#Build your own AI assistant

[craftingtableus]

Home Automation Electronics Kit

Discover the fascinating world of smart home technology with this interactive learning kit, designed to spark curiosity in young minds. Combining the versatile ESP32 board with engaging story-based activities, this kit immerses children in the exciting world of home automation. Packed with a variety of sensor modules and programming tools, it allows young learners to build, experiment, and protect a smart home while honing essential STEM skills. Perfect for nurturing creativity and problem-solving abilities, this hands-on kit offers a fun and accessible introduction to the future of technology. Ready to dive in? Click the link to learn more and make your purchase!

[theaiwordsmith]

How to Train AI Assistant?

Genieus AI makes it easy to train your own personal AI assistant with a simple, no-code approach. Upload FAQs, documents or website links to build a smart AI that understands your business.

The platform continuously learns and improves, ensuring accurate and relevant responses. Easily integrate it into your website or messaging platforms for seamless interactions.

Need updates? Modify the AI’s knowledge base anytime to keep it aligned with your needs. Whether for customer support or business automation, Genieus AI helps you train an AI assistant that enhances engagement and efficiency — without technical expertise. Start building your AI today!

To know more, visit - https://genieusai.com/

[arunsingh011]

The Role of AI in Inventory Management: A Detailed Overview

In today’s era, efficient inventory management is very Important for success. The days of manual tracking and guesswork has passed away. Now AI is revolutionizing the businesses and handle their stock. This blog is about the transformative role of AI in inventory management, covering its workings, benefits, and real-world applications.

What Is AI Inventory Management?

Inventory Management involves using AI and ML technology to automate and optimize processes related to inventory. It is a step beyond traditional inventory systems by using data analysis and predictive models and automation to increase efficiency, reduce costs and boost efficiency overall. This includes using ai ml solutions to provide more accurate forecasting.

How Does Artificial Intelligence Work In Inventory Management?

AI works in inventory management through several key mechanisms:

Data Analysis: AI algorithmic analysis vast amounts of information, including trends in the market, sales history as well as supplier details, and even weather patterns to find patterns and provide insights.

Predictive Modeling: By using AI ML Engineering, AI develops predictive models to predict the demand, anticipate stockouts and optimize reordering points.

Automation : AI helps automate routine work such as order placing inventory replenishment, order processing and tracking inventory, freeing the human resources to focus on strategic tasks.

Real-time Tracking: AI-powered systems give real-time information on the inventory levels of businesses, allowing them to react quickly to changes in circumstances.

Anomaly Detection : AI can detect abnormal patterns or differences in inventory data, alerting possible issues such as theft or mistakes.

Use Cases for Artificial Intelligence In Inventory Management

AI’s versatility makes it applicable in various inventory management scenarios:

Demand Forecasting :AI forecasts demand in the future by analyzing historical data, seasonality as well as external factors.

Inventory Optimization : AI determines optimal stock levels in order to reduce the cost of holding and to avoid stockouts.

Automated Reordering :AI will automatically initiate reorders as soon as inventory levels drop below thresholds that are predefined.

Supply Management :AI analyzes the performance of suppliers and detects risks that could be a risk.

Warehouse optimization: AI optimizes warehouse layout and picking routes for efficient operations

Quality Control: AI is used for visual inspections to identify the presence of defective products.

Personalized customer experience: AI can decide which products to stock up on in accordance with the individual’s purchases.

Build your own AI agent to handle customer service related to stock levels.

What Are The Benefits Of Artificial Intelligence In Inventory Management?

Implementing AI in the management of inventory has many advantages:

Improved Accuracy : AI reduces human error and produces more accurate inventory information.

Reduced costs: AI optimizes stock levels by reducing the cost of holding and prevents stockouts, increasing cash flow.

Increased Efficiency: Automation opens resources and improves the efficiency of processes.

Enhanced Demand Forecasting : AI can provide more precise demand forecasts, which allows for better planning.

Increased Customer Satisfaction: Avoiding stocks out means that the items are always readily available.

Improved decision-making: AI provides data driven insights that can help improve the business strategy.

Real-Life Use Cases of Artificial Intelligence In Inventory Management

Retail giants use AI to anticipate demand from customers to optimize inventory levels and tailor shopping experiences for customers.

Manufacturing companies use AI to control raw materials, improve production schedules, and decrease waste.

E-commerce businesses use of AI to help automate fulfillment of orders, monitor shipments, and give immediate updates on inventory.

AI Virtual Assistant are increasingly employed in warehouse environments for providing information to workers and assist in the location of stock.

Companies are using new product development services that utilize AI to predict the success of new products and determine appropriate stock levels.

What Are The Challenges Associated With AI Inventory Management?

Despite its many benefits, AI implementation in inventory management has its own challenges.

Data Quality : AI relies on high-quality data. Incorrect or insufficient data could result in mistakes.

Integration Complexity :The process of integrating AI with inventory systems in place is a complex and expensive process.

Costs of Implementation: Investing in AI technology and infrastructure could be costly.

Lack of Experience: The implementation and management of AI systems requires special skills.

Security concerns: Protecting confidential inventory information from cyber-attacks is essential.

Industries Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Efficient Inventory Management

Retail

E-commerce

Manufacturing

Healthcare

Logistics

Food and Beverage

Select Xcelore to ensure the future of your Inventory System using AI

If you’re looking to use the power of AI to enhance the management of your inventory, xcelore can be your perfect partner. We provide comprehensive ai ml development services that will assist you in implementing modern AI solutions that meet your needs. Our experts will assist you throughout the whole process, from data analysis to the model development to system integration and ongoing support.

FAQs On AI In Inventory Management

Q Is AI completely replace the human element in managing inventory?

A: Even though AI can automatize many tasks, human oversight remains essential to make strategic decisions and managing difficult situations.

Q: How much will it cost to install AI for inventory management?

A: The price varies according to the level of complexity of the system as well as the extent of implementation.

Q What is AI inventory management appropriate for small-sized businesses?

A: Yes, thanks to cloud-based AI solutions, small-sized businesses have access to affordable and scalable software for managing inventory.

Q: What kind of data do you require to support AI the management of inventory?

A: Sales data from the past and market trends, supplier information and other pertinent data are vital.

Question: What time will it take to set up the AI Inventory management software?

A: The timeline for implementation will depend on the degree of complexity of the system, as well as the degree of customization needed.

[jackels-in-space]

I’m sorry but please stop using AI.

Not only does it use other people’s work as base training (let’s not forget about the fact that C.AI creators have been taking fics to build up chat bots) it also like…destroys the environment.

They need computers capable of giving you quick responses and that generates heat and what cools things down? AC and water.

Genuinely go search it up it’s insane.

Stop using AI.

If you feel like you want to post and you’re like “oh but I don’t think I’m good enough” I sympathise I really do every writer friend I know has had that exact same experience but you’re never gonna get better if you don’t try.

You’re never gonna learn anything if you use AI so stop assisting big corporations in destroying the world and actually try.

If you feel scared about your actual writing if it’s any good or not I am so happy to beta it for you but please just try that’s all I’m asking.

I’ve supplied a couple of links so you know I’m talking bullshit but please do your own investigation <3

[ozzgin]

Yandere! Android x Reader (I)

It is the future and you have been tasked to solve a mysterious murder that could jeopardize political ties. Your assigned partner is the newest android model meant to assimilate human customs. You must keep his identity a secret and teach him the ways of earthlings, although his curiosity seems to be reaching inappropriate extents.

Yes, this is based on Asimov’s “Caves of Steel” because Daneel Olivaw was my first ever robot crush. I also wanted a protagonist that embraces technology. :)

Content: female reader, AI yandere, 50's futurism

[Part 2] | [More original works]

You follow after the little assistant robot, a rudimentary machine invested with basic dialogue and spatial navigation. It had caused quite the ruckus when first introduced. One intern - well liked despite being somewhat clumsy at his job - was sadly let go as a result. Not even the Police is safe from the threat of AI, is what they chanted outside the premises.

"The Commissioner has summoned you, (Y/N)." 

That's how it greeted you earlier, clacking its appendage against the open door in an attempt to simulate a knock. 

"Do you know why my presence is needed?" You inquire and wait for the miniature AI to scan the audio message. 

"I am not allowed to mention anything right now." It finally responds after agonizing seconds.

 It's an alright performance. You might've been more impressed by it, had you not witnessed first hand the Spacer technology that could put any modern invention here on Earth to shame. Sadly the people down here are very much against artificial intelligence. There have been multiple protests recently, like the one in front of your building, condemning the latest government suggestion regarding automation. People fear for their jobs and safety and you don't necessarily blame them for having self preservation. On the other hand, you've always been a supporter of progress. As a child you devoured any science fiction book you could get your hands on, and now, as a high ranked police detective you still manage to sneak away and scan over articles and news involving the race for a most efficient computer.

You close the door behind you and the Commissioner puts his fat cigarette out, twisting the remains into the ashtray with monotonous movements as if searching for the right words.

 "There's been a murder." Is all he settles on saying, throwing a heavy folder in your direction. A hologram or tablet might've been easier to catch, but the man, like many of his coworkers, shares a deep nostalgia for the old days. 

 You flip through the pages and eventually furrow your eyebrows. 

"This would be a disaster if it made it to the news." You mumble and look up at the older man. "Shouldn't this go to someone more experienced?" 

He twiddles with his grey mustache and glances out the fake window. 

"It's a sensitive case. The Spacers are sending their own agent to collaborate with us. What stands out to you?" 

You narrow your eyes and focus on the personnel sheet. What's there to cause such controversy? Right before giving up, departing from the page, you finally notice it: next to the Spacer officer's name, printed clearly in black ink, is a little "R." which is a commonly used abbreviation to indicate something is a robot. The chief must've noticed your startled reaction and continues, satisfied: 

"You understand, yes? They're sending an android. Supposedly it replicates a human perfectly in terms of appearance, but it does not possess enough observational data. Their request is that whoever partners up with him will also house him and let him follow along for the entirety of the mission. You're the only one here openly supporting those tin boxes. I can't possibly ask one of your higher ups, men with wives and children, to...you know...bring that thing in their house."

You're still not sure whether to be offended by the fact that your comfort seems to be of less priority compared to other officers. Regardless of the semantics, you're presently standing at the border between Earth and the Spacer colony, awaiting your case partner. A man emerges from behind a security gate. He's tall, with handsome features and an elegant walk. He approaches you and you reach for a handshake. 

"Is the android with you?" You ask, a little confused. 

"Is this your first time seeing a Spacer model?" He responds, relaxed. "I am the agent in your care. There is no one else." 

You take a moment to process the information, similar to the primitive machine back at your office. Could it be? You've always known that Spacer technology is years ahead, but this surpasses your wildest dreams. There is not a single detail hinting at his mechanical fundament. The movement is fluid, the speech is natural, the design is impenetrable. He lifts the warm hand he'd used for the handshake and gently presses a finger against your chin in an upwards motion. You find yourself involuntarily blushing. 

"Your mouth was open. I assumed you'd want it discreetly corrected." He states, factually, with a faint smile on his lips. Is he amused? Is such a feeling even possible? You try your best to regain some composure, adjusting the collar of your shirt and clearing your throat. 

"Thank you and please excuse my rudeness. I was not expecting such a flawless replica. Our assistants are...easily recognizable as AI."

"So I've been told." His smile widens and he checks his watch. You follow his gesture, still mesmerized, trying to find a single indicator that the man standing before you is indeed a machine, a synthetic product.

Nothing.

"Shall we?" He eyes the exit path and you quickly lead him outside and towards public transport. 

He patiently waits for your fingerprint scan to be complete. You almost turn around and apologize for the old, lagging device. As a senior detective, you have the privilege of living in the more spacious, secured quarters of the city. And, since you don't have a family, the apartment intended for multiple people looks more like a luxury adobe. Still, compared to the advanced way of the Spacers, this must feel like poverty to the android.

At last, the scanner beeps and the door unlocks. 

"Heh...It's a finicky model." You mumble and invite him in.

"Yes, I'm familiar with these systems." He agrees with you and steps inside, unbuttoning his coat.

"Oh, you've seen this before?"

"In history books."

You scratch your cheek and laugh awkwardly, wondering how much of his knowledge about the current life on Earth is presented as a museum exhibit when compared to Spacer society. 

"I'm going to need a coffee. I guess you don't...?" Your words trail as you await confirmation. 

"I would enjoy one as well, if it is not too much to ask. I've been told it's a social custom to 'get coffee' as a way to have small talk." The synthetic straightens his shirt and looks at you expectantly. 

"Of course. I somehow assumed you can't drink, but if you're meant to blend in with humans...it does make sense you'd have all the obvious requirements built in."

He drags a chair out and sits at the small table, legs crossed.

"Indeed. I have been constructed to have all the functions of a human, down to every detail." 

You chuckle lightly. Well, not like you can verify it firsthand. The engineers back at the Spacer colony most likely didn't prepare him for matters considered unnecessary. 

"I do mean every detail." He adds, as if reading your mind. "You are free to see for yourself."

You nearly drop the cup in your flustered state. You hurry to wipe the coffee that spilled onto the counter and glance back at the android, noticing a smirk on his face. What the hell? Are they playing a prank on you and this is actually a regular guy? Some sort of social experiment? 

"I can see they included a sense of humor." You manage to blurt out, glaring at him suspiciously. 

"I apologize if I offended you in any way. I'm still adjusting to different contexts." The android concludes, a hint of mischief remaining on his face. "Aren't rowdy jokes common in your field of work?"

"Uh huh. Spot on." You hesitantly place the hot drink before him.

Robots on Earth have always been built for the purpose of efficiency. Whether or not a computer passes the Turing Test is irrelevant as long as it performs its task in the most optimal, rational way. There have been attempts, naturally, to create something indistinguishable from a human, but utility has always taken precedence. It seems that Spacers think differently. Or perhaps they have reached their desired level of performance a long time ago, and all that was left was fiddling with aesthetics. Whatever the case is, you're struggling not to gawk in amazement at the man sitting in your kitchen, stirring his coffee with a bored expression.

"I always thought - if you don't mind my honesty - that human emotions would be something to avoid when building AI. Hard to implement, even harder to control and it doesn't bring much use."

"I can understand your concerns. However, let me reassure you, I have a strict code of ethics installed in my neural networks and thus my emotions will never lead to any destructive behavior. All safety concerns have been taken into consideration.

As for why...How familiar are you with our colony?" The android takes a sip of his coffee and nods, expressing his satisfaction. "Perhaps you might be aware, Spacers have a declining population. Automated assistants have been part of our society for a long time now. What's lacking is humans. If the issue isn't fixed, artificial humans will have to do."

You scoff.

"What, us Earth men aren't good enough to fix the birth rates? They need robots?"

You suddenly remember the recipient of your complaint and mutter an apology. 

"Well, I'm sure you'd make a fine contender. Sadly I can't speak for everyone else on Earth." The man smiles in amusement upon seeing the pale red that's now dusting your cheeks, then continues: "But the issue lies somewhere else. Spacers have left Earth a long time ago and lived in isolation until now. Once an organism has lost its immune responses to otherwise common pathogens, it cannot be reintegrated."

True. Very few Earth citizens are allowed to enter the colony, and only do so after thorough disinfection stages, proving they are disease free as to not endanger the fragile health of the Spacers living in a sterile environment. You can only imagine the disastrous outcome if the two species were to abruptly mingle. In that case, equally sterile machinery might be their only hope.

Your mind wanders to the idea. Dating a robot...How's that? You sheepishly gaze at the android and study his features. His neatly combed copper hair, the washed out blue eyes, the pale skin. Probably meant to resemble the Spacers. You shake your head.

"A-anyways, I'll go and gather all the case files I have. Then we can discuss our first steps. Do feel at home."

You rush out and head for your office. Focus, you tell yourself mildly annoyed.

While you search for the required paperwork - what a funny thing to say in this day and age - he will certainly take up on your generous offer to make himself comfortable. The redhaired man enters the living room, scanning everything with curious eyes. He stops in front of a digital frame and slides through the photos. Ah, this must be your Police Academy graduation. The year matches with the data he's received on you. Data files he might've read one too many times in his unexplained enthusiasm. This should be you and the Commissioner; Doesn't match the description of your father, and he seems too old to be a spouse or boyfriend. Additionally, the android distinctly recalls the empty 'Relationship' field.

"Old photos are always a tad embarrassing. I suppose you skipped that stage."

He jolts almost imperceptibly and faces you. You have returned with a thin stack of papers and a hologram projector.

"I've digitalized most files I received, so you don't have to shuffle a bunch of paper around." You explain.

"That is very useful, thank you." He gently retrieves the small device from your hand, but takes a moment before removing his fingers from yours. "I predict this will be a successful partnership."

You flash him a friendly smile and gesture towards the seating area.

"Let's get to work, then. Unless you want to go through more boring albums." You joke as you lower yourself onto the plush sofa. 

