aren’t Kurumi or Number One. We are… free to be anyone now. Kanai Ward is the only true safe harbor for our kind. The outside world can only be kept in ignorance for so long… The Unified Government and the WDO know about us, and we both know that the gaze of the public can lead to… well-” He gestured to Aiko, whose eyes seemed to dim a bit and pay Karen no more mind. and, with a mirthless smile he continued. “We are always going to be considered a threat to normal people. Ageless, immortal beings, made to be perfect soldiers…”
He tilted his head. “I had to run from that, but it still caught me all the same.”
“You planned it…”
“Because I wanted to be free… Everyone else killed their original counterpart… Why not me? I tried, I really did. Two loose ends but…. Well, thanks to Yuma I've come to see it differently: I am still Number One, I have all his memories up until he unwittingly donated his DNA… From there, I made my own choices with that knowledge… So am I him?”
Kurumi frowned. “I-I guess you aren’t.”
“And you?”
Kurumi’s face twisted, not quite sure how to answer that, just looking at the girls who might spend eternity in this small room. Fed ramen that others would clean up. Cared for by strangers who couldn’t stay around. They were stuck like this for now… maybe forever. Kurumi hated Karen for killing Aiko for a while, but looking at her like this, her eyes barely able to focus on anything, seemingly trying to scoop up the cool broth with her fingers while Aiko just looked to the group that avenged her. A smile twitched at times, before fading.
“I don’t know…”
Maybe she wasn’t Kurumi… maybe that wasn’t Aiko, maybe that was the thing that killed her, replaced her and lived her life. Maybe that’s all they’d ever be, until they found out who they COULD be. “But I do know that Kurumi would want to return that book to him. I know she would have tried to do what was right… and she’d protect Aiko and the others. Because it’s the right thing to do.”
Makoto looked at her seriously. “Even if that’s not Aiko?”
“It’s the person I knew as Aiko… even like this…” She was still afraid of needles. She still wanted more than anything to be an actress… “Maybe we’re not them… but we’re alive, and we carry on their hopes and dreams… their memories. If we don’t try to live then…”
Makoto smiled. “Good… Good… That’s what I wanted you to understand. But one last question if you’ll indulge me; what if, if we fix Aiko, all of them really… would they still be the same person? I don’t even know if the three there can be made whole either…”
Kurumi wondered if Aiko could wake up, not remembering anything. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of needles anymore. Maybe she wished to be an artist or author instead… But she had an anwser. “I’d try to be her friend too. I’d do it over and over again, because she would do the same for me.”
“Then I will grant your request… You’ll have a few days to gather supplies, and I'll see about the logistics.”
And then, as he turned, a thought occurred. “Have you opened the Book?’
“No… it feels wrong to.”
“It should. Don’t open the book unless you’re SURE of an emergency.” Makoto turned, sternly looking at them. “... Number One won’t be Yuma: He’ll be his own person. I know enough to get you to know where to look, but we’ve separated now. Are you still sure? He’s another Ship of Thesus… and there’s no guarantee that he will even know your name.”
“I told you… it’s the right thing to do.”
She gave one last look to the house. “Will they be safe?”
“This new system is made to keep them contained and secure… until we find a way to let them out.”
“And if you don’t?”
Makoto closed his eyes. “They’re still my responsibility and people. I’ve been put into a position of power… I tried to step down, but I was kept here… perhaps the worst fitting punishment given by a culprit of one of Yuma’s cases, eh?”
“You’ll spend eternity protecting us.”
“Yes and my steaks will be too juicy and my lobster too buttery.” He laughed. “... One day the sun has to peak through the storm. It can’t last forever… Me and my brother, i suppose I should call him, were never ones for half-measures. I wonder if Number One knew what he was doing, if he willingly risked those lives on a gambit… or if he had real hope in their return. I didn’t… that’s all I can say.”
He kept going. “Say your goodbyes, Kurumi. It might be a while before you join them in here again.”
Kurumi nodded. Undeterred… she knocked on the glass, and all of them turned to her… Aiko stepped forewards and put her hand on the glass, it was stained with the broth, already trailing down.
“I’m going to go away for a bit, but next time I see you… Ihope we can have a conversation again. By the hallways. Do you remember?”
She could see the gears turning in Aiko’s mind. Jammed as they were by the state she was in, Kurumi didn’t expect an answer… but she saw a nod. Tears starting to stain her cheeks, she wiped it away, and left the five girls in their temporary home.
Aiko and the others paced the rooms of the house together. Like goldfish, they didn’t remember anything they passed… Except for one another. Feelings were complicated for a while, but they seemed to think they were putting on a performance of some kind… the only kind they could.
The good scent appeared every day, though they couldn’t keep track. They were cleaned up by figures they didn’t know. They simply wandered or sat around the house. Sometimes traces of their old selves came to the surface; a phrase, a certain look or gesture… but it faded soon after.
Makoto watched from the Tower at the top of Kanai Ward, looking at the train station in the distance. He had all the power in the city now. He had, technically, won everything… but it felt hollow. All he could do is hope…
Kurumi’s train left the city, the first homonculi to leave Kanai Ward… perhaps the last. He looked across the papers at his desk; there were problems in the world, and the radical new concept World Death lingered on the minds of the Unified Government… they wanted soldiers for a reason, after all…
Whatever the future held, he was entrusted to guide them all there. The one perfect Homonculi…
The one who ultimately held the blame…