His fiancé stolen by his (supposedly) kind-hearted and merciful younger brother, Sun Fang decides to take the high road. (To the surprise of everyone who's ever known him.) Instead of fighting to get his cheating fiancé back, Sun Fang sets out to fu...
Turning around, Sun Fang smiled at Ivy. The AI had only just come back online, in the end spending a total of thirty-one hours in repair-mode. In this mode, Ivy was for all intents and purposes dead to the world, completely incapable interacting or even without any way of knowing what was going on around it. Sun Fang could only remember Ivy shutting down this completely once before, when he was a mere child.
It had scared him half-to-death, he knew. He'd been utterly inconsolable while Ivy was unreachable, spending the whole time curled up in his bed and sniffling. His father had sent over a temporary servant in Ivy's place, and it had triggered a tantrum the likes of which Sun Fang had never succeeded in replicating since.
Ivy, just after coming online again, looked sleepy. It walked over to where Sun Fang was sitting on the sofa, stopping right behind the backrest and looking at the TV with an empty gaze. The gears in the eyes were shifting in time with its thoughts (Sun Fang imagined) and it took it a moment to begin speaking.
"Did you go to the pottery event, Young Master?" Ivy asked, looking down at him.
Smiling, Sun Fang shook his head. He said, "I cited a family emergency and skipped it." Seeing the nearly imperceptible frown on Ivy's face, Sun Fang laughed, "I couldn't possibly leave you here alone like that. What if something happened? If there was a fire? You wouldn't be able to get out!"
Ivy's frown grew heavier. "You were looking forward to the pottery event, Young Master. You bought a whole new outfit just for it."
"There'll be more events, Ivy, but there's only one of you," Sun Fang retaliated.
At that, Ivy's expression smoothed out like a lake's ripples disappearing. Sun Fang smiled brighter, patting the spot on the sofa next to him. "Come, sit," he said, and pointed to the TV, "I'm watching a new idol drama, it's actually really interesting. We're only on the first episode, too, so you shouldn't be too confused!"
Ivy sat. "Have you eaten, Young Master?" it asked, turning to face him and completely ignoring the TV in the process. The main characters were just about to embark on the first step of their journey, and so Sun Fang codlin't quite stop himself from keeping one eye on the screen at the same time as he answered Ivy.
"I've eaten well," he reassured Ivy. He really had eaten well, he promised, it was just that it had all been junk food. Popcorn, and chips, and ice cream and cookies that he even baked himself. All of it was comfort food, the kind of food that he ate to make himself happy (and also just because it was really good, okay, sometimes it was just because it was good). With Ivy unresponsive, it had suddenly seemed inconceivable for him to cook proper meals in the kitchen alone.
It wasn't like he couldn't cook. It just... the kitchen was Ivy's. Everything in there, Ivy had put there. Ivy had decorated it, Ivy had bought all the things, Ivy had renovated it years ago, Ivy had decided everything about it. The kitchen was Ivy's, and it felt like a betrayal to cook in there without it.
It was illogical, but Sun Fang couldn't defeat his own brain.
"I hope everything went well?" Sun Fang asked, scooting a little closer to Ivy. Ivy's warmth was just about room temperature, a nice thirty degrees Celsius if Sun Fang wasn't mistaken. And that was with the air conditioning and the apartment building's cooling system working around the clock to keep all the indoor temperatures survivable.
Ivy said, "There was no problem. The latest operating update simply wasn't completely compatible with me, so I had to expend some effort to modify it, but it should all be functional now."
"That's illegal," Sun Fang smiled, poking Ivy's cheek. "AIs aren't allowed to modify themselves."
Ivy's head tilted, moving due to Sun Fang's persistent poking. "It's legal on Guillotine, as of six and a half years ago, for an AI to modify itself in order to operate smoothly. Altering the operating system to be fully compatible with itself is allowable, and can be done without notifying the owner. It now counts as necessary maintenance. It is, in fact, now illegal for an owner to prevent its AI from these kind of modifications."
Sun Fang's lips twitched, and he laughed faintly. "I know," he giggled. "But it's cute when you're serious like this!"
"I am always one-hundred percent serious, Young Master," Ivy said. On the TV, one of the main characters was tearfully saying goodbye to his new wife, who would now be left alone for months in a hostile family that would probably severely mistreat her until she realized her potential and started working on taking over the family. Sun Fang approved, though it seemed like too much work for him to really root for her. It wasn't like she was even actually in love with her new husband (political marriage, he thought) so why even bother sticking around?
Ah. But maybe that was just his own bias showing. Possibly, others might rather fight back and get revenge than just run away.
He couldn't relate.
"Of course you are," Sun Fang agreed, patting it on the shoulder. Ivy stared at him, but Sun Fang merely kept smiling until Ivy was the defeated. Ivy turned its head to the TV and looked at it; the main character was currently riding off on a horse into a forest, being chased by ninjas.
To be fair, the ninjas had been there at the drama's very first scene, so their existence wasn't shocking. What was shocking was that they had apparently betrayed the main character in the first episode and was now trying to kill him on the orders of their new master. Sun Fang blindly reached out a hand for his popcorn and grabbed a fistful of them. Things were getting interesting.
*
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