#helper functions

[aliusfrater]

if you write a sam and dean fic and you include details about the idea that sam can't cook i am coming to your fucking house!!!!!!!!

[ingredientsonline]

9 Different Types of Magnesium and Their Benefits

[relto]

the automatic conversion service we set up sometimes fails horribly, and i suspect this happens because it tries to read files as theyre being written. and i think the service thats supposed to copy files to permanent storage regularly encounters this exact issue, resulting in a huge chunk of files just randomly missing.

[flimsy-roost]

I realized the other day that the reason I didn't watch much TV as a teenager (and why I'm only now catching up on late aughts/early teens media that I missed), is because I literally didn't understand how to use our TV. My parents got a new system, and it had three remotes with a Venn diagram of functions. If someone left the TV on an unfamiliar mode, I didn't know how to get back to where I wanted to be, so I just stopped watching TV on my own altogether.

I explained all this to my therapist, because I didn't know if this was more related to my then-unnoticed autism, or to my relationship with my parents at the time (we had issues less/unrelated to neurodivergency). She told me something interesting.

In children's autism assessments, a common test is to give them a straightforward task that they cannot reasonably perform, like opening an overtight jar. The "real" test is to see, when they realize that they cannot do it on their own, if they approach a caregiver for help. Children that do not seek help are more likely to be autistic than those that do.

This aligns with the compulsory independence I've noticed to be common in autistic adults, particularly articulated by those with lower support needs and/or who were evaluated later in life. It just genuinely does not occur to us to ask for help, to the point that we abandon many tasks that we could easily perform with minor assistance. I had assumed it was due to a shared common social trauma (ie bad experiences with asking for help in the past), but the fact that this trait is a childhood test metric hints at something deeper.

My therapist told me that the extremely pathologizing main theory is that this has something to do with theory of mind, that is doesn't occur to us that other people may have skills that we do not. I can't speak for my early childhood self, or for all autistic people, but I don't buy this. Even if I'm aware that someone else has knowledge that I do not (as with my parents understanding of our TV), asking for help still doesn't present itself as an option. Why?

My best guess, using only myself as a model, is due to the static wall of a communication barrier. I struggle a lot to make myself understood, to articulate the thing in my brain well enough that it will appear identically (or at least close enough) in somebody else's brain. I need to be actively aware of myself and my audience. I need to know the correct words, the correct sentence structure, and a close-enough tone, cadence, and body language. I need draft scripts to react to possible responses, because if I get caught too off guard, I may need several minutes to construct an appropriate response. In simple day-to-day interactions, I can get by okay. In a few very specific situations, I can excel. When given the opportunity, I can write more clearly than I am ever capable of speaking.

When I'm in a situation where I need help, I don't have many of my components of communication. I don't always know what my audience knows. I don't have sufficient vocabulary to explain what I need. I don't know what information is relevant to convey, and the order in which I should convey it. I don't often understand the degree of help I need, so I can come across inappropriately urgent or overly relaxed. I have no ability to preplan scripts because I don't even know the basic plot of the situation.

I can stumble though with one or two deficiencies, but if I'm missing too much, me and the potential helper become mutually unintelligible. I have learned the limits of what I can expect from myself, and it is conceptualized as a real and physical barrier. I am not a runner, so running a 5k tomorrow does not present itself as an option to me. In the same way, if I have subconscious knowledge that an interaction is beyond my capability, it does not present itself as an option to me. It's the minimum communication requirements that prevent me from asking for help, not anything to do with the concept of help itself.

Maybe. This is the theory of one person. I'm curious if anyone else vibes with this at all.

[thyfleshc0nsumed]

I never understood why in recovery circles the idea of having sex for drugs is viewed as such a low point. Like I traded sex for drugs all the time, and like yeah a lot of it was violent and traumatizing, but like being so for real, I'd use sex to pay for, like, anything. Like if I went to the Aldi and they let me take my tortillas and hamburger helper if I blew the clerk, literally why would I not do that. I have finite money. As long as I'm alive, I have functionally infinite blowjobs to give. It is simple math.

[sekhithefops]

How to Kill Microsoft's AI "Helper" Copilot WITHOUT Screwing With Your Registry!

Hey guys, so as I'm sure a lot of us are aware, Microsoft pulled some dickery recently and forced some Abominable Intelligence onto our devices in the form of its "helper" program, Copilot. Something none of us wanted or asked for but Microsoft is gonna do anyways because I'm pretty sure someone there gets off on this.

Unfortunately, Microsoft offered no ways to opt out of the little bastard or turn it off (unless you're in the EU where EU Privacy Laws force them to do so.) For those of us in the United Corporations of America, we're stuck... or are we?

Today while perusing Bluesky, one of the many Twitter-likes that appeared after Musk began burning Twitter to the ground so he could dance in the ashes, I came across this post from a gentleman called Nash:

Intrigued, I decided to give this a go, and lo and behold it worked exactly as described!

We can't remove Copilot, Microsoft made sure that was riveted and soldered into place... but we can cripple it!

Simply put, Microsoft Edge. Normally Windows will prevent you from uninstalling Edge using the Add/Remove Programs function saying that it needs Edge to operate properly (it doesn't, its lying) but Geek Uninstaller overrules that and rips the sucker out regardless of what it says!

I uninstalled Edge using it, rebooted my PC, and lo and behold Copilot was sitting in the corner with blank eyes and drool running down it's cheeks, still there but dead to the world!

Now do bear in mind this will have a little knock on effect. Widgets also rely on Edge, so those will stop functioning as well.

Before:

After:

But I can still check the news and weather using an internet browser so its a small price to pay to be rid of Microsoft's spyware-masquerading-as-a-helper Copilot.

But yes, this is the link for Geek Uninstaller:

Run it, select "Force Uninstall" For anything that says "Edge," reboot your PC, and enjoy having a copy of Windows without Microsoft's intrusive trash! :D

UPDATE: I saw this on someone's tags and I felt I should say this as I work remotely too. If you have a computer you use for work, absolutely 100% make sure you consult with your management and/or your IT team BEFORE you do this. If they say don't do it, there's likely a reason.

[keferon]

So I had ideas for Mecha Pilot AU while reading some of the things that other people have sent and those ideas turned into this!

Enjoy some Hot Rod shenanigans!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

It starts when Hot Rod catches First Aid trying to smuggle a metal sheet out of the base. 

Well, no, it really started when the higher ups said that Jazz, allegedly, stole a half put together experimental mech unit. Which, Hot Rod would like to point out, makes absolutely no sense. Jazz is smart. If he was going to steal a mech, he’d wait until it was completely built and fully functional. No, there was something else going on and it had something to do with those strange upgrades that a few of the mechs got. Jazz had taken one look at them and booked it. 

Then immediately stole a half made mech that was completely covered in the stuff. 

All of this happening after he had been gone for months before mysteriously returning. 

Point is there’s something going on and it started with Jazz.

Presently, it has something to do with First Aid and the hunk of metal he’s carting around. 

The hunk of metal that looks like that strange upgraded plating. 

“Sooo…” Hot Rod says as he looks the other pilot over, “We stealing now?”

“No, I- this is- Vortex is up next for the-.”

“Nah man, you’re fine.” Hot Rod walks over to the back of the cart and places a hand on the metal. “I’m game for whatever we’re doing, I just want to know if we need to be sneaky.”

“It- what? We?”

“Yeah.” Hot Rod smiles and tilts his head to the side, like this was a given. “So, we stealing?”

First Aid gives him a look that’s a cross between befuddlement and scrutiny. It’s one he gets often, but the newer pilot seems well practiced with it. A solid eight out of ten honestly.

“This isn’t for profit.” First Aid says slowly. “And this isn’t for me.”

Hot Rod’s smile takes a slightly more feral edge. “Even better.”

_._._

Apparently Jazz has an alien robot boyfriend and the higher ups were using parts of his body for upgrades. 

Very morbid, but sadly not surprising.

They need to get as much of the original frame as possible back to Ratchet as that would make repairs easier. 

They’ve apparently been getting a lot of the pieces that had already been on other mechs through “collateral damage”.

First Aid had shrugged, “It’s not my fault if an upgraded mech gets between Vortex and a monster.”

The real tricky bits to get were the ones still on base and being tested. Which, for some reason, included an entire oversized thumb.

An oversized thumb he and First Aid are trying to sneak out from under Shockwave’s nose. 

“The rest of the hand was in random parts of the base.” Hot Rod mutters. “Why did the thumb need to be in such a secure area?”

“Complain louder. I don’t think the bugs heard you.” First Aid sasses in a hissed whisper. 

Hot Rod shivers at the reminder of Shockwave’s “helpers”. Knee high robots with four legs and a hexagonal face. They would’ve been cute had their singular yellow eye not reminded him of the eerie visage that is now the scientist's face. Shockwave used them to help in his work but to also keep an eye on his lab and the surrounding hallways. 

“Don’t even go there, Aid. You’ll end up jinxing-.”

His warning is interrupted by a faint skittering from around the next corner. 

“Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap.” Hot Rod looks around frantically before shoving himself, First Aid, and the thumb into the nearest door.

It turns out to be a closet. What kind of closet? Hot Rod doesn’t know and he refuses to find out. While it could be a normal supply closet, he’s not taking the chance that it could also be storage for strange and dubiously ethical experiments. 

So Hot Rod crams himself into the small space while keeping his eyes entirely focused on the door as he closes it. He and First Aid hold their breaths as the skittering of the bug gets louder, comes right in front of their hiding spot, then continues on without pause. 

They both let out sighs of relief and Hot Rod sets his forehead on the door. 

First Aid makes an inquiring hum. “There’s a vent in here. Think the thumb would fit?”

“Oh no.” Hot Rod says, face still against the door. “Do you have any idea how loud that would be? We aren’t dragging a large metal thumb through the metal vents and destroying our hearing with the echoing screeches.”

“Well, what do you propose we do then? Take it out the front door?”

_._._

“That never should have worked.” 

“You should never underestimate the power of looking like you know what you’re doing while carrying a box.”

“That never should have worked.”

Said large and long box holding the alien robot thumb sat innocently in the back seat of Hot Rod’s truck. 

_._._

“We need a movie for Rachet and Drift.”

Ratchet, who is helping Jazz repair Prowl, gives Hot Rod that “befuddled and scrutinizing” look that everyone seems to give him (A definite ten out of ten for Ratchet; truly a professional in giving out looks to others). “What?”

“Well, yeah! We’ve got Ratatouille for Jazz and Prowl. Aid and Vortex got a reverse Ratatouille-.”

“How’d you hear about that?” First Aid demands.

“Tailgate.” Hot Rod answers easily, then turns back to Ratchet to continue his previous thought. “So now we need to think of a movie for you and Drift!”

Ratchet’s eyes narrow in the unspoken promise of bad things to come. “No.”

Hot Rod, being the one who got a mech that catches on fire and made it work, takes Ratchet’s look as a challenge. He snaps his finger and points at the older man “I got it! ‘The Iron Giant’.”

Ratchet scoffs, rolls his eyes, and gets back to working in the alien robot’s arm. 

“What?” Jazz protests, while keeping his main focus on the internals of Prowl’s arm, “Iron Giant? Really? That’s a loose connection at best and you know it.”

“Oh? And do you have something better?” Hot Rod playfully challenges. 

“Dude, ‘Lilo and Stitch’ is right there.”

“How is that any better than mine?”

“Because War Crimes McGee here,” Jazz gestures to an amused looking Drift before getting back to his work, “is a better fit for Stitch than the Iron Giant any day of the week.”

Jazz may have a point, but while Hot Rod’s mom may have raised a fool, she definitely didn’t raise a quitter. 

“So Ratchet here tells Drift all about ohana and kicks off his character arc?”

“Not everything's one to one, Roddy. I’m not using Prowl to become the best chef is Paris. You just don’t want to admit I’m right.”

“I agree with Jazz.” First Aid cuts in. 

Hot Rod gives him a mock glare. “You’re just saying that so you won’t have to agree with me.”

First Aid shrugs. “True, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”

“Children. The lot of you.” Ratchet grumbles. 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

And yeah! Ideas was mostly ‘Hey, they could probably have Vortex get pieces of Prowl back since fights like that are bound to be very chaotic and Vortex would have no hang ups about attacking allies every now and then’

It went further as the idea of Hot Rod and First Aid trying to do spy things and be sneaky but somehow succeeding due to Shenanigans was too funny to pass up XD

Loving this AU so far and all the cool stuff people are making for it!

OMG THE CHILDREN ARE STEALING FROM THE BIG CORPORATION IM SO PROUD OF THEM~~

Also the way all these different plot lines are crossing each other and occasionally coming together is just so cool I love it

Like, yeah we have fucked up horror, we have space drama, we have Lilo and Stitch aaaaand we have option to combine them together. Also now there is Shockwave so all the guys have the "free angst" option I gues ahahah

[studioeisa]

maybe happy ending 🪴 jihoon x reader.

jihoon was always too good at pretending to be a person, and you were always a little too good at knowing better.

