Chapter 181

“Miyu, Miyu. Wake up.”

A gentle hand shook me as if to soothe me. But I curled up beneath the pure white sheets and continued pretending to sleep. It was just a way to buy a little more time.

Still, such a childish act never worked on adults. No, even if I were a talented actress, my parents… they would have checked my eye movements to see if I was truly asleep.

“It’s about time to go study. Hmm?”

The voice was endlessly kind, but to me, it was no different from the devil’s whisper.

Children’s instincts are incredibly sharp. I could tell, with perfect clarity, that not even a milligram of love was hidden in that sweet tone.

To escape it, I buried myself deeper beneath the covers. A flimsy piece of cloth with no real defensive power—yet it was the only thing left that could protect me in this bleak world.

But even that act of defiance didn’t last long.

“Miyu, if you don’t get up, I’ll have to punish you. You’ll listen, right?”

Punishment.

At that word, I shuddered reflexively.

It was because the punishment I’d received last time had been engraved into my body. Startled, I bolted upright from under the covers and met eyes with the man who had woken me.

Dad.

My dad.

The man I had once believed to be my father.

He was holding a remote control. His thumb rested on the red button. Thank goodness. If I had stalled just a moment longer, the electric shock would have struck me.

Behind him stood men in military uniforms and scientist “uncles,” all looking down at me.

Their eyes stared at me as if they were observing a monkey. It was frankly unpleasant, but I knew that upsetting them would bring about something much worse.

“Let’s go, Miyu.”

“…Okay.”

Reluctantly, I grabbed his hand and left the room. As we walked down the hallway, my mother was speaking excitedly to the uniformed men.

“Please believe me. You won’t be disappointed.”

“That little girl, really…?”

“Of course. You’ll be absolutely amazed when you see it.”

“We’ll have to see it with our own eyes first.”

From the conversation, I could guess what today’s “studies” would involve. Building a gas trap? Printing a combat module? Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t going to be anything I liked.

And then we arrived at the so-called “study room”—a lab in name only.

In front of me was a massive 3D printer. The soldiers and scientists watched me through reinforced glass from the room opposite.

I glanced at Dad. He simply nodded without a word. That movement meant: Make something that will surprise us. Most likely, they wanted another type of lethal weapon, just like always.

Sighing internally, I began typing commands into the computer. I reproduced the blueprint and calculations from memory in real time. In response, the printer started moving busily, creating something piece by piece.

And then—complete.

On top of the 3D printer sat a miniature railgun. Though called “miniature,” it was still around two meters in size. That was the limit of the printer’s current capabilities.

To me, it was a very unsatisfying creation.

“It’s not cute at all…”

The design, the purpose, the size.

All of it felt disconnected from the things I usually liked. But from beyond the glass, cheers and applause erupted. Their reaction was so enthusiastic that I couldn’t help but shrug proudly.

Well, why not?

If this was what people wanted, then helping them wasn’t such a bad thing. More than anything, every time I impressed our “guests,” Mom and Dad would give me a wonderful gift.

That day, after my performance in front of the soldiers, I received a box of crayons.

Unlike the tablet PC I usually used, they were rough and colorful, and I liked them a lot. During my permitted time, I drew pictures in my room or played with my dolls.

And so, time passed.

Even the shock I’d felt upon learning that Mom and Dad weren’t my real parents gradually faded away.

The memory of the uncle who died because of one of my pranks, and the realization that every bit of “love” directed at me was fake… with each passing day, those things became less and less important.

Because, in the end, I lacked nothing.

Even the goose that laid golden eggs must have received quite a bit of affection from its owner—at least until the day its belly was split open. I’m sure it lived a fairly happy life for a goose.

Children, by nature, crave love for the sake of survival—even if that love is a lie, even if it’s only for show. Even if my heart was hollow and only a shell remained, to me, it was still real. It was everything.

So I gave my all to that lie. If they wanted a new weapon, I built one. If they wanted to experiment on my body, I offered it up willingly.

And the more I did, the more it felt like something inside me was creaking and breaking. Still, at least in those moments when they gave me rewards, I could be intoxicated by the sweetness and joy of their false affections.

But just like eating too much junk food gives you a stomachache, relationships like that are bound to shatter eventually. Maybe things seem fine at first, but somewhere unseen, everything starts to rot and fester, until it’s too late to fix.

In my case, it began when I got a sibling. Or rather, I was told I would.

