Humans treat each other in many different ways. Sometimes they run and they push each other down, throwing their weight against each other in an effort to knock each other over. Sometimes they help each other up and run together, fingers intertwined. When their parents arrive to pick them up, the children either do not want to leave or run to their parents so quickly they can’t be stopped.
Tao used to be one of these children. Did he run and jump too? Did he climb trees? No matter how much Kris tries to be human now, in this present, he wasn’t always human, like Tao. He wasn’t born human; he’s not sure just how he was born. Kris was never a child. He never ran around, fell into the mud, helped someone up or climbed a tree. He never ran into his parents’ arms; he has no parents.
This…this human concept of “family”…of parents and their children, of children and their siblings, and their extended family, sometimes blood related, sometimes not. Tao has a family. He calls his parents almost every night and speaks to them in hushed Chinese, as if not wanting Kris to hear.
Kris tries to eavesdrop despite his motherboard telling him it’s a rude habit. He wants to know what members of the same human family say to each other. How do they treat each other? What’s it like to have parents? What’s this about the “unconditional love” human parents are supposed to have for their offspring? What happens if they do not love their human children? What becomes of them? How do they grow?
Every day, Kris sits in the park, under the shade of the only large tree, and watches the children play. Often, their ball toy finds itself near him and he throws it back to them. His lips give an odd twitch when they thank him and do that human thing called “smiling.”
Kris smiles for the first time when a child, the smallest one of the familiar group, kisses his cheek after he hands her back the ball. “Wah! So handsome!” she says, giggling.
His smile is a subconscious reflex and stays on his face long after she’s bounced back to her group. He feels content he can help her keep her happiness.
The first time he smiles before Tao, Tao bangs his knee on the coffee table.
“Ow, fuck,” he hisses, rubbing his kneecap.
“Are you alright?”
“Just…” Still wincing, he looks up at Kris. Redness encroaches on his cheeks and he turns his head away when Kris continues to stare. “You have a nice smile.”
“I do?”
"Ah, this is so embarrassing,” Tao mumbles. “So embarrassing. Dammit.”
Kris practices his smile in the mirror after that. Laughing doesn’t come to him until a little while later, when his humor software upgrades itself after his first month.
Just like his first smile, his first laugh causes Tao to injure himself: he walks into the wall.
“You need to stop doing that,” Tao later tells him, holding a bag of ice to his forehead.
“Doing what?”
“Laughing. Smiling. Expressing happiness. All of that needs to stop.”