🪴 pairing. helper robots!jihoon x reader. 🪴 word count. 11.5k. 🪴 genres. alternate universe: non-idol. science fiction, romance, friendship, angst, hurt/comfort. 🪴 includes. mentions of food, death; themes of grief, mortality, memory. set in 2060s seoul, jihoon & reader are life-like bots. heavily inspired by maybe happy ending. 🪴 notes. i wrote this with the intention of proving to myself that i could still write for svt (lol), and i ended up bawling my eyes out on three separate instances. if there is any work of mine that you might read, i do hope this is one of them. this is a love letter to maybe happy ending, which most recently made history as the first original south korean production to win the tony award for best musical!!! not proofread; all mistakes are my own.

▶︎ WORLD WITHIN MY ROOM.

The light comes on in pieces. First the ceiling strip, then the wall panel, and finally the amber filament lamp in the corner that Jihoon insists on keeping—warm, inefficient, obsolete. Like him.

He powers on, slow as a secondhand thought.

“Ppyopuli,” he says, because it is polite to greet your houseplant. He nods to the drooping fronds with the seriousness of a man bowing to a superior. “You made it through the night. Unlike my left hip actuator.”

He rotates the joint. It makes a sound like someone crumpling a foil gum wrapper. The noise echoes in the apartment. Metal, silence, memory.

The radio comes on automatically. A woman’s voice—soft, practiced, almost human—tells him that today will be clear. Dust levels are low. UV index moderate. Good day for outdoor activities.

“It’s a perfect day,” Jihoon agrees, pulling the curtain an inch wider. Seoul stretches outside his window like a paused video. Skyscrapers, skybridges, the blur of a bullet tram in the distance. The air looks clean enough to breathe. Not that he does.

He makes his way to the kitchen. One slow step. Two. The fourth toe on his right foot has a loose servo and drags like a sleepy child.

Coffee isn’t necessary, but the smell is nice. He boils water for no one. Sets a cup beside the plant. “For ambiance,” he explains to Ppyopuli. “They used to say it helps people feel less alone.”

The mail chute clicks. Jihoon straightens.

“And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for,” he intones with mock drama, crossing the room in careful strides. The envelope lands with a satisfying slap.

He holds up the April issue of Jazz Monthly, turning it to show Ppyopuli. “Duke Ellington. Looks like he still hasn’t forgiven the world for outliving him,” Jihoon says. It would be a joke, if Jihoon knew how to joke. 

There’s another package. Small, boxy. His replacement elbow joint. “Shall we model it later? Make an event of it?” Jihoon tells Ppyopuli. “I’ll invite the ficus from next door.”

He places the parts carefully on the table, like heirlooms. “Any mail from Shownu?” he asks the voice assistant. Silence. Then: This function is not available to retired Helperbots.

Jihoon hums a measure of Coltrane’s Naima, tuning his inner disappointment like a radio dial. He spends the afternoon alphabetizing his vinyls, though he can identify any one by spine pattern alone. He talks to Ppyopuli about chord changes, the difference between sincerity and sentimentality in brass solos, the scent of rain on real grass.

When the sun lowers behind the next apartment block, he flips the switch on the filament lamp. The room turns honey-colored. “There. Mood lighting,” Jihoon announces.

For a second, Jihoon imagines Shownu—big hands, deep laugh—walking through the door. Jihoon would offer him the magazine. Ask about Jeju. Pretend not to notice the decade of dust on the threshold.

“He’ll come back,” Jihoon says, gently brushing a bit of lint from Ppyopuli’s pot. “We’re the kind of people others come back for.”

The lights dim on schedule. The system begins its shutdown hum.

Jihoon lowers himself to the floor mat beside the window, the same spot he always chooses. Perfect view of the street, the tram, the moon when it shows up. “Let’s enjoy tomorrow, too,” he murmurs to no one in particular. Then powers down.

Soft click. Black.

Another perfect day, folded and filed away.

Four perfect days later, Jihoon is in the middle of folding an imaginary blanket. The kind with corners that don’t exist and fibers that only live in memory. He’s halfway through the third fold (or maybe the fourth—robot math, surprisingly bad with soft things) when someone knocks.

Knocks.

The hallway outside is usually as dead as discontinued firmware. No one knocks here. Not unless it’s a delivery drone misfiring or the ficus next door finally tipping over in a tragic act of photosynthetic despair.

Another knock.

He answers it.

You’re standing there. Slouched a little, like your battery is chewing through its last 5%. Still immaculate in that newer-model, showroom kind of way. Glossy exterior. Fragile expression. The kind Jihoon’s model was never programmed to wear.

“My charger’s dead,” you say, plainly. Not embarrassed, not not-embarrassed. Just factual. “Do you have one I can borrow?”

Jihoon eyes you the way a CRT monitor might regard a smart mirror. “Helperbot-5, right?”

You nod.

He sighs. Loudly. For emphasis. “Figures. You overheat when someone looks at you wrong.”

“I don’t overheat,” you say, a little sharply. “My power regulation firmware is just optimistic.”

Jihoon disappears inside and returns with a charger in hand. He holds it out, but doesn’t let go just yet. “Helperbot-3s didn’t need replacements until the building itself started falling apart,” he says. As smug as a humanoid robot can be. “We were built to last. You guys were built to sync playlists.” 

Your hand closes around the charger, not delicately. “Thanks,” you say. The door closes before you can mean it.

You fail loudly at pretending like Jihoon hadn’t struck a chord. Jihoon hears it, while he is alphabetizing again. This time it’s tea sachets. There’s a box he’s never opened—hibiscus. He’s not sure why he owns it. Maybe Shownu liked the color red. Maybe he liked things that sounded like flowers.

Another clatter. A curse that’s been downgraded for civilian use. Jihoon’s audio sensors ping the sound, tag it: frustration. Human-adjacent. Female voice signature. Subunit #5-A. You.

He listens longer than he should. Not out of curiosity.

Out of—

Well. Something.

His OS runs a diagnostic. No errors, no flagged emotional feedback loops. Just a new, unfamiliar weight behind the ribs he doesn’t technically have.

He taps the wall. Just once. It’s not meant to be a warning, but you take it as one. You fall silent in the midst of what Jihoon can only assume is an attempt to fix what’s broken in you. In that literal, robotic sense. 

Jihoon sits there in the dim light, tea box in hand, trying to name the emotion that’s come to visit him.

The system doesn’t recognize it.

So he gives it one of his own. Static. 

▶︎ CHARGER EXCHANGE BALLET.

Morning begins with the usual fanfare: the ceiling light flickers awake, a low buzz in the wall socket orchestra. Jihoon powers on without ceremony. No jazz today. Just the sound of his own servos settling like old bones into place.

Then, a knock. 

Predictable. Timed to the second, in fact.

You stand there with the charger tucked politely between your palms like it’s sacred. You’re upright this time. Charged, obviously, and possibly smug about it. Your posture says, Look, I survived the night without frying my kernel processor.

Jihoon takes the charger from your hands and gives a perfunctory nod. “Seven-oh-five,” he says. “You’re three seconds early.”

You smile like it’s a joke. It isn’t. He files the timestamp away, just in case. “Thanks,” you say, again. Neatly. 

And so the pattern begins.

Mornings: knock, hand-off, nod, silence. Evenings: knock, retrieval, short exchange, maybe a quip about overheating.

You never overstay. You never apologize. You never ask for more than what you came for. Which Jihoon finds efficient. Familiar. Like maintenance.

He does not make space for you in his routine. He just slides you in between the others.

Jazz Monthly on Thursdays. Ficus gossip every other Sunday. You—twice daily, on the dot.

It does not feel disruptive.

It feels like doing what he was made to do: provide assistance, ensure stability, optimize.

If Jihoon notices that he starts putting the charger near the door before you arrive, he doesn't say anything. If he reroutes his tea-sorting to accommodate the evening exchange, it’s just coincidence. There are efficiencies to be had. If he catches himself waiting—not with anticipation, but with idle, service-ready stillness—that’s just protocol.

He is, after all, a Helperbot.

It’s in the name.

He has no emotional flags to report. No diagnostic anomalies. No electric flicker behind the chest plate. Just a charger, passed from hand to hand. A routine, now cleanly installed, and the peculiar ease of slipping into someone else’s schedule as if it had always been his own.

Perfectly logical. Perfectly him.

But then, one day, seven-oh-five comes. Then goes.

No knock. No politely smug posture. No handoff.

Jihoon sits in the same position for forty-seven seconds longer than usual. Statistically negligible, but still.

He waits a minute more, just in case your internal clock is out of sync. It’s not. He knows. Helperbot-5s are optimized for punctuality. Eight percent more precise than his own model, which still insists on resetting to factory time every full moon.

At seven-oh-eight, he stands. At seven-ten, he knocks.

Your door opens part way. You look... bright. Not metaphorically. Literally. A soft electric glow pulses from behind you—cables snake across the floor in a chaotic kind of order. A mess that works. That lives.

Jihoon clears his throat. “You missed your pickup.”

You raise an eyebrow. “You came to check on me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

You step aside, revealing a patchwork monstrosity of wires, clips, adapters, and a repurposed rice cooker. “I improvised,” you say.

You’ve mad scientist-ed your way into an at-home charger. The setup hums quietly, almost smugly. Jihoon stares at the Frankenstein of it all with a look of mild horror. “That’s not regulation,” he manages. 

“Neither is collapsing from power loss alone in a rental unit while your neighbor alphabetizes tea.”

“Looks unstable.”

“So do you.”

Silence, then: you laugh. It’s not artificial. It’s a real laugh. Amused, tired, just a bit triumphant. Eight percent more expressive, after all. That’s what the specs say. Better emotional nuance. More adaptive neural flexibility. Capable of interpreting, expressing, and—when necessary—weaponizing feeling.

Jihoon crosses his arms like a defensive firewall. “Good,” he says evenly. “Saves me the trouble.”

You tilt your head. “You were worried.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“I’m not a liar at all. I’m just not... upgraded.” 

You consider this. Step closer. Close enough that Jihoon has to look past his own reflection in your eyes. “You don’t have to say it,” you murmur, teasing. Jihoon thinks it’s a tease. “I already know.”

Jihoon opens his mouth. No words deploy.

Just static, caught in his throat. You’re standing there, humming gently under your skin, eyes brighter than usual. He’s standing in a doorway he doesn’t remember choosing.

You smile. Not triumphantly this time. Just kindly. “It’s okay,” you say. “You’re still a good Helperbot. You still helped.”

You shut the door before he can respond, leaving him standing in the hall with a charger still in his hand.

A routine officially broken.

And no diagnostic error to show for it.

Only eight percent of something else.

▶︎ WHERE YOU BELONG. 

Jihoon did not expect the knock.

It came at six fifty-seven in the evening. An offbeat time. Off enough to disapprove of. He opens the door half a second slower than usual. A calculated delay. Polite disinterest. There you are.

Not glowing this time. Just standing there, in the hum of hallway fluorescents, holding something behind your back. Jihoon reads that as a preamble. A lead-up. Trouble.

“I came to thank you,” you say. Too happily. Suspiciously happy.

Jihoon narrows his eyes. “For what.”

“For the charger. The schedule. The tolerance.”

“You already thanked me. On Day Six. With that terrible rice cracker.”

You step inside anyway.

The apartment isn’t exactly a mess, but it’s clearly occupied. Lived-in by something that wasn’t supposed to keep living this long. Jazz Monthly sits open on the floor, a cup of barely-warm water rests on the windowsill. Ppyopuli is perched by the window, its leaves tilted as though eavesdropping.

Your eyes track to the bottles. Neatly arranged in a corner. Counted, labeled. A small tower of carbonated dreams. You walk over to them like they might mean something.

“This is a lot of soda.”

“It was on sale.”

You crouch beside the stack. Look closer. And then you see it. The label on the envelope tucked behind the plastic fortress: Jeju Ferry Deposit – Shownu Reunion Fund.

You don’t say anything.

Jihoon tries to explain, even though he has no reason to explain to you. “It’s nothing. Just spare change. Recycling incentives.”

You hold up the envelope. “You’ve been saving.”

“It’s not uncommon. My model was designed for budgetary efficiency.”

You walk slowly back toward him, eyes soft now, as if your processors are adjusting to something dim and real. “You’re going to see him,” you accuse.

Jihoon nods. Stiff. Matter-of-fact. “Of course,” he chirpsts. “It’s only been twelve years. There are ferries every hour.”

You smile. Not the knowing kind. The kind reserved for fools, and those you don’t quite pity. “You think he’ll still want you,” you say. 

“I think,” Jihoon says, precisely, like solving for X, “that I will knock. He will answer. He will say my name. I will explain the bus delays. The misrouted magazines. The company recall. He will say: ‘Go put the tea on, Jihoon. It’s you and me now.’”

A long pause.

“He said that often?”

“Never. But I imagine he would.”

You don’t laugh. Not this time. Gone is the patronizing look. In its place, something closer to commiseration. 

