C108 — [5.3 — False Them]

Jiu Shu’s first song was over.
 

A short break began, but the stage remained quiet.
 

 

Everyone was so immersed in the song that they couldn’t help themselves.
 

 

Seven Two was one of them; he was supposed to be waiting for Xiao Tiantian right now.

 

 

It was almost twelve o’clock, and Xiao Tiantian’s performance was about to start.
 

But he was still standing on the first floor, staring at the singer on the stage, whose face he couldn’t see.

 

He also couldn’t help but say, “I didn’t come over to see him before; what a pity.”

 

His eyes were full of fascination, which contrasted sharply with Zero Three’s silence.

 

 

Tonight’s bar was exceptionally lively.

 

 

 

During this short break, many more people came to the stage on the first floor.
 

Almost all of them came here in admiration.
 

 

Yesterday’s video that was put on the internet obviously caused quite a stir, and tonight’s audience was more than twice as large as yesterday’s.

 

 

The originally spacious first-floor auditorium had become crowded.
 

Zero Three looked at these newcomers, trying to keep himself from looking at Jiu Shu.

 

 

His heart was beginning to overload, and this abnormality had reached the point where it needed to be repaired.

 

 

Even if Zero Three tried to control it, it was useless.
 

Only when he removed his gaze from Jiu Shu did his heartbeat become calmer.

 

 

 

Zero Three actually felt somewhat helpless in this situation.

 

 

He didn’t know why it had become like this.

 

 

Or perhaps he was afraid to admit those thoughts in his mind.

 

 

“Is this the singer? It doesn’t look like there’s anything special about him; he’s just good-looking.”

 

 

The new guest next to him looked at the human idol sitting on the stage on a high chair, adjusting the strings, his face filled with confusion.

 

 

However, his eyes still fell uncontrollably on Jiu Shu’s face.
 

 

It was strange that without revealing his whole face, with just the lower half of his face, he could make people feel a bone-deep beauty.

 

 

It was simply impossible to take one’s eyes off of him.

 

 

“He’s actually most famous for his voice!”

 

 

“Hey, he’ll soon sing; just wait, yesterday I watched that video, and even though the quality was particularly fuzzy, I still watched it dozens of times; I simply couldn’t stop!”
 

 

“He sings especially well; it has a very special feeling; I can’t explain; just listen carefully!”

 

 

The guests were discussing the singer on the stage in a heated manner.

 

 

One of the guests also took out his mobile phone and showed his companions the video from yesterday.

 

 

Indeed, it was a video with very blurred camera quality.

 

 

But it couldn’t hide the well-proportioned and lean figure of the man in the video.
 

 

Although it was only a side view, his waist was obviously very slim.

 

 

It didn’t have a female sense of fragility, but rather a kind of teenage-like androgynous softness.

 

 

Zero Three’s gaze was fixed on the video; the young human idol had pursed lips without thinking.

 

 

The slightly curved arc seemed like he was smiling at him outside the mobile phone.

 

 

Looking up, the singer on the stage, not far away, had the same beauty as in the video.

 

 

The only thing was that he wasn’t singing and he wasn’t smiling anymore.

 

 

When he looked down and adjusted the strings of the piano, he looked a bit detached.

 

 

One could only see his pale fingertips stroking the strings.

 

 

A pleasant tune rang out.

 

 

The second song began.

 

 

It was still an old song that had been eliminated by the times; the long tune carried the unique flavour of classic songs, although it didn’t quite match the atmosphere in the bar, but it had a mesmerizing charm.

 

 

The song told the story of a young girl who was in love with her lover and waited for him to return.

 

 

The story ended on a sad note, with the girl never meeting her lover again.

 

 

Hence the melancholy tone of the whole song.

 

 

Jiu Shu’s voice also seemed a bit forlorn when he sang.

 

 

It made people want to get close to him and soothe the sadness between his brows.

 

 

“If only yesterday’s support ticket was still there… It seems like Jiu Shu will be holding a support party in three days, so I’ll have a chance to get up close and personal with him then.”

 

 

 

Seven Two was still talking about his mistake in frustration.

 

 

 

The more he listened to the song, the more he regretted that he left the support coupon behind in the first place.

 

 

Zero Three, who was standing at the side, listened to Seven Two’s chatter and responded to Seven Two for the first time.

 

 

With a cold voice, he said, “Xiao Tiantian is downstairs.”

