Epiones' POV
The morning before the big field trip, our new professor decided that "Environmental observation begins with civic responsibility." Which was a very expressive and academic way of saying we were being forced to pick up garbage around the campus parameter.
I stood near the edge of the courtyard, a heavy plastic trash bag crinkling in my hand as the humid morning air hung thick over the concrete. Honestly, I couldn't care less about the wrappers scattered across the grass. My brain was stuck on a loop, playing a single sentence over and over again like a broken record.
"Afterall…I was once human too."
I stabbed viscously at a crumpled juice box with my metal tongs. Once human too. What did that even mean? Was she a cyborg? A ghost inside a shell? Did she used to eat rice and complain about leg cramps like the rest of us before she upgraded into a lithium-ion battery? I imagined a little middle-school Chizuru running around, tripping on the playground, skinning her knee, and crying real, non-synthetic human tears. The image was so profoundly jarring it made my head hurt.
Once human too. I muttered the words under my breath, shaking my head as I aggressively shoved a plastic wrapper into my bag. Once human too. Once human too. If she was once human, then what am I? Twice human? Sub Human? Pre-Human?
"Epione"
I jumped about three feet into the air, dropping my tongs with a loud clatter.
Chizuru was standing right in behind me. She held her own trash bag with the exact same flawless grace she would bring to corporate galas. Her uniform sleeves are rolled up to a precise, measured length, revealing pristine, white wrist.
But as she stepped closer, The rigid, perfectly calculated posture she usually had completely dissolved. Her shoulders dropped into a relaxed, natural slouch, and that clinical register vanished from her voice. Her dark eyes softened, crinkling at the corners with a warm, entirely clinical-free amusement
"Are you okay? Your head is completely in the clouds," Chizuru asked softly, a gentle, teasing smile playing on her lips as she leaned down to pick up my dropped tongs for me, as she gestured slightly towards the ground with a nod of her head. "It also seems like you've gathered a liking to that apple-flavored juice box…were you perhaps craving it?"
I looked down, realizing my tongs had been hovering the exact same crumpled. Empty cardboard box for the last three minutes while I had my internal crisis.
I snatched the tongs back from her hand, my cheeks flushed instantly. "I'm not craving garbage, Chizuru! I'm just…trying to process what happened a few hours ago in the classroom! You can't just drop a massive, existential bombshell like 'Oh, I used to be a biological entity" right before the next class and expect me to casually sweep it under a rug!"
Chizuru let out a soft, genuine laugh, a sound son full of warmth that somehow made the heavy morning air feel lighter. She reached out, turning my hand over like she was examining a fragile, piece of glass. Her touch was warm this time, completely lacking the crushing, vice-like grip when she slightly used the robot strength on me.
"I suppose it is a bit too much to take in" She admitted softly, yes, it is too much. Her expression turns incredibly sweet, full of genuine, affectionate concern. "But you don't need to overthink it so much. I'm still just me. The same Chizuru who is going to make sure nothing else touches a single hair strand on your head…especially during the trip
Well…that was oddly specific
However, none of does what she had said answered my question nor my confusion. If anything, it just added about ten more layers of mystery to the giant puzzle that's named Chizuru Katsura. But looking at the soft, relaxed curve of her shoulders and the rare warmth in her eyes, I forced myself to swallow the rest of my questions. It was probably too personal. If I continued to push it, I might accidentally cross a line I couldn't uncross, worse, trigger something worse that I might actually be dead for.
So, I just sighed, letting it pass for now. "Fine, But if I die out there, I'm willing to spend my time in the afterlife finding a way on how to haunt your fiber optic nerves that can cause seizures."
My threat didn't pass through Chizuru rather, saw it as joke, she was about to open her mouth for a reply, but her eyes suddenly tracked down towards my feet, snapping into a sharp, observant focus.
"Epione, that one candy wrapper has lots of ants with it."
I blinked, looking down at the crinkled plastic I had just scooped up with my bare left hand. And what greeted me, is a terrifying, swarming army of tiny black insects that was already marching up the plastic, inches away from my thumb.
"Eeek!"
I violently threw the wrapper into the air, dancing backward as if the ground had suddenly turned into lava. My trash bag flew out of my gelatinous right hand, scattering three empty plastic bottles across the grass we had just cleared. I vigorously shook my left hand, wiping it against my uniform in a blind panic.
Chizuru caught the falling wrapper mid-air with her tongs, executing a flawless, lightning-fast flick of her wrist to send it flying safely into her own open trash bag before a single ant could transfer to her…well, it's as if ants have the bravery enough to bite and grip onto that metal…
She looked up to me, her shoulders shaking slightly as shed tried, and failed, to hide another very human laugh behind her hand. "Threat successfully neutralized Epione. Though your dance routine was a bit…dramatic?"
It wasn't a dance routine! It was a tactical retreat from a biological hazard! I huffed, still aggressively wiping my hand against my skirt like I was trying to scrub off my own skin. "Ants are ruthless, Chizuru! They don't respect boundaries and stop laughing! You're supposed to be a multi-billion-dollar pinnacle of advanced artificial intelligence, not a stand-up comedian."