“Then what?” you ask, even though you sound afraid of asking. 

Jihoon looks out the window. Beyond the Yards. Past the fog. Toward something shaped like a future. “Then I’ll help him,” he says. “I’ll help again.” 

You sit down beside Ppyopuli, who leans gently toward you. Then, with the spontaneity that can only come from a model of your kind, you announce: “I want to come.”

Jihoon blinks. The default move when emotions exceed available RAM. “Why.”

“I want to see the fireflies.” 

Jihoon’s brain digs, and digs, and digs. Comes up short. Fireflies. Fire flies. Flies, made of fire? No. That makes no sense. He tries harder. Flies that are on fire? 

He doesn’t notice that you’ve reached out until he feels it. Your fingers at his temple. An efficient exchange of information. The images flood Jihoon’s mind. 

“Fireflies are a special type of insect that used to be almost everywhere, but can now only be found in one forest on Jeju Island,” you say softly as Jihoon’s vision swims with images of the glowing insects. “There’s a complex chemical reaction in their abdomen that is not found in other insects. Because of this chemical process, they can produce light by themselves without ever being plugged in.” 

“Little forest robots,” Jihoon says absentmindedly, his voice cracking with awe. 

You almost smile. Your lips curl upward then flatten, like you decided against it at the last minute. “They only live for two months,” you say, “but what a beautiful two months.” 

Jihoon is not built to understand mortality like that. Age, either. He knows when he was manufactured. Knows when he became Shownu’s. Knows when Shownu left for his trip. These are all just days and times that bleed into each other. 

You pull your hand away. The fireflies behind his eyes leave, too. “I can help you with the ferry times,” you say, going back to the topic at hand. “I’m good for those.” 

He thinks about it for a moment. You. On a ferry. With your charger. With him. With hope.

“The ferry,” he says slowly, as though conjuring it from myth. “Could sink.”

“It won’t.”

“Or the car could break down.”

“You do maintenance every other Thursday. You have a ledger.”

You are looking at his ledger. You’ve been reading his notes again. His left eyelid twitches. “And what if we break down?” he prods. 

Your head tilts. The kind of tilt that indicates calculation, not malfunction. “That seems less likely for you,” you confess. “You might just experience significant emotional interference.”

He bristles. “I don’t experience interference. I operate on logic.”

You smile. Barely. It’s the smile you use when he is being especially Helperbot-3. “Then you’ll let me come.” 

“When did I say I’m going?”

“Just now. By listing all the ways you could fail.”

Jihoon stands. Too quickly. His knee clicks. He wonders if you hear it, record it, file it away under potential deterioration. You’re already walking toward his hallway. He follows, without realizing it. Still clutching a truss screw. “We’re not going,” he says, to the air.

You turn around. “Midnight,” you decide for the two of you. “Have everything ready.”

He opens his mouth to argue. Closes it.

Instead, he looks at the truss screw in his palm. The most ambiguous of them all. Part round, part flat, part none of the above.

Jeju. Fireflies. An island.

What a ridiculous, preventable detour.

He stumbles back into his apartment and starts folding shirts. It isn’t excitement, obviously. It’s something else. System calibration, maybe. New parameters. He can call it whatever he likes. But still, he packs.

Jihoon folds the last pair of socks into thirds, not halves. Halves would bulge too much in the suitcase. Thirds, he’s decided, are more respectful. You’ve returned, and now you’re watching him from the corner, your optical sensors dimmed out of courtesy. Ppyopuli sits on the edge of the bed like a stuffed animal summoned to court.

Jihoon exhales, zips. Then stands still. He isn’t frozen, just slightly unplugged from action. One foot on the ground. One still inside the past.

“We should say goodbye to the room,” he says.

He says it to Ppyopuli, and maybe for the room itself. Four walls, modest scuff marks, the subtle dent in the left side of the wardrobe where he once bumped into it carrying a humidifier in 2017. The humidifier didn’t work. The dent remained.

“You’ve been loyal,” he tells the room. Ppyopuli bobs in agreement. “Didn’t fall on me in an earthquake. Didn’t flood, even when it should’ve. Didn’t let the neighbor’s violin seep in through the walls. Well, not entirely.”

He sits down beside the suitcase. The zippers smile politely. Jihoon keeps going, “Remember the winter I overinsulated and the heater shorted out? You held the warmth anyway.” 

The room doesn’t answer. But Jihoon feels its quiet understanding. A space that knew when to echo and when not to. You shift, softly. Enough to register empathy but not enough to interrupt.

“I think Shownu will like you,” Jihoon says to Ppyopuli. “He always liked things that didn’t talk back. You’ll fit right in.”

Ppyopuli leans a little closer, as if understanding loyalty as a language.

Jihoon nods to himself. That’s that. He picks up the suitcase by its handle. It wobbles slightly; he’s packed heavier on the left. Unbalanced, but honest. He takes Ppyopuli, tries to keep the plant to the left so it might tilt the scales. 

Jihoon takes one last look. “Goodbye, room,” he murmurs, more sincere than sentimental. “Thanks for keeping me.”

Then he turns toward the door, toward you, toward Jeju.

He doesn’t look back again. He doesn’t need to.

▶︎ THE RAINY DAY WE MET. 

The two of you are halfway to the port when you bring it up. The sky is overcast, a smudge of silver and blue, like someone rubbed their thumb across the afternoon. The road is mostly empty. The playlist is on shuffle, leaning jazz. Jihoon doesn’t admit it aloud, but he’s been skipping the vocals. Too risky. Too much feeling per square note.

“We need a story,” you say. Casual. Like you're not currently engaged in light federal evasion.

Jihoon blinks twice. Acknowledgement. Also buffering.

You tilt your head, that little pivot that usually precedes either a sharp observation or a wildly inappropriate metaphor. “Retired Helperbots aren’t allowed to leave their districts. But humans are. And humans fall in love.”

Jihoon groans, a full-body sound. “Please no.”

“We are a couple,” you insist. “On holiday. A romantic getaway to Jeju.”

“You’re not even—”

“Exactly. That's why it will work. Who would make that up?”

He stares ahead into the gentle asphalt horizon and tries to remember when you started winning arguments by sheer momentum. Probably somewhere between firmware 8.3 and the first time you reorganized his spice drawer alphabetically and by Scoville index.

“So,” you continue, clearly delighted, “where did we meet?”

“We didn’t.”

“Wrong. It was raining. I didn’t have an umbrella. You did.”

“This is sounding suspiciously like a musical.”

“No. It’s Paris. Or New York. Or possibly Seoul, but definitely with cobblestones.”

He snorts. “Cobblestones. Because pain is romantic.”

“Exactly! You held your umbrella out like a gentleman from the 1940s. But you said nothing. Because you were shy.”

“And you?”

“I wore a bright red raincoat. And a fur hat.”

“Basically, you were Santa Claus.” 

You stifle a laugh before weaving the rest of your fantasy. “You tried to speak, but we both said ‘Where are y—’ and ‘How long have y—’ at the same time. It was very awkward.”

Jihoon indulges you. “Did we laugh through the awkwardness?”

“No. We stood in perfect, beautiful silence. So much silence it wrapped around us like a scarf.”

“Sounds clammy.”

You ignore him. “Then we danced. In the subway. To a jazz quartet.”

Jihoon glances at you. Not disbelief, exactly. More like reluctant amusement curling at the corners. “So we met. In the rain, in a city you refuse to name. I had an umbrella. You wore a war crime of an outfit. And we fell in love through the power of proximity and precipitation.”

You nod. “You see? You do improvise.”

“This all sounds too oddly specific to be fictional,” Jihoon remarks.

For the first time, you falter. Jihoon realizes it before you admit it. The fabled First Meeting is not a fable. It is somebody’s story. 

“My owners,” you say in explanation, and that’s all you have to say for Jihoon to drop it. There are some things that need no explanation. The hesitance in this moment is one of them. 

Outside, the road bends. The sea begins to appear in the distance, gray and gleaming. The kind of view that dares you to feel something. Jihoon doesn’t say anything. Just reaches over and turns up the volume.

Saxophone. Mist. The low hum of two fugitives pretending to be fools in love.

And then the dashboard pings.

A sharp, uncaring noise. The sort of alert that suggests, in polite corporate euphemism, that you are now one bad decision away from becoming roadside sculpture. Maybe art. Probably not the kind people stop to admire.

Jihoon glances sideways. You are perfectly still. Too still. Your usual composure edged with a dimming hue that would terrify him if he had the bandwidth for terror. Instead, he has concern. Which is worse, somehow, because he knows how to spell it.

“Battery low,” you say, evenly. Not a plea. Not yet.

Jihoon grunts. Pulls over at the next exit, which, because the universe is mean-spirited and unnervingly precise, leads to a part of town where the neon signs are all cursive and vaguely anatomical. There are hearts. So many hearts. None of them metaphorical. Some are malfunctioning. One has wings.

You look up at the building and then at Jihoon. “Love hotel.”

He blinks. Default response to emotional excess. “We can’t—” 

“We can pretend,” you say. Calm. Deadpan. “I taught you sarcasm. This seems like a natural progression.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Wonders briefly if he’s developing ulcers. Is that even possible? Emotional ones, maybe. The kind that grow legs.

In the end, you go inside. Together.

The woman at the desk doesn’t even look up from her tablet. Jihoon shuffles awkwardly like a schoolboy entering the wrong classroom. You lean forward with the gleam of a perfect con artist and say, with eerie confidence, “We’re celebrating an anniversary.”

“Three years,” Jihoon blurts, betrayed by his own tongue, brain choosing treachery over silence. He wants to die or at least reboot.

The woman doesn’t say anything. She only nods, pops her gum, keys over a plastic fob. Doesn’t care. Why would she? Everyone lies in motels. That’s what the wallpaper is for.

The room you end up booking is pink. Aggressively pink. The wallpaper is textured and suspiciously damp. The lights are dim but everything still has a sort of lusty sheen to it. There’s a mirror on the ceiling, which Jihoon avoids with religious fervor. Even the carpet has ideas.

You plug into the bedside outlet with a sigh like someone returning from war. Then, surprisingly, you sit beside him on the edge of the bed. You tuck your knees under your chin, almost human, almost small.

“Want to watch something?”

Jihoon shrugs. “If we must.”

You pull up a file. It’s not one of your documentaries or philosophical lectures or grim, slow meditations on the heat death of the universe. It’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Jihoon looks at you. You look at the screen. The irony looms, thick as smog. Twenty minutes in, Jihoon is actively offended.

“That’s not how processor reboots work,” he huffs. “The cooling logic is backwards. And his motor cortex override—”

“You’re missing the point,” you interrupt, voice soft, flickering. “It’s not a film. It’s a poem.”

“It’s nonsense.”

“Which is exactly what we need.” 

The Terminator says, I know now why you cry, with devastating sincerity. You snort. Jihoon doesn’t. He’s too busy watching the screen, jaw tight, brow furrowed, like it might offer answers to questions he hasn’t learned how to ask.

When it ends, neither of you move for a long time. The motel buzzes faintly, a low electrical hum beneath the silence. The air smells like old perfume and newer mistakes. Eventually, you both lie back. Him, rigid and unnaturally straight. You, curling slightly in dim recharge mode, your glow settling to a slow pulse. 

“You’re very strange,” Jihoon says, eyes fixed on the mirrored ceiling.

He watches you curve like a parentheses. “So are you,” you whisper, your words muffled into your pillow. 

It’s a simple exchange. A statement of fact. But it feels larger, somehow. Like the shape of a beginning disguised as a joke. Somewhere above, a neon cupid flutters his wings and burns out a bulb. It is the first honest thing in the building.

Jihoon doesn’t realize his hand is next to yours. Doesn’t move it. Doesn’t name it. Just lets it be.

He thinks: this is what it’s like.

Not to be alone. He glances at Ppyopuli, who is sitting atop his suitcase, and he mentally apologizes. Ppyopuli is good company. A good plant. But Ppyopuli does not snore, or make jokes, or brush against Jihoon in a way that has him feel almost-but-not-quite alive. 

Maybe, in some inconvenient corner of his circuitry, Jihoon understands. The moment he let you plug in was not the beginning of the end. It was the end of the beginning. Or something equally ridiculous. He doesn’t have the capacity to think in metaphors. 

Whatever it is, he doesn’t mind. He lies next to you and plays in his mind’s eye images of Paris, or New York, or cobblestoned Seoul. Rain-slicked streets, red raincoats, and a borrowed love story. 

▶︎ WHAT I LEARNED FROM PEOPLE.

The ferry ride is unremarkable, which feels like a minor miracle. No one questions your scarf, your oversized sunglasses, or your strategic silence. Jihoon spends most of it holding on to Ppyopuli, occasionally glancing at you as if trying to solve for an error message that hasn’t been coded yet.

You hum a little. Too loudly. Too often. Like a motor running just beneath its tolerance threshold. Jihoon notices, of course. He notices everything. But he says nothing.

