“You need to get out more,”

Key’s blunt statement made Taemin blink at his programmer in surprise. He hadn’t been with his creators for more than three days yet; the dogs had just seemed to accept him as part of the household this morning. They had been sitting on the couch, blankly staring at a rerun of a reality show that wasn’t as interesting as the commercials had boasted.

“Jonghyun said—“

“Forget him,” Kibum cut the android’s response off with a dramatic wave of his hand. Was he trying to bat the words away like an annoying bug? He knew well enough that the scientist didn’t want their creation going very far for the time being. “Let’s send you to school,” The grin that sprawled itself over the human’s face was Cheshire-like enough to make Taemin feel uneasy. Hopefully Jjong would get back from the grocery store soon.

“What good is school? I literally have encyclopedias for brains,” The robot was learning sass from the snarky programmer very well as of late.

Key didn’t appreciate his student putting practice to his lessons at the moment, and his grin turned into an annoyed glare. “Social experiment, it’s the best place for you to meet other young people,”

“I am barely a month old, I don’t think I have many peers with similar intellect,” the drawling tone of sarcasm was an easy one to master, and Taemin found that he enjoyed playing with his creators like this.

“Shut up, I’m talking about college, not preschool,” Kibum’s eyes rolled as he let out a huffy sigh of exasperation at the bot’s attitude. “I’ll talk to Jjong, we can enroll you in the next semester at our intern’s school if he’s really that worried,”

“Do I even have a legal identity? How am I supposed to apply?” Taemin wasn’t dumb. No, he would be considered a genius if he was human. But he had never attended elementary school, let alone graduated from high school.

“Get your GED, it’ll be easy for you, I doubt you’d even have to bother to study,” Key was examining his nails now, a habit for when he was deceptively deep in thought. “I can take care of identity stuff. Make yourself up a backstory. Foreign exchange student? What country do you want to be from?” the technician was babbling now.

“Why can’t I be from here?” The robot frowned, feeling a patriotic affection toward the government that funded his creation.

“Too many people from different places. You can’t tell a different story to everyone you meet and people will recognize if you weren’t from their hometown. But if you want, you can be born here, but grew up in another country?” Kibum was getting more animated as he spoke; he loved challenges like this. It was like he was pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes and hiding a secret in plain sight.

Taemin hummed in understanding, pressing his lips together as his mind wandered into itself and away from his body. “Can we talk to Jonghyun later? I don’t want to do anything behind his back,”

“Loosen up,” Key nudged the robot’s ribs playfully. “You need to live a little,”

**********

Kibum’s aunt’s  friend’s nephew who grew up in America had been the backstory the three of them decided on after convincing Jonghyun that Taemin wouldn’t be compromised in school. He had been excited the night before, the bot clearly remembered forcing himself into stasis earlier than usual in attempt to make the time pass quicker, but now as he stared at the big stone house of learning, he couldn’t help but feel a little apprehensive. The familiar face of Minho at his side was a comfort, though the intern seemed a little uncomfortable standing next to an android he had performed surgery on previously.

“It’s big,” Taemin’s voice was crackly as he whispered, like a poorly tuned radio.

“It’s not that bad,” Minho shrugged and pulled his bag higher on his shoulder. The intern was in his last semester before graduation and taking his exam to become a doctor while Taemin would be considered a freshman. Did all freshies feel this pressure when they entered the campus for the first time?

General Writing was his first class of the day. Taemin, despite being able to literally pull up a campus map in his head, was grateful that Minho came to walk him to his first class. The senior didn’t have to be at his first class of the day for another hour, but his presence was a comfort even though they walked in silence.

“This is your lecture hall, okay? What other classes are you taking?” As they stopped beside a plain door, Minho looked at the android’s schedule for the tenth time that morning.

“Nothing today until Psycology 101 this afternoon,” he answered easily.

“I’ll see you later?” the uncertain intern let out an awkward smile of embarrassment.

“Yeah,” Taemin smiled and waved as the only familiar face here turned and hurried away.

He stared at the door for another minute before taking a breath and entering. Only a few students were gathered so far, a small number of them were starting to introduce themselves among each other.

Taemin dropped his bag off at one of the empty seats before joining the group with a shy smile.

“Hi, I’m Taemin,” he bowed shyly, hoping his etiquette wasn’t as outdated as Key had for earlier.

“Hey! Amber, nice to meet you,” a face nearly as androgynous as Taemin’s own gave him a friendly smile as she held her hand out in greeting.

The android nervously shook her hand, though Amber’s friendliness put him more at ease.

“She’s American, don’t mind her manners,” another female spoke as she playfully punched the first in the arm. “I’m Min,”

“Oh, really?” Taemin spoke in unaccented English, smiling at the pair of girls.

“You speak English?”

“Where did you learn?”

The robot regretted showing off after the pair began to berate him with questions of his origin in the foreign language. What could he say? That he was a robot preprogrammed with every known language both in use and dead?

“I grew up abroad,” he gave a proud smile, though it was faked. He didn’t like lying to these people he had already come to regard as friends.

“Me too, well, I went to high school in America,” Min spoke in Korean again, to Taemin’s relief.

“Kevin and I were born in Cali,” Amber gestured to another very pretty male. In the back of his mind, Taemin thought that the pair could switch faces and look a little bit more like their respective es instead of the genderless image they gave off.

Their conversation of mixed Korean and English drew to an end as the professor took charge of the class and called them to order. Taemin left the hall at the end of the lesson with new numbers in his phone and a promise to Kevin and Amber that they’d hang out this weekend.