#112
The first thing he felt upon waking was the severe pain in his chest.
Yoo Seong-woo wished he could turn off his pain. This suffering was inefficient.
While taking deep breaths to kill the sensation, he heard someone’s voice.
“Your recovery speed is faster than expected. Must be thanks to the black moonstone.”
His visual functions hadn’t fully returned yet, so he could only see blurry lights, but Yoo Seong-woo remembered whose voice it was that he heard translated. It was the engineer who had repaired him, his creator’s mentor.
“Thank your master. He risked his life to save you.”
The pain subsided a bit, perhaps from painkillers that had been administered. He blinked while lying down. He checked several functions to assess his body’s condition.
The tactile functions in his arms and legs were all intact, and there were no problems with his sense of smell or hearing. His memory was perfect.
Though he couldn’t feel anything with his body yet, it seemed the surgery had been successfully completed.
Lying down, Yoo Seong-woo moved his arms and legs around to check his body’s mobility once more, then slowly sat up. The engineer helped him get out of bed.
“Your master is in the next room. He’s still recovering.”
Yoo Seong-woo, still mindful of his sluggish legs that hadn’t fully recovered, raised his head in confusion.
“Recovering? What do you mean?”
I’m the one who had surgery, so why is Yeon Tae-soo recovering? It wasn’t logical. Yoo Seong-woo waited for the engineer’s answer, but instead of replying, she pointed to the next room and stepped back. She seemed to mean that he should check for himself.
He walked slowly toward the next room. When he opened the closed door, his olfactory and auditory sensors reacted first. The strong smell of disinfectant that you’d only find in hospitals and the sound of machines. And specifically, the sound of life support machines.
Feeling uneasy, Yoo Seong-woo approached the bed. He pulled aside the curtain surrounding the bed and saw a figure lying there.
Yeon Tae-soo was lying down with a respirator attached. He seemed to be in a coma. The machine placed on his right displayed his vital signs in graph form, but Yeon Tae-soo looked as if he were dead.
Unable to put strength into his legs, Yoo Seong-woo pulled over a nearby chair, sat down, and stared blankly at Yeon Tae-soo. He didn’t call his name or anything. A human in a coma wouldn’t wake up in response to sound like someone waking from sleep. Communication was currently impossible.
Not yet understanding why he was lying there, Yoo Seong-woo raised his head again and looked around. Soon he found a clue that would explain the situation. Next to the screen displaying vital signs, another small screen was floating.
Yoo Seong-woo had seen this image before. Yeon Tae-soo had shown it to him before. What this vivid image contained, looking as if it could start beating at any moment, was Yeon Tae-soo’s heart.
But it was different from what he had seen before. In the previous image, there had definitely been a black part here.
‘The black moonstone…’
The black moonstone that had been in his heart was gone. The pitch-black darkness that had been attached was gone, leaving only a clean heart.
If so, he could guess where that black moonstone had gone without having to ask.
‘Why did you do that?’
He asked inwardly. It was something difficult for him, an android, to understand—an inefficient act.
As his thoughts reached that point, he felt a sense of dissonance.
Since when had he been concerned with inefficiency?
Since when had he prioritized causes and logic over learned emotions?
Yeon Tae-soo, with his eyes closed, looked terribly pale. As Yoo Seong-woo looked down at his face, half-covered by the oxygen respirator, with unfamiliarity and insensitivity, he suddenly realized one thing.
The fact that all the emotions he had possessed were now gone.
***
Yeon Tae-soo still hadn’t woken up by the time Kim Ji-heon arrived. Judging by the timing of his arrival, it seemed Yeon Tae-soo had contacted him in advance before the surgery. It must have been to prepare for any contingency.
As soon as he met Yoo Seong-woo, he noticed something strange and became awkward.
“Um… I heard from the engineer that it might be a temporary condition?”
“I heard there’s a probability of that too.”
Even to himself, his voice sounded unfamiliar. But that was all. He didn’t feel the need to reassure Kim Ji-heon or to erase the awkwardness. Nor did he feel particularly grateful for Kim Ji-heon rushing over.
He just wanted Kim Ji-heon to tell him what he should do now. An android without a mission has no reason to exist.