Sibling…? That might not be the right word. We didn’t share a drop of blood, so maybe it wasn’t even appropriate to call them that.

Anyway.

There was a baby in Mom’s belly.

It should’ve been a cause for celebration, of course. But unfortunately, the situation turned out to be closer to a tragedy. It wasn’t long before she miscarried. I don’t know the exact reason, but it was probably due to overwork or harmful substances floating around the lab air.

When I heard the news, I felt sad.

But I didn’t cry.

It was the kind of sadness you feel when you’re told that you almost made a new friend—but didn’t get the chance to meet them after all.

At that time, when I spent my days only moving between the study room, the lab, and my bedroom, the existence of a “sibling” honestly felt like a story from some faraway world.

Shall I be honest?

Within 99% of my sadness, there was 1% of relief mixed in. Because to my parents, I was the “fake” child, and if a “real” one were to be born, I feared that something of mine would be taken away. It was a shameful, dark emotion.

In any case, the sibling who never came into the world and simply disappeared did not leave much of an impact on me.

A few days later.

Until the day Mom came crying into my room.

Mom shook me awake roughly as I slept in bed. She must have hidden this visit from Dad and the other scientist uncles, sneaking here just to meet me.

She looked at me with the expression of someone who had lost everything in the world, knelt down, and begged in a voice like she was praying to God.

“Please… save my baby…!”

It was an unreasonable request.

No, if she was going to beg, she should have asked much earlier. Reviving dead cells was an incredibly difficult task, and the more time passed after death, the more the success rate dropped exponentially.

I shook my head.

“I’m not God, Mom.”

I told her it was close to impossible.

Even if it did succeed, I warned her, it wouldn’t be the kind of success she wanted. The chances of the child growing up normally were incredibly low. But it seemed like she couldn’t hear any of those warnings.

“Please! Please, I beg you…!”

She looked terribly fragile.

If I didn’t listen to her, she would surely collapse. And since I didn’t want to lose Mom, I reluctantly nodded.

And to speak only of the result—it was a tremendous success. I poured all my knowledge and technology into it and succeeded in reviving the dead baby inside her womb.

Of course, she couldn’t let anyone else find out about it, so she quit her job. She must have planned to stay hidden until the baby was born.

The baby grew once more inside Mom’s belly, and her stomach began to swell again. Time passed, and the due date approached.

And that was when the true tragedy began. She told me this during a phone call:

“Our baby is… kind of strange…”

What I had feared had come true.

The tests showed that the baby had been born missing about thirty percent of its brain. It was deformed. The fact that it was the brain, of all things, was the biggest problem.

Arms, legs, bones, a spine—those could all be replaced. Even if the baby was born without eyes, new ones could be attached. If the jawbone was deformed, it could be corrected with surgery.

But lacking a brain… that was far harder to solve. Especially when it wasn’t a matter of being damaged, but rather never existing from the start—even with “cybernetics” devices, it was impossible to expect normal cognitive ability.

That, I couldn’t fix. Her second wish, “Please heal my child,” was beyond my reach.

This time, I truly had to shake my head. It was impossible. Then, overwhelmed by despair, Mom began to blame me.

“It’s your fault! Because of you, my baby…!”

She hurled curses at me. She used every word in existence to insult and attack me. Even when I dropped the phone in fear, her curses rang on.

“I won’t forgive you! I won’t forgive you…!”

I hung up and ran to my room.

I hid under the blankets and cried loudly.

Why?

I only did what she asked of me.

I revived my sibling, just as Mom wanted.

It was Mom who ignored my words.

So why was she blaming me?

Why wouldn’t she love me?

Why didn’t I have real parents?

But no one answered those questions. In the end, I was just an experiment. A tool that had to produce results for the researchers.

That truth filled me with resentment.

I hated everything.

I wanted to forget everything.

But I was livestock trapped in a pen, and my owners had no intention of releasing the goose that laid golden eggs.

Even after all that, the next day, and the day after, I repeated the same routine. Building machines, solving problems, studying, injecting new devices and drugs into my body… that kind of daily life.

Fake affection.

False intimacy.

Twisted love.

Having tasted the bitter poison hidden inside its sweetness, there was no way for me to return to who I once was.

Everything became disgusting.

Even breathing brought forth new ideas, new formulas, sights no one else could see… and I wished for all of it to disappear.

I want to escape. I want to escape.

I want to escape. I want to escape.

And so.

I, the goose that laid golden eggs.

Made up my mind to break the cage that trapped me.

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