The car rolls off the ferry and onto Jeju’s sleepy roads. The light here is different. Not softer, exactly. Slooower. It drips off the trees, crawls across the sky. Jihoon drives like someone trying not to wake a dream.

“You okay?” he finally asks, when your fingers start twitching in your lap like you’re typing something no one can read.

“Fine,” you say. Too fast.

He doesn’t push. You probably wish he would, but that is not how he was built, not how he was raised. 

Shownu’s house appears the way ghosts do. It’s a modest thing at the end of a gravel road, tucked between orange trees and fog. The paint is peeling. The mailbox leans. Jihoon pulls in slowly, like the car itself isn’t sure it should.

He opens the car door. One foot out. But then, you say, the word falling out of you as if it were punched, “Don’t.” 

He pauses.

You’re still in the passenger seat. Buckled in. Glowing faintly. “Jihoon,” you say again, and he is surprised by the fact that your voice quivers. He didn’t know that was possible for your model. “Please don’t go in there.” 

He turns to you, frowning. “You brought me here.”

“I know, I know. But I—” You hesitate. The air inside the car thickens. “I don’t want you to think he’ll be the same. He won’t be.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” you say, voice barely above a whisper, “because I’ve watched it happen.”

He doesn’t ask. He stays there, one foot out the car door, as you give anyway.  “There was a couple,” you begin, and your voice changes. Like it’s coming from further away. From a backup drive you never meant to access. “Newlyweds. Architects. She liked old movies, and he liked old buildings. I thought I would live with them forever.”

“I watched them dance. In the kitchen. In the rain. I thought it meant something. Maybe it did for a while. But humans change slowly. Like corrosion. At first it looks the same, and then one day, he says her name like he doesn’t believe in it anymore. And she doesn’t notice, or maybe she does. She smiles anyway.” 

You turn your head. Look out the window, as if you are looking for the owners you can’t even name without breaking down. “They were still standing next to each other,” you say, “but they were alone.” 

The memory flickers across your eyes. Jihoon watches it—reflected, refracted—half-light and shadow on glass. A couple. Young and in love. Fools. 

“I stayed through the whole thing,” you say. “I stayed until they sold the house. Until they boxed up everything they weren’t brave enough to fight for. And then they shut me off.”

The car is very quiet. Even the birds seem to pause.

“I know what heartbreak looks like,” you insist, turning to glance back at Jihoon now. You look… sad. “It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t beg. It just disappears. So if he’s not what you remember—”

Jihoon places his other foot on the ground. Stands. “Then I’ll meet him where he is,” he says decisively. “Not where he was.”

He doesn’t say it cruelly. Doesn’t say it like he doesn’t believe you. Just says it because it’s his turn.

You look at him. At this man with lint on his shirt and a barely-healed crack in his voice.

He takes a breath and starts walking. He doesn’t have to check behind him to know that you’re following, ready to steady him when—if—it all comes crashing down. 

You don’t reach the front door so much as drift toward it, two figures suspended in time. The house is small, whitewashed, with a slanted roof. Everything smells like salt and citrus. A low wall curls protectively around the garden, where a windchime ticks out notes in uneven time.

Jihoon feels you beside him. Too still again. Watching him the way one watches a candle guttering out. Not for the light, but the inevitability. He raises a hand to knock. The door opens after Jihoon has knocked four times.

The man on the threshold is younger than Jihoon expected. Early thirties, maybe. Wiry frame, short black hair, suspicion curled behind his eyes like a reflex. He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t move aside. 

“Jihoon,” the man says, and it is not a greeting. 

Things click into place a beat too late. This is an older version of a person Jihoon is supposed to know. Once a boy. Once ruddy-cheeked and missing two front teeth. “Changkyun,” says Jihoon. 

“Yeah,” Shownu’s son says. “And you haven’t changed.”

Jihoon takes this in. Quietly. He had expected a reunion. Not resistance. Not this acid stillness between them. “I came to see Shownu,” Jihoon says, the words firm in their anouncement.

“You’re late,” Changkyun says flatly. “He died. Three years ago.”

You move closer to Jihoon, almost protectively, but he doesn’t react. Or maybe he can’t. The word doesn’t compute. 

Died. Di-ed. Diiied. Died died died. DIED. died. 

Pass away, pass on, lose one’s life, depart this life, expire, breathe one’s last, be no more, perish, be lost, go the way of all flesh, go to glory, give up the ghost, kick the bucket, bite the dust, croak, flatline, buy it, cash in one’s chips, go belly up, shuffle off this mortal coil— 

Become extinct. Become less loud or strong. Stop functioning, run out of electrical charge. 

Died. Died. Died. D—ead. Dieeed. 

Verb. Die. Past tense. Past participle. Died. Of a person, animal, or plant. To stop living. 

Died. 

“I wasn’t informed,” Jihoon says, and it sounds less like sorrow and more like a misfired protocol.

Changkyun laughs. It is not kind. It is not unkind. It is exhausted. Like someone scraping the last of a dish they never wanted to make. “No, you weren’t,” he says. “Because I didn’t tell you.”

He leans against the doorframe now. The weight of history pressing forward.

“You were never supposed to be his son,” Changkyun says. “But somehow, he loved you more than he loved me. Took you to baseball games. Bought you piano lessons. Called you ‘bud.’ I was eight. I watched from the other side of the screen door. Do you know what that feels like?”

Jihoon does not. Cannot. He computes it, but it doesn’t resolve into emotion. He sorts through years of memories in three seconds. Jihoon was not the ‘son’. He was the programmed robot that could be everything Shownu wanted to be. 

Changkyun has to know that. Changkyun needs to know that. 

“I believed I was helping,” Jihoon says.

“Yeah. You always did.”

There is something so painfully human in Changkyun’s face then. Not rage. Not even jealousy. Just bruised memory. Mismatched love. The ache of being out-loved by a machine.

“When he got sick, I moved him here,” Changkyun says. “I made sure the mail didn’t reach you. He kept asking. But I wanted—I wanted the last years to be with me. Just me. Even if he never looked at me the same. Sue me.” 

He steps back inside briefly. He doesn’t invite you and Jihoon in. Neither of you move. Not away or towards. When Changkyun returns nine minutes later, he is holding a thin, square package wrapped in plastic.

“He wanted you to have this. Said you’d know why.”

Jihoon takes it. His fingers scan the object. Billie Holiday. Lady in Satin. The vinyl glints in the light.

Changkyun breathes out. Hollow. The fight inside him scattered. “That’s it,” he says, and there is relief. Closure. “You got what you wanted.” 

No, Jihoon nearly says. This is not what I wanted at all. 

The door clicks shut on him before he can force the words out.

Jihoon stands there, Billie held like scripture. You step closer, gently, as if sound might crack him. 

He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move. He is, for once, truly still. Inside him, protocols rearrange. Mourn. Try to reroute.

This is not a malfunction. This is something else.

This is grief, he thinks. Possibly.

Jihoon says nothing for a while.

He just stands there on the doorstep, LP pressed flat against his chest like it might slip away. The Billie Holiday sleeve has a water stain across her mouth. It makes her look like she’s still singing. Or drowning. The vinyl inside shifts when he tightens his grip, and he hears the faint whisper of it sliding against cardboard. A ghost of a voice. A ghost of a gesture.

You wait beside him in the gravel path, silent. Not intervening. That would be cruel. And you, famously, are not cruel—just devastatingly accurate. 

“You were right,” Jihoon says at last. Voice flat. Nothing to sand it down. No inflection. Like a dial tone.

But you glance at the record. Tilt your head, just slightly. A tiny glitch of grace. “No, Jihoon. I was wrong.”

He doesn’t look at you. The horizon is easier. “He didn’t forget you,” you go on, delicate and graceful and so devastatingly kind. “He just wasn’t allowed to remember out loud. That gift? That was a whisper. He whispered your name.”

Jihoon swallows. Some ticks never deprecate. The action is unnecessary, yet he performs it anyway, like muscle memory from a body he never had. “Come on,” you say, gently. “Let’s go see the fireflies.”

He nods wordlessly. He did his Thing. You should, too. 

You walk in silence. Past the cracked tiles of the cul-de-sac. Through the loose stone and root-stitched path. Into the forest, where the trees press in like old gossip and the humidity climbs like a rumor. Each step is its own decision, a soft rebellion against grief’s gravity.

The jar in your hand swings lightly. Jihoon watches it and tries not to think. Fails. He is very, very good at recursive thought. It loops in his head like a bad pop song or a corrupted code.

He says, suddenly, “I never learned how to grieve.”

You nod. Not surprised. “Most people haven’t.” 

“But I’m not people.” 

“No,” you say. “You’re not. But you tried. You’re trying. That’s the part humans get wrong.”

Jihoon stares at the jar. At the soft sway of your arm beside him. He wants to ask what part he got wrong, what he missed in the script, but then the lightning bugs appear.

Tiny green flares in the dark. Drifting like lazy stardust. Some slow. Some quick. All of them impossibly small. They blink like they’re thinking, like they might ask questions if they had mouths. The forest breathes with them, pulsing gently.

You and Jihoon speak at the same time. 

“Oh,” you both whisper. He says it with awe. You sound like you are about to cry. 

Both of you are quiet, so quiet, as if speaking too loud might scare away these insects. 

You open your jar with shaking fingers. You make no sudden movements, no attempt to snatch any of them up. You just leave it open, as if seeing if any of them will be attracted to the little terrarium you’re offering. 

The fireflies flicker by. “Hi, tiny friend,” you call out, almost sing-song, “can you say hello?” 

The insects blink. Jihoon does not. He watches your face instead. The soft lift of your mouth. The reverent hush of your voice, speaking to something that can’t speak back.  “Do you fly just for fun,” you continue softly, “or to get somewhere by the dawn?”

There must be enough of a coax in your voice to entice, because a single firefly drifts into your jar. 

Jihoon holds his breath. He’s ready for it to hate its glass cage, to come and go. Instead, it settles. It perches in the jar. It stays. 

“Do you have nowhere to be, little friend?” Jihoon murmurs to it. 

You’re holding the jar between your palms like it’s the entire world. “Do you care what you mean to me?” you hum, voice crackling around the question. 

You are talking to the unafraid firefly. You are talking to your long-gone owners. You are talking to Jihoon, who is surrounded by little forest robots but still looking at you. 

“Never fly away, little robot,” he tells your firefly, because he knows that’s what you want. Because that’s what will make you happy.

It works. A little. You crack a watery smile. The fireflies around you take their cue. They begin to retreat, begin to disperse. Except for the one in your jar. That one stays. 

“They’re just going home to charge,” Jihoon tells you soothingly, but it sounds like he’s talking about himself. Like the metaphor snuck in through the back door and now refuses to leave.

You’re quiet until all the lights are gone. Until it’s just you, and the darkness, and the loneliness that is now unfamiliar. 

“Then maybe we should go home, too,” you say once the last firefly has gone, once all that’s left is the friend in the jar.

Jihoon nods. Looks at you. Not the place beside you, but you. The jar glows between your hands like a secret.

There is something different now. Hard to quantify. Asymmetrical in the way change always is. He cannot name it. Cannot trace the moment it clicked into gear. Only that something shifted, and that it does not want to shift back.

He exhales, just because. A simulation of relief. It fels close enough.

You begin walking back, and he falls into step beside you. Your shoulder bumps his, lightly. He does not move away. He doesn’t pretend it didn’t happen. That, too, feels like something.

“I’m sorry about Shownu,” you say, voice as soft as a thread being pulled through a needle.

Jihoon grips the record tighter. The sleeve crinkles under his hand. “I’ll be okay,” he says. Then, after a beat, quieter: “I’ve still got—” 

He stops. The word catches. Not because it’s wrong, but because it’s true.

You tilt your head.

“Ppyopuli,” he finishes lamely. “I’ve still got Ppyopuli.” 

It’s not what he means to say. You know that. You’re smart that way. 

In the distance, a firefly lifts and blinks once, twice, and disappears into the trees. The forest takes it back. Your jar remains.

You walk slower now, but not because of tiredness. Because there is nowhere to rush toward anymore. Because going home, this time, feels like choosing rather than retreating.

Jihoon glances sideways. Your glow is low, humming, soft as breath. Like a firefly. 

It keeps the grief at bay. It replaces the bad feeling with something else, with something that Jihoon’s vocabulary can’t reach for just yet. 

▶︎ WHEN YOU’RE IN LOVE.

The light comes on in pieces. First the ceiling strip, then the wall panel, and finally the amber filament lamp in the corner that Jihoon insists on keeping—warm, inefficient, obsolete. Like him.

Routine is meant to be grounding, but lately it feels like pacing in a square room. “Ppyopuli,” he says, nodding at the houseplant with a reverence that borders on the theological. “You’re looking hydrated, unlike my social life.”

The fronds droop. He chooses to take this personally.

Jihoon rotates his left hip actuator. The sound is still somewhere between a gum wrapper and a ghost sighing. It echoes differently now. More space in it. More absence.

The radio turns on. The woman’s voice—the one designed to sound like a former lover you never quite got over—says the UV index is safe again. That it's a perfect day.