Chizuru didn't even try to hide her amusement anymore. She let out another soft giggle, completely ignoring my complaints as she stepped closer to gently catch my shaking wrist.
"My apologies," She said, her voice dripping with pure, elegant sarcasm as she effortlessly maintained her relaxed, human posture. "I will make sure to update my system protocols immediately. 'Error 404: Campus cleanup compromised by a terrifying colony of three-millimeter insects. Initiating emergency deployment of Chizuru: The ant exterminator' better?"
"You are horrible," I muttered, though my face is burning hot.
"I am a highly advanced piece of technology," she corrected smoothly, her eyes sparkling with affection. "But technically, my current emotional matrix is operating on a purely human database of 'mocking my dramatic little sister'. There is a difference.
I rolled my eyes, but the knot of anxiety that had been tightening in my chest since earlier finally began to loosen.
Once we finished clearing our assigned section of the courtyard, we had to haul our heavy plastic bags over to our designated drop-off point. The university had set up a massive containment pile near the edge of the campus gates where all the students were dumping their morning's labor to be collected later by the sanitation drones.
The area was crowded, loud with the groans of exhausted students complaining about manual labor. But the moment I tossed my bag onto the pile, The noisy campus background noise seemed to completely cut out.
My stomach plummeted.
Standing just a few feet away, holding an impeccably neat, half-empty trash bag, was Jinhee.
An involuntary shiver ran down my spine, and my hands turned instantly cold. Memories of her sharp words and the suffocating tension that always followed her presence came rushing back, making it hard to swallow. I froze on the spot, my eyes locked on her.
Looking at her now, it was terrifying how easily she maintained her pristine, perfect student façade. To the rest of the campus, she was flawless, ideal classmate. But to me, she was a walking, breathing landmine. I had no idea what went in her head, or why her intense, blinding rage always seemed to lock onto me like a heat-seeking missile. There was no logic to her hostility, no warning signs…just a sudden, scary switch that flipped inside her, turning he from a model student into someone capable of pure violence. Standing there, I felt completely defenseless, totally blind to whatever storm was brewing behind her eyes.
Jinhee noticed me almost immediately. Her expression shifted, the polite mask slipping to reveal a raw, volatile intensity as she took a deliberate step forward, clearly intending to approach me. My breathe hitched in my throat. I braced myself for the incoming blast.
But before she could take another step, her eyes flickered slightly to the side, landing on Chizuru.
Eyes Above
Chizuru hadn't moved dynamically, but the change in her was vast, the relaxed, slouching posture vanished, she stood perfectly upright, towering with an imposing, flawless stillness that felt less like a student and more like a high-end security unit silently marking a threat. Her dark eyes bore into Jinhee with a cold, unblinking intensity.
Jinhee hesitated, her foot hovering mid-stride, her chaotic impulses suddenly colliding with Chizur's overwhelming aura.
Before the silence could stretch any further, the sharp, demanding ring of a cell phone broke the tension. Jinhee jumped slightly, quickly pulling the device from her blazer pocket. The moment she glanced at the screen, all the color drained from her face.
Dad. The caller ID alone seemed to completely paralyze her, triggering her a whole different layer of deep-seated trauma that completely shattered her aggression. She looked at Epione, then at Chizuru's Icy glare, looking profoundly trapped between the caller on the phone and the ones in front of her.
Without saying a single word to neither of them, Jinhee aggressively swiped the screen, brought the phone near her ear, and turned on her heel. She practically threw her trash bag onto the pile and hurried away toward the quiet corridor of the main building, her voice hushed, trembling, and deeply strained as she answered the call.
Epione let out a small, shaky breath, her eyes still glued to the empty space where Jinhee had just been standing. She didn't panic nor freak out loud. Instead, a quiet, heavy exhaustion just seemed to settle over her shoulders, making her look incredibly small.
"Jinhee's heart rate elevated by 22% the moment that communication device activated,"
Chizuru noted, Her voice dropping back into that smooth, gentle human register as she stepped closer to Epione's side. "Are you alright, Epione?"
"Yeah," Epione murmured quietly, her voice low-key and flat as she kept her eyes on the ground. "I'm fine. Just…relieved she left."
"Understood."
Chizuru replied automatically, but her focus was already shifting. Across the yard, Jinhee was walking fast, disappearing into the shadowed corridor of the main building with the phone pressed tight to her ear.
Silently, Chizuru activated her auditory processing matrix.
[System Protocol: Auditory Isolation]
Now her advanced noise-cancellation filter is deployed. Operating on the basic logic of the commercial earbuds but scaled to military-grade precision, her audio matrix inverted the frequencies of the campus cleanup. The loud chatter, the rustling plastic, and the cool afternoon wind vanished from her feed, replaced by a simulated silence that focused entirely on Jinhee's phone, then…her hushed, trembling voice suddenly cut through Chizuru's audio feed as clear as if she were standing next to her. The conversation so clear that secrets revealed themselves like an open library.