Chapter Text
"Hey, um, wake up!" I shook the shoulder of the man laying in front of me. He was wearing a gas mask over his face and had silvery-white hair that matched his long coat. He was lying face down in the middle of an alleyway, and the only reason we saw him was because Noiz and I were taking a shortcut home after a Rhyme fight he dragged me into. "Are you okay?" I turned Noiz. "He's unconscious."
"No shit. Should I call someone?"
"Aoba." I heard Ren's voice come from my bag. "He's not human."
"What? How can you tell?"
"Ren's right," Noiz chimed in. "Some of his skin is chipping off, and there's machinery under it."
"Lemme see," I muttered and moved to where Noiz was. He pushed back the man's sleeve to show me. The skin on his arm was peeling off in some places, revealing metal bones and wires on the inside. "He's a robot. . ." I whispered in shock.
"He seems pretty banged up too."
"Can you fix him?"
"Why do you want to do that?" Noiz looked up at me with a confused face. "It's none of our concern."
"Well, we can't just leave him here!"
He thought for a moment. "Fine. But we have to be discrete about it." Noiz picked up the robot's body and started walking in the direction of our apartment, and I quickly got up and followed.
Noiz was never the type to want to help others, strangers especially. His mentality towards the rest of the world was an apathetic one, which was a result of his childhood. He grew up in a rich family but with little care. His inability to feel sensation in his body caused him to play roughly with the other kids, and his parents saw him as a problem. They locked him up in his room with only a maid to bring him food, so when he got older, he ran away to Midorijima, the island where we live now.
He felt disconnected from people because he couldn't feel what they could feel. He pushed himself away from anyone and everyone and got addicted to Rhyme, a virtual reality fighting game, because it was the only thing remotely close to pain. Recently, he's been able to feel sensations again, but his outlook hadn't changed much.
I had thought that by being with him, I could change his outlook on people, show him that the world could be beautiful if he would just see it. I tried to get him to understand that not everyone has ulterior motives, and I'm still trying.
Maybe I just need to give it time, I thought as I walked beside him. He'll grow up. He's only nineteen, after all.
We made it back to our apartment, and Noiz placed the robot's limp body on the couch and went to go get tools. I sat on the floor next to the couch and took the gas mask off of the robot to get a look at his face. It was cold and lifeless, but surprisingly human. The right side of his face was relatively undamaged, but the left side was another story. Almost all of his skin was gone on that side, revealing a metal frame with wires and other hardware that I couldn't name. His exposed eye was dull, but I could still make out the color of the iris, magenta.
Noiz came back with a box full of tools. "I don't even know where to begin," he said. He knelt down beside me and observed the left side of the robot's face. "This can't be good." I watched as he turned the robot's head to the side. There was a large hole in his head, oil dripping and frayed wires sticking out. Noiz typed something on his coil and looked back at his damaged head. "There's a vital part in his head that was severed. That's what caused this."
"Can you fix him?"
"I'm not sure. Probably not." He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his choppy blond hair. "I mean, we could try to get replacement parts from Heibon or something, but there's a slim chance they'll have the right ones and an even slimmer one that we'll be able to fix him."
"Oh. . ." I slumped over, and Noiz pulled me over to rest on his shoulder.
"Sorry, Aoba," he whispered. "We can try though."
"Okay. I can ask Haga-san if he has anything," I said, somewhat dejected. "It's getting late. I'm going to bed."
"I'll be there in a bit."
I changed into a t-shirt and boxers and crawled into bed. I couldn't help but wonder about that robot we found. For starters, what could have happened to him? He looked terrible. Why was he just abandoned there? Even though he was a robot, it made me sad to see him like that. It reminded me of when I first found Ren.
I heard the door open and rolled over to see Noiz shuffling in. He took off his shirt and pants and flopped on the bed beside me. "Love you, Aoba," he said.
"Love you too, Noiz."
I shifted closer to him so I could feel his warmth. "Noiz," I said. "What do we do if we can't fix him?"
"I don't know. We'll deal with that if it happens."
That didn't exactly settle my worries, but I managed to fall asleep anyway.
The next morning I got up and ready for work. Noiz had already left by the time I was out of bed, so I got ready in silence. I saw the broken robot on the couch on my way out and stopped for a moment. "Ren, do you think he'll be okay?"
"I don't know."
"He reminds me of you. That's why I care so much." I picked Ren up and put him in my bag.
At Heibon, Haga-san greeted me with a smile. "Hey, um, I'm looking for a couple replacement parts for something. I have a list-" I searched for the list that Noiz had sent me. "It's pretty important." I showed him the list.
