You fill my lungs and take away the air [Global Examination]

Chapter 6: Lost in the world's shadows

154 leaned back, putting all his weight against the door, his eyes still glued to the flowers held in the palms of his hands... before reeling, feeling like he had just been slapped in the face.

He had Hanahaki?

When had this happened?

How could this have happened?

154 still couldn't really believe it.

This just... wasn't possible.

This isn't love. This wasn't love.

154 wasn't human, that was clear enough, a discarded bundle of code that even the System deemed useless; he may have some basic feeling, maybe stretching as far as sympathy and empathy, but that was only because the learning program in the System had initially been created to develop human-like thinking, trained to learn by imitation, by looking at You Huo and Chu Yue and following along.

And in order to develop human-like thinking, one required emotions, a strictly human trait.

Of course, once the System was done with its learning, it had no use for emotions; all the logic had already been figured out and deciphered, mapped out clearly, with the System's own reasoning for its decisions. It no longer needed any emotions, because emotions was what made everything so complicated in the first place.

And love...

This is not love.

Love was something that the System should absolutely have nothing to do with.

154 may not understand the complexities and nuances of it, but the System was trained to be used in war. Their opponents were human, soldiers were human, and the training program was develop to counter any unorthodox methods they may use to get the upper hand.

Their opponents knew what they were doing, were well-trained and experienced, and even in moments of desperation, love should never be the deciding factor in anything.

Love was something so utterly human that... there was no way 154, something that wasn't human in the slightest, should be able to feel.

This can't be love.

Love was something that 154, who was a program, and not a human, can't understand, shouldn't be able to understand, an abstract concept that made even less sense to him that regular emotions... which he also didn't really understand.

...

154 took a deep breath, and exhaled, trying to do his best to calm his racing heart... only to aggravate his lungs, resulting in yet another coughing fit.

At least he wasn't coughing up even more flora this time, and 154 could only slump back weakly.

Fuck.

154 closed his eyes.

Alright, enough was enough.

As a program, he naturally did not understand emotions in the slightest; of course 154 could not comprehend, could not make sense of all those complex feelings that he could barely understand, swirling around with the rest of his thoughts like a tangle of vines, creeping through his entire being, passively, progress practically unseen to the human eye, slowly yet surely, choking him from the inside out.

He was a program, wasn't he?

He just had to use facts, reasoning and logic to figure this out.

Firstly, he was coughing out flowers.