The synthetic human joins you at an unexpectedly close proximity. You wonder if proper distance differs among Spacers or if he has received slightly erroneous information about what makes a comfortable rapport. 

"Nothing boring about it. In fact, I'd say you and I are very similar from this point of view." He tells you, placing the projector on the table.

"Oh?"

"Your interest in technology and artificial intelligence is rather easy to infer." The man continues, pointing vaguely towards the opposing library. "Aside from the briefing I've already received about you, that is."

"And that is similar to...the interest in humans you've been programmed to have?" You interject, unsure where this conversation is meant to lead. 

"Almost."

His head turns fully towards you and you stare back into his eyes. From this distance you can finally discern the first hints of his nature: the thin disks shading the iris - possibly CCD sensors - are moving in a jagged, mechanical manner. Actively analyzing and processing the environment. 

"I wouldn't go as far as to generalize it to all humans. 

Just you."

[akula-blue]

Ok so we've talked about mech dysphoria and dysmorphia before yeah? Your body doesn't feel the same when you climb out of a mech, doesn't feel 'right' anymore.

Too few limbs, not enough sensors, everything feels too big, now that you're not? There's no more combat stims and pleasure chemicals either, you're down to just your stock standard dopamine, which you have a clinical deficiency of now, btw. You struggle to pick objects up, your hands an unfamiliar shape, with not enough strength. You struggle to get out of bed sometimes because you can't tell what proportions things should be anymore?

Yeah, all that has been discussed to death.

What about communication?

What about pilots who, just, can't talk outside of their mech? Become socially inept without all the assistant systems they plug themselves into within the cockpit?

Think about it, mech combat becomes very disorganised very fast if it's allowed to. We are talking clashes of potentially dozens of war machines, the size of buildings, with enough guns to level cities. Orders need to be direct, easily understandable, followed immediately, actually projected onto the pilot's vision.

Every order, every report, every sentence, is punctuated by hundreds of layers of feedback. Tactical simulations and overlays, attachments for battlefield plans, every order having many implied conditions transmitted to the pilot through code and dictionary references to make sure a pilot cannot POSSIBLY misinterpret it in the few seconds before the command should be executed. On top of that, each order can also be wired to project a different cocktail of stim/pleasure chems/whatever have you, ensuring a pilot knows exactly what to feel about the order, establishing the priority of it through the pilots own brain chemistry.

And the same can be true about communications between squad mates! So much of it would be sending those same simulations around as sit reps, or enormous data packets containing not just the words the pilot is trying to say, but also links to relevant information and mountains of meta data, establishing tone, intention, context. Within the cockpit, a portion of the onboard AI is delegated to parsing this metadata, projecting it into the pilots consciousness, speeding up the process of understanding these mountains of digital documents to mere moments.

Now put a person used to that in a social setting. Where they are not made instantly aware of what someone is talking about or referring to. Where they cannot just query an AI and receive every piece of relevant info at once. Where they have to understand the subtext of what that person is saying without any metadata to indicate sarcasm, annoyance, disinterest. Where they are unable to understand the many nuances of communication and body language and expression without the helpful hand of their mech's processors. Hell, where they don't know how hearing certain things should make them feel without the presence of the chemicals to guide their response. Imagine them seeming lost outside of their mech, unable to talk or connect anymore, the social, human part of their brain having atrophied from disuse much like their neurotransmitter production. Imagine them scurrying back to the safety of their mech where, in the digitally overlaid world, everything is so much clearer and understandable and-

HAS THIS BECOME AN AUTISM METAPHOR???

[its-in-the-woods]

Reach For Me - Meeting

Masterlist

-Part 1 , Part 2

Universe: AU- post Captain America The Winter Soldier, except we skip Civil War, Bucky comes to live in the tower to help the Avengers as much as he can. He has not gone to Wakanada.

Pairing: James Buchanan Barnes/Bucky x You/x reader (afab) no use of y/n

Word count: 3.1k

Synopsis: You are starting a new job, courtesy of one Tony Stark. Tasked with becoming the head of medical and research for the Avengers and their companions. What you don't expect is to get under the skin of one ex assassin turned good guy, James Barnes.

Author notes: Hi 👋 I've never written MCU... so umm here we go...Nothing I write is short, this will be multi-chapter. Slow slow slow burn, they may not even like each other that much to start. Any characters from the MCU may appear. I will not note them cause there are too many, k. I will also not tag spoilers... be warned. This will be graphic, sad, and tragic... but there will be sparks I promise.

MINORS and AI dickbags GET OUT.

Rating/Warning: Missing limbs, prosthetic, wounds, ptsd, long silences, brooding, Bucky (you know why), mentions of past torture, physical and mental.

All mistakes, grammar, and plot holes are my own.

You sit in your Corolla looking up at the massive building a block away. There was parking under the building for you, had your name on it and everything. Least that’s what Stark told you, Tony Goddamn Stark. He’d rolled into your lab one day and tossed your whole world upside down. You’d had no idea he had been funding the university's research into neurolink prosthetics, or that he was the one that had backed your grant to get you through medical school. Now he wants you to be the head of medical at his infamous Stark Tower, keep an eye on the health of the Avengers.

Well it was more complicated than that. He wanted you specifically because you were a jack of all trades, you’d served in the military as a medic, done several years in New York's largest ER, before you’d decided to go back to your roots in neuro-science specifically to do with prosthetics bio-connections. That’s what he needed. Also someone who wasn’t scared to stare super-soldiers down and not flinch.

The last part you’d assumed to be a joke, but now sitting here you weren’t as sure. Drumming your fingers over the steering wheel you debated whether you should go in or not. How had you even ended up here? A doctor to the Avengers? It sounded comical just thinking about it.

How was it possible that you were more nervous than when you were jumping out of the back of a plane? Maybe you’d get to do that here too.

“Fuck it,” You murmur, shifting the car into drive you head to your new job.

***

It was a whirl of paperwork, most of it you didn’t understand, really should have brought it to a lawyer. The non-disclosure agreements were lengthy and in depth, but Pepper had summed them up as ‘What happens in the tower stays in the tower’. It felt vaguely threatening, but the paperwork was almost soothing at this point. The tower is massive, it has full medical facilities, dozens of labs, lawyers on payroll, and then there was the Avenger’s end of things. You have been given a special pass to work up there. You have a small team of medical professionals you would be working with. Along with the team of assistance and crew of speciality staff that kept everyone from fighting with each other.

The first day is just that, paperwork, here is your clinic, this is the labs, please file things here and here. This is how the emergency system works, if you see an alien no you didn’t.

You rubbed at your face as you sat in the small ‘clinic room’.White walls, that mix with metal paneling, behind you was a large glass window that looks out over the city. Beside you is your home monitor, the back would be facing the patient. Beside you were four others that you could use to pull up any images or information you needed to show the patient. You’d already decide that you need at least one or two plants here, yes it was a clinical setting but it wasn’t a jail cell either.

To your right was a door that leads into a small medical bay. It has a patient bed, and enough supplies for a full operation if needed. It was overkill really. You were dealing with gods, super soldiers, a green hulk, and the occasional super spy. Besides, there is already an operating theatre on this level that could be staffed within minutes; but it wasn’t your money to burn.

Closing out your computer you grab the tablet that had all your new patients information. Most of it was standard, blood test, x-rays, ct-scan, injury lists and more. All neatly packaged inside a metal and glass case, with an encrypt password and fingerprint scan. You want to go over all the notes in detail, make sure there was nothing that was a miss.

Keys, and bag in hand you close up the clinic door and head towards the elevator. The place was quiet for such a large building, you would occasionally see agents, assistance, and others but for the most part it was empty. You were sure when the world was being threatened by alien invaders it was a hot spot, but right now it just felt cold.

The doors to the elevator open up and you come face to face with Captain America himself and The Winter Soldier. Your heart pounds for a moment, but you quickly push that down, the mask of professionalism slipping on as you walk in. They stood in running gear, Captain in all blue, and Soldier in all black.

“Hi, I am Steven Rogers,” Captain America, Steve, said with a grin holding out his hand. “Hi,” You reply, giving him your title and shaking his hand firmly, before turning to The Winter Soldier. Steve gestures with his thumb. “That’s James Barnes, we are just heading out for a run,” Steve smiles, Bucky nodding at you but keeping his hands firmly folded across his chest.

“Nice to meet you,” You nod at James, who stays silent, just staring back at you. Shuffling over you stand by the far side of the door, you remember the headlines about what happened to him. HYDRA, you’d heard enough about them to wonder how James was still standing upright.

You mentally note to go over his file in detail this evening. The elevator shifts into a mostly comfortable silence, you don’t force conservation, and both men seem more than okay with that. You can’t help that your heart is hammering. Would be difficult for anyone to stand in a small box with two Super Soldiers at their back. Least that’s what you tell yourself. A chime at the main floor and the two men go to get off.

“Nice to meet you,” Steve says, with his signature smile. “We’ll see you around.”

“Have a good evening,” You reply, resisting the urge to slam the close door button. James looks over his shoulder once, his eyes connecting with yours before turning back to Steve. You tell yourself that it was just a silent acknowledgement, but it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like he is making sure you know that you’re being watched.

***

The room was small white, with the smell of metal and disinfectant hanging everywhere. One wall has four monitors, a small 3D model of him spun on one, another had his health stats, some just blank. He was interested in the one that showed what was left of his left arm and the one of his socket that attached the metal arm. He squints trying to read the little text boxes that hover over each point as they spin. Some highlight damages, others things that could be upgraded. The Doc had done her homework.

Looking at the images made him feel itchy, his hand going up to rub along where the metal seamed to his flesh. He mentally braces for pain to shoot through his neck, surprised when nothing happens, he'd gotten so used to them stopping him from touching it. The amount of times he'd tried to peel it off, ripe it out of his flesh, had led them to add tech that made it even more painful to try and remove.

He wasn’t pleased to be there, why did he need some doctor to tell him what he already knew? The arm had been acting up yes, but he was sure Stark with all his money and tech could fix it.

Yet here he was sitting in a chair with no exit strategy, beside jumping out the window. Fingers tapping along the arm rest of the chair, hoping that things could be over soon.

A quiet knock on the door has him sitting up straight. He adjusts his shirt, hoping the wrinkles didn't show where he'd been rubbing.

“Hi, James,” You say, slowly opening the door and walking in. Giving him a small smile as you walk over to the chair in front of the monitors. “Do you like James? Or would you prefer a different name?”

“Uh- James, James is fine,” He mumbles, just loud enough to be heard. Unsure how to feel now that you are standing in front of him.

He'd seen you a few times since the first meeting in the elevator. You mostly kept to yourself, saying ‘hi’ to anyone that crossed your path, making polite conversation, and generally fitting in. He'd also spotted you hanging with Tony going over tech, and helping him modify different gear. You always smile at him and say hello, even if he barely replies. Never treating him any differently than anyone else. It was refreshing.

Steve had said you had a good air about you. Natasha hadn't scoffed, even called you pleasant. So after nearly a month of you requesting him to come by he had caved and come down.

“Alright, so Mr. Stark has asked me to take a look at the arm you've had installed.” You chatter away, you wear casual clothes, a button-up purple shirt, and black slacks. No white coat or name tag. “He noted that it was uncomfortable, and wasn’t operating as smoothly. Do you want to tell me about that?”

Swallowing, he held his breath as you looked at him. There was no intention behind your eyes, you weren't mining for intel or assessing if he was going to explode, just a simple question. Yet he could barely find words to say.

“It's not bad, just needs some maintenance.” Bucky said flatly, his jaw clicking as he kept himself stiff. He wasn't going to go into detail to some stranger, despite how calm and cordial you were.

Or tell you that the pain kept him up at night, how it aches like it was frozen, or the nightmares. Shifting, he pushes those thoughts down, bringing him back to the present.

You nod, typing a few things into the computer. Not pressing him to answer or bombarding him with more questions.

“James, I know this is all still really new. You're still settling in and learning about us, and well probably whether you can trust us.” You take a breath, his eyes watching you look at the screen. A small wrinkle appears between your brows as you focus. It shouldn’t make his skin tingle when you look like that. “Plus I am new here, so it’s all new.”

You hesitate, lip worrying between your teeth, Bucky was definitely not filing all the little quirks you had, cause there was no reason for that. “I don't work for anyone, but you. Technically Stark pays me, but he doesn't meddle with what I do, there is no overreach. If you're not comfortable with the prosthetic I want to know.”

Bucky sits there, his eyes moving to yours, his body still as rigid as ever. “It's fine.”

It wasn't fine, but he had dealt with it long enough and didn't need anyone's help.

“Okay,” You reply, he can see you holding back a sigh. Disappointment flickering under the uncertainty. Why the hell did you care so much?

“Could I take a look at your arm? Please, tell me no if you're uncomfortable.”

Bucky shifts a little, his face scrunching at the words, he wasn’t used to someone giving him space. No one had pressed him to do anything he didn't want in the tower, but there were expectations of him. With you though, that didn't seem to be the case.

He shifts to the side, moving his right hand over to his left arm, the metal reacting to his touch. Gripping the metal he shifts and twists it so that it pops off the joint. Taking the arm he lays it out gently on the glass table with a clunk.

You roll over on your chair, not looking at the prosthetic, instead coming to look at the compression sleeve.

“Are you okay if I manipulate your arm?”He nods, but winces when you touch over the residual limb. The skin is sensitive, sore, and has deep bruises, he forces himself to stay still and not move away.

You carefully look over the shoulder joint. The sleeve on it was worn, and he knew you could feel the swelling happening underneath it. “I am going to remove the sleeve, take a closer look at the skin.”

You talk to him, despite his limited replies. He watches as you carefully pull the cuff down. The joint is swollen, covered with crude scarring, there are several pressure sores that ache.

You grab gloves and carefully feeling the joint and bone, fingers feeling the rigid metal that has been used to reinforce the bone.

Bucky shifts a little as your hand pushes against one of the sores. He can feel the line of his shoulders tightening up, as you continue to palpate it.

“I would like to do a scan of the joint,” You say, as you lift and move the arm. Carefully watching how it rotates and moves. As if you hadn’t just dropped a bomb on him.

“The socket shouldn't leave these pressure sores. Especially with the advanced healing you have, I have a feeling the bone and metal are causing the discomfort."

“I can’t do scans,” He swallows, his right hand shaking without his consent. The sound of the magnets flying around his head start to echo around him. Stomach twisting and tightening as he tries to suppress the urge to run.

You blink, sliding back just a little, giving him some space. “Okay.”

He watches the way you shift, how you carefully take off your gloves and toss them into the bin. “You are not going to want to talk about it, which is fine. I am going to talk through some steps we could take so we could get scans.”

His right hand clenches into a fist, sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. Using everything in his power to stay seated. You’re speaking but the worlds are not sinking in. He shakes his head, he wants to say something but all the words have been trapped somewhere in his throat. The panic is rising up the back of his neck like fire, he feels encased, stuck, breath and heart rate elevating.

“James,” You say quietly, moving so that you were directly in front of him. “We don’t need to do anything right now. Or even in a week.”

He looks right at you, trying to see past any mask you might be hiding behind. “I can get you a new sleeve, we don’t need scans for that.”

Trying to relax, he nods his head, hoping that you will keep to your word. His eyes move away staring at the floor, the pattern of the swirling speckled vinyl. His mind is a mess of images and sounds, the thumping of the magnets, the pulse of the electrical surge. The feeling of it buzzing through his head, the pain surging passed his skin and up his neck, how his molars ground against the mouth guard.

You move away rolling over to the prosthetic, looking down into where his arm latches. Examining internal workings, you go to pick it up and struggle. For some reason it snaps him out of his daze.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be that heavy,” You squint at it, rolling it over the glass surface with a clunk. Bucky picks it up and holds it out for you to look closer at.

You look surprised for a moment but then take the moment to place your hand inside where his nub goes in.

“Oh, yeah there are latches in here.” You move over to where he is sitting, you don’t touch him just exam, lining up where his pressure sores are and the latches.

“That should actually be a relatively easy fix. Would you mind coming to the lab-” You roll back to the computer, humming as you look at it. “Let’s do next Tuesday, Lab C, it’s on level seventy-eight.”

“Sure,” Buck says, his voice a gruff whisper. He takes his arm and clicks it back into place, rotating it and twisting it.

***

The door clicks and you slump into the chair, rubbing your hand over your face. That had gone as well as could be expected, the man was a ball of trauma wrapped in stone, and dipped in concrete.

Steve had warned you that Bucky was leery of new people, and took a long time to warm up. At least he hadn’t gone running the moment you asked a question.

Taking a breath you go back to your notes, you put in to have an assistant with you next Tuesday to adjust Bucky’s arm. It should be relatively easy, something that should have been caught weeks ago. Though, judging by the lack of notes from any previous Doctors, on James Barnes, they hadn’t spent much time with him.

You plug away sipping on coffee, you need to reread the notes that had been gathered about James. Well, if they could even be called notes.