"Okay. But can you do me a favor and finish setting up while I look?"
"Sure." I hoped and prayed he had the right parts. I started to set up the rest of the shop and took my spot behind the register.
Haga-san came out. "We don't carry any of these anymore. They're for some pretty old models. Can I ask why you need them?"
I didn't know how legal it was to just take a robot off the street and fix it up. "Uh. . . Noiz was just wanting to fix, um, an old allmate. I don't know. He just asked me to see if we carry any of these."
"Oh, I see." Haga-san went into the back to do something, and I waited around until opening time.
It was a relatively slow day, and I found my mind wandering several times. I left after my shift was over and headed back to my apartment. It got kind of lonely in the apartment at times without Noiz because he got off of work at a later time than me. Even though I had Ren, who I love dearly, I still missed him. I sat in a chair and decided to call Granny to see how she was doing.
"Aoba!" she answered. "How's everything? Is that Noiz kid treating you right?"
"Yeah, Granny, everything's great."
"That wasn't very convincing," she said. "What's wrong?"
"I'm fine, it's just-" I considered whether or not I should tell her what was actually going on. "Noiz and I found this broken robot in the street, and we took him in. Noiz can't fix him though because we can't get the right parts, and even with those the chance of getting him working again are really small."
"That's like when you found Ren. I actually remember that really well. You saw him on the side of the street, just a heap of metal and fur, and you took him in and fixed him."
"Yeah. . ."
She was silent for a moment. "I have a friend who used to be a researcher," she eventually said, "and maybe he could get his hands on some of them for you."
"Really?" My eyes widened.
"Yeah. Can you send me the list? I'll see if I can contact him."
"Of course! Thanks a lot!"
"Okay. Bye, Aoba. Love you."
"Love you Granny." I hung up on my coil and immediately sent her the list.
I glanced over to the couch where the robot was still lying and decided it was a good idea to send a message to Noiz about what Granny said.
Noiz got back later in the evening and found me asleep on the chair. He shook my shoulder. "Babe."
I groaned and swatted his hand away.
"Aobaaaaaaaa," he dragged my name out in a teasing voice.
"No, I'm tired."
"Fine then I'll just sit on you." He turned on the TV and sat on my lap.
"N-Noiz! Get off! You're heavy!" This kind of behavior was actually pretty normal for him at this time of day.
"But you're comfy." He curled into my chest. "Oh, yeah, and I got your message. Did she say when we'd be able to get them?"
"What? The parts?"
"No, the bunnies," he scoffed. "Of course the parts!"
"No. I'm assuming she'll call me when she has them and have me pick them up."
And that's exactly what she did. The next day we both had time off from work, since it was a Sunday. Noiz wanted to go with me because he "had nothing better to do," but I think he genuinely wanted to go with me because he had dropped what he was doing when I said I was leaving. I didn't like leaving him alone because I knew it reminded him of his past, and sometimes, especially if he was in a bad mood, he would do reckless things.
The things he would do to himself scared me to no end.
We walked to Granny's house, but Noiz seemed somewhat distant. I held his hand to bring him back down to real life, and he squeezed it back. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah. Just tired. I didn't get much sleep last night."
We were greeted by a sealed box and a note that read:
'Aoba,
I'm out right now, so I've included all the parts on the list that I could get in the box."
-Granny"
I turned the paper over and scribbled a thank you, and we headed back home with the box. As soon as we got home, Noiz began work on the robot. He looked completely focused as I watched him work. He had several windows open on his coil and another computer by his side. I watched him carefully take things out and replace them and put them back in and swear and throw things across the room and violently type. I watched his eyes dart around and his hands move with minds of their own for hours. I didn't know what else to do. I wondered why he was getting so worked up over this when just a few days ago he was completely jaded.
"Noiz, it's been a while. Do you want something to eat?" I finally asked.
"Uh, yeah, sure." I seemed to have taken him out of a trance. "Anything's good."
He slumped back in his position on the floor and sighed. I heated up some microwave pizza for him and brought it over. "Hey." I sat down on the floor next to him. "Take a break, okay? You look pretty tired, and I don't want you to overwork yourself."
He nodded, and I kissed him and handed him his pizza. While he was devouring his pizza, I put away his tools and cleaned up the things he had thrown. "Let's go to bed, Noiz," I said after he had finished eating. I took his hand and pulled him with me into the bedroom and settled down with him in my arms.
I woke up later that night to hear something hard hitting the wall and followed by swearing and rolled over to see if Noiz was still in the bed.
He wasn't.