Chapter 4 - A Different Kind of Beginning

"Ready?" Lihua looked at Nan Shang, who was sitting at the stool in the kitchen. Lihua took a seat on the stool beside her best friend. With careful hands, she picked up the remote she was holding and clicked on the 'power' button. As she did so, her stomach stooped a little and she unknowingly bit her lips.

It was a pain to fix the robot up. First of all, there were liquids everywhere. Lihua wanted to beat herself and threw herself off a cliff for being very stupid to make a fatal error like that. Secondly, the students under her mentorship were approaching their exams so Lihua had to make sure all of their assignments they submitted were marked and returned back to them on time, which delayed a lot of thing, which infuriated her. Several weeks later after the system failure of her first prototype, Lihua had finally fixed up the robot, Yifan. 

Nan Shang kept saying it was a bad idea but she still had the curious bug killing her brain so she stayed to watch the whole thing unfold. All she said was, "You're on your own if anything bad happens." 

Lihua held her breath as the bars on the screen fluctuated up and down. She installed a system to watch over the statistics how how much load she was putting on the processors inside the robot. If the processors work too hard and couldn't keep up, the robot could slow down, which could become a nuisance or worse, a system failure with all the data wiped out if the processors are to burn from overheating. "The whole thing is stablisied," she muttered to herself as she watched the robot opened its eyes and stared into the distance. She held her breath and her heart was beating unrealistically fast and loud.

The robot turned his head in their direction and walked over in a stiff manner, like a child who just mastered the art of walking. "Why is he like this?" Nan Shang asked, "He looks so retarded..." 

"Nan Shang," Lihua sighed, "the systems have not stabilised yet. Give Yifan a break!" 

"Okay! Okay! Stop being defensive over your robot lover boy," Nan Shang glared at her before she set her eyes on the robot, who was walking towards them. Lihua rolled her eyes at her friend before she turned her heard toward the robot.

When it has reached in front of them, it halted for a while before speaking, "Master." 

"Kyaaaaaaaaaaa~!!!!" Nan Shang's strings of screams swamped the whole apartment, "it speaks! OH MY GOD! I must take a record of this and put it on SNS! (Social Network Services)" As she spoke, she quickly fished for the mobile phone from her pocket and started taking pictures, at which Lihua lunged forward and took away the phone from her. 

"Are you stupid!?" Lihua snapped, "if you put this!" she pointed at the robot with a jab, "on the SNS." Her finger fell onto Nan Shang's mobile, "My life is basically screwed!" 

Nan Shang's eyes widened before she finally said, "Oh yeah..."

"And you call me stupid?" Lihua laughed and threw the phone back at her best friend. "Isn't he amazing?" She admired the robot as it stood before them, with its head tilted to the side, like a human who is quite slow on catching up things.

Nan Shang laughed and slowly put her phone back into her jeans pocket. "I'm not going to avoid saying this but he looks retarded..." she spoke casually as she put tucked the phone away.

"Nan Shang..." Lihua sighed and wagged her finger in front of Nan Shang, "This is just a start. There is so much he needs to learn and I need to do so that it works flawlessly. This kid-"

"Kid?" Nan Shang raised her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes in disgust. 

"Yes," Lihua's expressions turned into unimpressed mode as she retorted, "Kid. My baby." 

Her best fried chuckled, "You know this is how cat ladies start out. They start calling random things my kid, my baby." She laughed at herself, pleased with what she told Lihua. 

Lihua glared at her best friend playfully and crinkled nose, a gesture that she usually does what she is not exactly pleased with what other people say. "Anyway," she started, "I have to make sure his processors are fine and his memory storage and well-oiled."

"Is this a way to shoo away your guest, Han Lihua?" Nan Shang chuckled with a joke. Lihua nodded, which made the other girl laugh. "Fine. I'm going. I have to go anyway. I have a date, anyway."

"A date?!" Lihua's voice raised a little at the surprised. She was never aware that her best friend was seeing someone else. "How did this date happen? How could you not tell me?"

"Your baby," Nan Shang spoke as she put on her coat and wrapped her scarf around the neck, "had been your focus for the past few weeks. I told you about that guy. One of my colleagues want to set me up with this guy since he's interested in me," she shrugged, "I don't know. It's worth going I suppose." 

Lihua pursed her lips and pulled it to one side, "I hope it goes well. Be very careful. And tell me how it goes!" 

"Don't worry. I'm a capable woman. Just take care of your baby," Nan Shang laughed before she opened the door and left Lihua with the robot in her apartment. 

Lihua's eyes fell onto the robot, who was still standing in front of her with its head tilted to the side. "You look quite stupid, dummy," she murmured to herself as she fondly pushed the nose of the robot, who didn't respond anything but stared at her with eyes that were completely void of emotions. 

~~~

Several weeks have gone past and Lihua had been working relentlessly on both the robot and her own work. It had taken quite a toll on her since everyone kept commenting about how she had lost so much weight and that she always looked tired. Whenever she gets such compliment, Lihua always dismissed it with a smile. 

"You look very tired, Miss Lihua," the robot spoke to her as she was typing away on her computer. She smiled at him, which he responded with a natural smile. During the past few weeks, she had changed the robot's programming to address her as Miss Lihua or Lihua randomly on occasion instead of master since she had felt awkward about the whole scenario giving her the feelings of master and slave relationship. The robot, or Yifan, had well-adapted to his surrounding. He could now walk around the house without tripping over random things and table corners. She had also installed a lot of new features such as facial recognition and face reading to detect moods. It was an exhausting job but she was glad that she had gotten it out of the way. 

"Yifan," she called and gestured at the robot to scoot over to her side, which he obliged like a little kid, she smiled and ruffled his hair. He did not move away nor responded. "I have to take you out..." she mumbled. 

"Why?" he asked. 

"So that you can observe people and learn from them instead of me," she retracted her hand from his hair, "unless...." her eyes fell onto the television set in front of them, "how could I forget...." 

~~~

Several weeks later. 

"Yifan!" she called the robot's name and he scurried out with a smile, "Lihua! You're going to work?" 

She beamed, "Yeah! I'm going to leave you alone in the house, okay?" 

"Okay!" he smiled back. 

"And," her hands waved in front of the screen in a stiff motion to turn it on and channels started appearing, "here you go. Watch anything you like, okay?" 

He hesitated as his head turned towards the screen and smiled like a little kid again, "Okay! Have a great time at work!" 

Lihua smiled and slowly locked the door behind her. Life had been great for her. She would go to work in the mornings while Yifan stayed back home with a television to develop his skills on detecting human emotion. As Yifan is a self-learning robot, she didn't have to worry much as he will study everything on his own and soak up knowledge like a child. All she needed to do is perform maintenance task on his memory storage devices in timely manner. It felt like she was living in the house with a little kid, except, much taller. 

Life has been great. 

~~~

[Author's monologue:] It has been so damn long since the last update... I'm so sorry that it had been so long. lol. Then again, this is another project that I slowly write. I hope you liked it!