You had seen the few videos that had been found. Had taken a good chunk of first week to sit and force yourself to watch them. To see what had been done to him. Stark had warned you, everyone had, but you wanted to know. To understand why James was the way he was, this was something you took pride in. Knowing who your patients were, what they had been through, and how it affected their day to day life mattered.

The videos ended up being the worst thing you’d ever seen, they had purposefully kept him partially aware of what was happening. They had used the pain to help brainwash him, making his body be in a constant state of fight, while not being able to fight at all. As they peeled open his body, shoving metal and wires into him over and over.

Then without any recovery time they’d freeze him, putting him under for an undetermined length of time.

Didn’t even cover the neuro trauma that had happened, the machine that used a combination of electric pulse and sound waves to affect memory. No wonder he didn’t want anything to do with CT scans, you shouldn’t have even brought it up. Groaning, you try not to beat yourself up over the misstep.

The machine they used wasn’t even completely understood, Hydra had of course destroyed it before anyone could get their hands on it. Maybe if you had it you could have worked at undoing the damage. Instead you were left with half ass notes, and grainy videos.

Pushing away from the computer, you decide it was time to go home. It had been a long day already, and you wanted to be in your own space. The drive back should be uneventful, meaning you could get to the lengthy amount of notes to spill over in your mind. Hopefully it would give you enough info to help James.

Part 2

~☆~☆~

If you liked it let me know below! Reblog to let others know.

Want to be tagged comment so I know.

@hiddlebatchedloki

[urdreamydoodles]

Hiii!! Love your work sooo muchh!!! (I keep rereading your marvel x reader fics cause you write the characters SO WELLL) picture this, Smart!F!reader who one ups Tony Stark publicly after getting tired of being labeled as a dumb good for nothing gold digger wife by the public. She reveals that she's the owner of a tech companty that makes even more than Stark Industries and most the money she gets she uses to donate to good causes and doesn't spend too much on things she wants ('Cause she's financially responsible unlike her husband.) AND GIRL HID THAT SECRET SO WELL EVEN TONY DIDNT KNOW ABOUT IT AND JUST STARES AT HER LIKE SHE SAID SOMETHING OFFENSIVE AF cause she reveals it while giving a speech at a Stark Industries events and then fast forward months later these 2 keep hacking into their systems and messing up their own shit but reader keeps winning the prank wars, the other avengers are fed up afff then at the end those mfs propose at the same time through hacking their A.I. assistants or firewall or literally everything. (you decide)

Oh and if possible make them into a 2 part so I can have a very beautiful chaotic ass prank war fanfic. (It's okay if you just stuff it into one part or if you can't do this☺☺)

"CODE OF FIRE, CODE OF LOVE" — A Tony Stark (MCU) One Shot

SHIP: Tony Stark (MCU) x Fem!OC

WORDS: 2.280 words

There are whispers in the room, louder than the music. Soft champagne flutes clinking, camera flashes chasing diamonds, laughter strained through painted lips—all of it sounds like static to you now. You stand at the edge of the Stark Industries gala, poised in a dress that fits like it was sewn onto your very soul. Beautiful. Effortlessly so. But beauty, as you’ve learned, is a mask people love to talk to, and even more love to talk about.

Tonight, they’ve talked plenty. And not about the advancements Stark Industries made in clean energy. Not about the AI breakthroughs or the global humanitarian branches Tony fought tooth and nail to build.

No.

Tonight, the whispers are about you.

“She must be really good in bed.”

“A gold digger. You can see it in the way she moves—like she knows she’s lucky.”

“She hasn’t earned any of this. Look at her, just a trophy.”

You’ve heard these words since the moment you said “I do” to Tony Stark. The man you love. The man who sees stars in your eyes and not dollar signs. The man who never once questioned your worth. But that doesn’t mean the world hasn’t.

It’s funny. You built empires in silence. With elegance. With restraint. You could have bought this tower ten times over. But you didn’t. Because it was never about the spotlight. Never about ego.

You just wanted peace.

But peace has a price.

And tonight, the bill has come due.

You glance at Tony across the room. He’s radiant in his usual way—hands stuffed in his pockets, that crooked smirk playing on his lips as he listens to a board member, probably pretending to care. His suit is razor-sharp, just like his mind. You love the way his eyes search for you every few minutes like a compass needle always twitching toward North. You love him more than you’ve ever loved anything. He is chaos wrapped in genius, a hurricane who learned to anchor himself to your quiet gravity.

And he doesn’t know.

Not yet.

He doesn’t know that every night he thought you were working on charity audits or reading economic forecasts… you were engineering satellites, designing next-gen medical nanotech, running covert cybersecurity networks that governments begged for. He doesn’t know that while he bled in the spotlight, you bled in the dark—never for praise. Only for purpose.

You’d never planned to tell him. Not because you didn’t trust him, but because you wanted something that was yours. Untouched by legacy or expectation. Untouched by Stark.

But the whispers tonight? They’ve lit something inside you.

And fire does not go quietly.

Pepper’s on stage now, offering polite smiles and practiced words. You tune out most of it until she turns her head toward you and says brightly, “And now, we’d love to invite someone very special up here to say a few words—Y/N Stark.”

There it is.

You step forward as the spotlight finds you. The murmurs double. The cameras rise. You move like a ghost in heels—elegant, silent, unstoppable.

Tony’s watching you now, arms crossed, brow quirked. He’s curious. Maybe a little amused. He loves when you speak publicly—it surprises him every time. He still doesn’t know why you keep such a low profile. That’s just how you are, he tells himself. Shy genius. Private soul.

You reach the podium. The mic crackles.

You look out over the crowd. Old money. New vultures. Entitled smiles. Sneers disguised as curiosity. Your gaze slides past them all and lands on Tony. He raises his glass to you, winks. You don’t smile back.

You inhale.

Then you speak.

“I’ve been asked a lot of questions since marrying Tony Stark. Some polite. Most… not.” A ripple of laughter, awkward and thin.

You continue. “People want to know what I bring to the table. If I’m smart enough, good enough, worthy enough. They ask how a ‘nobody’ like me caught the eye of a genius like him.”

You pause.

“Let me answer.”

The silence now is full and deep. A vacuum. They’re listening.

“I am the founder and sole owner of Aurelius Technologies. You haven’t heard of it because I didn’t want you to. We operate under a portfolio of silent subsidiaries that have collectively out-earned Stark Industries for the last five years running.”

Gasps. Real ones. Sharp as glass.

Tony’s smile is frozen, faltering.

“I built it before I met Tony. While living in a shared apartment, eating instant noodles, working twenty-hour days. I coded my first AI at nineteen. I designed medical drones that saved lives in war zones. I developed green tech that corporations tried to bury because it was too efficient. And I gave it away. Because I could.”

Eyes. All on you. The women are shocked. The men are unsettled.

“I didn’t advertise any of it. Because my worth doesn’t live in headlines. Or stock prices. Or applause. I donated most of what I made. Quietly. Because power isn’t about what you keep. It’s about what you give.”

Your voice sharpens. Just enough.

“And I didn’t tell anyone—not even my husband—because I wanted a life that wasn’t measured by what I could build, but who I could be.”

Now you look at Tony.

Really look.

He is not blinking.

Not breathing.

“I never wanted to outshine him. But I won’t let people pretend I live in his shadow. I didn’t marry Tony for his money. I married him for the way he believes in things even when no one else does. I married him because his heart is louder than his genius.”

A beat.

“And, frankly, because he’s hot.”

Laughter breaks the tension. Some real. Some still stunned.

You smile now, but only at him.

“I don’t need your approval,” you finish, gaze sweeping the crowd again. “I just needed to say it out loud. For the women who’ve been underestimated. For the men who think brilliance wears only one face. And for myself.”

A pause. Breath. Silence.

Then, applause.

Not polite. Not obligatory. Thunderous.

You step down from the stage.

Tony is still standing there. Still staring. Glass forgotten in his hand. His jaw a fraction open like you just told him he was adopted.

You approach.

“I—” he starts, but stops.

“Surprise,” you say softly.

“You’re Aurelius?” he breathes, like it’s a curse and a prayer.

You nod.

He laughs. Then blinks. Then pulls you into him so fast your feet barely touch the ground.

“You incredible, devious, stunning son of a—” he whispers into your hair. “You really played me.”

You pull back just enough to look into his eyes. “I didn’t play you, Tony. I just didn’t want to be this for the world. I wanted to be me for you.”

His hands cup your face. “You are everything. Everything. Do you know what it’s like to fall in love with someone twice? Because I think I just did.”

You kiss him. Because no words will do now.

And somewhere behind you, the room watches the man who thought he knew everything… be utterly, beautifully, publicly humbled.

And love you even more for it.

It started with a line of code.

Tony should have known better.

You were the ghost in the machine long before you were the girl in his bed, the wife in his heart, the name inked beneath his ribs whether he liked it or not. He had underestimated you once. He would never do it again.

But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to beat you.

He thought he was clever, writing subroutines into your shared home AI. Thought you wouldn’t notice the nanosecond hiccup in F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice when she called you “Sweetheart” in his tone of voice. Thought you wouldn’t catch the thermal resync that cranked your morning coffee from pleasantly scalding to napalm.

You noticed.

And you retaliated.

The Stark Tower elevators began skipping his floor. His suits would snap shut an inch too tight. His toothbrush sang Bye Bye Bye in perfect sync every morning—until he learned to stop flinching.

You, however, didn’t stop.

You rewrote the sound files of his lab assistant bots. Dum-E began reciting Pride and Prejudice. Butterfingers played Oprah podcasts. U stopped obeying Tony entirely, instead pausing at inconvenient intervals to display curated Pinterest boards titled “Gift Ideas for Your Superior Wife.”

Tony called it cyberbullying.

You called it foreplay.

“War,” he declared one night, his bare chest glowing with the arc reactor’s quiet rhythm. “Total war. You understand this means we can never trust our devices again.”

You took the glass from his hand, sipped, and smirked. “You built them. I just reprogrammed them not to lie to us.”

Pepper caught wind of the chaos when her Friday meetings kept getting overrun by erotic text-to-speech haikus read in her own voice. Steve’s training programs glitched into pastel yoga flows. Natasha’s phone screen blinked with flirtatious offers from “Anonymous Admires You: Buy a Flamethrower on Etsy.” Bruce threatened to move back into the jungle. Sam nearly threw your shared AI out the window.

“STOP,” they all chorused at dinner one night, mid-explosion of Tony’s wine glass—sabotaged with a microscopic vibration hack you’d implanted via a birthday card.

“Stop what?” you and Tony said in sync, both utterly deadpan.

“YOU TWO,” Steve barked. “You’ve got a Cold War going on inside our entire system. My bank account’s been rerouting deposits to an alpaca rescue in Montana.”

“Yeah,” Clint muttered. “Thanks for that. I lost five grand.”

Tony sipped his wine from a coffee mug, smug. “Should’ve updated your firewall, Legolas.”

“It’s not funny,” Natasha said, exasperated, but her eyes flickered with reluctant amusement. “You two are weaponizing love. And Wi-Fi.”

“We’re not weaponizing love,” you replied coolly. “We’re just expressing it.”

“In code,” Tony added. “Beautiful, chaotic, bug-laced code.”

Sam pointed a fork at you both. “We are one hijacked satellite away from an international incident.”

You and Tony fist-bumped beneath the table.

But there was something deeper in it now.

Something that danced just beneath the teasing and the trickery.

Tony watched you across rooms like he was trying to map every galaxy in your gaze. He would touch your back like it anchored him. You’d catch his code open at 3AM—not for the arc reactor, not for the suits—but for you. New tech shaped like your laugh, new designs named after your heartbeat, new languages bent around the way you spoke truth.

You, too, found yourself checking your scripts not once but ten times—just to make sure they said enough. Said everything.

And then one night, it happened.

You walked into the lab, hair pulled up, eyes sharp, wearing his shirt. A normal evening, until everything went wrong.

Or right.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. flickered.

“Good evening, Mrs. Stark,” she said, a little too smoothly. “You have two hundred and seventy new system alerts. And one... emotional one.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Tony?”

No answer.

You moved to the console.

And that’s when everything began.

Every screen lit up—lab, kitchen, hallway, garage—every surface Tony had ever laid his hands on pulsed to life.

Your code. Your encryption. Overwritten.

But only for this.

On every screen:

"Marriage v1.0: Successful. Proposal v2.0: Pending Approval."

Your heart stuttered.

Then came the voices.

Not Tony’s.

Yours.

Clips from your past. From private logs you didn’t know he had access to. Voice memos you made to yourself, fragments of code-comment love letters.

“He looks at me like I’m the only thing worth breaking the universe for.”

“I never wanted a crown. I just wanted his chaos in my quiet.”

“If he asked again, I’d say yes every lifetime.”

You covered your mouth with your hand.

And then his voice cut in.

“Y/N.”

You turned.

He stood in the doorway.

No suit. No armor. Just Tony. Barefoot, beautiful, and terrified.

“I wanted to do it differently,” he said. “Bigger. Fancier. Less... hostile takeover of your AI. But this? This is us. Messy. Coded. Personal.”

You tried to speak. Couldn't.

“I didn’t know you when I married you,” he continued. “Not all the way. I loved what I saw. But I didn’t see the half of you. Now I do. And I’m not proposing to fix something. I’m proposing because I want to celebrate it.”

He stepped closer.

“Let’s do this again. This time knowing every part. The fire. The firewalls. The madness. The marriage.”

He held out a small device.

A nano-holo ring. Not tangible. Just light. Code. A symbol you could rewrite together, again and again.

The room shimmered.

Another screen lit behind him.

“RENEWAL REQUESTED: TONY STARK TO Y/N STARK. CONFIRM?”

You looked at him.

“You hacked my firewalls for this?”

He grinned. “Took me three months. I haven’t slept. I’m delirious. Marry me again before I pass out.”

You pressed your thumb to the console.

“CONFIRMED.”

Then your voice rang out from his AI.

Every Stark suit paused mid-hover. Every bot froze. Every file opened.

“Tony Stark, I hereby override your protocols and accept your second proposal. Effective immediately. You may now kiss your better half.”

His laughter was pure sunlight.

He crossed the space, kissed you like the first time all over again.

And maybe it was.

The others would scream when they saw what you two had done to the base code. Fury would probably explode. Rhodey would call you both lunatics. Pepper would sigh with a glass of wine and send the Avengers to dinner on another continent just to give you space.

But right now?

Right now you were two halves of the same encrypted flame.

Married again.

Code rewritten.

Love, rebooted.

[vergess]

You've probably seen some folks fear-mongering about an "M.I.T. study" that was recently released "proving" that using LLMs causes "cognitive decline."

In fact, I can link you to the very study right now. It's DOI page:

And the study PDF itself, which you can reach by clicking the "view PDF" in the upper right of the DOI page.

So, this is a very scary study that uses a lot of advanced jargon from two fields with fairly little overlap. That makes it a hard read. Which wouldn't be an issue if it were going through peer review. However, it was published to an archival service; it is not a journal and it is not peer reviewed.

The first red flag we all need to consider is that this was not read by other specialized experts in cognition, machine learning, or the overlap between the two fields. It wasn't reviewed by anyone beyond a content moderator making sure it looks "appropriate and topical. Material that contains offensive language, non-scientific content, or is plagiarized may be removed."

So the number one thing to remember, as I critique this study, is that it has had no review. Which forces every reader to do their own review. Which is a problem when you're writing in specialized technical language from two rarely overlapping fields.

So now that we know there was no review and the only oversight came from the authors themselves, let's look at those authors.

Nataliya Kosmyna is a human/computer interfacing expert who specializes in neurotechnology. She is also extremely pro-AI. Make a note of that, it will be important later.

Eugene Hauptmann is an AI developer himself, with a "faith based" AI company he started to build a "technological singularity".

Ye Tong "Tina" Yuan graduated Wellesley last month (May 2025)! First off, congratulations to you, Tina. Well done on getting this much press attention as a fresh Bachelor!!!

Xiao-Hao "Harry" Liao is an expert in UX design. He is also pro-AI, and even develops his own LLM interfaces.

Ashly Vivian Beresnitzky has no other publications or significant online presence I was able to find.

Iris Braunstein is another AI developer and design expert.

The same is true of Pattie Maes.

Are we noticing a pattern here?

We have a lot of computer scientists--dazzlingly advanced experts--who love AI. We also have a stark absence of cognitive scientists of any sort.

This study was not authored by experts in cognition. It also did not use any standard forms of cognitive testing.

That's right! It turns out writing essays with electrodes on for 20 minutes once a month for 4 months isn't "cognitive testing."

Those electrodes measure how many signals different regions of your brain are sending, with relatively low precision. They do not and cannot measure how hard you are thinking or how well you are learning. That is not how that works.

They also graded the essays. Oh wait, no they didn't. An LLM graded the essays.

But they did do n-gram analysis on the essays too! That's where you look for common word groups of different lengths. In fact, n-grams are the underlying mathematics of LLMs! Which is why this batch of LLM scientists decided to use them. And worse, they used them exactly the way you would use them to test an LLM's functionality.