“Oh, this is bad. If the boss finds out… we’re really screwed.”
He understood the meaning of these muttered words as well. He too could anticipate Yeon Tae-soo’s reaction. But that was all. He didn’t particularly think about how to deal with it, nor did he feel sorry. He just acknowledged the fact.
“For now… I understand. I’ll take care of the boss, so Mr. Yoo, please focus on your recovery.”
“Yes.”
Fortunately, Kim Ji-heon didn’t demand anything difficult of him. Nor did he reproach him for losing his emotions.
‘I didn’t fail. Your microchip is working properly, I tell you.’
The engineer had guaranteed that her surgery was successful.
‘Then why have my emotions disappeared?’
He asked out of mere curiosity, not with any blame. If the surgery was successful, why had he lost his emotions?
‘It’s because your body rejected them.’
The engineer’s words were difficult to understand immediately.
‘Why would my body reject emotions?’
‘Because they’re difficult to understand. Because they make incomprehensible choices. Because it needs to protect you from foolish decisions.’
Yoo Seong-woo finally understood. One by one, he recalled the things he had done since meeting Yeon Tae-soo. How he got seriously injured after touching a suspicious cleaning robot on the street, how he took off his mask in public to save Yeon Tae-soo, and how he went to meet the minister at the construction site without telling him. Numerous incidents had threatened his safety.
‘That’s why your body decided. To completely shut off these useless emotions that only cause errors.’
He stood in the suite living room, blankly looking down at his hands. Could this body make such judgments on its own?
But how useful would he be without emotions?
This body was originally created for art. And Yeon Tae-soo…
Yeon Tae-soo wasn’t his master. He kept him by his side because he was his lover. He protected and cared for Yeon Tae-soo because he loved him. If all his emotions disappeared, would that relationship be maintained?
Then would he be discarded after losing his emotions?
‘I’ll be by your side.’
Before waking from anesthesia, Yeon Tae-soo had embraced him and said this in a dream.
In that distant black space, Yeon Tae-soo had run toward him, and his former self, before losing emotions, had smiled brightly.
Yeon Tae-soo’s voice from the dream, saying he would stay by his side, lingered in his ears for a long time. That voice, promising to be by his side, felt real. It remained with him through something other than his auditory sensors.
But I’ve lost all of that. What should I do now?
As he stood blankly, there was a beeping sound beside him. Popo was looking up at him with its lamp lit.
Popo seemed to sense that he had changed. Unlike before, it wasn’t acting cute, but was just watching carefully from his feet, staring up at him.
In the past, he would have stroked Popo when it approached him or thrown a ball for it, but Yoo Seong-woo averted his gaze. He was no longer a veterinarian, so he didn’t need a medical assistant robot either.
“You are free.”
Popo seemed confused, slowly tilting its round body left and right.
“You can go wherever you want. I no longer need you, PO11M.”
The robot, retreating as if frightened, hesitated for a moment before beeping again and broadcasting a voice.
– Popo is Mr. Yoo’s assistant robot!
“…You don’t understand. I said I don’t need you anymore…”
– Popo can help Mr. Yoo! Popo is strong!
Come to think of it, Popo had followed him even when he fled from Yeon Tae-soo before. For no particular reason.
Though he had lost his emotions now, Yoo Seong-woo knew that it was something like camaraderie. So he nodded.
“Do as you please.”
– Popo will protect Mr. Yoo! Popo will protect Mr. Yoo!
Popo, now free of distance, rolled around excitedly.
Not only did he remember the camaraderie Popo had shown him, but also the camaraderie he had felt for Popo. Though he wasn’t human, his learned emotions had felt intimacy toward beings he had spent a long time with.
But he could only remember having those emotions, not revive them.
It was the same with the affection he had felt for Yeon Tae-soo.
Despite vividly remembering those intense emotions and feelings, he couldn’t revive them.
Yoo Seong-woo thought that his past self was like a corpse. It wasn’t an expression of self-contempt or sentimentality. A being that is already dead and no longer functioning, waiting to rot. That was the definition of a corpse, and it was a fitting expression for the now non-existent Yoo Seong-woo.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
