ikigai

aporia

They learned their lesson way back. Humans often feel tired when they're sad and longing for something. They feel sick. They're empty when they're sad and longing. They would have this immeasurable blank space right in the centre of their being. When they eat, the food doesn't taste like something they need to survive. When they watch other humans, the blank space gets heavier. So heavy it cracks their heartbeat.

The sound of her sickness was still floating around them. Infecting. Spreading like rot. So in spite of their fear, they gave her a chance to lift the weight and fix her heartbeat.

They didn't want to do it. They had to. It was for her sake. But—surprisingly—Zero didn't seem to be that bad until its very last days. Mayday stopped extracting the sphere out of its chest after a while, so it stayed awake at night in one of the isolated towers.

It acted like a child that wasn't childish. It asked questions. Tons of questions. It looked so intrigued about its body when Mayday would leave the room. It would crack its head out like a blooming flower and adjust pieces inside its fake skull.

They were glad Mayday didn't give Zero eyes. It was suspicious enough with its never-ending energy and suspicious mimick. They didn't want to see how empty it was through human-like irises. Assuming she would even make them human-like. She seemed to have a thing for nonhuman creatures.

Zero made them believe that it managed to grow closer to being human than they ever managed to. Zero could show emotion even without intending to. They weren't jealous of it. They were actually proud of Mayday. She was prooving herself way smarter than their creator by achieving that.

So the fear slowly diminished. There was no way she would endanger herself by creating something kind.

"What am I?" Zero asked one day when Mayday was checking the stability of the core. If there was something they just couldn't get used to no matter how hard they tried, it was Zero's voice. Like a weed root growing feeding off rust.

"Give it a guess," she revealed, motioning with one hand through the air.

"No, not like that." If it wouldn't be for Mayday's body standing with her eye spyglass glued to its chest, they guessed it would be fidgeting its... fingers. It didn't really have fingers but they didn't know how to name those extentions. "I mean, am I a boy or a girl?"

Mayday paused. She took a step back and snickered. "What?"

"What am I supposed to be?"

"How do you feel like?"

"I don't know."

They couldn't read its heartbeat because Zero didn't have one, but the small descend into its tone gave away the downcast. It was singsongish. Like suddenly pressing a slightly deeper note on a piano.

"That's okay," Mayday voiced. She noticed it too. The change of the sound. "People struggle with that too. Gender questioning... and... other stuff. I don't think you wanna know about the other stuff."

"How do you know you're a girl?"

"I don't know how to put it into words. Like—it clicks." She spread her fingers and cupped her hands together. The fingers interlocked, no space left between them. "Like this. It feels right to me to be a girl."

"How do I know I'm a girl or not?"

"Do you want me to refer to you as a girl?"

Zero paused. "I don't know."

Mayday grinned. Her smile was warm and nice. She looked prettier smiling. "You know, you don't have to choose between boy or girl. There's more than that. If you don't feel like a girl but you don't feel like a boy either, that's okay too."

"Is it?"

"Yeah."

"How do I—"

"Look, I want you to figure this out, I do, but I'm not the best one out here to talk about these things. I never questioned my gender. I don't know how it is."

Mayday adjusted the core back into Zero's skeleton. It had a different glow now that it was put in the right place.

"Are there ground rules?"

"Nah, I don't think so." Then she started to gather her tools and a small frown formed between her eyebrows. "I mean—there are, but not really rules. So I guess the answer you're looking for is no but at the same time a small yes? Does that make sense?"

"No."

"You can ask Uyeda when I finish you. She's nice. And she knows way more about this than me."

"Smarter?"

"Probably."

"Why isn't she here?"

There was it. The sickness. The blank space. She turned her gaze down and her smile slowly perished. Her body just shrugged like it all meant nothing. "She has other things to do."

"Will she ever come to see me?"

"The whole world will see you soon enough. Along with Uyeda."

"When is 'soon'?"

"A week at best."

"A whole week?" Zero cried, high-pitched and needy. "But I am perfect right now! Look! Flawless!"

"God, you're such a kid," Maeda muttered. The breath she let out seemed to warm her lungs. It tied the blank space in a small corner in her ribcage. "You can't fight a fly to save your life and I'm supposed to sell a war-machine. Still think you're ready?"

That seemed to put it in a meditating haze. Maeda snickered, going back in her usual playful mood. At least Zero had the appearance of a war-machine to compensate the lack of aggressiveness of its compound.

"I don't have a life to save."

A lesson. Not sure if either learned it in the past. A harsh, dead-cold lesson.