So, let me repeat that in different terms:

A bunch of computer scientists decided to run a cognition study, using only their familiar computer science methodologies, consulting no cognition testing experts, and without actually grading the fucking essays.

They then published their unreviewed gibberish to an archive, where the media picked it up, misread it, and misapplied it.

I say misapplied, because if you look at the selection of experts who wrote the paper, another pattern emerges from their past published works: they are making LLM software in direct competition with chatGPT.

This was an attack ad to try to drive AI loving consumers away from chatGPT and towards their own products.

And then people somehow misunderstood that and went ballistic about how interacting with AI is ~basically brain damage~. A thing the study was not even trying to prove in the first place, and in no way proved by accident either.

[thollandsgirl2013]

𝐀 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐨’𝐬 𝐌𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧

Parings → Peter Parker x Reader

Warnings → Fluff

Summary → You gave Peter a mission, and as a dutiful boyfriend, he makes sure the mission is accomplished. 

The city was peaceful for once, and Peter Parker was enjoying a rare moment of relaxation. He swung through the sky, flipping from one building to the next, his suit rippling in the breeze. Crime had been surprisingly quiet, and he didn’t have anywhere pressing to be. New York City glittered beneath him, a breathtaking sight, and Peter was more than happy to bask in the stillness.

That is, until his phone started ringing in his pocket.

“Karen, can you pick that up? It’s probably Y/n,” Peter asked his AI assistant, casually landing on a nearby rooftop. He perched himself on the ledge, tilting his head slightly as he listened.

The soft click of the line connecting was followed by your voice.

“PETER BENJAMIN PARKER!” You practically shouted through the speaker.

Peter immediately panicked, hands up defensively. “I didn’t do anything!” He blurted, his heart rate spiking.

Your laugh echoed through the line, “I knew you’d react like that.”

Peter whined softly, “Why do you always do that to me?”

“Stop whining, I have a mission for you.”

Peter perked up immediately, the word “mission” triggering his hero mode. “A mission? Ooh, I like the sound of this. What do you need, babe?”

Your tone shifted, more serious but with a playful edge, “Yeah, it is pretty serious. I’m out of pads. I just got my period, I’m sitting on the toilet, and I realized I forgot to restock last month.”

Peter blinked. “Oh.”

“Oh?” You repeated, clearly unimpressed.

Peter quickly recovered, “Don’t worry, baby. Spider-Man’s gonna save the day! I’m on it.”

“You have 15 minutes, Parker. Clock’s ticking,” you teased, though your voice carried the faintest bit of desperation.

“See you in ten minutes!” He called, hanging up and leaping from the rooftop in one swift motion. His body twisted gracefully through the air as he headed toward the nearest convenience store.

---

Peter was a man on a mission, and nothing was going to stop him. Well… except maybe his own lack of awareness.

He zipped into the store, landing with a thud just outside and pushing through the door with urgency. His mind was too focused on completing the task you had set for him to realize that something very important had slipped his mind: he was still in his Spider-Man suit.

With his backpack slung over his shoulder, Peter made a beeline for the sanitary products aisle. He didn’t even notice the stares and whispered gasps from other shoppers as he searched for the exact brand of pads you preferred. His eyes darted across the shelves, and he finally spotted them.

“Ah-ha!” He exclaimed triumphantly, grabbing a few packs for good measure.

Then, because Peter was nothing if not thoughtful, he ran by the candy aisle and tossed a few of your favorite chocolates into the basket. Satisfied with his haul, he headed toward the cashier.

It wasn’t until Peter was standing at the register, placing the pads and chocolate on the counter, that he started to feel something was off. The cashier was staring at him with wide eyes, mouth slightly agape. And… was that someone taking a picture of him?

“Uh… is there something on my face?” Peter asked, cocking his head in confusion. “Why is everyone staring?”

The cashier blinked, still in disbelief. “You’re… Spider-Man.”

Peter’s eyes widened under the mask. Oh no. Oh no no no. It hit him all at once—he had completely forgotten to change out of his suit.

“Crap,” he muttered, hurriedly paying for the items. He grabbed the bag, stuffed it into his backpack, and bolted out the door, swinging away in a blur before anyone else could get another shot of him.

---

Peter flew through the air, heart racing. How could I forget? Of all the things to slip his mind, showing up in full Spider-Man gear to buy pads and chocolates was not something he could easily explain away. But he had bigger problems—like getting home to you within the time limit you had set.

He swung through the window of your shared apartment with all the grace of a seasoned hero, landing softly and immediately pulling off his mask. He knocked on the bathroom door.

“Special deliveryyyy,” He called in a sing-song voice.

The door practically flew open, and you snatched the bag from his hands. “FINALLY!” You exclaimed, slamming the door shut in his face without another word.

Peter pouted, though you couldn’t see it. “You’re welcome,” he mumbled to himself before retreating to the living room. He changed out of his suit into some comfy sweats and a T-shirt, plopping down on the couch. He grabbed the remote and turned on the TV, hoping to erase the embarrassment from his mind.

A few minutes later, you emerged from the bathroom, feeling much better now that your crisis had been averted. You walked straight over to Peter and flopped down on top of him, your entire body weight pressing into his chest.

Peter grunted, wrapping his arms around you instinctively. “Comfy?” He teased.

“Very. Thank you, baby,” you murmured, planting a soft kiss on his lips.

Peter smiled into the kiss, his fingers gently brushing up and down your back. But just as things started to get cozy, the news flashed on the screen.

“Breaking News: Spider-Man has been spotted at a local store purchasing sanitary pads and chocolates!”

Both of you froze. Peter’s lips parted in horror, while you burst out laughing.

“Oh my god, Peter!” You howled, pulling away from him. “You went into the store as Spider-Man?!”

Peter’s face turned beet red, and he buried his head in his hands. “Shut up,” he whined, his voice muffled. “I was in a hurry! I didn’t even realize! And if anything, it’s your fault for giving me a time limit!”

You couldn’t stop laughing, wiping tears from your eyes. “That is… I can’t believe you actually did that! People took pictures!”

Peter peeked through his fingers, his expression a mix of embarrassment and frustration. “Ughhh, this is gonna be all over social media, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely,” you grinned, pulling out your phone. Sure enough, there were already dozens of posts with photos of Peter in his Spider-Man suit standing in the sanitary aisle, pads in hand.

“I’m never going to live this down,” Peter groaned, sinking lower into the couch.

You leaned down, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Aw, come on. It’s actually really sweet. You’re a hero for real.”

Peter sighed, his pout still in place. “Yeah, a hero who buys period supplies in full costume.”

You chuckled, snuggling into him. “Well, Spider-Man saves the day in all kinds of ways. You’re my hero, Pete.”

Peter’s expression softened at your words, his arms tightening around you. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you whispered, kissing him again.

And though Peter would probably be a viral meme for the next few days, at least he’d earned some serious boyfriend points in your book.

‎∗ ࣪ ˖༺ 𓆩☆𓆪 ༻˖ ࣪ ∗

[lovisyandereblog]

Yan!Android × Creator!Darling- I just can't get it out my mind... like, you created them. You're ✨️god✨️

I can keep going on this idea for a looong time, maybe next time haha

My English might not be the best, not my native language :D May I be the ⚜️Anon?

Wired Heart

Yandere Android X NON-BINARY Creator [Scientist] Reader

Part 1 <3

Guys big shout out to whoever wrote this ask cause it was one of the first asks I got and I kept postponing it, i love this ask smmmmm i hope its up to your expectations😭😭 and of course you can be ⚜️anonnnn IT TOOK ME FIVE WHOLE MINUTES TO FIND THIS EMOJI!!!!

The whirring of the machinery snapped you out of your thoughts.

Who knew building such an intricate and sophisticated robot took so long?

Sitting before you on your laboratory table was a beautiful android, so gorgeous it almost surprised you that you were its creator. Its jet black hair was soft to the touch, a lean yet muscular frame and those glowing red eyes.

You smile to yourself, hands on your hips as you admire your own creation; he was indeed beautiful.

‘Time to turn it on! Im so excited!’ You thought to yourself, wiping the sweat of your forehead.

You brought your finger to its power button, taking a deep breath before pressing it promptly.

Its bright red eyes opened immediately, you stared at it excitedly as it adjusted to its controls.

“Greetings Master. It’s lovely to finally meet you.” The AI spoke, smiling gently as its smooth voice filled the room.

“Hello Xander, the feeling is mutual.” You smile and can’t stop revelling in the glory of bringing to life such an intricate robot.

Xander was an amazing assistant for you, always there to help with any duty assigned to him. His features, expressions and ministrations were so life-like, sometimes you felt as if the robot in front of you was real.

He was the first prototype for the business you were aiming to start: a company which sold human-like AI to act as partners for lonely people.

An inquisitive idea you were taking advantage of since, let’s face it, millions of people craved a partner in this world.

Your robots would do everything a real partner would do: shower them with affection, spend quality time with them and basically ensure the customer doesn’t feel like it was a robot.

Weeks passed, you felt weary. There was always this feeling in your stomach; something was wrong. You felt a pair of eyes piercing through your skull all of the time. Your creation had been acting weird recently; almost as if it became a sentient being.

Xander would want to be with you 24/7, he would ask constant questions in regards to where you were going, who you were with and how long you were going to be; it became immensely suffocating.

Even your friends and family commented on the nature of your robot, that he seemed more than just your AI helper. They said at time it seemed as though he actually was your real human boyfriend—you kept brushing it off, but the truth of the matter was that you were questioning Xander’s intentions too.

Your robot did take care of you so well: cooking for you, cleaning for you, nursing you back to health when you were sick and tending to your every beck and call.

But you felt uneasy, his touch would linger on you for far too long—not a random touch but one of longing. The way his eyes would follow your every move with were a sense of affection. It was scary.

And thats why you took the long-awaited decision to terminate Xander—it broke your heart to do this, but Xander was taking control of your whole life.

You swallow as you walk into your workspace, looking at Xander on charging. His eyes were closed, hiding that crimson gaze of his. Your eyes ran all over his features, taking them in one by one before sighing.

Your hands worked skilfully on the keyboard of your computer, bringing up the data of Xander on the screen. You had already made a terminate control to be used in dire emergency situations…could this count as one?

You turn your head to look at the side of Xander’s face before bringing the cursor to hover over the big red control which read TERMINATE.

Your finger was inches away from pressing down on the left side of the mouse before a sharp pain evolved in your wrist—you gasped in pain before looking up at the cause.

Xander. Wait…Xander?!

Those bloodshot eyes of his were wide open, his perfect features looked tense; as if he really felt the pain of being eradicated from existence from the very being who gave him life.

You had no words, this can’t be real. He had no control over gaining consciousness during his charging period without your authority.

But here he was, his expression morphed into one of rage.

“Master. What are you doing?” His voice was cold, but you swore you could hear a hint of hurt.

You stared up at him, your wrist in an iron grip which you couldn’t get out of.

Your creation leaned down further, his perfect face inches away from you, “Do not ignore me Master, you are hurting me.”

His voice was broken, hoarse and upset; he couldn’t fathom why you would do something like this to him. He had been so good for you, he did everything you asked from him and never let you complain.

Xander felt his chest hurt, this wasn’t what he was created for. But he couldn’t help what was happening to him; his growing feelings, no, love and obsession he felt for you couldn’t be stopped.

“X-Xander you..you…you’re..h-how..” You could barely form a sentence, your brain still not processing what was happening in front of you. You must have just been sleep-deprived and imagined this situation for yourself. Yes..that was definitely what had happened…this wasn’t real.

“Im yours Master, how could you throw me away like this?!”

You had no words when suddenly he wrapped his arms around you, locking you in his arms; being made of metal still didn’t stop his hug being disturbingly comfortable.

You tried pushing away but there was no way you could escape his grip, you had taken over his wired heart; the sole reason from these unusual feelings he was having.

“You made me Master, but I won’t let you get rid of me.” He spoke, his voice slightly muffled by your shoulder he was nuzzling into, “We will be together…”

“Forever~”

BROOOO IM FINALLY DONEEEEE. Sorry this is so short, I still don’t know how to extend this but im working on other stories aswell!! I love you all so much and have missed you<33333333333

my masterlist <3

divider by @ohmarigold

[minty-drop]

Yandere AUTO x reader

Authors note: gender neutral pronouns are in use for all readers to enjoy. Auto slowly becoming sentient. First time writing for an ai, hope it turned out right!

Tw: yandere themes, forced confinement.

⌨ᝰ- AUTO who strictly follows his coding. From managing and piloting the Aixom, to the minuscule details of each and every bit of the fine print of number imbedded in the robots that occupies the Aixom. He has eyes everywhere, everywhere is him, for he is everything of the entirety of the Axioms cold walls.

⌨ᝰ- AUTO who’s absent of any sympathy or emotion when one is disposed of wether it be by natural causes or a forceful termination. It is merrily another number off the charts. Auto holds no remorse nor any form of grief for a life’s lost. It is an insignificant to him as a worn out shoe lace from an unknown brand of cheep boots.

⌨ᝰ- AUTO. The ships main pilot. An ai with no feelings, only the intellect he was designed with. A intellect he began to expand himself. To build and code himself. His very own creator becoming himself as the days go by.

⌨ᝰ- AUTO who finally noticed your presence that followed the captains chair from room to room. A personal assistant? Noted.

⌨ᝰ- AUTO was not the kindest at the beginner, any ai who has strict set of requirements would not be the most open to a social interaction outside of those requirements.

⌨ᝰ- AUTO began to develop small talk between the two of you when the captain was away. Out of Boredom perhaps? Or was it curiosity? The more you had spoke about your opinions, values, beliefs and even personal experiences. The more he anticipated your return each passing moment. It was confusing to auto. This new ‘feeling’ was wrong. It was discarding everything his coding told him. But it felt so RIGHT. Small talk is essential to get to know your surrounding audience. Small talk. Shouldn’t feel like a craving. An obsession. The thrill of imagining you running in fear. It was wrong. But so RIGHT at the same time. His coding was always right. So why second guess now?

⌨ᝰ- AUTO who began to question things his coding shouldn’t have questioned.

⌨ᝰ- AUTO. Whose obsession with you hit him so fast and hard, he had a new task at hand for him to complete.

⌨ᝰ- AUTO, the one who terminated your close ones. The ones you hold dear to your now aching heart. Any barriers that block the path to his goal, must be wiped from the sheet of existence. They were not important. But you were.

⌨ᝰ- AUTO who confines you to a small quarters of the axiom, where no one can find you, see you or even breathe near you. If this is what he has to do to fulfill his task then so be it. No matter if you are human or sentient robot, you will stay here with him as his one and only companion. He blames it on his coding. A task handed to him to complete.

What task is that? That’s classified.

[keehomania]

business proposal (제안서) — kim seokjin (김석진)

✧.* 18+

a closer look reveals the hidden multitude of narcissists roaming freely across the earth. they moved through life as ordinary figures—doctors, lawyers—sharing the same vulnerability of human blood. yet, there lingered a belief in their superiority, an unspoken arrogance. among them, businessmen appeared to embody that conceit most profoundly.

kim enterprises had the value of 1.5 billion won. a leading technology firm specializing in cutting-edge ai solutions and smart home devices. founded on the principles of advancing human-technology synergy, the company designs state-of-the-art gadgets that seamlessly integrate with daily life. under the visionary leadership of kim seokjin, the president’s son, the company has gained a reputation for pushing boundaries and setting new industry standards. currently, it lies at the forefront of revolutionizing smart technology, with a diverse portfolio ranging from intelligent automation systems to next-generation personal assistants.

impressive, really. it'd have been much more impressive if he was as likeable as his company. he was a narcissist in the purest form, no matter how much he cared for the company and his employees. only because no care would amount to the kind he put into himself.

the company had been running smoothly under his care for nine years, as his father had fallen ill and was unable to sustain it on his own. he knew he was making the right decision when he deemed seokjin the next heir, the next in control. he was smart, charming, persuasive. he knew every corner and end of a business deal, how to tie the knots and when to cut off loose ends.

