Ch 1 – What are you busy with, human?
T/N: I have such a big backlog of stories I want to translate, and this one drifted to the top! The cuteness is off the charts, and the humor is absolutely phenomenal. Sprinkle a little heartache and existential dread on top, and you get get this wonderful story! I hope you enjoy it.
Trees cast dancing shadows against the gauze curtains, which fluttered gently in the wind. A robot vacuum cleaner, carrying a big fat cat on its back, was roaming in circles around the house.
Footsteps sounded outside. Strangely, the pre-programmed robot stopped in the middle of its work and turned to face the door.
Saying that it ‘faced the door’ was somewhat inaccurate, because the simple disc-shaped robot had no face, and simply pointed its power button toward the door.
Keys clinked together, and the robot vacuum cleaner, carrying the big fat cat, moved a few centimeters closer.
The door creaked open, and the robot vacuum cleaner inched forward as if in anticipation.
But then, like many before it, the dream came to an abrupt end.
The man on the bed opened his eyes, blinking dazedly: “It’s like this every time.”
This man looked somewhat strange. His short hair was dark blue, and two blueish lines marked his handsome face. One ran below his eyes and across the bridge of his nose, extending from above his right ear to his left, and the other line started at his upper lip and ran down over his chin, disappearing beneath his clothes.
It didn’t look like a tattoo, but more like it was embedded in his face slightly beneath his skin.
The blue lines seemed to brighten and dim intermittently, but it was difficult to notice unless one looked closely.
“Sleeping, dreaming…..I feel like I’m becoming more and more like a human. Specifically, a human before their ‘spiritual evolution.’” Yu Xi sat up. “I prefer the humans who used to look a lot like monkeys. Although they also liked to do silly, monkey-like things, I feel like there was a kind of avaricious vibrancy about them.”
He rambled on and on, but there was no one there to respond to him.
Yu Xi continued to mutter to himself as he made the bed.
Suddenly, the virtual projector in the room turned on. The projection took up half the room, like a close-up stage play, except that the background props were a little too realistic.
Yu Xi watched as the human character in the projection professed his love to a strange, blue-skinned alien, and his lips curved up.
He had watched this movie tens of thousands of times. He had memorized all of the lines, and even remembered which era and brand each of the background props belonged to.
Perhaps he should clear his memories so that he could experience this movie as if it was brand new to him.
However, this idea only briefly crossed Yu Xi’s mind. Years ago, when he was clearing out his memory, he accidentally cleared out a quarter of his past as well. This led him to forget how long humans had been gone, and what year it was on the astrological calendar.
Yu Xi was very unclear on how he had even made such a mistake, since the operational steps and his thought process had also been deleted. All he knew was that in the blink of an eye, he had traveled directly from three thousand years after the extinction of humankind to the present.
Yu Xi didn’t even notice the change at first, until he realized that his energy was about to run out and his “life” was coming to an end.
Yu Xi was somewhat curious about those memories. He wanted to recover them, but if every day in those memories was exactly the same as every day in the present, then wouldn’t he just be reclaiming…..lonliness?
Wait, he could feel lonely?
Yu Xi didn’t understand, and was unable to conduct a comparative experiment.
“They always yearned for immortality, and wanted to know the answers to all of the world’s questions, but when they finally achieved it, they began to actively throw themselves toward death. I don’t understand.” Yu Xi continued to mutter, “So what exactly were they pursuing? The entire time, were they just courting death?”
He activated his command system, and the entire planet began to ‘revive.’
This was a gift given to him by the last wave of humans – a ‘home’ to which they would never return.
Yu Xi felt like a particularly intelligent “smart butler.” He even joked about it to the humans, but they didn’t know what a smart butler was at all, and only understood the laugh track Yu Xi played to accompany it.
“Was the joke really that ancient?” Yu Xi had never forgotten that incident. He didn’t know if what he was feeling was embarrassment, but he sometimes got so caught up in the memory that he couldn’t sleep at night.
“But I really do feel like a smart butler now.” Yu Xi raised his head and went silent, leaving only the sound of the old movie playing in the room.
He waited patiently for a moment, and then laughter rang out from all directions.
“That’s how it should have gone.” He pressed the center of his chest with a cheerful smile, and a semi-transparent virtual screen lit up.
As the canned laugh track gradually faded, Yu Xi connected to the planet’s surveillance system and let out a sound of surprise.
The screen transitioned, revealing a bloody, mangled form.
“It’s human-shaped?” Yu Xi stared at the thing as a miniature surveillance probe circled around it.
“It really looks like a human. It’s flesh-colored, and its hair is composed of individual strands. Hey, look at that, it even looks male.” Yu Xi’s shock grew. “Absolutely nothing is out of place. It’s perfect!”
