Absolute Chanyeol

PART 01

PART 01

Absolute Chanyeol

And I'm so grateful to you
I'd have lived my whole life through
Empty as the sky
Never knowing why
Lost forever
If I never knew you

Pocahontas soundtrack - "If I Never Knew You"

In the kitchen of his lonely apartment Byun Baekhyun, 19, stares helplessly down at the catalog on the counter. He had found the catalog in his mailbox that morning, staring at him amidst a sea of bills and letters from home. The catalog is of average size, though a little on the thin side, with bright colors proclaiming the great uses and amazing reviews of the products it sells.

Baekhyun hasn't even purchased anything yet and this is already a mistake. He should know better than to trust his neighbor, Huang Zi Tao. That kid is always getting into things. Byun Baekhyun cares nothing for fads so what the hell is he doing with a catalog of potential robotic boyfriends?

Only Tao could've passed this on to Baekhyun. It makes sense considering Tao has a robot boyfriend already. Kris is tall and broad; he's the kind of robot one would think had the power to take over the world one day. Baekhyun's a little intimidated by Kris but this feeling has almost nothing to do with his tall stature and commanding voice. Kris is pretty life-like for a robot and possesses enough "human" intelligence he can easily be mistaken for human if it weren't for the eerie, artificial light shining in his eyes.

Baekhyun constantly forgets Kris isn't as human as he seems. All things considered, Baekhyun doesn't know why he's even entertaining this idea of a robotic partner. It's true he doesn't have much success in that department with school and work taking up large chunks of his life but he knows there's no reason to rush things. If he wants a boyfriend, he would actively seek one and not take the punk way out, buying his own.

Still, a robotic boyfriend does have a certain appeal. It's mostly for curiousity's sake that he opens the catalog and looks through it.

Staying clear away from the "sexbots" on the last page, Baekhyun lets his eyes roam the first two pages: they detail the many possible "cute" boyfriends eligible for purchase. Purchase. His parents will never know of this. He doesn't know what they personally think of this new "robot" fad but he's seen newspaper articles about the older Korean generations being terribly confused, frightened and disgusted by their youths shacking it up with tin cans.

"It's only a matter of time before they enslave us!" a very frantic reporter said on the television just last night.

Baekhyun doesn't buy into all the hype. He's seen those robots in action and he doesn't think they're capable of staging their own uprising when they don't know what "hot" or "cold" are. Kris can tell Tao what temperatures are considered "hot" and which are "cold" but when asked to describe what they feel like, he draws a blank. A very handsome blank, for his face is shaped like that of a movie star's, but it's a mental blank nonetheless.

Baekhyun's never lived with another person, much less a robotic one. Flipping through the catalog, he sees they apparently don't need much to survive: just basic human interaction, some mental stimulation and "love."

All the robots here are advertisied as "boyfriends" but Baekhyun just wants a companion, a roommate of sorts. He doesn't really know how Tao does it. Kissing a robotic boyfriend, no matter how "in love" one is with it would be like kissing one's own computer, right? Or kissing a doll? Or kissing a doll that had a computer inside of it? How lifelike can they be?

Baekhyun should just close this catalog and forget all about robotic boyfriends and all that nonsense. He's a good-looking guy (...kinda), he'll find a real boyfriend on his own.

It's only after fifteen minutes of flipping through the booklet and landing on the same page that he realizes his eyes are drawn to one figure and one figure only. The CH model: One hundred and eight two centimeters (Tall); brown, curled hair (cute) and has the ability to...fall in love? What the hell does that mean? It's a computer; what does it know of love.

Against his better judgment, Baekhyun is drawn to that sweet face. The model is one of the cheaper ones and Baekhyun knows it's foolish of him to be thankful when "cheap" means almost nothing to a university student. He's going to be swimming in debt when he graduates medical school but this...this toy, wouldn't it be interesting to have?

Even if Baekhyun can only stand playing with it for a little while, he would like to personally experience what the big deal is about. He'd like to judge for himself just how "life changing" (according to the catalog) having a robotic boyfriend/roommate/ is.

And, anyway, if things turn out too badly, he can always blame Tao for this.

Tao was the one who gave him such a catalog after all.