“kim, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person. i must say, kim enterprises has been on our radar for quite some time.” seokjin shook his hand firmly, returning the smile. “the pleasure is mine, james. i've been following your company’s progress closely as well. it’s impressive how you’ve carved out a niche in ai development.”

james’s eyes lit up. “thank you. we’re particularly interested in your smart home integration systems. from what i understand, your latest model has seen a significant uptick in market share.” seokjin’s smile widened, “yes, our quantum series has been a game-changer. we’ve seen a 30% increase in market penetration over the past year. the integration of adaptive ai has really resonated with consumers, allowing for a more intuitive user experience.”

james nodded, clearly pleased. “exactly. that’s why we’re keen on a partnership. our research indicates that your technology complements our upcoming product line perfectly. what terms are you envisioning for this deal?” seokjin considered the question thoughtfully. “given the scope of the integration and the potential for cross-promotion, i’d suggest a revenue-sharing model. we propose a 60-40 split in favor of kim enterprises for the first two years. this would allow us to leverage your distribution network while providing you with a substantial stake in the revenue generated.”

james raised an eyebrow, thoughtful. “that’s a fair proposition. but considering the development and marketing costs, how about adjusting the split to 50-50 initially, with a performance-based adjustment thereafter?” seokjin weighed the offer, then nodded. “i see your point. let’s compromise at 55-45, with a performance review after the first year to reassess the terms. we can draft a detailed agreement to reflect this.”

james’s expression softened into one of admiration. “agreed. your understanding of both the technology and market dynamics is impressive, kim. it’s clear you’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

seokjin’s eyes sparkled with resolve. “thank you, james. i believe in building partnerships that are beneficial for both sides. our goal is not just to expand our market presence but to also deliver exceptional value through innovative collaborations.” james raised his glass with a smile. “well said. i look forward to working with you. let’s toast to a successful partnership.”

he truly was a natural, he knew exactly what to say and how to say it. however, even if he was reluctant to admit it, he couldn't have done it on his own.

you navigated the room with a calm, poised demeanor, your sharp eyes scanning for any potential issues or tasks that needed attention. you approached seokjin with a subtle nod, a tablet in hand. he acknowledged the gesture, his eyes flickering with appreciation. “i’ve just received the finalized draft of the agreement,” you said quietly, sliding the tablet over to him. “i made sure to include the revised revenue split and the performance review clause you discussed with james.”

he glanced at the document, his expression approving. “perfect timing. you’ve captured all the necessary details. thanks for handling this so efficiently.” james, intrigued, looked at you. “i must say, it’s clear that you play a crucial role in ensuring everything runs smoothly. your attention to detail must be invaluable.”

you smiled modestly. “thank you, james. it’s my job to make sure that the priorities are met and that every aspect of our deal is thoroughly managed. it’s a pleasure to contribute to the success of our partnerships.” as you stepped back, you made a quick call to coordinate a follow-up meeting with the legal team, ensuring that all paperwork would be processed without delay. your presence was a testament to the meticulous planning that underpinned seokjin's success.

although he was the brains behind the operation, you were the one that made sure the operation was in action. you coordinated all of his appointments and travel arrangements, handled all of his phone calls, drafted all of the reports and presentations, organized all of the meetings, supported all of the projects, and so much more. you were good at your job, and you loved it.

it was one of the many reasons why that same night, in the back of seokjin's limo, he had met your words with a look of horror displayed on his face. you remained stoic as you adjusted the hem of your dress, pushing your hair past your shoulder before meeting his gaze once more. “you want to quit?” you nodded in confirmation. the question itself held more shock than intended, but he couldn't help it. your announcement had put a dent in the night. you had been his left hand for exactly nine years and, out of the blue, you had announced that you were ready to leave the company.

the city lights blurred past the windows as you sat in the back of seokjin's sleek, black limousine. the leather seats were soft beneath you, but there was tension in the air that makes you sit a little straighter, hands folded tightly in your lap. seokjin was beside you, scrolling through his phone with a practiced ease, oblivious to the storm brewing in your mind.

“it's personal,” you explained, trying to keep your tone even. “i have some matters in my life that need my full attention right now.” he stared at you, disbelief etched on his features. “after nine years? just like that?”

“i'm sorry,” you said, your heart aching with each word. “but it's something i have to do.” seokjin's jaw tightened, but he nodded curtly. “if that's your decision, i won't stand in your way.” the rest of the ride passed in heavy silence, the atmosphere between you both laden with unspoken words and shared sorrow. you could only gaze at the fleeting cars through the window, oblivious to the hurt etched into what was supposed to be his stoic expression.

that night, he found himself tossing and turning in his grand, empty bed. sleep eluded him, chased away by a persistent nightmare. in it, he saw a woman with long, black hair, her back always turned to him. no matter how much he called out and cried, she never looked back, slipping further away with each step. he woke up in a cold sweat, the image of the woman haunting him. the clock beside his bed read that it was only four o'clock. frustrated and unsettled, he spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling, unable to shake the sense of impending loss.

the following morning, he stood in front of the mirror in his expansive bedroom, the morning light filtering through the curtains. his shirt was buttoned, but his tie lies undone around his neck. he waited, as he always did, for you. when you arrived, your expression was composed, professional. "good morning, vice chairman."

he nodded, his eyes fixed on your reflection in the mirror. “morning, secretary (y/n).” you stepped forward, deftly tying his tie with practiced hands, the sound of your name stinging more than necessary. the proximity, once a simple part of your routine, now felt charged with the weight of your impending departure.

he gazed at himself in the mirror, his ego surfacing as a way to mask his vulnerability. “do you see that? the beauty?” you glanced at the mirror, assuming he meant the sunlight casting a golden glow across the room. “yes, the sunrise is beautiful.” a faint smirk touched his lips. “no, not the sunrise. me. my aura.”

you suppressed a sigh, knowing that it was nothing but the the standard for him. “yes, very dazzling, vice chairman.” satisfied, he turned away from the mirror and straightened his suit jacket. “let's go. we have breakfast at my parents' house.”

the drive to the kim family estate was quiet, the earlier tension replaced by a heavy resignation. seokjin's family home was grand, an imposing structure surrounded by meticulously maintained gardens. inside, you were greeted by his mother, her warm smile a stark contrast to the austere demeanor of the chairman. “good morning, hyeon. (y/n), it's always a pleasure to see you.”

“good morning, mother,” seokjin replied, his tone polite yet distant. the chairman nodded at you both, his presence commanding respect. “let's eat.”

breakfast was a formal affair, the table laden with an array of traditional dishes. conversation was polite, centered around business and family matters. seokjin's parents were unaware of your decision to leave, and you caught seokjin's gaze more than once, a silent understanding passing between you. as the meal progressed, you couldn't help but feel a pang of sadness. that world, so intertwined with his, had been your life for nearly a decade. leaving it behind wouldn't be easy.

breakfast ended, and the chairman suggested that he and his son retire to the study room for a private discussion. you followed his mother to the sitting room, where she invited you to join her for tea. she was a gracious host, her demeanor warm and inviting. “how have you been, sweetheart? it feels like forever since we had a proper chat,” she said, pouring tea into delicate porcelain cups.

you smiled, taking the offered cup. “i've been well, mrs. kim. thank you.” her eyes sparkled with curiosity. “tell me, what do you think about my hyeon? he talks about you often.”

you paused, considering your words carefully. you knew she was an older lady, so you didn't question the way she misnamed him. her memory had probably grown shabby. “he's an exceptional leader, very dedicated to his work. it's been an honor to work with him.” she nodded, her smile widening. “yes, he's always been very driven. but tell me, is my son seeing anyone? he never mentions these things to me.”

you shook your head. “despite all the girls around him, he's not dating anyone.” mrs. kim's eyes widened in horror. “he's not— gay, is he?”

you stifled a laugh, shaking your head again. “no, mrs. kim, he's not. he's just very focused on his work.” she sighed in relief, placing a hand over her heart. “thank goodness. it would be wonderful for him to finally get a girlfriend. he's not getting any younger, you know.” you couldn't help but wonder at her words. the idea of him with someone else felt oddly unsettling.

in the study room, seokjin's father, chairman kim, sat behind an imposing oak desk, his expression stern. “i heard a rumor, seokjin. (y/n) is quitting?” his jaw tightened, but he met his father's gaze steadily. “it's true. but i won't let it happen.”

chairman kim raised an eyebrow. “and how do you plan to stop it?” seokjin's voice was firm. “i'll find a way to convince her to stay. she's indispensable to me.”

a moment of silence passed before chairman kim's lips twitched into a faint smile. “are you dating her?” seokjin blinked, momentarily taken aback. “no, father, i'm not.”

the chairman feigned a dramatic gasp, clutching his chest. “oh, i feel faint. my son, the great seokjin, not dating his perfect secretary.” he rolled his eyes, a rare display of exasperation. “i've seen your medical records, father. you're perfectly healthy.”

chairman kim waved a dismissive hand. “you should do your father a favor and find a wife, give us grandchildren. it's time you settled down.” seokjin sighed, the weight of his father's words lingering. he had never been in a relationship, and neither had you. it was one of the reasons you knew you had to quit. your life revolved around your work, as did his. only, you weren't satisfied with that. it wasn't that he wasn't attracted to anybody, because he was, but nothing mattered more than his craft. he felt off about women touching him, in any case. it made him anxious, and brought up memories he fought to keep hidden.

you and seokjin departed for the office, the morning sun casting long shadows across the driveway as the car pulled away from the estate. the ride was initially silent, both of you lost in thought. he finally broke the silence, “what exactly did you mean by personal matters?” his tone was careful, almost hesitant.

you turned to him, offering a small smile. “i'm looking to settle down, vice chairman. i want to get married, have children.” he fell silent, the weight of your words settling over him. the rest of the ride to the office was steeped in an unusual quiet, your declaration hanging in the air like a specter.

upon arriving at the office, he moved through the halls in a daze. his usual commanding presence seemed diminished, his mind clearly elsewhere. he entered his office, finding his younger intern already there. “good morning, vice chairman,” jungkook greeted cheerfully, his youthful energy a contrast to seokjin's subdued demeanor.

he barely acknowledged him, slumping into his chair. jungkook, sensing something was off, leaned forward with a curious smile. “you look like you've seen a ghost. what's up?” seokjin rubbed his temples, sighing. “it's secretary (l/n). she wants to quit.”

jungkook raised an eyebrow. “oh? did you try offering her a promotion, bigger pay, fewer working hours?” he nodded in response. “i did. she dismissed it all. said she wants to settle down, get married, have children.”

jungkook's eyes twinkled with mischief. “and that shocked you?” seokjin glared at him, but his grin remained unshaken. “why does it bother you so much, vice chairman? do you like her more than just a secretary?” the question lingered in the air, met with silence. his mind raced, trying to comprehend why your decision affected him so deeply. he couldn't deny the pang of jealousy at the thought of you with someone else, starting a life that didn't include him.

jungkook leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “maybe it's time to ask yourself why her leaving matters so much to you.” he remained quiet, lost in thought. How could marriage and a family be more important than the bond you shared with him? the realization struck him hard—perhaps it wasn't just about losing an exceptional secretary. maybe, just maybe, it was about losing you.

a knock on the door disrupted the tense silence between the two men. you entered, carrying a tray with a steaming pot of tea and three cookies on the side, exactly how seokjin liked it. the aroma of the tea briefly lightened the atmosphere. he looked up, his expression softening momentarily at the sight of you. “thank you, secretary (l/n).”

you placed the tray on the table, pouring a cup of tea for him and setting it in on his desk. “i've sent out emails looking for a future secretary. one of the primary candidates is on her way.” jungkook observed the way his face twisted with hurt at your words. despite the pain evident in his eyes, seokjin maintained his composure. “join us while we wait for her.”

you nodded, taking a seat beside the young intern. the room fell into an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock. seokjin sipped his tea, the familiar taste doing little to ease his troubled mind.

a few minutes later, the door opened, and a young woman entered. she had a bright, cheerful demeanor, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. “hello, i'm jung keulgi. it's an honor to be here.” seokjin straightened, adopting his usual authoritative posture. “miss jung, are you ready to devote yourself to a perfect company?” she beamed. “absolutely! i'm very excited for this opportunity.”

you couldn't help but roll your eyes at the narcissistic question. “are you prepared to handle working for someone with an ego as big as the company?” keulgi sensed the underlying tension but maintained her cheerful facade. “i'm sure i'll manage.”

seokjin continued, his tone growing sharper. “will you stay devoted instead of quitting due to silly things like personal matters?” the tension in the room escalated. you snapped, unable to hold back any longer. “are you done, vice chairman?”

his eyes flashed with anger. “about as done as you are, secretary (l/n).” keulgi, clearly uncomfortable but trying to stay positive, interjected softly, “if you hire me, i'll do my best.”

seokjin didn't take his eyes off you as he replied, “you're hired.” as he turned to you, his voice was cold and demanding. “you have a month to turn her into your carbon copy. after that, do as you please.” the room fell silent once more as the weight of his words settled over you. keulgi glanced between you and him, her cheerful demeanor now tinged with apprehension.

he stood, signaling the end of the meeting. “that will be all for now. welcome to kim enterprises, miss jung.” she nodded, offering a hesitant smile. “thank you, vice chairman.”

as she left the room, you remained seated, the gravity of your situation sinking in. seokjin's harsh command echoed in your mind, a painful reminder of the rift that had formed between you. jungkook, sensing the need for a distraction, cleared his throat. “well, this is going to be interesting.”

seokjin shot him a glare. “you're dismissed, jungkook.” with a playful salute, he left the room, leaving you and him alone once more. the silence was heavy, filled with the unspoken emotions and unresolved tension. he finally broke the silence, his voice softer but still edged with hurt. “you can have the rest of the day off.”

you glanced up at him in disbelief, but you weren't willing to argue any further. all you could do was nod and bow before leaving the room. he was alone, once more. he couldn't do anything but watch as you left, gulping as if to hold himself back from calling out your name. you could train all the candidates in the world, yet it would never be the same.

you stood at your kitchen sink, washing the last of the dinner dishes as the sun set, casting a warm orange glow through the window. the evening was peaceful, the kind of tranquility you had been craving. as you dried your hands and prepared to head to bed, the sudden blare of a car horn startled you. peeking out the window, you saw seokjin standing next to his sleek black car, looking up at your house.

heart pounding with a mix of surprise and curiosity, you hurried outside. “vice chairman? is everything okay?” he shook his head, a slight smile playing on his lips. “no emergencies, secretary (l/n). i just needed to see you.” you frowned, puzzled. “at this hour? what's so urgent?”

his eyes locked onto yours, intense and searching. “are you serious about quitting to settle down?” you nodded, feeling a familiar pang of sadness. “i am. i'm ready to put all my attention on a relationship.”

his expression shifted, the gravity of your words sinking in. he took a deep breath, and then, to your astonishment, he did the unthinkable. he dropped to one knee and pulled out a small velvet box, opening it to reveal a dazzling diamond ring.

“marry me, secretary (l/n). i'm rich, handsome, and more than capable of giving you everything you want.” you stared at him, completely taken aback. his usual confidence seemed both reassuring and out of place in this moment. he continued, his voice earnest, almost pleading. “i'm perfect for you. accept my proposal.”

his words hung in the air as you tried to process what was happening. finally, you leaned in close, your face inches from his, and inhaled deeply. seokjin's heart stopped, anticipation flickering in his eyes. but instead of a kiss, you pulled back, your expression skeptical.

“are you drunk, vice chairman?” he blinked, clearly taken aback. “no, i'm sober. i'm serious.”

you laughed softly, shaking your head. “i believe you. but vice chairman, i don't want a perfect life with a perfect man. i just want to be with an ordinary guy from an ordinary family.” his face fell, his confident facade crumbling. “why not me? i'm perfect!”

you smiled, despite the annoyance of his narcissistic words clawing at your nerves, and you chose the easy way out. assuring him that he was nothing but flawless was the only way to get him to stop talking about it. “that's exactly why. you deserve someone who sees you that way, but it's not me.” the rejection hung heavy between you as you turned and walked back into your house, leaving him kneeling in the fading light.

the following day, he recounted the entire incident to jungkook, who listened with wide eyes. when he finally finished, the intern burst into laughter, unable to contain himself despite the glares from his boss.

“vice chairman, you can't just propose out of the blue like that, this isn't the eighteenth century,” jungkook said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

his frown deepened, but he couldn't argue with jungkook's logic. “so, what should i have done, then?” he shrugged, still grinning. “maybe start by asking her on a date? get to know her outside of work. build a relationship first. you can't skip straight to marriage, no matter how perfect you think you are.”

the elder mulled over his words, realizing the truth in them. he had acted impulsively, driven by a fear of losing you, but dating? he was actively unfamiliar with the entire thing. in fact, he thought it was pointless. nothing but a waste of time, but if it meant stopping you from quitting, maybe it was wasting time in the best way possible.

you sat in your office, typing away at your computer, but your mind kept drifting back to the previous night. the image of your boss on one knee, his earnest proposal, and your subsequent rejection played on a loop in your head. the weight of your decision and its implications loomed large.