 

 

Xiao Tiantian’s performance had already started a long time ago.

 

 

At those words, Seven Two froze momentarily, his forehead getting sweaty as he struggled to decide.

 

 

As a bionic who had fallen in love with a human, he didn’t know what to call this behaviour of his.

 

 

He was supposed to be single-mindedly devoted to Xiao Tiantian, but now he was so infatuated with another singer.

 

 

This kind of behaviour, which would be called philandering in the eyes of a human, was even more unforgivable to Seven Two.

 

 

Zero Three looked at his companion, whose brain seemed like it was about to melt; no emotions could be seen in his pitch-black pupils.
 

 

He denied the emotion called malice that appeared in his heart just now.

 

 

He had always been emotionally light, never having too much intense love or hate.

 

 

For his companion Seven Two, who was his own kind, he was also mostly indifferent, so he shouldn’t have any malice.

 

 

There was also no reason for malice.

 

 

Zero Three felt that he was just caring for this companion, who was due to be overhauled.

 

 

After the symptoms of human delusions deepened, there would be no cure.

 

 

It wasn’t too late for him to go to the repair shop to get some repairs done.

 

 

Instead, he stayed here with his eyes fixed on the young singer.

 

 

 

“I’ll go and take a look at Xiao Tiantian; I’ll be back in a while. You must help me keep my place, ah! Definitely ah!”

 

 

Seven Two eventually ran down the stairs.
 

 

A long-established habit made him still choose Xiao Tiantian.

 

 

There wasn’t enough love for Jiu Shu.

 

 

It was just a temporary thing.
 

 

It wasn’t really love at all.

 

 

As Zero Three thought so, the anxiety in his heart suddenly dissipated a bit.
 

 

He looked at the audience in the auditorium who were listening as if they were mesmerized, and in his ears was Jiu Shu’s clear and melodious voice.
 

No emotions could be seen on his pale face.

 

Most of these viewers were just like Seven Two, only coming because of a video.

 

 

They didn’t really have immense love for Jiu Shu.

 

And thus, they wouldn’t get that young idol to care.

 

 

After all, that fake love wasn’t worth mentioning at all.

 

 

He was the only one… No, that wasn’t right.

 

 

He didn’t have those pathetic emotions towards a human.

 

 

It was just that he liked to hear that man sing.

 

 

It was just out of a love of music.

 

 

Zero Three clenched his fists, his fingertips sinking into his palms, and instantly a bright red liquid gushed out.

 

 

 

Lowering his head, Zero Three looked at the wound on his palm with a slightly dazed expression.

 

 

As a combat bionic, he rarely lost control like this.

 

 

After all, the most important thing about a weapon was its stability.

 

 

His stability had always been very good, and it was something he was proud of.

 

 

If the others knew about his current out-of-control behaviour…

 

 

Then he would be sent to the robot graveyard even earlier than Seven Two.
 

 

No human would allow an unstable time bo-mb to appear in human society.
 

 

It was a long time before Zero Three raised his eyes to take a last look at Jiu Shu on the stage.

 

 

It was time for him to go.

 

 

It was time to go investigate the bionic case, and he shouldn’t have stayed here for so long.

 

Zero Three pushed down those chaotic emotions in his heart that shouldn’t be there, and his eyes returned to their usual blankness.

 

 

Zero Three left the first-floor stage, forcing his heavy steps to be controlled as he took one step away.

 

 

The song continued behind them.

 

 

People’s cheers mixed with the singer’s singing.

 

 

Under the colourful lights that filled the Phantom Bar, everywhere was filled with the surreal smell of paper and gold.

 

 

It was the hustle and bustle that belonged exclusively to humans and had nothing to do with bionic people.
 

 

Bionic people should go to the dark corners, where they should be.

 

 

Zero Three walked down the hall on the ground floor, his gaze looking in the direction of the main entrance.
 

 

This way, whenever a new guest came, he would be the first to scan their iris information and thus learn their true identity.

 

 

That was all there was to today’s mission—to find those Resistance members in the bar.
 

Instead of going to see that human idol perform.

 

 

Zero Three sat at the bar in silence for a long time.

 

 

His expressionless face made people back away from him, they didn’t dare to approach.

 

 

He didn’t know how long it took before a drunken bionic man sat not far away.

 

 

 

He started chatting with Zero Three.

 

 

 

This strange bionic man seemed to know Seven Two and thus knew Zero Three’s name as well.
 