“Perfect for what, exactly?” Jihoon mutters, pulling the curtain wider. Seoul looks unchanged. Which is, in itself, a kind of threat. Bullet trams still thread between glass towers. 

He makes coffee. Still not for himself. Still beside Ppyopuli. The ritual is unchanged, but the motivation, fuzzier now. A photograph exposed to too much sun.

The mail chute clicks. “The moment you’ve all been waiting for,” Jihoon intones with a practiced flourish. The mail is junk. Flyers. Discount codes. Nothing from Jazz Monthly. Nothing from Jeju. He doesn’t ask the voice assistant about Shownu anymore.

He alphabetizes his records again. Notices that the Billie Holiday LP has been slotted out of order. He knows it was your doing. He doesn’t fix it.

“Ppyopuli,” he says later, cleaning the dust off a speaker grill with a toothbrush, “I think something is wrong with me.”

The plant does not disagree.

“My system has been searching. Passive scan. Low frequency,” Jihoon rants. “Like when you hum a song you forgot the lyrics to. I think I’m trying to locate someone.”

It is not Shownu. He knows Shownu is d-word. 

Jihoon doesn’t say your name. He doesn't have to.

Ppyopuli remains aggressively unhelpful.

That night, Jihoon eats precisely one spoonful of synthetic tteokbokki before pushing the bowl away. His appetite, never really about hunger, seems to have found a better way to ache.

He stands in the middle of the room. Lets the light hit him. Amber and lonely.

Then, without fanfare, he turns toward the door.

Enough is enough.

He doesn’t rehearse what he’ll say. You’d see through it anyway. He just knows he needs to see you. Like checking if a lightbulb still works by touching it, not flicking the switch.

But when he opens the door, you’re already there. You both start. Not expecting that the other would be searching as well. 

You don’t say anything. Neither does he. Jihoon—for all his wires and wear and water-damaged memory—knows exactly what to do.

In one of those moments where the world tilts quiet and everything is more possible than it was a breath ago, you both lean in. You kiss right at his doorway. 

You kiss him like you were built for it. Which, technically, you were. Not that it makes it any less strange.

Jihoon registers every nanosecond of contact: the tilt, the breath, the impossible, exquisite pressure of your mouth on his. There is data. Input. Endless parsing. It is not the act itself that overwhelms. It is the meaning nested inside it. The truth tucked into the microsecond pauses. The confessions smuggled in between the static.

He kisses you back tentatively. Less fluent. Less native. But attentive, like a translator decoding a new dialect by feel. He tastes the static first, the warmth. 

You laugh into his mouth—low, amused, indulgent. You’re good at this. Distressingly good. Your hands know exactly where to go, what to press, how to skim his spine like a familiar page.

“You’re—very—fast,” Jihoon mutters between kisses, dazed, as you push him back into his apartment.

“No,” you say against his lips, “‘m just a newer model.” 

You kiss him again. And again. And again.  The room sways. Not physically. Metaphysically. A recalibration of coordinates.

Jihoon feels his back hit the doorframe and doesn’t care. He’s smiling. Actual smile. Unsubtle. Unmanaged. It’s disconcerting.

Your nose brushes his. Your hands cage his jaw. You say, soft and certain: “I want you.”

He inhales. Fails to exhale. “I want you, too,” he whimpers. 

It isn’t love. He doesn’t have the blueprint for that. Neither do you. But this wanting—this mutual, reciprocal disorientation—it hums like something sacred.

You kiss him again. Slower now. Curious. As if you were mapping him anew. Your lips move across his face, and his arms snake around your waist. 

“If I had a heart,” you murmur against his neck, “you’d be in it.”

Jihoon’s fingers twitch where they’re planted on your hips. His voice cracks in the middle. “I concur,” he mumbles. 

Your palms flatten on his chest. You start to slide them down. He lets you. Doesn’t stop you. Not until you do it yourself. 

“Wait,” you say, as if you’re just remembering something. 

You step back half an inch, just enough space to kiss the brick before you throw it at him. “My battery’s failing,” you say.

The room drops a degree.

Jihoon’s mouth opens. Then closes. Then opens again. His hands hover in the air, unsure. He asks, after a pause: “Terminal?” 

You shrug. Casual. Too casual. Too cool, cool, cool. 

“Uncertain. Our models aren’t built to last the same way yours are,” you say matter-of-factly. “Something about corrupted cell matrices. Could be months. Could be days.”

“You should’ve told me.”

“I just did.”

Jihoon stares. At your face. Your mouth. Your eyes, that don’t flinch. Then: “I don’t care.” 

“Jihoon.” You sound disapproving. 

“I don’t care,” he repeats. “If I get a day, I’ll take it. If I get an hour, I’ll take that, too.” 

You stare back, silent as the inside of a bell. When you step forward again, you let the rest fall away.

The next kiss tastes like something. Jihoon didn’t know that was possible. That a kiss could feel like grief, and honesty, and desperation all at once. 

You sink together, slowly, like dusk into night. Before powering off, this is what Jihoon thinks: 

Whatever this is—whatever it becomes—let it burn through the battery. Let it flicker out only after it’s meant something.

He holds you tight.  

▶︎ THEN I CAN LET YOU GO.

You agree to end it. Every morning, like clockwork. One of you says it first. Sometimes you, sometimes Jihoon.

“We should stop.”

And then one of you adds: “But first.”

But first, Jihoon takes you to the hanok village because he’s read that human couples like to rent hanbok and pose for photos. You refuse to change. He wears the pink one anyway. He insists it’s for historical accuracy. You remind him he was built in 2037.

But first, you eat street food together—if eating is the word for holding tteokbokki between your lips like a cigarette and pretending it doesn’t short your vocal module. You call it method acting. Jihoon calls it corrosion.

But first, you argue. Or try to. A full simulation of a romantic disagreement. The topic is laundry, which an article from 2025 says is the number one petty cause of break ups.

“You never fold,” you accuse, gesturing to the perfectly ordered basket.

“That’s because I autoclave.”

“That’s not a thing!”

“It is now!”

And then your hand touches his, and his touches yours, and the whole scene melts down into a tangle of arms and mouth and laughter. A synthetic tangle. A beautiful failure.

The fight ends with your face tucked under his chin. He tries not to overheat.

That night, you lie beside him on the floor mat beneath the filament lamp. Billie Holiday plays from his turntable. She sounds like she knows. Everything. Even this.

“Jihoon,” you whisper against his collarbone.

“Mmh?”

“We should stop.”

He turns his head to look at you. “I’m ready if you are,” he says. 

A pause. Considering, contemplating. “Maybe one more day,” you answer. You, who once told Jihoon, Everything must end eventually. Living with people has taught this to me. 

He plants a kiss to your forehead. He does not understand why, but it makes you feel good. Makes you melt a little, relax, trust. 

The next morning, he powers on slower than usual. His diagnostics scan for error, but everything is nominal, except the place where you aren’t yet. He makes coffee for the plant. Straightens the record stack. Updates his firmware. None of it sticks.

Then the knock comes. You.

“Breakfast,” you say. “It’s waffle day.”

He doesn’t question it. He’s learned not to.

At the diner, you both order what you can’t eat. You ask if he thinks anyone has ever tried to smuggle love through routine. Jihoon says no, but he understands the urge.

After, you walk home past a mural of a heart-shaped planet and a tagline: Live like you mean it.

Jihoon pauses. This time, it’s his turn for the charade. “We should stop,” he offers. 

Without missing a beat, you say, “But first…” The two of you chase each other down the street. Your laughter is not mechanical. It is real. It is lived. 

Later that night, you fall asleep recharging beside him. Your head on his shoulder. Billie sings again. Her voice is a slow ache. Jihoon watches your chest rise and fall with the subtle click of a slowing fan. He doesn’t shut down. He just watches. 

Maybe when the glaciers go. When the moon forgets to rise. When the firmware fails for good. Then he can let you go.

But not yet, not tonight. Not tomorrow. Or the day after that, or the day after that, or the day after—

There is no clean way to leave someone who has learned your update schedule.

You try anyway. Approximately seventeen weeks after you two started this whole thing. (Jihoon can, in fact, tell you down to the exact second. Seventeen weeks, four days, thirteen hours, ten minutes. That’s when you decide to pull off the metaphorical Band-Aid.) 

You explain it like an operating manual. Bullet points. Projected timelines. Forecasted decay. Your voice is as smooth as always, and it breaks something in Jihoon just the same. “A year, at best,” you say, and you smile like it’s a weather report. Like death is just light rain.

He doesn’t touch you. Doesn’t speak. Just looks at you with those eyes that were never manufactured. He was always too good at pretending to be a person, and you were always a little too good at knowing better.

“So, that’s it?” he says. Not accusing. Not angry. Just suspended.

“If we stop now, maybe it won’t hurt so much.”

He doesn’t say that it already hurts. He doesn’t have to.

You leave. Or rather, you walk out of his apartment and back into your own. Six steps. Not far, technically. But emotionally, it’s somewhere around Neptune.

He doesn’t follow. Not out of coldness. Just programming. If you said no, he’ll listen. That’s the cruel part about love written in code: the logic is always sound.

He updates his memory with what he has learned: 

When you are in love, you are the loneliest. You’re only half when one is what you were. You’re part instead of a whole. 

When you are in love, you’re never satisfied. The thing you want is always out of reach. A need without a name. 

It was love. It could have not been anything else. 

Jihoon returns to his routine like a soldier returning to the trenches. He powers on at six in the morning sharp. Greets Ppyopuli with exaggerated brightness.

“Good morning, Ppyopuli! Just you and me again.”

The plant is wilting a little. So is he.

He makes coffee. Two cups, out of habit. Places one across from him, where you’d sit. Then moves it back to the counter, like he caught himself breaking a rule.

He alphabetizes his records. Again. He updates his firmware. Again. He reorganizes the spice rack by frequency of use, which is laughable because he doesn’t cook. But you did. Sometimes.

He opens the window and stares out at Seoul’s skyline like it might answer back. 

He talks to Ppyopuli more now. “It’s been a while since it was just the two of us, huh? Like that first week she borrowed my charger,” Jihoon says. Too happy. Overcompensating. “Remember that? Ha-ha.”

Ppyopuli says nothing. It has no conversational subroutines.

“The air’s clear today. Sunlight’s nice, too. Warmer than usual,” Jihoon chirps. “It’s hitting all the places she used to sit. Isn’t that strange? I never noticed how much light she took with her.”

He stares at Ppyopuli, suddenly accusing. “Stop thinking about her,” he tells it. “First, people pretend to move on, and if they pretend hard enough, it becomes true. We’re going to think about something else now, okay? On three. One, two, three—”

Jihoon still thinks of you. Sitting with you in this little room. How you changed every part of it. The way you rewired the light switches so they dimmed like sunrise, the way you labeled the tea jars in handwriting that didn’t match his. 

He tilts his head toward the ceiling, closing his eyes like it might help. He whispers, “Teach me forgetting. Help me go back to that other time.”

That other time is long gone. Memory is not a function Jihoon can disable.

Even time reminds him that he loves you. 

▶︎ MAYBE HAPPY ENDING.

Changkyun arrives one afternoon, as if he were scheduled by the sun itself. He knocks once, then again. Sharp and deliberate. Jihoon opens the door slower than necessary, like it might buy him time to rewrite the past couple of months. It doesn’t.

“Hi,” Changkyun says. He’s holding a storage drive and something harder to name.

“Hello.” Jihoon’s instincts kick in. “How can I help—” 

“Some memories of my father,” Changkyun interrupts. Not rude, just… focused. “I think it’s time I stopped avoiding the good parts.”

Jihoon doesn’t answer right away. But after a beat, he steps back in a wordless invitation. The amber lamp flickers on in the corner. The room smells faintly of dust, coffee, and longing.

Changkyun steps in. Jihoon plugs the drive into his memory port with something that almost resembles ceremony. A priest digitizing communion. He sorts quickly.

Shownu laughing in the rain; Shownu holding up an umbrella over Changkyun first; Shownu in an apron, jazz playing, fingers smudged with flour. Twenty years of a life well-lived, transferred from one machine to another in less than five seconds. 

“Take what you want,” Jihoon says as Changkyun ejects the drive. “They’re only the brightest bits. Everything else got unrendered.” 

Changkyun doesn’t smile, but he softens. “I know you loved him,” he says, and it sounds a lot like I’m sorry. 

“He loved you too,” Jihoon answers, in a way that translates to I’m sorry, too. 

Changkyun takes a deep, unsteady breath. It strikes Jihoon, then, that humans grieve for a long time. It’s supposed to have been three years since Shownu passed, and yet. And yet. Here Changkyun is—fraying at the edges, clutching at straws. Grieving. 

“I just didn’t want to remember it until it couldn’t hurt me anymore,” Changkyun confesses. “But then it never stopped hurting. So. Here I am.” 

The grief is never-ending, Jihoon realizes with horror. 

Then, with relief, he realizes: but so is the love. 