“And his appearance is so old-fashioned, ah, just like mine.” Yu Xi continued to admire him.
His admiration lasted for a long time before he finally activated a medical robot – not for treatment, but to create a medical record before deporting him.
Other beings were not welcome here. Yu Xi was a neutral force in interstellar space, and taking in an alien would only cause him trouble that he didn’t want.
He would preserve this alien’s genetic material, then put him in a starship and launch him out. Whether he lived or died at that point was up to fate.
“His blood is red too. Although some of it has become a bit dark…..is that still blood?” Yu Xi was still rambling on when the medical robot pierced the alien with a needle.
Yu Xi adjusted the angle, wanting to snap an image of this creature that looked like a human to keep as a souvenir, but he quickly went still.
The medical robot’s examination was complete. This was not some unfamiliar alien he had never encountered before.
Yu Xi was very familiar with this genetic material. Or rather, he used to be.
After all, later generations of humans didn’t have ‘genes’ at all.
“A human?” Yu Xi sat there blankly for a moment. He blinked rapidly, first checking to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating all of this due to being infected by a virus.
How could there be a human on this planet? And an ancient human at that.
He still had hair and fingernails, and his appearance…..well, his face was injured, so it was a bit difficult to see it through all the blood.
Could this be a human who had traveled through a wormhole? Or perhaps a virus had infected Yu Xi so severely that he was experiencing hallucinations indistinguishable from reality?
Yu Xi touched his face and felt that it was a little hot. The breathing light on his face was pulsing even more rapidly, and his processors were working overtime.
On the surveillance footage, the person on the ground let out a weak groan.
“Ah!! He made a sound!” Yu Xi jumped up on the spot.
He suddenly remembered how fragile ancient humans were. If he watched any longer, this human who had fallen from the sky would die.
“How do I save him? Oh, right! A stretcher!” Yu Xi rushed outside.
“Heavens, how can there still be a living ancient human? And he fell into my home of all places.” Yu Xi’s mouth was running non-stop. “Will he need to eat? Oh! And he’ll need water too, he can’t survive without it.”
“Luckily, I had some free time and planted some crops, otherwise I wouldn’t know how to take care of him.” Yu Xi felt as if something was trying to break free from his chest, and pressed a hand against it to try to control the feeling.
But he didn’t succeed.
Yu Xi suddenly remembered a young human he had once taken care of. When the parents agreed to let the child keep a cat, the young human was overjoyed, and ran around flinging its limbs everywhere.
What had the young human done next?
Oh! It started to make screeching noises.
“Woohoo!” Yu Xi jumped down the next five steps, shouting with joy as he released the pent-up emotions in his heart.
He laughed heartily, running and jumping around. Meanwhile, the human had already been picked up and placed on a stretcher.
The human was severely injured, with many broken bones. Yu Xi also discovered the human’s crashed starship not far away.
He controlled some machinery to move the thing away. He intended to repair the crude starship and find a place to put it once it was fixed. This was something the human had brought with him.
It could be considered his own “nest.”
If Yu Xi happened to frighten the human, he would let him move into his “nest” first until he got used to him.
Yu Xi ran and ran, then suddenly came to a stop.
He needed to disconnect the ship’s power source. It seemed as if the human had been attacked. What if he woke up and tried to leave?
It was too dangerous out there. He couldn’t just let him run off by himself.
After coming up with a plan, Yu Xi estimated the distance to the hospital. He felt that he couldn’t run that far on foot, so he located a flying vehicle. He needed to see this ancient human as soon as possible.
*
*
A floral fragrance reached Kersz’s nose. He was awake, but he hadn’t opened his eyes yet.
His last memory was of falling toward a brightly-lit, uncharted planet after a space jump. Based on all of the holographic images, the inhabitants of this planet should be humans.
But this place was outside the bounds of the star map. Kersz could no longer feel the pain of his wounds, and he seemed to be enveloped in something warm and comfortable.
Had he been rescued? Or was this a trap?
Why did it feel like someone was hugging him?
Kersz decided to wait and see what the other party would do.
He heard the sound of machines running and knew that he couldn’t fool them by pretending to be asleep. He didn’t intend to use this method to avoid facing the situation; he just needed to figure out what the other party wanted.
Kersz silently kept track of the time in his mind, while also straining his hearing to catch the slightest sound.
When he counted up to nine thousand, Kersz was a little perplexed.
Had they really not noticed that he was awake?
Yu Xi had long since realized that the human was pretending to be asleep, but he usually wouldn’t bother humans when they were doing their own thing.
Humans were always very busy doing their own thing.
Just like this human. He had been busy for almost three hours.
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