ikigai

a dime a dozen

The deadline was getting closer each day. No panic yet. No stress. Clean and done. It was perfect. All fucking perfect. Zero was perfect—the new program was done and tested multiple times.

So, why hesitate?

Why so nervous?

The day Zero stepped outside was the day it died. Maybe that’s why.

The hero assistant was noting down the state of the product. A product Mayday designed just for this particular purpose. War. She wrote down on a lined paper, with a pencil that got a giant PLUSULTRA-shaped eraser. That had to debalance her grip, Mayday thought—the weight of that eraser. Did it come as a bonus for her job? How did this girl even get this job at her age?

Look, we know you need money and this is your only hope to get a respectable job. If you sign this contract, your life, mind and body, belongs to us. You have the purpose we give you. You fight when we tell you to and retreat if we tell you to. But hey—at least you're getting free merch.

Mayday thought of burning that pencil until not even ashes remained.

"Why did it stop?" The assistant's voice brought her back to real world.

"What?" She asked, still in a fuzzy haze. "Oh... um... It seems to have run out of targets. The purpose is accomplished so it stopped. Naturally."

Fucking good-for-nothing puppet. Mindless kid.

"Then get down there more targets. Those were taken out too fast."

"The speed of this demonstration only compliments the capacity of Zero." Dipshit.

The assistant pursed her lips, running another time through all the papers she wrote. The simple twitch of her lips gave away the lack of patience. But she did want to do a good job. "Set it to full power," she said, stomping her heel on the ground like an annoying child, her eyes bleary and stubborn. "This can't be full capacity. This is not the product we agreed on." She didn't know shit about the test. Instead of a smart demonstration of yield, she wanted just a fireworks show. Fucking pitiful. To think even the best of heroes didn't have a clue about what was going on so instead they sent a kid.

Sending a kid who just turned eighteen to evaluate Mayday's position in the war field.

"Full power isn't a level. I don't press a button and make a wall explode. It evaluates the surrounding. Would you" Mayday spoke in her trained flat tone. She was using that only with people she deeply hated or she thought were beyond stupidity. Though the assistant was neither of those, Mayday was seeing only her bosses. She could get through the stubborness because a literal child was standing in front of her. The ones she couldn't stand were the heroes who sent a stubborn child to evaluate her work. The words set it to full power echoed in her brain

A furrow cut the perfect aligning of the assistant's perfect plucked brows but only for half a moment. Mayday only now noticed how nice she was looking. How clean. No acne scars on her face, no bumps, big bright eyes and long lashes. She smelled nice too—one of those sweet perfumes, not expensive, not cheap. Just the right amount sprayed on. It was unfair to compare herself to a child. To compare the cover face with the last page in the album.

It wasn't that she despised this kid for being pretty and young. Mayday herself wasn't old. She just felt old and withered. Like she knew heroes for decades and hated them for enturies and the amount of hate was tattooed in flawes on her. And she hadn't got a look at herself for a long time. She couldn't tell what exactly has been cracking out but it was definitely falling apart. That couldn't improve the fragility of her temper. But the look: her teeth were yellow, her hair frizzy, not to mention her roots—almost always oily because apparently she could get out of bed and 'do the smart things' but it consumed too much energy to wash her hair. The dark circles around her eyes were so deep it made her eyeballs look like they were going to evade their socket. Not the ideal look on a multimilionaire. She rather looked like homeless junkie. Why would anyone respect such a gross human?

Fuck that. Fuck these cracks. Fuck the falling apart.

The assistant didn't know jack shit about Mayday. The heroes who sent the assistant didn't know jack shit about what Mayday's been through.

Wait. The thoughts got ahead again. Now she blamed the kid. Fuck her for blaming the kid.

"I didn't build it to destroy cities. I built it to protect human lives efficiently. You think a dead man would appreciate my signature if this thing would blow his house with style?" Mayday said after the awkward amount of time it took her to remember what the hell this was about. Though it was wrong to ask the assistant what she thought.

The conversation went on about details in Zero's functions and skills. Mayday replied to all the questions absent-minded, her gaze falling unconsciously on Zero in the below arena, standing on ruins of seven-foot-thick walls. Not a hint of her most important creation. Just a mindless machine to be added to the pile.

After the assistant left—still bragging, still only half-pleased by Mayday's work—Mayday stood there for a few minutes. The lights in the arena were turned off and there was complete silence. She thought maybe the rage would be enough to power up other emotions too, but now the anger was gone too.

She lit up her hands, just to see if she could still do that. Her blood boiled, her veins glowing like there was running lava through her, but no sparks. Not a flicker of electricity. Her hands were as numb as her brain. She was sliding back to the past. To the bottles, to the wondering if they could light up something more inside.

She was very aware of the people surrounding her suddenly, and this made her feel so much worse. She slipped back into selfishness and the only one to see it was the one hiding oustide.