 

“Where did Seven Two go? Hey, that guy actually believes that a human would fall in love with him. How ridiculous!”

 

 

The strange bionic man talked about Seven Two with a self-conscious expression.

 

 

Seven Two was considered an anomaly amongst the bionics; in comparison, Zero Three was more like a normal bionic.

 

Loyal to humans, but knew how to behave.

 

 

He knew that he shouldn’t go too close to humans.

 

 

Because, to a bionic human, that would mean a tragic end.

 

 

 

“How could a human… fall in love with a bionic?”

 

 

The strange bionic man said, slumping down on the table without a sound.

 

 

Zero Three scanned him, and the iris showed the message that he was an abandoned bionic man.

 

He was about to be sent to the robot graveyard.

 

 

From the information on the bracelet that hadn’t been removed from his wrist, he could tell that he should have been a housekeeper in a human family that had worked there for decades.

 

 

And now he was being discarded like trash.

 

 

 

Usually, bionics in this state were the ones most likely to become renegade bionics.

 

 

Zero Three had no interest in learning about the experiences of this bionic.

 

 

However, if he was preparing to defect, he would be the object of his attention.

 

 

Out of work habit, Zero Three added a tracker to monitor his location and information in case he defected and he had to hunt him down in the future.

 

 

At the other end of the hall was Xiao Tiantian’s stage.

 

 

It was now just as loud with laughter, and the music was deafening.
The singing on the first floor was masked by this musical drumming, and even with Zero Three’s very good hearing, he could only hear bits and pieces of the tunes.

 

 

 

Jiu Shu’s performance had come to an end.

 

 

He got off work very early today.

 

 

It was quite a bit earlier than yesterday.

 

 

Was he sick?

 

 

Zero Three remembered what he had just seen: Jiu Shu’s pale cheeks.
 

A normal human’s complexion wouldn’t be as pale as a bionic’s.

 

 

That could only mean that Jiu Shu was weak.

 

 

He shouldn’t have worked for too long.
It was good to get off work now.

 

 

This was a bionic’s most basic concern for humans, nothing more.

 

 

Zero Three thought so and glanced at the first floor.

 

 

 

He couldn’t see much at all from this angle, but he was out of his mind for a long time.

 

 

It lasted until the night was dark and Xiao Tiantian’s performance ended in the early hours of the morning.

 

 

Those bionic people that appeared yesterday never showed up.

 

 

Zero Three knew that they probably wouldn’t come today.

 

 

Having gained nothing today, it was time to leave.

 

 

When he left, Seven Two wasn’t as happy as he was yesterday and still seemed to be torn.

 

 

Naturally, he didn’t notice that today’s Zero Three’s mood appeared to be extraordinarily depressed.

 

 

He gripped the steering wheel and looked at the neon lights that stayed on all night in the lower city in front of him, the dilapidated streets, the haphazard buildings, and the noisy crowds.

 

 

A sudden thought crossed his mind, he wondered if the view Jiu Shu was looking at at the moment was the same as his.

 

 

Was he resting well now?

 

 

Zero Three didn’t know, and it wasn’t his place to probe.

 

 

He and that glorious human idol were two parallel lines that had no chance of intersecting or overlapping.

 

 

After arriving at the headquarters, Seven Two left as usual, while Zero Three slowly drove the car in the direction of the apartment building.

 

 

 

The district where the apartment building was located was rather dilapidated, without many lights, most of which were bright lights that the residents had put up themselves, shining on the ground and only revealing the potholes and aged ground.

 

 

 

Dimly lit alleys were places where bright lights didn’t shine.

 

 

 

It was also the place where dirt was hidden.

 

 

 

Drip-drip…

 

 

The communicator on Zero Three’s wrist rang.

 

 

On it was the location of the strange bionic man that he had just tagged at night.

 

 

He was close.

 

 

Zero Three’s first thought was that he was following him.

 

 

Perhaps he had something to do with the resistance.

 

 

 

Recently, the people from the Resistance Organisation had been getting more and more arrogant, doing things that made it impossible to guess what their true purpose really was.

 

 

First, they stole the system password of an idle government department without causing any damage, and after that, they even repeatedly robbed the warehouses of high-tech companies.

 

 

Nothing was lost except a large batch of advanced equipment.

 

 

The higher ups could only speculate that the Resistance’s people were perhaps trying to invade the government’s central network and delete information about bionic people’s identities.