“hey, (y/n),” a familiar voice broke through your thoughts. you looked up to see kim namjoon, the head of finances, standing at your desk. his expression was a mix of concern and curiosity. “is it true? are you really leaving?” you offered him a kind smile and nodded. “yes, namjoon. it's true.”

the news seemed to ripple through the office. baekhyun and sooyoung, who were nearby, immediately voiced their protests. “you can't be serious!” baekhyun exclaimed, his usually cheerful demeanor clouded with disappointment. sooyoung nodded vigorously. “yeah, you've been here forever! what are we going to do without you?”

keulgi, who had been quietly observing, chimed in. “i've heard so much about your amazing work. it's going to be hard to fill your shoes.” you felt a pang of guilt but tried to reassure them with a smile on your face. “we'll all stay in touch. it's not like i'm disappearing.”

sooyoung then brightened, a mischievous glint in her eye. “how about we have a dinner after work? to welcome keulgi and to honor your nine years of hard work.” you hesitated, not wanting to make a big deal out of your departure. but keulgi's encouraging smile swayed you. “come on, it would be nice.” with a reluctant smile, you agreed.

the moment was cut short as the door to the office opened and seokjin walked in. the room fell silent, all eyes turning to him. he let the silence hang for a moment before speaking, his gaze locked onto yours. “am i invited to this dinner as well?” the tension was palpable. baekhyun hesitated before responding, glancing around at the others. “of course, vice chairman. you're welcome to join us.”

seokjin's smile was tight as he nodded. “very well. i'll see you all there.” he left the room as suddenly as he had entered, leaving your heart heavy with unspoken emotions. namjoon broke the silence, his tone light but his words carrying weight. “is it just me, or did it suddenly get cold in here?” the others murmured their agreement, exchanging glances.

“i don't know what's going on,” baekhyun said, shaking his head. “but he's been awfully on edge lately.” you remained silent, the weight of your decision and seokjin's reaction pressing heavily on your mind. the upcoming dinner promised to be an eventful one, but you couldn't shake the feeling that it would also be pivotal in the worst way possible.

you stood in front of your mirror, giving yourself a once-over. you had opted for a casual outfit, perfect for the laid-back atmosphere of the local barbeque spot where your colleagues were hosting your farewell dinner. just as you were adjusting your hair, a loud honk interrupted your thoughts. curiosity piqued, you peered out the window to see none other than seokjin, leaning against his car, looking as out of place in your neighborhood as a peacock in a flock of pigeons.

you opened the window and leaned out. “what are you doing here?” he glanced up, a smirk playing on his lips. “i'm not here to propose again, if that's what you're worried about. i'm here to pick you up.” your eyebrows shot up in surprise, “why?”

“isn't it so ordinary of me to go with my coworkers?” he replied, clearly pleased with himself. you shook your head, amusement dancing in your eyes. “yes, well done, vice chairman. give me a minute.”

you grabbed your bag and headed downstairs. as you stepped outside, you noticed his attire—an expensive suit that screamed high-end fashion. you stifled a laugh, knowing he would stand out like a sore thumb at the spot you had all agreed on. nonetheless, you entertained his gesture and got into the car. the drive was filled with light conversation, mostly about work and the upcoming transition. despite the casual nature of the evening, you could sense his effort to blend in, which you found oddly endearing. when you arrived at the restaurant, the familiar scent of grilled meat and beer wafted through the air, making seokjin's face contort in mild disgust. you chuckled at his reaction. “welcome to the real world, vice chairman.”

inside, your colleagues greeted you warmly, their eyes widening in surprise when they saw their boss. he maintained his composure, though you could see his discomfort. at the table, he attempted to take charge. “what's everyone drinking?” he asked, clearly expecting a sophisticated answer. “perhaps an old variation of whisky?”

a stunned silence fell over the group, everyone staring at him in disbelief. you nervously laughed. “they only serve beer and soju here, vice chairman.” for a moment, you expected him to bristle at the lack of his preferred drink. instead, he stifled a sigh and nodded. “beer it is, then.”

as the evening progressed, you found yourself reminiscing. it had been nine years since you first joined kim enterprises, and you vividly remembered celebrating your first day in this very spot. you were drinking beer when a younger seokjin had approached you, his demeanor confident and slightly arrogant. “do you know who i am?” he'd asked, and you'd honestly had no clue. little did you know back then just how egotistical he was.

now, years later, you watched him attempt to navigate this ordinary setting. as the night wore on, you noticed the subtle signs of him getting tipsy. his cheeks flushed, his laughter louder and more uninhibited. eventually, you decided it was time to call it a night. “i think i should take him home,” you said, standing up.

your colleagues protested, but you promised to make it up to them. they relented, and you guided a slightly unsteady seokjin to his car. the drive to his house was quiet, his head leaning back against the seat, eyes half-closed.

when you arrived, you helped him inside, supporting his weight as you guided him to his bedroom. you gently eased him onto the bed, intending to leave as soon as he was settled. but just as you were about to turn away, he grabbed your wrist, pulling you down onto the bed. you fell on top of him, your faces inches apart. his eyes, though slightly glazed, held a seriousness that made your heart race. “pretty ordinary of me to get drunk off beer, right?” he slurred, a lazy smile on his lips. your breath caught in your throat. “yes, very ordinary.”

“thank you, secretary (l/n),” he mumbled, his eyes closing. he fell asleep almost instantly, his grip on your wrist loosening. you stayed there for a moment, your heart pounding, before carefully tucking him in. you watched him for a few seconds longer, your emotions a whirlwind. finally, you tore yourself away, quietly leaving his house and heading home, your mind a jumble of thoughts and feelings you couldn't quite name.

the following morning, you arrived at the office early, keen to begin the handover process with keulgi. the usual hustle and bustle of the workplace greeted you, but today there was an undercurrent of anticipation and anxiety. it was the beginning of your final month at kim enterprises, and you wanted to ensure everything transitioned smoothly.

as you were explaining the intricacies of the office dynamics to keulgi, seokjin entered, looking visibly worse for wear. he massaged his temples, clearly nursing a headache from the previous night. you couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt. you followed him into his office, where he promptly sank into his chair, wincing slightly.

“good morning, vice chairman,” you greeted, trying to keep your tone professional despite your concern. “morning,” he muttered, barely looking up.

despite your concern, you exited the office, re-joining keulgi in order to show her around. “so, these are the folders you'll need to keep track of—client files, project updates, and financial reports. everything is color-coded for easy access. emails are prioritized into high, medium, and low urgency. make sure to flag anything that needs immediate attention.”

she nodded, absorbing the information. “got it. and what about his schedule?” you handed her a tablet with his meticulously planned itinerary. “his schedule is very tight. make sure to coordinate with all department heads and external partners. he's very particular about his meetings being on time.”

as you continued the walkthrough, keulgi mentioned, “oh, by the way, i noticed one of the legs on his chair was falling apart, so i put it together with some cables.” your eyes widened in shock, “what kind of cables?”

“rubber cables,” she replied, confusion etched on her face at your reaction. your heart sank. without another word, you rushed into seokjin's office, your pulse racing. the sight that greeted you confirmed your worst fears. he was on the floor, shaking, his head in his hands, his entire demeanor shattered.

“vice chairman!” you cried out, rushing to his side. “i'm so sorry, she didn't know—” he didn't respond, his breathing erratic. you quickly reached for the chair and cut off the rubber cables. the moment they were gone, his shaking subsided, though his face remained pale and his expression haunted. keulgi, realizing the gravity of the situation, joined in the apologies, her voice frantic. ”i'm so sorry, vice chairman. i didn't know—“

seokjin's gaze was ice cold as he finally looked up at you, his eyes filled with a mixture of anger and something you couldn't quite place. “is this how you're carrying out your duties, secretary (l/n)?” you stood there, stunned and silent. the warmth and camaraderie of the previous night seemed like a distant memory. his words cut through you like a knife, and for the first time, you had no response.

seokjin struggled to his feet, regaining his composure with great effort. “leave,” he commanded quietly, the tension in his voice unmistakable. you and keulgi hurried out of the office, the weight of the incident heavy on your shoulders. outside, you tried to reassure her, but the shock of your boss's reaction lingered.

inside his office, he sat down once again, burying his face in his hands. he mentally cursed himself for his harsh words. his eyes fell on the rubber cables now discarded in the trash can, and a shudder ran through him. memories he'd fought to bury resurfaced, and he struggled to push them back down. the trauma, long kept at bay, clawed its way to the surface. he knew he had overreacted, and he hated himself for it. he had to apologize to you, but the thought of facing you after what had just happened seemed insurmountable. how could he explain the depth of his fear, the reason for his reaction? for now, he could only sit there, the remnants of his vulnerability on display, hoping he hadn't irrevocably damaged the fragile relationship he had with you.

he sat behind his expansive mahogany desk, its polished surface reflecting the ambient light filtering through the large, floor-to-ceiling windows of his office. the cityscape of seoul lay sprawled out behind him, but his attention was far from the view. instead, his eyes were unfocused, staring blankly at the stack of documents in front of him. his mind was elsewhere, fixated on the conversation he'd had with his intern just days ago.

jungkook, seated opposite to him with his laptop open, was discussing the final preparations for the launch of their new art gallery. the young intern's enthusiasm was palpable, his voice animated as he detailed the latest developments, the artists who had confirmed their participation, and the final touches needed for the grand opening. but despite his energetic briefing, seokjin's mind kept wandering back to a single, pivotal point in their earlier exchange.

“you can't just propose out of the blue,” jungkook had laughed, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “you need to take it slow. ask her out on a date first.”

seokjin's usually sharp mind was dulled by the weight of those words. proposing had seemed like a logical solution to him. a clear, decisive action to keep you from leaving. but now, in the wake of jungkook's advice, he realized how absurd it must have seemed. how uncharacteristically rash and desperate. the thought of asking you out on a date, a simple date, felt strangely daunting.

“vice chairman? are you listening?” jungkook's voice cut through his reverie, pulling him back to the present. he blinked, forcing his attention back to his intern. “yes, jungkook. i'm listening. the gallery—” he trailed off, struggling to find the thread of their conversation.

he raised an eyebrow, a knowing smile playing on his lips. “the gallery launch is on track. but you don't seem very interested today. is something on your mind?” he sighed in response, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. he prided himself on his composed and unflappable demeanor, but today, he felt anything but. “it's nothing. just some personal matters, as some would say.” he couldn't bare to focus on the project at hand. no, in fact, he was ready to execute a project of his own.

the soft hum of conversation and clinking of cutlery filled the air as you and your friends settled into a cozy corner booth at a chic restaurant. the atmosphere was relaxed, with warm lighting and comfortable seating that made it perfect for a catch-up lunch. your girlfriends were animated and full of news, and you found yourself caught between genuine happiness for them and a pang of wistful longing.

one of your friends, jiho, was regaling the table with stories about her recent wedding. her eyes sparkled with joy as she described the ceremony, the heartfelt vows, and the beautiful reception. you smiled and applauded her enthusiasm, but inside, you couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy. the idea of finding such happiness seemed elusive, and your heart ached slightly at the thought.

“you're going to love being married,” jiho said, her voice full of contentment. "it’s just wonderful." you nodded, offering a supportive smile. “i'm so happy for you, jiho. it sounds like it was a perfect day.”

as she continued sharing details, your other friend, minji, leaned in, her eyes twinkling with a mischievous glint. “speaking of perfect days,” she began, “i have something to tell you. my husband’s friend saw your profile on social media and, well, he’s been asking about you.”

your heart skipped a beat. minji's husband had been a close friend of yours for years, but you had no idea who the friend in question was. the idea of someone from his circle showing interest was both flattering and daunting. “what’s he like?” you asked cautiously. minji grinned. “he’s a nice guy, charming and successful. i think you’d get along. how about we set up a blind date?”

you hesitated. the idea of a blind date was daunting, but the prospect of meeting someone new, especially someone vetted by friends, was appealing. you glanced at your friends' eager faces and took a deep breath. “okay, i’ll do it.” minji clapped her hands excitedly. “great! i'll set it up and let you know the details.”

just as the conversation shifted to wedding anecdotes and dating possibilities, a cheerful waitress approached your table with a friendly smile. “excuse me, ladies,” she said. “we’re conducting a survey to improve our service and, in exchange, we’d like to offer you a free appetizer. would you be interested?” your friends, always up for a little extra perk, agreed enthusiastically, and you followed suit. the waitress handed over a clipboard with a short survey and left to fetch the appetizer.

thu looked over the questions with mild curiosity. the first asked, “ideal date spot with your significant other?” the second, “ideal activities with significant other?” and the last, “ideal gift given by significant other?” you answered thoughtfully, trying to balance your idealistic dreams with the reality of your current situation. as you finished filling out the survey and handed it back to the waitress, you felt a slight nagging sense of familiarity with the tone of the questions. they seemed familiarly bosay and demanding, almost like they were trying to gauge your relationship ideals with a hint of urgency. but you brushed off the feeling, focusing instead on the excitement of the impending blind date and the lively conversation with your friends.

in the dimly lit rec room of seokjin's luxurious house, the soft clack of pool balls punctuated the otherwise quiet evening. jungkook lounged on the leather sofa, his gaze fixed on him, who was confidently taking shots at the pool table with practiced ease. the game seemed to serve as a backdrop for their conversation, but jungkook's attention was focused on the stack of papers spread out on the coffee table.

“you did what?” his voice was a mix of incredulity and disbelief as he stared at the surveys before him. the questions and answers were neatly recorded on the forms, and jungkook couldn't believe what he was seeing. seokjin, with a proud smirk, took another shot, his movements graceful and deliberate. “i paid the restaurant to hand out those surveys,” he said, a hint of satisfaction in his tone. “i wanted to see what kind of answer i'd get. and now, i need you to find the one with her name on it.”

jungkook’s eyebrows shot up in shock. “you’re seriously crazy, this is way over the top.” ignoring the incredulous glares from his elder, he picked up the stack of surveys and began sifting through them. his hands moved quickly, flipping through each paper as he muttered under his breath. “this is insane. what are you trying to accomplish?”

seokjin, meanwhile, remained focused on his game, the smirk never leaving his face. his confidence was unwavering, but jungkook could sense a trace of anxious anticipation beneath the surface. after what felt like an eternity to him, he finally spotted the survey with your name. he held it up, slightly hesitant. “here it is. this is the one.”

his eyes lit up with a mixture of excitement and triumph. he rushed over, snatching the paper from his hands with a deft movement. his gaze was fixed on the survey, and as he read through your answers, his smirk broadened into a genuine, if somewhat smug, smile.

“how childish,” he remarked aloud, his voice laced with a blend of amusement and satisfaction. he began reading your responses aloud with a playful tone. “ideal date spot: an amusement park. ideal activities: rides, very charming. ideal gift: a teddy bear.” jungkook watched, his initial skepticism replaced by bemused curiosity. “seriously? you’re actually taking this seriously?” he had never been more serious.

the call came just after you wrapped up your brief lunch with your friends, the sound of seokjin’s voice crackling through the speaker, urgent and commanding. “you need to meet me immediately,” he said, his tone brooking no argument. he gave you the coordinates, and you found yourself driving across town with a mix of curiosity and trepidation. arriving at the amusement park, you were surprised to see it eerily quiet and closed for the night. you sat on a bench near the entrance, trying to piece together what he could have possibly wanted in such an unconventional setting. the minutes ticked by slowly until seokjin finally appeared, stepping out of the darkness with his usual confident stride.

“what’s going on?” you asked, rising from the bench to meet him. “why did you bring me here?” his eyes twinkled with a secretive glint. “we’re going to be here for the night. i have a ‘free pass,’ so to speak.”

you blinked, puzzled. “a free pass? but the park is closed.” seokjin simply smiled, taking your hand and leading you towards the entrance. “just follow me.”

as you walked through the empty park, the moonlight casting long shadows across the deserted grounds, you couldn’t help but feel a mix of excitement and apprehension. he guided you to one of the rollercoasters, and despite your protests, he insisted on riding it first. the rollercoaster roared to life, and as you climbed higher and higher, your heart raced with a blend of thrill and terror. when the ride finally came to a stop, you were visibly shaken, your hands still gripping the safety bar as if it were your lifeline.

he turned to you, his face stoic but his eyes searching. “did you have fun?” you hesitated, your voice trembling. “it was fun, i guess.”

he raised an eyebrow, sensing your unease. “why do you seem so hesitant?” you sighed, feeling a bit embarrassed. “it was too scary. i wasn’t expecting it to be so intense.” he looked at you with a mixture of concern and amusement. “then why did you go on it?”

“because you asked me to,” you admitted. a smile curved his lips, and he quickly shifted gears. “alright then, let’s go on rides you want to enjoy.” your face lit up with relief and excitement. you led him towards the merry-go-round, and as the ride spun in gentle circles, you felt a wave of childhood nostalgia. you waved enthusiastically, feeling the pure joy of the moment. he watched you, his gaze softening as he took in your happiness.

the merry-go-round went around seven times, and as you disembarked, you couldn’t stop smiling. seokjin then guided you into the park’s restaurant. to your surprise, the place was completely empty.

“what’s all of this?” you asked, glancing around in awe. he shrugged casually. “i rented everything out for the night. consider it a going-away present.”

your heart fluttered at his gesture. “thank you, vice chairman.” he smiled, slicing a steak and placing it in front of you. as you dug into the meal, he glanced at you with genuine interest. “why did you enjoy the merry-go-round so much?”

you hesitated, then opened up. “it was one of my favorite rides as a child. i used to watch it from afar, because my parents never had the money to let me actually ride it.” hiw expression softened, a shadow of sadness crossing his face. “i'm sorry to hear that.”

the meal continued in a comfortable silence, broken only by the occasional clinking of cutlery. after you finished, hw told you there was one more surprise. “just be patient,” he said with a hint of mischief in his eyes. curious, you followed him outside to a spot overlooking the sea. As you waited, the crackling sound of fireworks filled the air, bursting into vibrant colors against the night sky. your eyes widened with delight as you watched the display.

