The sound of the bionic heart beating faded away in the silent night.

“Where is HongBin?” asked Ravi’s mechanical voice.

Only silence answered the boy until HakYeon hesitantly filled the silence:

“… I don’t know… It seems that HongBin is… dead?”

Death was a word that Leo didn’t understand. He knew humans used that word, he had heard it on the news and it was recorded in his memory. But to be honest, he didn’t know what it meant at all. The memories he had were only a blur. From what he could remember, only loss, painful memories and sadness filled this word.

He remembered when the men had entered HongBin’s hiding place, looking for the girl robot. They hadn’t even paid attention to the five half-finished robots in line, certainly assuming that they were not functional. Some of the men had held his creator while others had checked the girl. When a loud robot voice like had announced the robot as being “illegal” the men had immediately tried to take her memory out of her.

Should he have said “it” instead of “her”? His memory once again blurred the processing of information.

“What is being dead?” The voice of the younger one asked

“It means that you can’t think or speak or move anymore” answered Ravi.

Leo thought again about it. It seemed that it was the best definition he could have done too. Hyuk will have to be satisfied with that because no one would be able to do better.

“But N we never really moved. We’ve been hanging there for weeks if not months or even years…” argued Ken.

“None of us have arms and some of us don’t even have legs” Hyuk added trying to watch N.

“Both of you just moved. You moved your heads to look at me. If we want to know what’s going on, the only thing we can do is… finish ourselves.”

The younger ones were about to protest when Leo’s voice was heard:

“I agree.”

For Leo to officially agree with N, the situation had to be serious and the friends knew that so they forgot the mere idea of arguing longer.

“The thing is… How do we do that?” Ken asked.

“It’s easy when you think of it. Ken, you were the first one to be created that’s why you are one of the most successfully completed… You must have seen HongBin create us…” Ravi answered with a smile playing on his lips.

“Furthermore, when you think of it, we’ve all seen him take care of the girl robot. Each and every step of the process is loaded in our memories. All together we can make it. What do you think?” N added trying to convince the other unfinished robots.

“Let’s go for it.” Leo decided.

The struggle to become more human was real. Not because it was really painful, at this point, when they were not finished, it seemed that none of them focused on their feelings. It was a matter of life and death for them. And even if they didn’t knew what death meant, part of their memories seemed to fear that word so they have learned to fear it as well and try to avoid it.

Some of them only had one leg done, others had not even that. The mere fact to succeed in putting one of them on the working table, where all the constructions robots were at, was in itself a great victory. Because they were using a lot of energy, they decided to let half of them to work and the other half to charge. That way, when the working ones were tired they just stopped working only to be replaced by others.

They didn’t have to look for the materials everywhere: it seemed that HongBin had left them on the floor right next to the table: a pile of hands and electric cables could be reached with the construction robots and since all of them had use of their mouth they could guide the construction robots.

When Ken had his second leg done as well as both his arms, it was much easier to finish the four other robots. Sure, they didn’t look like humans at all but after all, they will take care of appearances later on when they will all be fully done.

The use of hands helped to speed up the process for the other ones. In less than two days, every robot had legs and arms and hands. They were now able to check on their creator.

Clumsily running as they could with their new brand legs, the five creations entered the back room. None of them had been in this one as robots and none of them had any memory of this room from when they were “alive”.

All of them clearly remembered HongBin running inside of this room, holding tightly the girl’s hand and locking it behind them. But the robots didn’t need a code: the door wasn’t locked anymore.

There was no trace of HongBin or the girl anymore. It seemed that they had gone somewhere else.

“Look at that!” Hyuk was pointing at the floor where a small mechanical heart was still beating.

“I think we have found HongBin…” Ravi began

“… and his girl.” N ended Ravi’s sentence.

“So… What do we do now guys? I’m kind of… lost without HongBin…” Ken asked.

“If HongBin had created us it’s for us to have a second chance. So we should honour that.”

“I agree with you but you know the rules as well as I do. We are illegal. We can’t go on the streets like that.”

“We can’t go like that but with a little bit of disguise we will be just fine. Come on guys. I remember the world out there. I want to be a part of it again.”

“Then it’s decided. We have to create our skin tissues and clothes. We also will have to wear make up to hide our scars on our faces. And even after having done all of that we will have to be very careful: If one of us messes up and is discovered he will probably put the others in danger too. So… Everybody’s in?”

“I am.”

“I am too.”

Leo checked his friends. “We all are. We are not only friends anymore, we are also brothers from the same creator.”

After a few days more of preparing themselves to be in the world looking like humans and it seemed that they were ready. When they were not physically preparing themselves, they had taken the time to mentally prepare themselves and dig deep in their memories to remember how they used to behave like humans.

Today was the day. They were now ready to hang out. Looking one at another they took their costumes, ready to put them on and go out.