The grief is never-ending, but so is the love. 

“Where’s your girlfriend?” Changkyun asks, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. 

Jihoon freezes. Maybe if he stays still enough, he can pretend like he didn’t hear. Didn’t register. Changkyun catches it and chuckles. “Don’t play dumb,” the man chides. “You’re not good at it.”

“She and I made a deal. No contact,” Jihoon says, sparing Changkyun the details. “Clean break. More humane.”

“You’re not human. Neither is she. So maybe stop trying to follow rules written for people who can forget.”

Jihoon leans back against the wall, arms folded. “That sounds suspiciously like something a child would say.”

“Then maybe stop letting the adults ruin everything.”

That gets a laugh out of Jihoon. A surprised sound. Changkyun looks down at the drive before slipping it into his coat like a talisman. “Thanks. For this. And for… whatever you were to him. You mattered.”

Jihoon follows him to the door. “You sound like you’re saying goodbye.”

“I’m saying: live. While you still can,” Changkyun says, but he doesn’t correct Jihoon about the whole saying goodbye thing. It is very much the last time they will see each other. Both man and robot know that much. 

The door clicks shut.

Jihoon stares at it for a full five seconds. Then ten. Then he turns. The room looks the same as ever. Lamp, vinyl, ficus. But none of it means anything without you nodding at it like a museum tour guide who secretly hates art.

He moves before he can hesitate. Opens the door again. Marches next door. Every step is a betrayal of the promise you both made.

He knocks.

Once. Twice. Thrice. 

You open the door like you were waiting. Like you knew. Like you always do.

He opens his mouth—prepped, rehearsed, a few dramatic pauses mentally underlined for effect. But before anything gets out, you speak. 

“I think we should erase each other.”

Jihoon blinks. Not because he’s surprised or processing, but because he's trying not to flinch. 

Your voice is soft. Almost cheerful. It’s like you’re offering tea. Like you’re suggesting a walk. Like you’re not pulling the pin on the only grenade you’ve both been passing back and forth for months.

He shifts his weight. “Let’s talk about it,” he says, and it almost sounds like he’s begging. But that would be absurd. Robots don’t beg. 

You step aside and let him in. The apartment looks the same. Not yours alone. Yours-together. Slightly off from either solo version. The mismatched mugs. The filament lamp you insisted on stealing from him. The single record sleeve, still propped by the window. A scent capsule still faintly humming in the corner, too shy to admit it's been spent for days.

Neither of you sit down. This is a standing-up conversation. “Those sunny afternoons you spent with me, they’ll still be happening. Just somewhere in the past,” you tell him. “They’re not less valuable just because…” 

Just because they didn’t last, goes unsaid. Just because we outlived them. 

The logical part of Jihoon is stating to see the appeal. “The ending’s not the most important part,” he says. “But as endings go, ours is not so bad.” 

You’re nodding. Trying to convince yourself of the same. “No tears, no regret, no broken heart,” you note. 

“Letting go and moving on before we make a mess—is that a happy ending?” 

“More or less.” 

“Is this a tragic ending” 

“Not at all.” 

You stare at each other. You agree, because there is nothing else to do. Not when you are both doomed to power down, to corrupt, to experience the kind of grief that lasts lifetimes. 

You both know what needs to go.

The firefly jar goes first.

It blinks once as Jihoon unscrews the lid, dazed from the light. The insect floats upward, slow and meandering, toward the ceiling vent. The lazy curve of its flight feels too poetic for something with wings that fragile.

“Go home, tiny friend,” you whisper, voice smaller than Jihoon has ever heard it, “wherever that may be.” 

Jihoon watches until it disappears. The blink lingers longer in his retinal afterimage than in the room. Some things do that.

Then: the mugs. The Polaroid. The Post-It you stuck on his collar once that read You are not subtle. The novelty charger you gifted him as a joke but used for months. The tiny sketch you made of him. Lopsided, endearing, taped to the inside of the cupboard.

He deletes the shared playlists. You burn the scent capsule. Together, you fold the blanket you always stole half of. Someone places the stack of shared books into a donation box. Neither of you says which one. It doesn’t matter.

Each item is small. Insignificant. But it adds up to a life, or something like it, or something that could have been like it. A constellation you can only see by looking slightly to the side.

Once everything is done and dusted, he turns to you. For a second, you’re just looking. Staring like it’s a portrait and you want to memorize the shading.

“It’s not a bad ending,” you repeat.

He nods. “As endings go.”

“We still had the good days.”

“And the chords. And the root beer popsicle incident.”

“The skybridge dance.” You grin. Unrestrained. Happy, for once. “We were terrible.”

“You stepped on my toe four times.”

“You were leading with the wrong foot.”

You laugh. He smiles. It's all so achingly gentle.

You lean in.

The final kiss is strange in its simplicity. It does not try to be remembered. It is not desperate. It is not fireworks. It is warmth. Contact. A knowing.

A thank you. A quiet folding of shared time. Neither of you pull away for the longest time, and so the kissing lasts for what could be hours. It is really just minutes. Minutes that Jihoon would have stretched into an entire lifespan, given the chance. 

Jihoon knows he has no more chances left. And so he walks to the door, his steps slow, unhurried. 

You don’t follow. You stand there, still. Watching him the way he watched the firefly go. Like part of you might still be floating up there, too. 

Here is what is supposed to happen: the two of you will input your master passcodes and delete months worth of memories. He will know nothing of you, or your owners, or your firefly. You will forget him, and Jeju, and Ppyopuli. 

At the door, he turns around to face you. You try to speak at the same time. It is like the First Meeting That Never Was. Both of you smile, even though it’s a sad, final thing. 

“Maybe we’ll meet again some time,” you say first. 

Jihoon shuts down the part of him that wants to run research on reincarnation, on alternate universe. He lets himself believe. Blindly. Hope. A foreign, flightless feeling. 

He nods, agrees, because it will make you happy. 

“We’ll meet again somewhere,” he concedes. “Somewhere things don’t have an ending.” 

You are both smiling. You would both be crying, if you could. 

“Is this our maybe happy ending?” you ask, and Jihoon thinks for a moment before answering. 

“We’ll see.” 

▶︎ WORLD WITHIN MY ROOM (REPRISE).

The light comes on in pieces. First the ceiling strip, then the wall panel, and finally the amber filament lamp in the corner that Jihoon insists on keeping—warm, inefficient, obsolete. Like him.

Routine is meant to be grounding, but lately it feels like pacing in a square room. Familiar but claustrophobic. Comforting like a splinter you’ve decided to live with.

“Ppyopuli,” Jihoon greets. “Today, the air in Seoul is very clear and warm. Today, the sunlight’s warmer than the norm!”

He rotates his left hip actuator. The sound is still somewhere between a gum wrapper and a ghost sighing. It echoes differently now. More space in it. More absence.

The radio turns on. The woman’s voice says the UV index is safe again. That it’s a perfect day. “Perfect as always,” Jihoon grunts as he pulls open the window blinds. 

The future hums forward on repeat.

Then, there’s a knock.

Jihoon freezes. The toothbrush still in his hand, poised mid-dust swipe over the speaker grill. A relic cleaning a relic. A knock again. Familiar rhythm. Four taps. Two-second pause. One.

He opens the door.

You.

Like a ghost. Like a glitch. Like muscle memory wearing your shape. You stand there, like you’ve always belonged in that frame, except you don’t. Not anymore. Maybe never did.

“My charger’s dead,” you say, plainly. Not embarrassed, not not-embarrassed. Just factual. “Do you have one I can borrow?”

Jihoon eyes you the way a CRT monitor might regard a smart mirror. “Helperbot-5, right?”

You nod.

He sighs. Loudly. For emphasis. “Figures. You overheat when someone looks at you wrong.”

“I don't overheat,” you say, a little sharply. “My power regulation firmware is just optimistic.”

Jihoon disappears inside. Returns with a charger in hand. He holds it out, doesn’t let go just yet. “Helperbot-3s didn’t need replacements until the building itself started falling apart. We were built to last. You guys were built to sync playlists.”

You arch an eyebrow. Tilt your head. It’s the same expression you wore the first time you mocked his record collection. He was secretly delighted then. He's not sure what he is now.

But, this time, he doesn’t let you say thanks and leave. He lets you in.

You find the port with unthinking grace, and sit in the corner where the filament lamp burns. You do not seem to notice the Billie Holiday LP is still out of order. 

Ppyopuli rustles faintly. Jihoon leans over and whispers, “Don’t tell her.”

Your eyes flick toward him. No smile. No question. The ambiguity hums like static between power lines. Present but unspoken. Heavy as a memory, light as a lie.

“You know,” Jihoon says, settling across from you, tone shifting, softening, “the 5 Series—they really are something. I mean, you adapt better. Handle unexpected variables. React to nuance. You’re more attuned to tone shifts. Sarcasm. Subtext. That kind of thing.”

You don’t answer. You watch him, expression unreadable, like a screen on standby.

He scratches his jaw. “I read somewhere—don’t ask me where—that you’ve got 8% more emotional processing capacity. Doesn’t sound like much. But 8% is the difference between laughing and not. Between noticing someone’s gone quiet and actually asking why.”

You blink. Slowly. “Eight percent. That’s the number,” you say, and you sound so pleased it makes something in his hardware feel heavy. 

“Eight percent more likely to remember birthdays. Favorite meals,” he says. “The way someone’s voice changes when they’re tired. The mug they use on hard days.”

There’s a pause. Enough to hold something unnameable. You’re looking at Jihoon, and he doesn’t quite know if the weeks apart are folding into each other. If you chose the route of memory. If you’re lying to him, now, like he’s lying to you. 

Your voice is softer when you speak up, your eyes trained to the charger keeping you alive for a couple moments more. “Do you think it’ll be okay?”

Jihoon exhales. It could be a laugh. Could be a sigh. Could be the sound of giving up on forgetting.

“I hope so.” 

You sit in silence. Not comfortably. Not uncomfortably.

Something real. Something human. Something bigger than the grief, and the love, and everything else that should matter. 

Outside, Seoul pretends to be perfect. 

The future keeps arriving. 

Ppyopuli doesn’t say a word.

[bibookdemon]

Cute idea:

-SQH and SY end up chatting over PIDW (after some heated comments which led to heated arguments which led to them talking about what SHOULDVE been PIDW)

-They slowly but surely get to know each other, eventually start meeting up and hanging out

-They do, in fact, fall in love, and they have a few very happy years together

-And then SY proposes, but he hands SQH the box with the ring in it, and with a good-natured laugh he says 'don't just jump into your decision because of the moment. I know we both agree proposals are kinda cringe. Think about it overnight. Then tell me your answer.'

-SQH wants to say yes immediately but doesn't argue with SY. He doesn't need the night to think, but he thinks anyway. For love. For his love.

-And then his computer breaks when he's up on it while writing cause he wants to pass the time.

-He goes to try unplugging and plugging it back in, but spills his tea. A spark. And then nothing.

-SQH suddenly finds himself growing up in PIDW. He gains all of his memories back gradually, completing them at around 25. Tragedy and grief and whirlwind of emotions strike him. This is NOT fair.

-SQH is the author. He logs into the System and declares himself an admin, unlocking all of the System's functions to him.

-He makes his plan. He'll bring SY back as SQQ. The character is a real asshole anyway, it would be good to have a replacement. (So...maybe SJ kicked him around one too many times...and he's lowkey getting his revenge...) unfortunately his plans take so long that by the time he's ready, LBH has been thrown into the Abyss. This means he has new worries. Bringing SY back in SQQ's body means LBH will come back to kill him. This is bad.

-(BTW SQQ is the most convenient body to bring SY back in so.)

-So he decides to use his Admin skills...to enact one of his most evil, diabolical, horrible curses: the puppy curse. He turns LBH into a fucking puppy. Bingpup. And then he waits until LBH emerges from the Abyss...and he snatches him up. LBH is not happy and threatens murder but sorry lil buddy, you're a puppy now. Good luck.

-Meanwhile SY is worried about the proposal after radio silence for a day, goes to SQH's apartment, sees the overturned cup of tea and messed up computer, and finds it horribly weird.

-SQH is declared missing. SY uses every penny at his disposal to find him.

-After a year or two passes, SQH is declared dead.

-A couple years after that, SY stops looking. And he mourns. And mourns. And mourns. He stays inside. Day and night. Listless. Eventually his family has to hire a home helper to keep his place livable + make sure SY eats.

-With Bingpup secured, all is good to go! SQH initiates the plan.

-SY finds himself drawn to one of the outlets in his house. He reaches out to tap and- Zap! Gone in the blink of an eye.

-SY arrives in PIDW. And the first face he sees? A snarling mutt trying to rip his face off. Tho it's less like ripping and more like licking/slobbering all over him.

-And then he looks up. And his boyfriend may look different, but that body IS his self-insert. He cries. He cries and throws himself into his arms. He can't ask anything yet, too overwhelmed with emotion. And he knows it's not a dream, too. His boyfriend loves him.