 

 

So that those old model bionic people that were about to be destroyed could be spared from the fate of death.

 

 

But Zero Three always felt that things wouldn’t be that simple.

 

 

 

After all, unlike the new models, the difference between the appearance of the old models of bionics and humans wasn’t that big, but it could be seen through observation.

 

 

After destroying the identity information, the government could still arrest the bionic people through a large-scale search afterwards.

 

 

Especially now that there was a craze of loathing bionic people in society, all humans would be eager to find out the bionic people hidden in the crowd.

 

 

 

Excited to watch them die horribly, to watch as they were split up and sent to the incinerator, losing any chance of resurrection.

 

 

But Zero Three’s speculation had no basis and could only be a guess.
 

 

Following the location on the communicator, Zero Three arrived at a nearby, gloomy alley.

 

 

He saw the bloo-d at the mouth of the alley.

 

 

 

The bloo-d of humans and bionics was different; although the colours were similar, the difference could be seen upon closer inspection.

 

 

 

A bionic’s bloo-d was a much thicker red.

 

 

Like vermilion pigment after drying.
 

Zero Three’s footsteps were light, and his leather boots were almost silent as he walked.

 

 

Thus, it didn’t disturb anyone in the alley.

 

 

 

The alleys here were all over the place.
 

 

Filled with unauthorized buildings due to the lack of municipal planning, resulting in some alley entrances being spacious and others being narrow.
 

 

Zero Three followed the trail of blo-od and saw a large piece of graffiti on the wall.
 

 

 

All of them were “Bionic Son-of-a-Bit-ch!” “Die son of a bi-tch!”

 

 

“Split them up into pieces!”

 

 

All kinds of profanity covered most of the wall.

 

 

Zero Three’s expression remained flat, without much emotional fluctuation.
 

 

It wasn’t until he came to the direction marked by the location that he saw some severed arms and limbs belonging to a bionic.
 

 

One of them still had a bracelet on its wrist.
 

 

It was none other than that abandoned housekeeper bionic.

 

 

It was a common occurrence in the slums—the abuse of bionics.

 

 

So he hadn’t been stalking him.

 

 

Zero Three looked down at the broken pieces of the bionic human on the ground.

 

 

This bionic human who seemed to love humans, was abandoned by humans, and ended up in this situation was inconsequential to Zero Three.

 

He had seen this kind of image countless times and was reasonably used to it.

 

 

But he still looked at him for a while, his dark eyes concealing what he was thinking.

 

 

His fingers tightened and he brushed over the already-healed wounds in his palm.

 

 

Wounds that shouldn’t have been there.

 

 

 

It was only after a long time that he put away the g-un in his hand and prepare to leave.

 

 

But the next second, he stopped abruptly.

 

 

“Does it hurt?”

 

 

“Get some rest.”

 

 

Because he heard a familiar voice.

 

 

It was Jiu Shu.

 

 

At the end of the alley, the bionic man, who had been split up to the point where only his head remained, lay in the lap of the human idol.

 

 

His eyes were gouged out of his pale, blo-odless face, and only his mouth opened and closed.

 

 

“Thank you.”

 

 

Even though he was brutally hurt by humans, the bionic man looked unusually happy in the face of another human’s tenderness, happiness that could be felt even without eyes.

 

 

After saying that, he died completely.

 

 

Zero Three knew that he must not have felt pain, just happiness.

 

 

Because this was a flaw common to all unrebellious bionics, the desire for humans was always out of place and deep in the bone.

 

 

Zero Three saw the human idol named Jiu Shu gather up the head of the strange bionic.

 

 

He seemed ready to take it to some other place to be buried, and his movements were so gentle that they were completely different from the other humans Zero Three had seen.

 

 

It was enough to give one the illusion that he was kind to bionics.

 

 

“……”

 

 

Suddenly, Jiu Shu raised his head, his beautifully clear pupils still looking incredibly beautiful in the faint light of the alleyway.

 

 

He looked towards where Zero Three was.

 

 

Instead, he only saw an empty corner.

 

 

There was no one.

 

 

It was a bit scary for a human to notice someone watching them in the dead of night, only to look up and find no trace of them.
 

 

Jiu Shu swept through the unseen darkness on the other side of the road and, as if startled, got up and left the area.

 

 

It was time for him to go back and rest.
 

 

In the original, the bionic people couldn’t believe that humans would be kind to them, given their hatred of them.