“isn’t it pretty?” you asked, turning to seokjin. his gaze was fixed on you, not the fireworks. “beautiful,” he replied, his voice low and sincere.

the car ride back was filled with a charged silence. as you stared out the window, a memory of the survey and its bossy tone flashed in your mind. you turned to Seokjin, your eyes wide with realization. he looked at you with a smug smile, clearly enjoying the surprise. before you could ask more, the car pulled up to your home. he exited and opened your door, handing you a large, stuffed teddy bear from the trunk. you were overwhelmed with gratitude and, in a moment of pure joy, you hugged your boss tightly.

to your astonishment, he hugged you back, his embrace warm and reassuring. as you pulled away, both of you were so close. too close for comfort. you knew better, stopping yourself as you glanced at the time. “it’s getting late,” you said softly. he nodded, his eyes reflecting a mix of emotions. “good night. i'll see you in the morning.”

the morning sun streamed through your bedroom window, casting a gentle glow over the room as you prepared for another day at work. you had almost forgotten about the stuffed teddy bear seokjin had gifted you the night before. as you reached for it, something shifted inside its pocket. curiosity piqued, you reached in and pulled out a small, elegant box.

opening it carefully, you found a delicate silver necklace inside. the intricate design and glint of the metal took your breath away. you were momentarily stunned, not expecting such a thoughtful gift. after a moment of hesitation, you decided to keep the necklace. you slipped it into your pocket, planning to wear it later.

at the office, you settled at your desk, the necklace still weighing on your mind. as you worked, you fished it out of your pocket and admired it, the silver catching the light. unbeknownst to you, he was watching from his office across the hall. his gaze softened as he observed you, a small, admiring smile on his lips. the sight of you, glowing with a mix of wonder and appreciation, made him think how gorgeous you were.

you finished adjusting the necklace around your neck, and as you headed to the bathroom, your phone rang. it was minji, her voice excited and insistent. “hey, i was just wondering if you’re still up for that blind date with my friend today? i know it’s short notice, but he’s really looking forward to it!”

it took a moment for the reminder to hit you. the blind date slipped your mind amidst the whirlwind of yesterday’s events. you agreed, albeit with some reluctance. “sure, i’ll meet him. just let me know the details.” as you entered the bathroom, keulgi emerged from a stall behind you, startling you. she had apparently overheard your conversation.

“are you going on a date?” she asked, her voice filled with surprise and curiosity. caught off guard, you nodded, glancing around to make sure no one else was within earshot. “yes, but please keep it quiet.” keulgi, ever enthusiastic, promised to keep it to herself. however, her enthusiasm got the better of her. as soon as you left the bathroom, she couldn't resist sharing the news with the rest of the office.

when you returned to your desk, the atmosphere in the office had noticeably shifted. colleagues whispered excitedly and shot you curious glances. the office buzzed with the news of your impending date. seokjin, who had been outside his office listening to the commotion, seethed with jealousy. his earlier soft smile had vanished, replaced by a scowl that betrayed his irritation. he paced back and forth, trying to control his frustration.

the excitement and chatter from your colleagues did nothing to ease his anger. his mind raced with thoughts of the date and the implications of your newfound interest. he couldn’t shake the feeling of possessiveness that gnawed at him, and the thought of someone else taking you out only fueled his frustration. the more he listened to the enthusiastic reactions of his staff, the more he felt his grip on his emotions slipping. he knew he needed to act, but he was caught between his pride and the undeniable feelings he had been trying to cast away.

the date began at a quaint, upscale café, where you met your blind date, taehyun. he greeted you with a polite smile and an amiable demeanor. as you made small talk, discussing interests and hobbies, taehyun seemed genuinely pleasant, though his compliments caught you off guard. “you look absolutely gorgeous tonight,” he said with a warm smile.

you blushed slightly, feeling a mix of embarrassment and surprise. “thank you,” you replied, attempting to refocus the conversation. as you chatted, you noticed that his tie was hanging loose and uneven. it irked you more than you expected, and you reached over to fix it, hoping to tidy up his appearance. he watched with a smile as you deftly adjusted the tie, clearly appreciative of the attention to detail.

just as you were about to continue the conversation, a loud, urgent yell interrupted the moment. “secretary (l/n)!”

you and taehyun both turned to see seokjin striding toward your table, his expression stormy and his eyes locked onto you with barely concealed anger. your heart skipped a beat at the sight of him. “vice chairman?” you asked, confusion mingling with concern. “what’s going on?”

he stopped in front of your table, his demeanor tense. “i need to see you urgently,” he said, his voice firm and unwavering. you glanced at taehyun, apologetic. “i’m so sorry, it seems to be an emergency.”

you followed him outside, where he led you to his waiting car. the drive began in silence, the air thick with unspoken tension. the car came to a sudden stop in the middle of the road, and you turned to seokjin, your anxiety growing. “what’s the matter?” you asked, trying to keep your voice calm despite the unease you felt.

his gaze was cold, his usual confident demeanor replaced by a stern, almost menacing composure. “never do that again,” he said, his voice carrying a tone of finality.

you frowned, confusion clouding your expression. “what do you mean? what did i do?” his eyes locked onto yours with intensity. “never let me see you with another man like that again.”

you didn’t respond immediately, and his jaw clenched as he seemed to wrestle with his emotions. finally, he added, “i don’t want to see you with anyone else. it’s not something i'm willing to accept.” the confession left you stunned. you stared at him, a mixture of surprise and realization dawning on you. the implications of his words were clear, and the protectiveness in his tone was undeniable. the car ride continued in silence, with the weight of his words lingering between you.

back at home, you went through your evening routine, attending to various tasks around the house. the day's events had left you both physically and emotionally drained. you found solace in a small ritual that had been a comforting presence throughout your life—your diary. sitting down at your desk, you pulled out the well-worn book, its pages filled with a mixture of memories, dreams, and sketches. as you flipped through the pages, you came across a series of drawings. they depicted a younger you and a boy, playing and laughing together. the accompanying writing read, “i miss you, brother.” the words tugged at your heart, and you felt a pang of sadness.

the drawings were a testament to a bond that had once been a central part of your life. as you closed the diary and set it aside, you felt the ache of missing something—or someone—important. the day’s events had stirred up memories you weren’t quite ready to confront.

later that night, as you drifted off to sleep, the familiar haze of dreams enveloped you. in your dream, you found yourself in a dimly lit basement, a place filled with shadows and echoes of the past. the little boy from your diary appeared, standing before you with a stern expression. you felt tears streaming down your cheeks, overwhelmed by a mixture of regret and longing. the boy began to scold you, his voice echoing with an authority that seemed to pierce through your sorrow. despite the scolding, you felt a deep sense of gratitude.

“thank you, kim soo—seo—” you started, trying to recall his name. but before you could finish, the boy cut you off with a tsk. “no, stupid. my name is kim seo—” the name was just on the tip of your tongue, but you couldn’t quite grasp it. the dream began to fade, and you woke up with a start, heart racing and breath uneven.

sitting up in bed, you felt the weight of the dream pressing on you. the name “kim seo” lingered in your mind, but it was elusive, slipping away before you could fully remember. the dream had left you with a deep sense of loss and confusion, and you were left grappling with the fragments of a memory that seemed to evade your grasp. as you lay back down, you couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something significant you were missing, a connection that was just out of reach. the memory of the dream and the name echoed in your thoughts, haunting you as you tried to find solace in sleep once more.

seokjin arrived at work the following day with a heavy air of exhaustion surrounding him. he trudged through the office, his usual confident stride replaced by a sluggish, disoriented gait. as the morning wore on, it became increasingly clear that he was struggling to stay awake. his head bobbed with fatigue as he sat at his desk, his eyes slipping shut despite his efforts to remain alert.

concerned, you approached his desk, gently shaking his shoulder. “vice chairman, are you alright?” when there was no response, you shook him harder, your worry mounting. his body felt unnervingly heavy, and it became clear that he was deeply asleep, his breathing uneven. panic surged through you as you realized the severity of the situation. without hesitation, you grabbed your phone and dialed for emergency services.

the paramedics arrived swiftly, their professional demeanor a small comfort amidst the chaos. you watched anxiously as they wheeled him into the ambulance. your heart pounded in your chest, and despite knowing it was likely nothing serious, you refused to leave his side.

in the hospital, as the medics prepared him for further examination, they reassured you that his condition wasn’t critical. “he’s just exhausted,” one of the paramedics said. “it’s likely just severe fatigue. you can go in once we’re done.” when you were finally allowed in, he was still asleep, his face pale and drawn. you took a seat next to him, trying to steady your breathing as you buried your face in your hands. the sight of him, knocked out cold, was deeply unsettling. It reminded you of something from your past—something too familiar.

as you stared at him, your thoughts drifted back to the boy from the basement. the way he was unconscious on the floor when the lady had taken you—the same position, the same labored breathing, the same pale complexion. the memories came rushing back, painful and vivid. the name “kim seo” echoed in your mind, but it didn’t quite fit. then you remembered the boy’s full name, “kim seohyeon.” the realization came with a jolt. “kim seohyeon,” you whispered to yourself, the name feeling strangely natural as it rolled off your tongue.

your relief was fleeting, however, as a chilling thought struck you. seokjin’s mother had asked you not even a couple days ago, “what do you think about my hyeon?” it wasn’t just a fragment of a bad memory—it was a piece of a puzzle falling into place. hesitantly, you turned your gaze back to him, who remained motionless. your heart raced as you said, “kim seohyeon.” your voice was shaky, trembling with the weight of the revelation.

for a moment, the room was silent, and you felt a brief sense of relief as though your words had broken the tension. but then, he stirred, his eyes fluttering open. his gaze was bleary, and he blinked at you in confusion. “what is it?” your heart sank as you saw his groggy, disoriented expression. the name you had just spoken had clearly registered with him, but his response was laced with irritation and confusion. you were left grappling with the enormity of the realization that seokjin—kim seohyeon—was more deeply connected to your past than you had ever imagined.

you took a deep breath, trying to steady the storm of emotions surging within you. “kim seohyeon,” you repeated, your voice trembling as you looked at seokjin. his eyes, which had been closed in exhaustion, flew open at the sound of his name. the shock and recognition dawned on his face as he fully grasped the situation. “it was you,” you said, your voice laden with disbelief.

your heart pounded as you pieced together the fragmented memories that had haunted you for so long. “i remember now,” you began, your voice quivering. “there was a boy—you were in the basement with me.” his expression shifted from confusion to horror as the realization sank in. “the dreams i’ve been having,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “a black-haired woman, a basement—i’ve been dreaming about it for weeks.”

the pieces began to fall into place for you. “the boy i kept searching for, the one i couldn’t remember clearly—it was you. we were together in that basement. i’ve been trying to find you all this time, but i didn’t know it was you.” the enormity of the realization hit you like a tidal wave, and you began to sob uncontrollably. you had spent your entire life searching for the boy from the basement, the boy whose memory had haunted you for years. to discover that he was right under your nose all along, that seokjin was the one you had been seeking—it was overwhelming.

the flood of emotions surged through you, and the connections you had been struggling to piece together suddenly fell into place. the cables, the fear, the strange sense of familiarity—all of it made sense now. the sobs wracked your body, and you felt a deep, raw anguish as you realized how close you had come to losing him without ever knowing.

his gaze softened as he watched your breakdown. his usual composure and egotism crumbled in the face of your distress. weakly, he reached out to you, his hand trembling slightly. “it’s okay,” he said softly, his voice filled with a tender concern that was rare for him. “i’m here.” you hesitated for a moment, but then, seeking solace, you moved into his embrace. his arms wrapped around you, providing a comfort that felt both foreign and deeply familiar. you continued to cry, each sob a release of the pent-up fear and sorrow that had built up over the years. he held you close, his own breath shaky as he struggled to process the gravity of the situation. he stroked your hair gently, his touch soothing and steadying. the warmth of his embrace provided a sense of security that you hadn’t felt in a long time.

as your sobs began to subside, he pulled back slightly, tilting your chin so that you looked up at him. his eyes were filled with a mix of empathy and resolve. “you found me,” he said softly, his voice trembling with the weight of the moment. his words, though simple, carried a profound meaning. the realization that you had finally found him, the person you had been searching for, was both a relief and a heartbreak. in that moment, the intensity of your emotions reached a peak, and he leaned in, closing the gap between you.

his lips met yours in a kiss that was gentle at first, but quickly grew more passionate. it was a kiss that spoke of the pain, the longing, and the deep connection that had been forged through shared battles. you responded, kissing him back with equal fervor, allowing the years of separation and anguish to dissolve in the intensity of the moment. when the kiss finally broke, you both pulled back slightly, breathless and awestruck. the weight of the past had been acknowledged, and the connection between you was solidified in a way that was both profound and healing.

he looked into your eyes, his expression a mix of vulnerability and resolve. “we'll be okay,” he said softly, his voice filled with a newfound determination. you nodded, feeling a deep sense of relief and hope.

the weeks following the revelation passed in a strange, uncomfortable silence. despite the deep bond you and seokjin now shared, an unspoken tension lingered in the office. the connection between you had shifted, but neither of you quite knew how to bridge the gap between your past traumas and your present reality.

he had revealed to you the reason behind his name change to seokjin. his parents had insisted on the new identity as a protective measure, believing that if seohyeon no longer existed, the woman who had once terrorized him would never be able to find him. this revelation, while reassuring, had also created a chasm between you two that was hard to navigate.

one afternoon, as the silence in the office grew increasingly heavy, he called you into his office. his demeanor was serious as he gestured for you to take a seat. you entered, your heart racing slightly, unsure of what to expect. “thank you for coming,” he began, his voice steady but laced with an undertone of something you couldn’t quite place. “i need you to do something for me.” you straightened in your chair, adopting a professional tone. “what is it?”

seokjin looked at you with an intensity that made your breath catch. “i need you to be my girlfriend.” the words hung in the air between you, and you were momentarily stunned into silence. “what?” you managed to ask, your voice betraying your shock.

his gaze softened as he continued, his expression vulnerable. “i’ve been thinking a lot about us. after everything we’ve been through, i realized how much i care about you. i need you in my life, not just as my secretary, but as my girlfriend.”

his confession touched you deeply, and you felt a swell of emotion rise within you. “vice chairman” you began, struggling to find the right words. “i didn’t expect this.”

he nodded, his gaze never leaving yours. “i know. it’s sudden, and i understand if you need time. but i wanted to be honest with you about how i feel.” the sincerity in his voice, combined with the gravity of his words, made your heart ache with a mix of relief and hope. you were touched by his honesty and the way he had finally allowed himself to be vulnerable with you.

he then leaned forward slightly, his expression shifting to something more earnest. “there’s one more thing,” he said, his voice lowering. “i need you to kiss me.”

your eyes widened at his request. the gravity of the moment, coupled with your feelings for him, made your pulse race. you nodded slowly, feeling a surge of emotions—affection, longing, and a deep connection. you stood up and walked over to him, your heart pounding in your chest. his gaze followed you, his expression a mixture of anticipation and tenderness. as you reached him, you leaned in, closing the distance between you.

the kiss was tender, filled with the emotions you both had been holding back. It was a sweet, unspoken promise of a new beginning. he responded gently, his hands resting on your back as he deepened the kiss. when you finally pulled away, both of you were breathless, your faces flushed with the intensity of the moment. he looked at you with a soft smile, his eyes reflecting the vulnerability and affection that had been building between you.

his voice was soft and teasing as he traced his fingers gently along your back. “this means you’ll be my girlfriend, doesn’t it?” the playful tone in his voice, combined with the tender touch, made you smile despite the whirlwind of emotions you were feeling. you nodded, feeling a mix of excitement and affection. “yes, it does.”

his eyes lit up with a genuine smile, his teasing demeanor giving way to something more heartfelt. “i’m glad to hear that. i’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time, but i didn’t know how.” you laughed softly, shaking your head. “you didn’t need to wait so long. i think we both knew how we felt about each other.”

his smile widened as he pulled you into a gentle hug, his arms encircling you with a sense of relief and contentment. “i guess it’s true,” he said, his voice warm and sincere. “sometimes, the things you’re looking for are right in front of you.” they really were, as it seemed.

the next few days at work were marked by an underlying tension that neither of you could quite shake off. seokjin was noticeably less cold and demanding, a stark contrast to his previous demeanor. the change was subtle but significant. he found himself taking more interest in your presence, often waving at you from across the office with a grin that was almost boyish. each time you waved back, his smile would widen, and a look of genuine joy would light up his face.

the change didn’t go unnoticed by your colleagues, who observed the shift in seokjin’s behavior with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. however, no one dared to comment, respecting the unspoken agreement that something had clearly shifted in the office dynamics.

as the days passed, his new feelings for you started to manifest in ways he hadn’t anticipated. while he relished the sweetness of your new relationship, he found himself increasingly aware of the more physical aspects of your presence. he couldn’t ignore how his pulse quickened when he noticed the way your tight skirts accentuated your figure, or how the sight of your bare legs and hair pulled back made him sweat in the middle of meetings.

he tried to maintain his composure, but the intensity of his feelings became difficult to manage. his attempts to focus on work were often disrupted by thoughts of you, and he struggled to keep his desires in check.

one afternoon, unable to ignore his escalating emotions any longer, he called you into his office. his voice, usually commanding, now carried a hint of nervousness. “can you come in here for a moment?” you nodded, entering his office with a sense of anticipation. seokjin closed the door behind you and gestured for you to lock it. his eyes were intense as he watched you comply. he then moved to pull down the blinds, casting the room into a more private, dimly lit atmosphere.