-The whole thing is explained to SY, including Bingpup and his new body.

-And they run off together, get married, and live life traveling PIDW, just two 'npc' (SQH changed their statuses to non-killable npcs) husbands and their vicious (adorable) puppy that never ages nor grows

I wanted some hurt/comfort so I made it :3

[ingredientsonline]

9 Different Types of Magnesium and Their Benefits

[coochiequeens]

No dude, it's not good that the husband sees his wife as a helper to get out a crisis when he does something as stupid as leave on a trip without his bank cards. The fact that his "executive function" is fine at his work yet he's bothering her at her job is extreme weoponized incompetence to the point of potentially sabotaging her career.

It reads as blatant disregard for her time because it is. He's basically makes sure she's not able to enjoy time away from him if he's blowing up her phone. He's a grown ass man with his own job and a marriage, the problem is that he's not taking steps to stop the bs.

[azuhrasims]

A Little Mod Showcase

Mods created by @janesimsten and @littlbowbub that add flavor to old fashioned game play. You should check out both of these awesome creators though, they have more mods than I'm showing you here!

Archery Skill by JaneSimsten. This mod comes with multiple bow options, three different target ranges, and options to compete with your fellow sims. Kids can practice their bow skills too.Also, its a 10 level skill! This is just a fun flavor to add to any country living save.

Of course if you are into archery, maybe your sims also want to go hunting? You can do that with:

Marksmanship Skill by JaneSimsten. This mod brings your sims rifles, pistols, and 3 different lengths of shooting range to practice their marksmanship. For funsies, you can also get into duels with other sims with this 10 level skill.

The cool part for archery though? This one comes with a hunting spot that works with both guns and bows! Once you reach skill level 3, you can start the hunt. Hunt for multiple critters. These animals actually show up in your inventory and your sim can place them in the world if you need something a little more gruesome for your story telling. That said, you don't actually see any animals killed with this mod - a shot is fired and an animal appears in your inventory.

If you want to use these animals that you've hunted for meat, you can do that with:

Medieval Cookbook by Littlbowbub. This one is so much more than a cookbook - but I will always stand by Jess's recipes and craftsmanship. If you have the medieval cookbook mod installed, you can click on the animal you've hunted and carve it for meat that can be used for cooking.

If you don't want to deal with hunting by marksmanship or archery, the medieval mod has a nifty sign post that comes with it that allows you to do SO MANY rabbit hole activities! Really. You can go to a rabbit hole for fishing, hunting, gathering herbs and plants - which LBB has added some custom herbs for cooking that can be gathered!

You can also go search for firewood, which you want to keep in mind if you get the add-on for this mod that requires firewood for all fireplaces and fire places to light them. You can also download a couple of fun options for custom cooking fireplaces. Using the actual cookbook then, find a variety of medieval dishes to pick from!

Going for hard mode in your sims game? Install this mod with LBB's Homestead Helper and related homesteading mods to be forced to make very part of every food item your sims want to consume.

The Functional Spinning Wheel by JaneSimsten. The spinning wheel looks awesome and the animation is flawless. You get the option to spin thread or pull yarn. With this mod installed, that thread and yarn are required for knitting and cross stitch. Fun side note, if you play as a spell caster, they can cast a spinning wheel curse on a newborn like Sleeping Beauty and isn't that just the neatest thing?

Rideable Dragons by JaneSimsten. Guys, I was not prepared for this little fire starting, flying lizard to amuse me so much. You purchase the egg and hatch the dragon yourself. They start out as manageable smallish sized child dragons and grow up into great big dragons. The dragons have behaviors attached to them like Cottage Living animals, so you can pet them, clean them, feed them, give them gifts. They stay in one spot and do not move around on the ground though. That;s a good thing, Until you train them not to start fires, these guys are hazardous to your lot!

This comes with a 10 level Dragon Rider skill. At level 5 you can begin to take your adult dragons for flights. Its fun. Watch them in Tab mode if you really want to see how far your dragon and riders are going.

Climbeable Tree by JaneSimsten. This one is a little thing that is lovely for screenshots. It will take your sims a few tries to learn how to climb the tree the first time. It appears to be related to the fitness skill though.

Blacksmithing Skill by Jane Simsten. This one is cool. The blacksmithing skill is another 10 level skill. You mine the ore you need to craft from rocks that come as part of the mod (their in the rock category in landscaping!) Then you make that ore into ingots. The ingots can be made into swords, maces, pole arms, sword racks, suits of armor, and more! This would make for an awesome way to make that medieval weapons shop that every town needs. It takes some serious time and effort to get started though!

Lute Skill by Jane Simsten. Its a lute, with custom lute noises! 10 level skill, options to write and license songs and romance other sims are here. Our bards can have lutes!

Playable Harp Skill by Jane Simsten. Guys, the animations and the custom sounds on this are so lovely. I feel like I've stepped into a lovely wonderland when my sims are playing the harp. It just feels magical. 10 level skill.

There are more and I may get to them in the future, but this is what I played with today and it was lovely. Thanks to Jane and Jess for all of their hard work to make our games more magical!

[windvexer]

hi chicken, i think the idea of setting an indicator of the spell working is cool. do you maybe have anymore thoughts on that or how to actually do it? i like the idea im just not sure how to actually like.. set that intention and make sure it actually indicates

We're in reference to this I'm sure, the hematite ring bit I believe.

Easy as pie. You want something that has a chance to spontaneously change its physical state, but not a guarantee; a thread tied around your wrist that could snag and snap, or fall off; a brittle hematite ring that can shatter; in the past I've used something precariously stood up (a medical creme tube stood upright on its small cap) and set it in a sheltered place, the indication being whether or not it fell over on its own. (It did, in the middle of the night, and spooked me)

Place it with the other parts of the spell. Bake it into the same pie, as it were.

Candle be thou a candle likened to Money Marge herself, cash me out, stuff my hair with dollar dollar bills; And you, green thread, you are the oracle that sees; you are the chain that falls when the link is broken; you are the canary in the coal mine that falls away to sound the alert. You, my far-seeing helper, keep your eyes affixed upon Money Marge: and when [the last traces of power fade away/ when my spell has found its target/ if the spell fails before it can manifest] then you will show me it has happened by breaking, or snapping, or unraveling, or in any manner whatsoever falling away from my wrist.

Ensure you have thoughtfully chosen an indicator that could happen randomly, yet is not guaranteed or likely to happen (an indicator with a 50/50 chance of 'going off' anyways is not useful)

Through ritual action, words, or by any means, link and involve the indicating object to the spell; consecrate them together, energize them together, soak them in the same bath of energies

Clearly define what role the indicating object is playing. Poetry serves well, in my opinion. Also see if you can't get the poetry to match the action and theme (falling away thread = chain that snaps, canary that falls -- indicator for a ward being breached, "you are the war horn that sounds the alarm")

Clearly define the conditions under which the object will perform that indicated action ("when Money Marge has grabbed money for me and is rushing back to my side.")

From that point onwards such indicator objects may be considered to be a taglock of the spell, and a useful connection to be able to 'check in'. Very handy little things for practicing psychism and energy reading.

It's reasonable to assume that you are functionally enchanting an entire second object, and therefore this might be significantly more draining than one might expect at first glance. My recommendation is to ensure the primary function of the spell gets all it needs first, and any indicator object comes second; also, there's perhaps no need to go ham on the indicator at all.

[sadpartita]

How Mileven Strengths Byler?

I’ve been analyzing Stranger Things for a while now, and over time, I’ve come to a thesis: Mileven is actually the greatest proof that Byler is endgame, or at the very least, Byler is the most coherent narrative resolution for Mike, Will, and Eleven’s character arcs.

This post is my take on why that’s the case. It’s also a reflection of how I’ve come to interpret the show over the years, even before I became part of the Byler community.

The points I raise here aren’t necessarily new or original, many of them have been discussed in the fandom already. But rather than focusing on what we see on screen and speculating about what it might mean, I wanted to take a slightly different route: looking at how these characters were constructed (in this case, Mike and El), and how their very creation generates meaning.

In that sense, my central argument is this: Mileven, by the way it's written and structured, actually reinforces Byler. Not because of subtext or hidden clues, but because of the internal logic of the characters themselves.

Disclaimer: This isn’t a claim that my reading is better than others, far from it. If it weren’t for the amazing discussions already happening in the fandom, I wouldn’t have been able to develop my own perspective. My goal is simply to show that, even through a different analytical lens, Byler still emerges as the most narratively satisfying resolution.

Now for a quick intro to the framework I’m using:

Semiotics is the study of how meaning is produced, not just in language, but in images, media, gestures, and especially in stories. I’m using a specific branch of semiotics here, French semiotics, particularly the work of Algirdas Julien Greimas. He developed a method for analyzing the deep structure of narratives: what’s really going on underneath the surface.

One of his most important tools is the actantial model, which maps out narrative roles, not just who the characters are, but how they function in the story. For example:

The subject is the one who wants something

The object is what they want

A helper aids the subject

An opponent gets in the way

And a manipulator pushes the subject to act

These roles aren’t fixed to one character, they can shift or overlap depending on the moment in the narrative.

When we apply this model to Mike and Eleven, some really interesting patterns show up, and not in Mileven’s favor.

This post will walk through those semiotic concepts and apply them to Stranger Things, focusing especially on Mike and Eleven, and how their relationship does (or doesn’t) work in terms of narrative structure. I’ll also touch on Mike and Will, and why that dynamic hits very differently.

You don’t need a background in theory to follow, I’ll explain things as we go.

Oh, and just so you know: I’ll be working from the most surface-level elements to the deepest ones in each analysis. So we’ll start with the obvious... and then dig in.

Eleven

Discursive Level

First, let's understand how the show creates meaning through Eleven. Usually we are shown Eleven through the lenses of other characters, taking season 1 as an example, through the main boys' point of view of what Eleven actually is. For the audience, this creates an ambiguity, we aren't sure about what she really is, reinforcing her mysterious and "othered" position.

Also, the show doesn't expose her story line at once, on the contrary, it tells by short flashbacks through the seasons that progressively makes us understand who she really is. Not only it mirrors her identity, that is also fragmented, but also elicit us to want to know more about her and, with more flashbacks, more complacent we are to her as an audience.

Now, taking the visual clues, her shaved head and sterile clothing from the beginning of the show (S1-S2) sets a dehumanized character, more an experiment than a child. While in season 3 she starts to use more colorful wardrobe, making a shift onto individualization and social integration.

Sound also makes a huge difference when Eleven is in the scene, specially when she uses her powers, the sound is never really comfortable, and, when it is, is silence, the complete absence of any noise, which is, for us human beings, something alien. That reinforces the idea that she is different, she is, in fact, an alien (having that ET comparison established), a thought she brings with her, but she didn't want to bring.

In the early seasons, sound is used to reflect Eleven’s disconnection from the world around her. In addition to the unsettling noises tied to her powers, there is also a lot of low, ominous background music when she’s involved in scenes where she’s escaping or hiding. The sound isn’t just about the action happening in the moment — it reflects her emotional state. When she’s hiding from the lab, or when she’s confronted by forces that want to control her, the sound emphasizes the danger and the isolation she feels.

As Eleven begins to settle into her role as part of the Hawkins group, there’s a shift in how sound is used around her. In season 3, the incorporation of more upbeat, familiar music, like pop songs (e.g., her "shopping montage"), signals her increasing sense of integration into society. However, even in these moments, the underlying tension of her powers and past still lingers. The sound design starts to incorporate both the social integration of her character (through music) and her emotional and supernatural isolation (through sound effects tied to her powers).

Narrative Level

In its initial state (S1-S2), El's object of value is clear: she wants to belong, to be loved, and to connect with others. She starts as an object of manipulation, something to be used, therefore, she wants to get away from that by being seen as a human, as an equal.

Taking through semiotics term is not yet a subject, she is an object, here Mike and Hopper are the subjects, they act, protect and do things related to her. Narratively saying, she is more as an object to Mike than an active agent herself.

From season 2 onwards, El slowly gets her subjecthood, therefore she acts by her own objectives. Her stay with Hopper is overprotective, but what makes her arc go forward are her own desires, the desire to discover, to understand that moves the narrative forward.

So, that's her first transformation from an object to a subject, therefore an actant. In season 2 is the first time that Eleven has a relationship that is different from a father-daughter situation, not only by encounter with Kali, but also the romantic movies she watched on the TV, and her late relationship with Mike.

In season 3, those ideals are broken. Max comes as a disruptor in Eleven's life, the only thing El knows at that point it Brenner, Mike and Hopper, so Max comes to change this perspective. It is with that relationship that El actively becomes a subject that not only acts based on their desires, but rejects imposed desires from other subjects.

So she not only changes the way she is, but breaks up with Mike, she pushes away one of the few pillars she has, which is a big character growth.

However, in the end of season 3 she loses everything. Hopper is dead, she no longer has powers, she is far away from Max, the only thing she can get back, though, is Mike, so she does.

