Word Count: 1,128

They halted all projects in order to build her and make her perfect. She was exactly as Jongdae remembered her, from the gentle small pink lips, to the large eyes, to the soft cheekbones.

“There’s still time to stop this. Jongdae. Please. Listen to me,” Baekhyun pleaded once again.

“No Baek. This will be fine and then we’ll have her back,” Jongdae insisted. “Just put her heart in and we can continue.” Baekhyun debated crushing the thing and refusing to build her but he knew that Jongdae would be able to find someone else to comply with his request, although he wasn’t sure whether he would be able to live with the blood on his hands when his prediction came into fruition.

“I’ve already got most of the program written out. Can you read over it?” Jongdae handed the laptop to Baekhyun, who scanned over it quickly, checking for any errors in input or personality.

“It looks good…”

“I just need the last bit.”

“You mean the looping algorithm?”

“Yeah. I was wondering where you think it should go.”

“Probably back here,” Baekhyun said, indicating a line about a third into the program.

“Yeah. That looks good.” Jongdae nodded and then Baekhyun typed out the code, fingers flying across the keyboard.

Baekhyun entered the last lines of code for Sulli. “Are you sure you want to do this? There is still time to turn back. Really. We can scrap this all, right now, and get back to our lives,” he pleaded one last time.

“No. We’ve done it. We’ll have her back Baek. Don’t you want that?”

“I would, if the stakes weren’t so high…”

“Whatever. You’ll be glad we did this.” Jongdae snatched the computer back and then downloaded it to a disk.

She had her hands folded peacefully over her stomach and looked exactly like their Sulli. Jongdae had even dressed her in some clothes she had left behind. She looked just as if she were asleep. She looked like she did before she got sick. Baekhyun couldn’t look at her. Even if his friend had deluded himself into believing the illusion, Baekhyun knew that nothing good could come of it.

“It’s time to see Sulli again,” Jongdae said before quickly downloading the software into her. He didn’t see the pained look on Baekhyun’s face as her heart began to whir. Her eyes opened slowly.

“Jongdae?” She sat up and smiled at him.

“Sulli,” he smiled and hugged her. Her skin felt soft, warm, and familiar. “I missed you,” he whispered.

“I missed you too,” she replied in the familiar soft and pure voice. Baekhyun knew that no matter how much she looked and acted like Sulli, she was not. He turned away, unable to look at her.

--

For a while, Jongdae was happy with Sulli. Baekhyun learned to tolerate her presence without vomiting, which he did the first day, once Jongdae had returned to his home from the workshop. That was only at the beginning. After a year, he soon realised the emptiness of her words and voice. He realised that Sulli’s glow was no longer there behind the chocolate eyes.

One day, Jongdae came into the workshop without her. “She’s not, it’s not Sulli. She’s not our Sulli, my Sulli.” The look of anguish tore Baekhyun’s heart to shreds. He knew this was coming but he couldn’t do anything about it. “She looks like her, speaks like her, sounds like her, but she isn’t her.” Tears were streaming down his face now.

“Baek, what have I done?”

“I’m sorry, Dae. This is my fault. It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“It’s my fault. I was foolish and haughty. I thought I could bring her back…” Baekhyun hugged his friend, not knowing what else he could do.

“We both thought that we could. We both missed her. I would have done the same if she were my girlfriend.”

“What can I do now? Every time I see her. I can’t help but see the similarities but know the differences. She is Sulli but she isn’t my Sulli… Every time I see her, it makes my heart swell and makes me sick to my stomach.”

“You can deactivate her…”

“No. I can’t. That would be like killing her a second time. I can’t do that. I can’t get rid of her because I’ll always know that I lost her twice, once by my own hand.”

“Please. Jongdae, please get rid of her. You’ll go mad just like the others. Sometimes you just can’t replace someone and you shouldn’t try. This was traumatic, I get that, but you shouldn't have done it. You shouldn’t have tried to bring her back…” Looking at Jongdae’s face as he said this tore his heart apart, but he needed to tell his friend after all of this time. Maybe Jongdae could still be saved, he had thought at the time.

He sighed. “You’re right Baek. I’ll deactivate her.” Baekhyun didn't realise what Jongdae had meant at the time, or the words that went unsaid.

--

“Baek. Can you come by my place when we finally do this?”  the message from Jongdae read.

“Sure. I’ll be there in five,” Baekhyun responded. He didn’t notice that Jongdae didn’t send a reply. He always had to have the last word in a conversation, but not this time. Baekhyun found him at his house, leaning on Sulli’s shoulder as they sat side-by-side with his eyes closed. He could have been asleep, except that his chest was not rising and falling and his face was slowly paling. Sulli, too, was gone. Her heart stopped when Jongdae’s did.

Baekhyun could only stand before the scene, tears streaming from his eyes. The scene haunted him; it still haunted him. He felt guilt that he hadn’t tried harder to stop his friend from destroying himself. He felt guilt that he didn’t have the heart to deactivate Sulli. They were both alone in the world at the time, but at least they had one another to cling to when things got bad. Not after that.

Now he was alone. He spent two and a half empty years alone, making mecha for those who had also lost loved ones or who needed companions. For the first couple months, he would turn to Jongdae, or where Jongdae used to be, asking for help. “Dae? Is this the right…” There was no one there beside him in the empty workshop anymore. Eventually, he began to write the program that would either revolutionise mecha or bring about his own downfall. That was how Kyungsoo was born. Baekhyun built him in hopes of fulfilling Jongdae’s original dream, of being able to truly bring someone back to life, or at least create a new life.

A/N: About Jongdae/end of Jongdae arc. I'm super sorry about this. Jongdae was my first bias and I'm killing him off like this. So Baekhhyun is just reminiscing and not actually telling Kyungsoo what happened; just a clarification there. So this is why Baekhyun cries when he thinks of his best friend. 

Also about any inconsistencies. I wrote this before I wrote chapters 5-10 so it might sound a little strange. For now I'm going to just be posting chapters and then I'm going back and editing it. Thank you for subscribing, dropping comments, and upvoting!