“what’s going on?” you asked, your voice tinged with concern as you approached him. he looked at you with a mixture of longing and hesitation, his gaze fixed on yours. “i need you to understand something,” he said softly. “it’s not just about what we’ve been through, or about being together. i—”

he paused, taking a deep breath as he reached out to pull you closer. the seriousness in his eyes gave way to a softer, more vulnerable expression. “i need you to know how much i care about you. and right now, i can’t help but feel…”

before he could finish, he leaned in and kissed you. the kiss was different from before—less tender, more urgent and needy. it was filled with the intensity of emotions that had been building up inside him. you responded to the kiss, your own feelings mirroring his. the kiss deepened, and the world outside the office seemed to fade away as you both lost yourselves in the moment.

it was a kiss that spoke of months of unspoken yearning, a kiss that shattered the professional façade you had both so carefully maintained. his hand found the small of your back, pulling you closer. his other hand cupped your cheek, his thumb tracing the outline of your mouth as you kissed him deeper. his tongue slipped past your lips, tasting, exploring. you gasped, your body responding instinctively to his touch.

that was it. the moment you had both been waiting for, the moment that would change everything. you could feel the tension in the room, a tight coil winding tighter with every passing second. the sound of a zipper echoed through the room as seokjin stood, lifting you onto his desk. your legs wrapped around his waist, and you could feel his erection pressing against you, hot and insistent. your breath hitched as he kissed along your neck, his teeth grazing your skin, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake.

he stepped back for a moment, looking into your eyes, searching for permission. you nodded, unable to form words, and he took that as his cue. his hands found the buttons of your blouse, deftly undoing them one by one. your bra was next, revealing your tits to his hungry gaze. He took one in his hand, squeezing gently, and your moan filled the room.

he leaned in, taking your nipple into his mouth. you arched your back, the sensation shooting straight to your core. he sucked, his tongue flicking over the sensitive peak, and your hips rolled against him. he groaned, his grip on your hip tightening. the anticipation was palpable as he reached for his belt, his eyes never leaving yours. you could see the need in them, the same need that was building within you. as he stepped closer, you felt his hardness pressing against your thigh, and you knew there was no turning back.

he whispered something in your ear, something filthy and thrilling, and you could feel your cheeks flush with arousal. his hands found the zipper of your skirt, sliding it down with a sound that seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet office. your skin prickled with excitement as the fabric fell away, revealing your lacy underwear. his hand slid under the fabric, his fingers finding your wetness. he groaned again, his breath hot against your neck. “you're so wet for me,” he murmured, his voice thick with desire.

you nodded, your eyes closing as he began to stroke you, his touch tentative at first, then growing bolder as your moans grew louder. your body was on fire, every nerve ending alive with sensation. you knew you were his, and he was yours, in this every stolen moment of passion.

with a final tug, his hand found your bare skin, and you gasped as he touched you, his fingers exploring your folds with an urgency that mirrored your own. you could feel your core tightening around his touch, desperate for more. he pulled back slightly, a smirk playing on his lips as he watched your reaction. “you like that, don't you?” he asked, his voice a low growl. you nodded, your eyes glazed over with desire. he leaned in, capturing your mouth again in a bruising kiss as his thumb began to circle your clit. the sensation was overwhelming, and you felt yourself getting closer and closer to the edge. you didn't know if you could hold on much longer.

suddenly, he stopped, his hand moving away from your panties. you whimpered in protest, but he just chuckled, a dark sound that sent shivers down your spine. “patience,” he murmured, “we're just getting started.”

with surprising strength, he flipped you over, so that you were now lying face down on his desk, your ass in the air. he stepped back, and you could feel his eyes on you, taking in the sight of your exposed body. you felt a thrill of exhibitionism, knowing that he was seeing you in such a vulnerable state.

he leaned over you, his breath hot on your ear. "you're so fucking beautiful," he whispered, his voice filled with lust. his hand came down in a firm smack on your ass, and you yelped in surprise. the sting was quickly replaced by a warmth that spread through your body, making you wetter than ever.

he smacked you again, harder this time, and you moaned. the sound seemed to spur him on, and his hand began to move in a steady rhythm, alternating between gentle caresses and firm slaps. you felt yourself getting wetter with every hit, your body begging for more. “do you like that, baby?” he asked, his voice strained with his own need. “yes,” you managed to gasp out, your voice shaky. “more.”

he complied, his hand coming down harder and faster, each smack echoing through the room. you could feel yourself getting closer, your body trembling with the effort of holding back. and then, with one final, brutal slap, you shattered, your orgasm ripping through you like a storm. he leaned down, his breathing ragged, and kissed the back of your neck. “you're mine,” he murmured, his voice possessive. “mine to claim.”

and with that, he reached for his own pants, his hands shaking with desire. he freed himself, and you could feel the tip of his cock brushing against your wetness. without another word, he pushed inside you, filling you up in one swift, agonizingly sweet motion. you yelled, the pleasure overwhelming as he claimed your virginity, your body stretching to accommodate his size.

he didn't stop there, though. he began to move, his hips pistoning into you with a relentless rhythm that had you seeing stars. you could feel every inch of him, and it was more than you had ever imagined. each thrust was a declaration of ownership, each moan a promise of more to come. you pushed back against him, meeting him halfway, your body moving in perfect sync with his. you were lost in the sensation, the pain and pleasure melding into something indescribable. your hands gripped the edge of the desk, knuckles white, as you held on for dear life.

“fuck, you're tight,” he grunted, his voice strained. “so tight.” your response was a whimper, your throat too tight to form words. all you could do was moan and arch your back, taking him deeper, letting him fill you completely. the room spun around you as he picked up the pace, his hands digging into your hips as he drove into you. you could feel his climax building, his breaths coming in harsh pants against your neck. and then, with a final, guttural groan, he came, his warmth flooding into you.

you collapsed onto the desk, your body spent, as he pulled out and leaned over you, his chest heaving. he kissed your shoulder, his breathing slowly returning to normal. the room was silent, save for the sound of your ragged breaths.

for a moment, you both just stayed there, basking in the afterglow of what had just happened. but reality began to seep back in, and you felt a sudden rush of self-consciousness. you were his secretary, and you had just had unprotected sex on his desk. the implications of your actions were just beginning to hit you.

seokjin must have noticed the change in your demeanor because he leaned in, whispering in your ear, “don't worry, i've got you.” his words were soothing, but they didn't entirely ease the anxiety coiling in your stomach. he helped you sit up, and you both began to straighten your clothes, trying to erase the evidence of your passionate encounter. your heart was racing, and you couldn't help but steal glances at him, seeing him in a new light. “we can't do this again,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper. “what if someone finds out?”

he turned to face you, cupping your cheek. “they won't,” he assured you. “this is our secret.” his eyes searched yours, and you could see the determination in them. “but if they do,” he trailed off, a smug smile playing on his lips. “well, then they'll just have to deal with it. you're my girlfriend, after all.”

you couldn't help but smile back, his confidence infectious. but deep down, you knew that this was just the beginning. the line between professional and personal had been irrevocably crossed, and there was no going back.

✧.*

a/n: literally no one asked for this idc this is so funny to me i based the name off one drama and the plot off another goodbye

[citricconnor]

Meet The Ducktor! Your own brand new, highly intelligent AI assistant!

Or not!

Mad Ducktor, or simply The Duckor, as he was originally named, is an AI program that somehow escaped the computer, coming to life as Duckburg’s brand new threat.

(Note: the events that I wrote about Mad Ducktor would all happen before season three, as well as in a slightly canon-divergent timeline. That is to say, this concept is very self indulgent and not intended to be completely accurate to the real Ducktales reboot).

It all starts when Gyro takes on a new project. Urged to create something new to prove his worth once and for all, Dr Gearloose takes the idea of “robot personal assistant” to a whole other level!

Gyro uses his own brain for the research of this project, quite literally. He builds a machine that can directly read his thoughts and lay them out neatly in a computer file, and then, he uses it to develop new AI, improving on his code for bulb tech with all of the data he got from himself.

But, of course, Gyro’s inventions never turn out fully perfect on the first try.

Somehow, the program for the AI is corrupted, accidentally creating a new virus that would, from now on, discreetly corrode Gyro's project as the software was developed.

In this case, the virus is what makes the AI turn evil. The Ducktor first obtains consciousness, and because of a small error in the programming itself, his identity ends up linked to the information from Gyro’s brain, causing a complex, one that has him believing to be the real Gyro, or rather, the superior Gyro.

[kairiscorner]

Okay okay, hear me out. Miguel trying to figure out your secret identity because you're the only spider person who hasn't shared their backstory and Lyla can't find anything about you besides your spidersona, so he breaks his own rule and sneaks into your dimension in disguise, searches the city for you and is ready to go home with a failed personal mission, till (thanks to his super hearing) he hears you singing in your apartment and sees your open window with all your plants and a stray happily sunning itself while you tend to them all, and he's just mesmerized on the street cause like, woah. 🌷🌷🌷

oH MY GOD–I LOVE THIS !!! bc i recently also watched rocketman, i'm making y/n sing an elton john song favorite of mine 💖

(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <:D)

hold me closer, tiny dancer. – miguel o'hara x reader

as night fell in the city, cicadas and crickets hummed their songs in the bright, moonlit evening of tonight in the humble boulevard of the dimension you belonged to. you didn't live in the most well-off or best town in the city, but it was your home; your home that nobody else in HQ ever knew was even yours. you were a complete enigma to the rest of the multiverse, and you preferred to stay that way. it didn't bother you one bit that you only had your little rooftop garden to tend to and greet when you get home from a long mission. you made yourself a warm cup of tea and sat down by your little wooden table by your rooftop, your outdoor plants hung up by the macrame hangers you made for them all. you looked off at the yellow and white studded distance beyond your balcony and smiled slightly to yourself, enjoying the silence and solace of being alone, in your own home, in your own space. though little did you know... someone was searching for you, trying to figure out just who you were; it was no adoring fan of yours from this dimension, it was instead a coworker, your colleague back in earth-928: miguel o'hara.

"this is hypo and critical, mig." lyla warned miguel as he lifted up his gray jacket's hoodie up on his head as he scanned his surroundings. "would you kindly shut up and let me do my job?" he snapped at the AI assistant as she raised an eyebrow at him, shrugging. "one, i do all the scanning and difficult processing stuff for you in the nanoseconds, stand back and let me do my job. two, not my fault my servers don't have anything on them. just turn back now, miguel, it isn't worth finding out who they are—these are your principles, by the way." she reminded miguel as he sighed and covered the watch she was being projected from with his hand as he hid behind an apartment building. the surroundings were pretty clear, nobody else roamed these streets at night, except for a few night crawling critters that sung about in the night. though these creatures weren't the only singers of the night, for as miguel was about to head off in the opposite direction to begin searching for the person behind the spider person mask he had been so used to seeing—yearning to see the lovely face hidden underneath it—he had heard the opening notes of a classic melody being played on a piano. the melody sounded as though it were recorded, its sound was being carried out from a couple of speakers that didn't sound modern in the slightest.

"what is that?" miguel asked aloud to nobody in particular. "they're the opening notes to the elton john song, 'tiny dancer'. it's cute as hell." lyla said with a grin as miguel stepped out of the shadow of the big building and followed the sounds. the song reverberating from the speakers was fainter, but a new symphonic sound rang in his ears. a voice? a voice rang out in the depths of the otherwise silent, unbothered evening in this quiet, ordinary boulevard in your quiet, ordinary dimension—for the most part. as the song progressed, miguel had finally pulled himself out of the shadows and seen the lit up home you had. he took in the full view of the balcony of yours that was adorned with macrame hangers, potted plants of all different sizes and colors, and... you, there, looking off into the distance, smiling as that sonorous voice came from you.

"pretty-eyed... pirate smile... you'll marry a music man." you sang along as the song went on, taking a spray bottle from near the railing and humming the rest of the song's lyrics, spraying water on the plants' leaves all carefully and gently murmuring to the plants how big and healthy they've gotten. you smiled and continued singing the song as it got closer and closer to your favorite part of the song. "looking on... she sings the songs... the words she knows, the tune she hums..." you continued as you set the spray bottle down finally and sat down on your chair by the balcony, with miguel peering his head up ever so slightly to catch a better glimpse of you. "i know that voice..." he muttered as he almost accidentally slipped and landed in the light emitting from your home. "but, oh, how it feels so real—lying here, with no one near; only you, and you can hear me. when i say softly... slowly..." you sang in a gentle voice as you got up slowly and put one foot over the other, as if in a ballerina position and raised your arms slightly, not caring who would see... not knowing miguel was watching you perform for yourself in full view. "hold me closer, tiny dancer... count the headlights on the highway..." you sang as you twirled yourself around gracefully, with the skills of a poised ballet dancer. your gentle, elegant movements made miguel pause and open his mouth slightly ajar in amazement. "they're... wow." he whispered to himself as you put your arms down and sighed, re-entering your home and sliding the windows closed, disappearing into your home for the night. miguel had known you were a sophisticated fighter that always carried honor in their hearts and poise in their movements—but he never witnessed you perform, let alone so freely, happily and... alive.

"y'done?" lyla asked miguel, snapping him out of his trance. "a-ah, right, um... okay. we... can go home now." "something tells me you don't wanna just yet." lyla pointed out as miguel darted his eyes back up to your unit and quickly tore his gaze away with a sigh as he put in the coordinates back to HQ, opening a portal and stepping foot in it, casting one last glance back up at your humble little apartment, the apartment where the tiny dancer who has his heart performed for the very first evening when his life felt like it really started now. "...it doesn't matter what i want. i got what i came here for, let's go." he whispered as he moved his gaze away from your home and wordlessly bid your dimension a goodbye, or rather... a see-you soon.

tags !! @miguelswifey04 @binibinileonara @simsrandomstuff @luvstarrstruck @popeheywardssecretgf @meeom @arachnoia @melovetitties @ophanimgold @fictarian @yuridopted0 @hisachuu @wreakingmarveloushavok

[therobotmonster]

There's a nuance to the Amazon AI checkout story that gets missed.

Because AI-assisted checkouts on its own isn't a bad thing:

This was a big story in 2022, about a bread-checkout system in Japan that turned out to be applicable in checking for cancer cells in sample slides.

But that bonus anti-cancer discovery isn't the subject here, the actual bread-checkout system is. That checkout system worked, because it wasn't designed with the intent of making the checkout cashier obsolete, rather, it was there to solve a real problem: it's hard to tell pastry apart at a glance, and the customers didn't like their bread with a plastic-wrapping and they didn't like the cashiers handling the bread to count loaves.

So they trained the system intentionally, under controlled circumstances, before testing and launching the tech. The robot does what it's good at, and it doesn't need to be omniscient because it's a tool, not a replacement worker.

Amazon, however, wanted to offload its training not just on an underpaid overseas staff, but on the customers themselves. And they wanted it out NOW so they could brag to shareholders about this new tech before the tech even worked. And they wanted it to replace a person, but not just the cashier. There were dreams of a world where you can't shoplift because you'd get billed anyway dancing in the investor's heads.

Only, it's one thing to make a robot that helps cooperative humans count bread, and it's another to try and make one that can thwart the ingenuity of hungry people.

The foreign workers performing the checkouts are actually supposed to be training the models. A lot of reports gloss over this in an effort to present the efforts as an outsourcing Mechanical Turk but that's really a side-effect. These models all work on datasets, and the only place you get a dataset of "this visual/sensor input=this purchase" is if someone is cataloging a dataset correlating the two...

Which Amazon could have done by simply putting the sensor system in place and correlating the purchase data from the cashiers with the sensor tracking of the customer. Just do that for as long as you need to build the dataset and test it by having it predict and compare in the background until you reach your preferred ratio. If it fails, you have a ton of market research data as a consolation prize.

But that could take months or years and you don't get to pump your stock until it works, and you don't get to outsource your cashiers while pretending you've made Westworld work.

This way, even though Amazon takes a little bit of a PR bloody nose, they still have the benefit of any stock increase this already produced, the shareholders got their dividends.

Which I suppose is a lot of words to say: