Kim Namjoon has been a lonely kid ever since his best friend, Jung Hoseok, moved away. He's in his senior year of high school, he's accepted the fact that he's lonely now. But, like all humans, he craved the company of another human. What he didn't...
It was finally Saturday, that was a relief for Namjoon. Keeping Seokjin under control at school had become quite easy. The doll was obedient, despite his jealousy, he listened very well and stayed put when Namjoon told him to.
It was suspicious. Seokjin listened too easily, especially after the whole carving-initials-into-Namjoon's-wrist fiasco, it was like Jin was trying to make up for what he'd done. Namjoon constantly thought about what Jin said during their tea party; "of course I'm not real, I'm only made to make you happy, Namjoon." Namjoon was starting to believe it.
Currently Seokjin was outside in the backyard. Namjoon had put him there to distract him while he figured out more information about the Standard Loneliness Package, but he needed to do it alone so Jin wouldn't catch on. If he even cared.
Namjoon looked out his window in the backyard where the doll was playing in the grass. It was a fenced backyard, so he didn't really have to worry about anyone seeing Jin, plus he looked pretty preoccupied with something he found on the ground. The student chuckled a bit before pushing off the windowsill with his foot to roll across the bedroom, bumping into his desk.
Namjoon propped his laptop on his desk and held the power button, listening to the whirring of the machine for a moment as it turned on. He pushed it backwards to make room in front of him on the desk, looking up at his bulletin board where Seokjin's note hung. He tore it off.
"Standard Loneliness Package, date of arrival, likes and dislikes..." his eyes raked over the note over and over, trying to pick up any hints, any clues at all, there had to be something! Soon he got the brilliant idea to simply turn it over where a quote in fine print was written on the back: "Companionship perfected. Beyond human limits."
"Oh, so I'm an idiot," Namjoon muttered, typing the quote into his browser. How didn't he see that at first? Well, to be fair, he hadn't looked too hard, only the occasional glance. He pressed enter and waited for something to come up.
Not much popped up. There were lots of inspirational quotes and other websites on how to find real friends, not dolls, but not what Namjoon was looking for. Well, he didn't really know what he was looking for, he just searched for anything that looked like a doll or the Standard Loneliness Package. He sighed and put his head down, he felt like he'd been scrolling for ages, until he finally found the one he was looking for.
"Happiness, just one click away. Standard Loneliness Package." Namjoon read aloud. "Pretty straightforward."
He clicked on the link and was immediately taken to a website, but it looked old, like it hadn't been updated in a long time. Also, it wasn't a PDF or an online file, it was a picture of the paper copy of the article that had been uploaded onto the website. A very smudged picture at that. Brows furrowed, Namjoon clicked on the photo.
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Namjoon reread the article a few times, his eyes trailing back and forth in concentration as he tried to take it all in. There were many grammatical errors and smudged ink spots, half of the words on the page weren't even real. But he did make out the main message: no one should be alone 24/7.
