Hanbin hears Jiwon come alive before he sees it; Jiwon’s hardware warns him through a loud whirring in its chest that it’s being overworked. It makes Hanbin feel like they’re both standing on thin ice even though their bottoms are both cushioned by the plush upholstered seats of his personal lab. Hanbin has sat Jiwon up and initiated his system in a sorry attempt to see if it can be rebooted.

Jiwon’s perfect posture doesn’t say anything, except that he can work as a mannequin for apparel, even in his unconsciousness. When he opens his eyes, he looks straight ahead and almost through Hanbin. Hanbin immediately detects the lifelessness in his eyes, and it draws such a huge contrast from his usual jovial demeanor. Jiwon has Hanbin holding his breath for what feels like a decade, until a light flickers in his eyes and he blinks at Hanbin as if he’s finally seeing him.

Jiwon scans the room, glazing his eyes over the holographic screens just beside Hanbin showing tests and reports regarding both his hardware and software, but it’s not something he doesn’t already know about. It’s such a cramped room for there to be anything but the bed he’s sitting on, Hanbin’s desk and table, and some free space to walk on. And although this clearly looks like Hanbin’s lab, to Jiwon, it’s prison—prison that he can’t leave if he wants to go out. Oh, the irony.

Jiwon focuses at the door for a second, and when he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, he closes his eyes and clenches his fist to use what power he can. At the same time, his chest whirs loudly, and the graph lines on Hanbin’s screen fluctuate rapidly.

“Stop it! What are you doing!” Hanbin raises his voice at Jiwon but the droid isn’t fazed.

After a while, the whirring in Jiwon’s chest quiets down. He opens his eyes and looks at Hanbin with a smile on his face.

“He’s in the kitchen,” Jiwon tells Hanbin like the information’s new to both of them, his voice low and drained of energy, almost grating.

“You could have just asked.”

“I didn’t think you’d appreciate that.”

Hanbin doesn’t say anything to that, just clicks his tongue as if to say point taken.

Jiwon lets the silence settle for a second before his chest whirs aloud and he speaks again. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice sounding like the usual, but they both know it won’t last.

Hanbin raises an eyebrow, “For what? For letting Jinhwan touch you when you know it’s not his or your place to do that?”

“You’re making it sound like you’re concerned about me.”

Hanbin clenches his jaw before responding, “I’m only doing this because you’re important to him. And he’s important to me.”

“Well, you don’t have to try so hard. Besides…it’s not like you can override my code.”

“So?” Jinhwan peers into Hanbin’s eyes.

Hanbin doesn’t look at him, not yet, but he picks up his fork to play around with his food while deep in thought before he puts it back down, shaking the his brief encounter with the droid away from his thoughts. He looks at Jinhwan who has his face propped up on his hands in curiosity and thinks that he won’t be this pushy if he’d never met Jiwon. He would have dropped the subject right after he brought it up—no, it wouldn’t have been something to talk about in the first place.

Hanbin relents anyway. “He just has this ability to get under my skin,” then, under his breath, he adds, “Must be coded into his system.”

Jinhwan hears him anyway.

Hanbin hears both the sharp sound of Jinhwan’s chair dragging against the floor and his hands banging on the table simultaneously as the boy gets up in eagerness. “Did he wake up?” He asks Hanbin, and his enthusiasm reminds Hanbin of dogs before they were annihilated and replaced by automated hybrids that he can’t help but smile, even if Jinhwan’s apparent enthusiasm is not for him.

“It went back to sleep right away,” Hanbin tells him, hating himself for bursting his bubble but it’s not like he can let him get too excited. Jinhwan’s just about to dash straight to his room to check up on the droid.

“Oh.”

Jinhwan sits back down, slowly this time.

“It needs to rest for a while.”

Jinhwan opens his mouth as if to say something but closes it again. He sits in silence, and it looks like he’s picking at Hanbin’s choice of words because Hanbin’s sure he can see the wheels turning in his head. Hanbin is just glad that Jinhwan doesn’t comment on it and instead just asks, a few seconds later, “For how long?”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

There’s a lot that Hanbin doesn’t tell Jinhwan, but