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I thought I didn’t belong in the human world. I thought… a stupid robot was enough for me.

What am I going to do now?

☾

Raymond

The place, the people, the time. When they were unwanted, people couldn’t bear their own existence either.

Why was I sitting in this soulless, enormous room instead of lying in Mina’s bed? Why did my ears hear the clatter of an android robot instead of her loud laughter? Why the skunky odor of the drug instead of her scent?

Nothing was familiar; everything was foreign and cold. I had been forced into a brand-new world—so lifeless I could hardly grasp the heavy curtain of darkness consuming me. The same silhouette kept circling in my head in that black.

She had trapped me there, covering my entire mind with an ocean of her tears, so that she could have me wherever she wanted. My clever lady, my precious Mina. The fire burning inside me envies her red hair, even it knows it is doomed to die out in her eternal waters. Her eyes shone with aspiration, pulling me into the deepest part of the ocean, wrapping her arms around me, kissing every part of me until I went hopelessly mad. With each kiss, I learned to breathe a little more in her waters. It didn’t matter if we drowned together, if poison dripped from her lips to mine. I had already gone mad for her, and the ocean’s most beautiful Mina was equally madly in love with her Remi.

But I was not her Remi. The spell had been broken. The ocean vanished, and my mind turned into an endless desert.

But I was still the same; if Mina wanted, I could become anything, take on any role, drown in that ocean, and be taken over by the siren, or a witch. It didn’t matter. I still cared about being real, just like I did as a child; only the meaning had deconstructed a little. I would be whatever Mina wanted, whatever she desired was the real.

A liar.

In Mina’s eyes, the only person in the whole world whose opinion mattered to me, I was nothing but a liar.

Did she have to learn that now, after all these years? The timing couldn’t have been worse.

My nerves frayed, my hand reached for the other paper, the last one. My mind wouldn’t stop spinning. Without Mina, it was impossible to stop the world.

A few minutes later, the dust was enough to numb all my senses. If only Mina were like that. If only there were a certain dose I could take from her and be satisfied with.

But it wasn’t happening. It wasn’t enough.

We’d only been apart for a week, but I couldn’t breathe like this. A rational part of me said this was a typical addiction, which if I stayed away long enough, I’d forget her. Perhaps I was in the resistance phase right now; I should be patient and force myself to get through these days without her. Maybe then the addiction would end, and I would be free.

But… I’d never wanted to be free. I loved losing control with Mina more than anything else; those were the only moments when I felt truly alive. The rare moments when I let the beast inside me loose. Giving Mina that leash and completely losing control was what tied me to life. I could never find anything more meaningful than that.

Well, maybe thinking that way was part of the addiction phase.

“Son.”

Sebastian Loxton entered without knocking, and I closed my eyes, wanting the dream I was immersed in to never end. I wanted Mina’s warm body to remain pressed against my forever. Her patient, gentle kisses—the opposite of mine—should continue forever.

“You’ve become a drunkard. If you keep this up, you’ll end up dead.”

I wish. I thought for a moment. Why should I live? Even Mina had wanted to take her own life; perhaps that was the right path. After all, my Mina rarely made wrong decisions. Perhaps it was the only solution…

“You might want to know this, it’s about your girl.”

I stood up in a huff, he took a step back.

“Easy, son, easy.” Sebastian almost seemed to be enjoying himself. “She was at Yunna’s place. With an old man, probably Yunna’s customer.”

My face winced, I frowned. “Damn, Yunna?” A thousand scenarios flashed through my mind, my hands began trembling. Did she find her damn father?

“When?”

“I saw the footage this morning, but it’s two days old.”

“Let me see.”