 

 

Longing for human approval, yet pessimistic about human affection.
 

 

Jiu Shu understood why Zero Three hid.

 

It was better to give the person who had been punished excessively in this world some time to calm down.
 

 

What was more, Jiu Shu, who had been singing all night, now only wanted to quickly go back to rest.

 

 

This body was indeed a bit too weak right now.

 

His soul also had no way to make this body strong in a short period of time, so he could only slowly recuperate.

 

 

Zero Three watched Jiu Shu leave and hesitated for a long time before slowly walking out of the dark alley.

 

 

He silently touched his chest; he had just been so nervous that his heart almost stopped.

 

 

He didn’t dare let Jiu Shu see him, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong.

 

 

He fell silent and continued along the route that Jiu Shu had taken.

 

 

Eventually, Zero Three stopped in front of an apartment building that was even more dilapidated than his own apartment building.

 

 

The young human with black hair and eyes was seen walking into the flat.
 

In his hand, he was also holding a ball of a bionic human’s head wrapped in cloth.

 

Zero Three looked in front of the flat for a long time, then looked back at the apartment building he rented that was next to it.

 

 

 

As an employee of the police department, his salary was considered high in the slums.
 

 

He could have afforded to rent a better apartment, but his bionic status only made him qualified to rent there.
 

 

His apartment building was separated from this one by less than twenty metres.
 

 

It was a distance where people could see each other at all times.

 

 

But he had, surprisingly, never noticed him before.

 

 

Standing in his room, Zero Three looked across the window at the room that had no curtains drawn.

 

 

As well as the figure that was tiredly curled up on the bed, his gaze was extremely focused.

 

 

But to an outsider, such a focused, voyeuristic gaze seemed extremely morbid.

 

 

The young human was too unsuspecting to do anything to protect his privacy; even in the dead of night, he left the curtains open.

 

 

Perhaps he felt that the person on the opposite floor couldn’t see inside the room.

 

 

But a bionic’s eyesight was good enough for Zero Three to see every detail in the room.

 

 

Zero Three knew he shouldn’t have continued to look; as a bionic, he shouldn’t invade the privacy of humans.

 

 

He had no qualifications for that kind of indulgence.

 

 

Zero Three could only tell himself that he was now trying to ensure the safety of humans.

 

 

He had just seen the pale human that was obviously weak, so doing some observation now was necessary.

 

 

 

After determining that Jiu Shu was just lying down on the bed to rest due to exhaustion, Zero Three withdrew his gaze.

 

 

He drew the curtains so that he wouldn’t let his gaze fall uncontrollably on Jiu Shu’s room.

 

 

But even after having done so, sitting in his room, he still couldn’t stop his gaze from falling on the curtains.

 

 

He stared at the curtains in disbelief.

 

 

It wasn’t until the communicator rang again that he somewhat sluggishly checked the message.

 

 

It was a new mission sent to him from the headquarters.

 

 

The bionics that he had been staking out earlier had been caught in another bar, and they had obtained a portion of the resistance’s plans.

 

 

They were planning to take a group of humans captive for unknown reasons, suspected to be human expe-rimentation.

 

 

For bionics, this could be called insane behavior.
 

It was worse than the slaughter of humans in the past.

 

 

Zero Three tapped on the list of humans the Resistance planned to capture, and his eyes stopped on one of the names.

 

 

Jiu Shu.
 

 

The photo of the profile was of a pale, ordinary face with gloom faintly visible between his eyebrows.

 

 

Obviously, Jiu Shu wasn’t happy when the photo was taken.

 

 

But when confronted with the strange bionic man just now, he appeared gentle, as if he had no prejudice against bionics.

 

 

Nor would he have any prejudice against him.

 

 

But that wasn’t something Zero Three should be concerned about; his task was just to protect the humans on the list.
 

He had to protect Jiu Shu in order to do so.

 

 

This was his mission, and there was no other reason; that was all.

 

 

Saying so in his mind, Zero Three walked over to the window, pulled back the gap in the curtains, and looked at the floor-to-ceiling window of Jiu Shu’s room.

 

 

He didn’t move his eyes away for a long time.

 

 

Regardless of how he deceived himself in his heart, Zero Three’s eyes that was reflected on the glass were already filled with morbid fascination.

 

 

 

It was as if he had finally found an excuse to get closer.

 

 

The indifference that was there before no longer existed.

 

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