Inai Ni Yami ((Within Darkness)) {{FINISHED}}

Chapter 39 ((Yuki))

Chapter 39

Bitter. 

Bittersweet? That’s what Keisuke sees. Eve used to see jealousy. Daisuke sees a kid. Takeyama sees a smaller kid, maybe even a baby. Rikka won’t acknowledge me. Princess Sorana despises all Kagami’s because we’re a creation of the Kurai’s - though she held some sort of favoritism towards Rio - and Zakiya was a man on his own, ignoring everyone and only listening when he was needed for physical labor. Other than that, Zakiya mostly spent his days wallowing in regret of what his original self had done. 

All in all though, no one really liked me- only Keisuke, and even he didn’t understand me. No one could see the bitterness I held towards those who lived, those whose hearts could beat and pump actual blood, not electrical pulses. I envied those who could - who needed - to breath, and were able to enjoy nature without having to process scents or sounds. 

I was bitter, I was envious. It was a surprise my skin hadn’t gone green yet, but then again even getting “sick” wouldn’t make me green. Not like humans. Instead, I’d be left looking like Eve, all peaceful and asleep while in reality I was churning with anger simply because I didn’t look sick. Simply because people would see me and they wouldn’t have cause to pity me. Or even worry about me. I was a machine. I was breakable. I was fixable. I was everything a living being was not - and I despised it. Not even those brief moments with Keisuke made me feel real enough. It was all artificial feelings. 

We were all just artificial children. 

“There, you should be better in no time,” my voice comes in a soft, breathy sigh, my mind still worlds away, where maybe I could’ve been born a human - or a Kurai. The Dorei gives me this wide toothy smile, with the front two teeth missing. It’s cute - adorable - and my jealousy spikes up a notch. That’s another thing. Kagami’s are flawless in appearance. Living beings hold many flaws, and thus they identify with one another. That’s why so many Dorei’s - and the Kurai’s that know of us - fear us. They fear our perfection. 

Putting up a fake smile in return, I shoo the Dorei off and stand. So few patients have been coming to the hospital wing of the Sanctuary lately that it’s been getting lonely. For anyone else who didn’t like working, they’d have been glad. For me, it meant more thinking, more time for the loathing part of me to grow stronger.

I watch the Dorei boy run off into the hallways that used to never be so empty and sigh once more, leaning against the wall. Blank walls everywhere I go. But I know if I were to keep walking around I’d eventually find the walls that darkened as you went, the one’s that showed the history of Shin-En. Maybe I should go and see if Kagami’s have their own history? But I knew the answer well enough in my mind. Kagami’s to Dorei’s and Kurai’s never had a history. What is not real does not have a history. We only share what the original person we represent had been. 

In the past, I was Yukimura Takanashi, one of Shin-En’s most respected surgeons. She was actually one of the helpers in creating Kagami’s. She and her expertise with the Kurai and Dorei body combined with ShiroTech’s machinery was able to create what I am today. For that, she was given countless awards and acknowledged as the best. Then she died of Cancer, a disease that plagues even the humans above and everyone became devastated. I’ve read this story countless times. 

Technically, I was being in the works of production before she even died, but when she did, the doctors went into a panic. I was the nearest Kagami with the least amount of memory transmitted into my head, so they wiped away what had already been placed and put in the memories of Yukimura. They expected me to carry out Yukimura’s experiments. This was before they’d realized Kagami’s were different compared to the original, and when they put me into the surgery labs, I learned a few things. I was an empath.