Chen covered his mouth shortly after the noise left it and slowly he backed up onto the couch, standing when he had enough room in front of him. He went to open his mouth again but decided against it after seeing the other’s reaction just from him being startled. ‘Who is he’ the unit asked himself ‘Why did he wake me up?’. Chen stood forward slightly and went to open his mouth, however the taller interrupted him.

“Ah- I’m sorry!” He bowed his head “Wrong room” and with an obvious look of embarrassment he ran off, leaving a dazed Chen alone again in the now dimly lit room. The unit sat for a few moments before making a move to close the door, deciding that he had rested enough. He flicked on the television, the news was over and more cheesy shows were airing, Chen settled in for yet another ‘days of our lives’ run off.

Before long the unit found himself dozing off again, the lack of stimulation making his circuits run slow, he would have shut off again if it wasn’t for loud banging on his flimsy door. “Chen! There’s a problem with one of the machines! I need you to fix it, hurry up” Chen groaned, sitting up and turning off the tv. He opened the door and came face to face with his manager who gave him the room number. “Be quick about it” he said as he pushed the unit off in the direction of the room. Chen rolled his eyes, he didn’t know why he thought that stranger could have possibly been his manager, he was the loudest man in existence, not to mention you could hear him coming from miles away.

Of course, the room he was sent to was on the other side of the building, it didn’t help that he was expected to be there quickly. ‘To hell with them, they’re probably just some bratty twelve year olds’ he thought, keeping a leisurely pace all the way to the room.

--

Tao could have strangled his friends, not one of them thought to tell him that they not only changed rooms, but moved to an entirely different part of the building. He had found them after rigorous searching and a phone call, they tried to make him feel better by letting him choose a song, but that didn’t help, and to top it all off the machine broke half way through.

“This is so unfair” he whined, plonking down on the couch with a pout, placing the microphone on the small table. “Stop your whining, we’re all disappointed, but they’re gonna fix it” one of his older friends, Xiumin assured. “Yeah, if they ever show up! We called them ages ago” Luhan, another friend exclaimed “Shut up, we called them about five minutes ago” Xiumin shoved him lightly, leaning back in the couch.

Tao sighed and rolled his eyes at his friends. They had agreed to come out in order to celebrate Xiumin’s college graduation (Even though the ceremony wasn’t for a few more days). Along with Xiumin and Luhan there was Yixing and Kris. Yixing wasn’t one for many words outside their small group, partly because he was a quiet person, but mostly because he was constantly tired from the amount of training and assement work that he put into his college course. Kris was just an embarrassment, Tao thought back to when he first met him, how cool he thought he was and cringed at the days he would follow him like a love sick puppy. He remembered being jealous and intrigued by the man, although, the closer they got the more he realised that he has been disastrously wrong.

Kris had an arm slung around Yixing who, unsurprisingly, was sleeping. The man had his sunglasses on indoors ‘Who wears sunglasses indoors? It’s not even day time outside’ Tao thought to himself, leaning back against the seat.

The group waited a few more minutes in a comfortable silence until the door handle clicked and opened. Tao could have died of embarrassment when he saw who walked in.

--

Chen didn’t bother looking at the people in the room, his only focus being the damaged karaoke machine. He walked past them and pulled up a seat on the small table, dragging the machine closer to him. The unit reached into his pocket and pulled out a small screw driver, he unscrewed the back of the machine and got to work; he wanted to be out of there as soon as possible. “Ah, wasting no time I see” One of the people in the room began talking, Chen only nodded, keeping his eyes forward and his mouth shut.

The once comfortable silence in the room had turned awkward, everyone began to do their own thing as an escape from the silence, whether it was playing with a phone, playing with hands or even whistling. Chen wished they’d all just shut up for ten seconds. ‘How can a group of people be so noisy when doing absolutely nothing?’ He thought as he worked.

--

The room was filled with quiet tinkering, phone buttons clicking and frustrated noises from the one working on their machine. Tao watched the man work. He had felt bad about disturbing the other in what looked like his nap, although he couldn’t be too sure he was actually napping, the noise that came from him didn’t sound human. Tao had entertained the thought that the person was in fact a robot but soon put that idea to rest, ‘There’s no way that a place like this could afford anything remotely like a robot’.

“Ah, not to rush you at all, but how long do you think it’ll take?” Tao asked, leaning forward slightly, all he got was a shrug in return. He frowned, that wasn’t the response he’d been hoping for. “Not even a small estimation of time?” Asked Luhan, who was looking more and more frustrated at this whole trip. The man turned to Luhan and looked him in the eyes before shrugging and turning back to his machine.

--

Chen groaned internally every time one of them opened their mouth. ‘shut up’ was all he could think whenever a noise that resembled words left them. While he was busy trying to drown their noise with his thoughts the unit failed to notice a hook that was inside the machine, he brought his hand down on it and it stabbed through his palm. The unit let out pained noise, covering his mouth with his other hand when the distorted noise left him. ‘Damnnit, that’s twice in a day’ he berated himself for being so careless with his voice.

He turned to look at the other people in the room, all of them had heard the noise, even the one whole was sleeping had woken up, and all of them were staring at him. ‘Maybe I was louder than I thought’. Chen bit his lip and pulled his hand off of the hook and quickly closed back up the machine, he gave it a whack on the side for good measure and like magic the machine sputtered back to life, a song playing loudly where it had left off. While the group was busy trying to find the remote to mute the loud music he left, holding his hand close and practically sprinting back to his room.

--

Tao had cringed when the other had yelled in pain, so had everyone else. The noise was like a ringing in your ear that had been pitched a thousand times. Tao also saw the look of embarrassment that crossed the worker’s face as he rushed around to finish his job. He couldn’t help but wonder what made that sort of noise, because it definitely wasn’t a human noise.

Tao was pulled from his thoughts when music started blaring, he watched as the television came back to life with the song, Kris and Luhan made a leap for the remote to turn down volume. Amidst the new chaos he saw the worker leave while clutching his hand. As he left the room Tao swore he could see a glint of light from the cut, almost like a reflection you’d find on a mirror or metal.

‘Metal…’ Tao found himself once again entertaining the thought that the other may actually be a robot. ‘No, don’t be stupid’ he berated ‘The only robots you’ll ever see are the ones that are presented with the Suho guy on tv’.

“Hey Tao, don’t think too hard you’ll hurt yourself” Yixing joked while throwing the mic over. Tao snapped out of his thoughts and fumbled with the microphone as he caught it.

“Come on, it’s still your go” Yixing smiled, setting the song back to the beginning for the younger. Tao smiled and sat on a closer couch, the thoughts of robots and the worker soon leaving him in favor of the intentionally bad singing and obnoxious laughter that came with a terrible karaoke bar. 

(Ayo, sorry this took a bit, I had work most of the week so I was too tired to write, on that note i'll probably edit this chapter a little later, but for now here we go~!)