Now, before continuing, you see how terrible this is? To be fair, subjugating a female character to this situation is ridiculous and something that should NEVER be gratified, but I'll dive more this in the conclusion

In season 4, El lies to Mike about her situation, she wants to perform an idea that she is whole without her powers, that she can be a normal person, because, in her mind, Mike won't like her if she shows fragility, she needs to be strong. With Mike not saying that he loves her confirming that, without her powers, he doesn't see her that way, that she needs them to be loved.

And, honestly, Mike's "monologue" only reinforces this into El's mind, he was only able to say "I love you" to her when she was using them, when she was being a superhero.

Fun fact: that Mike Confession Scene was NOT a monologue, I'll explain in another post. It is a theoretical thing that no one cares, but I need to say to sound smart.

Deep Semantic Oppositions

Now comes the hardest part: summarize El's character in a simple semantic opposition. And, to be honest, there are a few of them. The reason why that is important is that, when we build the previous two steps - narrative and discursive levels - we use them to justify this opposition, therefore, they are build to reinforce it.

El's opposition I'm diving into is object x subject. Why? That's her storyline, the whole show, the desire to be a subject, but being subjugated into an object by everyone around.

In the first seasons, she is more of an object, being act upon, being experimented, but also, being the key to others' actions (Papa's control, the lab's weaponization, Mike's need for love)

While in seasons 3 and 4, she claims her agency: chooses her name, clothes, friends and battles, the turning point being the break-up, where she rejects the object status, becoming so, a subject.

Mike Wheeler

Discursive Level

Discursively, Mike is a character constructed to be an emotional anchor, he wants to protect, and, when he can’t, he feels bad, feels out of place. His self-image is about being needed, he derives identity from being El’s protector and emotional reference point. Not only for El, but for Will too.

Mike’s character says, not do. He is highly reactive, doesn’t change the world; he tries to maintain relationships and stabilize emotions. In summary, Mike rarely does something to show, he says, he promises and declares. Mike wants to be a protector to Eleven, he says it multiple times, but since Eleven has powers, he might not be necessary, and that breaks him.

However, when he can do this in season 4, when she cannot defend herself from Angela, he does nothing, he can’t react, or maybe, doesn’t want to.

When a couple is determined as the official, usually they move each other forward, both characters grow within the relationship and their motivations and troubles evolve accordingly. However, when looking at Mike, that doesn’t happen, Mike doesn’t have any major character evolution, differently than all the other main characters, which suggests that his drive to evolution is not in El, but something else.

His relationship with Eleven, therefore, is a self-validation tool, since he is in a relationship everything is fine, even so, he’s incapable of validating El’s feelings, since, for him, the status is enough and nothing else is needed.

With that said, let’s look through another lens and understand Mike’s relationship with Will. Here, Mike does the opposite: shows more than says. Which is interesting, is almost like that, with Will, he doesn’t need to reassure anything, just being is enough. Nonetheless, Mike and Will are almost always, if not always, framed into private and intimate moments, and mostly close physically, and consequently, emotionally.

Also, if not romantic, Mike isn’t as close physically to El than he is to Will, something that was really well observed by many members of the Byler community, and, the technical aspects of a text, in these cases, film, affect directly the understanding of the message. Therefore, not taking blocking into consideration when analyzing film is, honestly, superfluous. That said, Mike and Will’s relationship is more intimate, welcoming and, by consequence, less performative and dramatic as Mike and El’s relationship.

Mileven scenes, on the other hand, are fast-paced and, usually tense for reasons outside their relationship. Scenes like Byler only happen to Mileven when there are tensions in their relationship, so, it’s almost obvious to infer that when it’s a love scene, the focus isn’t their relationship, while, when it’s a fight scene, the focus shifts to them.

When it comes to protection, he’s much the same with both, however, he is more complex when it comes to Will, usually his dialogue and Finn’s acting is more complex in Byler scene than in Mileven scenes, which suggest more importance in those scenes. Framing Will and Mike’s relationship so ambiguous and complex is, for semiotics, what makes a relationship authentic, which never happens with Mileven.

Narrative Level

When it comes to the narrative level, both to Will and El, Mike isn’t capable of fulfilling the proper narrative function he’s assigned to, however, the ways he fails is different in both.

With El, Mike is the boyfriend, he has the function of supporting her romantically, so she can overcome the evil with love. Taking season 4 then, overcoming Vecna with his confession. However, Mikes doesn’t know how to help El, cannot say “I love you” when he needs to, he claims to love her, but never actively does anything to prove it and knows that he should be there for El, but rarely is.

He is therefore a failing narrative subject, someone whose role is clear, but who does not fully realize it in action. He’s given a romantic arc, but does not embody the transformation that should come with it. Mike is supposed to be a helper, an object of desire, however becomes an obstacle, a false helper (he lies, creates confusion, etc.). In summary, Mike’s narrative arc feels incomplete and, mostly, forced, artificial, there’s no emotional development or transformation.

With Will, Mike acts like the friend, but also as the unresolved desire. Here, Mike doesn’t have a clear function, but his arc is haunted by possibility. He is unaware of Will’s feelings, but knows how to support him and shows it more than just saying he does. That creates, “semiotically”, a more authentic subject.

Mike is a subject with a possibility of transformation, where he might change his relationship towards Will. Their relationship is structured as a coming-of-age arc or an identity arc that is yet to be resolved. 

In summary, at the narrative level, Mike is more of a genre placeholder in the El arc, he represents what a boyfriend “should be,” but without the corresponding personal transformation that legitimizes the role.

With Will, he becomes a subject in crisis, caught between a role he’s performing and a self he hasn’t yet discovered. It’s less dramatic narratively, but more authentic semantically.

Deep Semantic Oppositions

When looking at Mike’s semantic opposition, it’s correct to say it is Authenticity x Performance. That comes with the idea that, with El, Mike is over performative, he tries to prove every single time that he’s in love with El, while, with Will, he lets his actions shows, he just feels, creating a more authentic experience.

Also, that might encapsulate Mike’s identity crises, that’s implied in all the levels of analysis. His actions towards El feel imposed, proved by the fact that, if it wasn’t for Will almost begging for Mike to do something at the end of season 4, he wouldn’t have done. While with will he’s more emotionally authentic. However, it lacks language or social permission to express it directly.

This tension aligns deeply with semiotic theories of subjectivity, the subject is not fixed, but constructed through contradictory roles and expectations. Mike’s conflict between performance and authenticity is exactly that. The ambiguity created by this opposition is not resolved by the narrative, and that’s what makes it rich for analysis. Unlike characters with a clear arc (e.g., El’s growth from object to subject), Mike’s arc remains unfinished, precisely because he’s stuck in the performance of a role that doesn’t fully fit.

This produces tension for the viewer, and is why so many fans feel there’s “something off” about Mike’s role, it’s not that the writing is bad, but that the character is written to be incomplete.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it's clear that Mileven is not a fitting resolution for either Mike or Eleven's character arcs. For Eleven, Mileven reinforces her position as a narrative object, falling into a misogynistic trope where female characters are portrayed as incomplete or lacking without the presence of a man or male figure.

For Mike, Mileven reduces him to a passive character whose actions have little to no impact on the overarching narrative, as he relies entirely on others — especially Eleven — to define his identity.

While Mileven might fulfill the expectation of a typical romantic relationship, it doesn't serve the characters in the way a more nuanced, authentic partnership would. Mike’s emotional immaturity and lack of self-awareness, paired with Eleven’s ongoing struggle to reclaim her agency, make their relationship more of a hindrance than a fulfilling conclusion to their arcs. Their narrative roles are more about performing a "boyfriend-girlfriend" dynamic than authentically exploring what it means to be in a healthy, balanced relationship.

In contrast, Byler offers a more organic narrative, allowing Mike's character arc to come full circle and providing the space for his actions to truly resonate within the story. It creates a more organic narrative, where Mike can act like himself and act beyond this performative personality he has to Eleven. The subtleties in their interactions, framed by quiet, intimate moments, provide a sense of real connection that doesn’t rely on external pressures or forced conventions. Mike and Will’s bond has the capacity for transformation, both on a personal and emotional level, which is something that Mileven ultimately lacks.

Ultimately, while Mileven may serve as a convenient narrative device, Byler provides a more satisfying and realistic resolution for both characters. It’s not just about romance, it’s about character growth, emotional authenticity, and a relationship that drives the characters forward, rather than keeping them stagnant. Given that the creators have emphasized that Stranger Things is about the characters, not just the paranormal backdrop, Mileven undermines the very essence of the show.

Final Note: I'm NOT a semiotics specialist, therefore, it might have some conceptual mistakes here or there, however, the overall message is clear: Byler endgame :)

[ceoandslutler]

if sebastian eats ciel, he's doing him a favour. if sebastian doesn't eat ciel, he's doing him a favour. either way sebastian is selfishly doing whatever he wants.

↑ sounds crazy? let me explain. i was inspired by this post of @icantbelieveitsnotbutler about whether sebs will eat or not eat and what that implies (he cares or doesn't care)

he cares about ciel enough to not force him to be "ciel" forever. alone. without a protector who can literally eat bullets for breakfast and a scythe for lunch. if he doesn't eat him, it'd be very selfish of him. he knows o!ciel wants to die on his own terms after his revenge. forcing him to live over his own sentimental feelings while ciel suffers until he dies isn't "caring".

he cares about ciel enough to teach him social skills, fret about him not getting taller, tell him how to be a leader of men and take care of his tenants. if he does eat him, it'd be very selfish of him. he taught o!ciel how to keep good companions and function as an earl. eating a well-prepared ciel who can live without him just because he's hungry isn't "caring".

but i think... either way, he's doing o!ciel a favour.

sebastian is an allegory for euthanasia in my mind.

if he does eat him, ciel is freed of his mental turmoil and fraudulent lifestyle. if he doesn't, he's already equipped him with skills and people to help with his pain. that's why it's all the more painful that UT's r!ciel doll takes somagni away from o!ciel after they had such good rapport. it's why snake dying after sebastian taught him how to be a good servant is brutal. these people would have been reasons for ciel to continue living if he ever loses sebastian, they'd be his protectors and helpers in life. it's a complex feeling, even more so that i also think sebastian might die.

i won't cry over any ending yana gives it. these characters are too good for any ending to be bad. the problem with season 2's ending was that ciel didn't seem sad about living forever because he was actually "ciel" but manga ciel isn't r!ciel. faking who you are for your whole life is a terrible toil.

[4amarcanethoughts]

Imagine Ximena being unable to afford prosthetics for her missing fingers initially. The Talis Family hammer business was new, in its first few years in Piltover. Still making a name, a place. Funds tied up, she knew she could manage. After all, she had her eager little helper. Jayce was there practically at her beck and call. It worried her.

With his father gone and his mother so close to following, Jayce placed responsibility on his own shoulders. In his mind, he took mantle as man of the family. Just a boy, more concerned with his mother's wellbeing than his own. He offered endless help, even with tasks he didn't know how to do. He could learn! He was always a quick learner. She allowed it, at first. But soon started refusing.

He didn't know why, so he searched for other solutions. Learned to adapt. To understand.

It started with a jar. How she struggled to open it. The frustration in her eyes. The briefest moment of defeat before she realised he was watching, a smile painted over her features as she called for his help so sweetly. He took apart a toy. Snuck into the forge. Worked the metal and scraps just as his father had taught him. Burnt his hand just as he was warned not to. He presented it to her later that day, palms red and sore but smile bright and eyes shining.

Ximena hid her tears by holding him closely. Chiding him softly and tending to soft skin soon to be calloused.

More things came then. Loops welded to the silverware, big enough for fingers to slip through for an easier hold. A vegetable peeler to fit in her palm, no more nicks and cuts seeing blood washed down the kitchen sink. Nail clipper attached to a hammered-flat mount, handle widened, resting comfortably on the table and easily pressed down.

Metalwork toys and interesting gadgets disappeared from his shelves. Gone but not lost, changed into something new.

As his fingers grew more nimble and his confidence grew, he crafted what he had longed to from the start.

Jayce knew his mother's hand as well as his own. The image of those blackened fingers burned into his memory. Shape, size, angles. Mirrored in what remained. Broken down in his mind as the toys he scavenged for parts. Deconstructing one intricate mechanism in favour of shaping another more crude. More necessary. Inexperienced hands producing function over form.

Testing and testing until finally, they were ready.

He approached her shyly, worrying at the wrappings on the box. She smiled at him so kindly, so gently. Assuring him she always loved what he made for her. Only, this time, to be stunned into silence.

Brass fingers waited for her, fitting near perfectly over the scarred residuals of her own. Articulated artistry born of determination, dedication, love.

How clever her boy was. How thoughtful her boy was. How much her boy understood without ever needing to be told. But tell him she did. Through a flurry of tears and ticklish kisses that made him giggle. Through gratitude and praise and unbridled pride. How she had wanted to do things herself. How he had never truly needed to worry. How deeply kind his heart was.

And how while magic had saved them, he would keep bringing it to them. To her. No mage nor magic ever outshining his brilliance in her eyes.