“Let’s meet here at 12PM. That way we’ll just know everyone is safe. We will see about staying and do things together later on. Right now I have the feeling everybody have his own idea of fun. One last thing: here are our phones. Everyone take his own and if you have an emergency just call one another.”

All the other four silently agreed by nodding and smiled one last time before parting away from one another.

Leo’s idea of fun was to stay at home and sing his heart out or go on a soccer player field and play. But he was afraid not to be able to do anything right: he wasn’t used to be a robot yet. So maybe going in a coffee place was better than nothing. He walked along the streets until he found out a place that looked like to be quite welcoming.

“Hello. I’d like a latte.”

HongBin had had the idea to take his friend’s money and put them in an account “just in case” so Leo had no problem to pay and avec contemplated the idea of buying more but he decided to be sensible. As he drank the beverage, he could feel the hotness of the drink and this mere feeling relaxed him. To be honest he would have been even more relaxed if a phone hadn’t been ringing for a while now. Suddenly he realized the phone in his pocket had been vibrating all along. Reaching for the item he sighed. He knew they were in danger but he didn’t even have the opportunity to relax.

“Hello? Yes, N, I’m answering only now. No, I just didn’t realize it was my phone ringing. I know, I’ll take more care of this next time and answer right away just on case you or the guys need me.”

He hadn’t noticed a girl looking at him weirdly.

“Excuse me…?”

Leo turned around to see a girl scrutinize him from head to toe.

“You remind me of someone I used to know… Sorry it’s silly of me. He is dead and… I just… You sounded like him too… Forget about this…”

Leo looked at the girl. She rang something in him. It seemed that she was somewhere in his memory. But where was she, he couldn’t tell at all. She was indeed someone from her pas but who was she?

“Wait… You just said I reminded you somebody… My name’s Leo… At least that’s how people call me…”

“I’m EunSun… That’s weird. His name was Leo too… But I heard he died two years ago. He was in high school with me… You wouldn’t be related to him?”

“I… The thing is… I’m…”

“You are…?”

Leo couldn’t blow his secret to a stranger he had just met. Even though this girl wasn’t not a total stranger since she had belong to his past…

“He was my… Twin brother. Nobody knew in our schools. We didn’t go to the same ones but we used to have the same nickname since we were really close…”

Leo didn’t know why he had said that. Lying would have meant that the girl would probably had stopped talking to him but maybe he didn’t want the girl to stop talking to him. His memory was fuzzy but he wanted to know from where he knew this girl and why his memories about her didn’t come right away. It wasn’t normal. After all he was a robot, he should have known everything from the day he had met her in his other life to the last time he had saw her.

“Indeed he never talked about a twin brother…”

“We were really secretive about that.”

“It must have been really hard for you to lose him. I miss him very much even though we never were really close…”

The girl’s eyes were teary and pain was written all over her face. He definitely had no idea of what was making her like that.

“Yes. It was hard.”

The girl didn’t seem satisfied with that answered though.

“It’s as if you don’t even feel anything. Such a mechanical answer… There is something about you that’s…” Her eyes opened wide. “You are not human, are you?”

Leo was taken aback. Maybe he hadn’t been careful enough but he never had thought to be discovered that soon.

“So… What are you…? A robot?”

Leo uneasily moved on his seat. Maybe if he took all the blame his friends wouldn’t be discovered and still be safe…

“Well… You could call me like that I guess…” he answered smiling faintly at the girl.

She looked at him with weird eyes.

“Who could be so tortured to recreate a dead man? Who could make a robot out of a loved one? This is just sick.” The girl seemed to be shivering on her seat, somewhere between fear and disgust for Leo.

“I won’t let you call him sick. He missed me so he recreated me. Do I go insulting those who created you? You are not really polite.”

“You even think you’re a wonderful creature I guess… You don’t even realize you’re just another machine. Just like a microwave or one of those coffee machine that made the coffee you’re drinking. It’s crazy…”

“Listen, I don’t want to make a fuss or anything…”

“You’ll be scared to be discovered by the special police. Don’t worry I won’t tell them about you. But don’t count on me to do anything else for you.”

The girl stood up and left the coffee room this instant leaving Leo behind her.

And the robot who had never really felt anything began to crave to know more about the singular girl he had met. As he watched the silhouette of the girl fading away a smile crawled across his face and he silently wished to meet her again.

Hey guys!

Hum... To me this oneshot would be completed but to be honnest it has given me so many ideas for a longer story that I'd like to know what you think about this: should I make a longer story out of this oneshot or should I leave it to the imagination of the reader? So please answer the poll  (It will be open from now until... next week I guess (so it means november 2nd !):

Anyway I'm really thankfull to all those who have subscribed and supported this story ♥ Love you all *spreading Starlights' love*