The numbers on the digital clock changed again and again as the night grew deeper.
Manager's Bedroom.
"I was just saying that even if the employees work like this every day, their mental state is still better than my department heads'…"
As usual, X was writing his pre-sleep journal.
"And then today I nearly got forcefully—ugh… if I'm being precise with wording… it'd be drug-assisted assault…?"
His typing paused. The absurd incident from not long ago was still vivid, as if it had just happened.
"I even pulled her mental health report from the Training Department database earlier… and it showed everything as normal? What the hell…"
"But Angela using TT2 to save me really caught me off guard… I guess she really does live up to being my secretary."
"Hm…? No, wait… something feels off…"
X stopped typing, leaned back, raised a hand, and rubbed his temples, trying to organize his thoughts.
"These mysteries… I feel like I almost caught the thread… but… it's still blurry…"
"Damn it… why does my brain always do this—"
"If you're going to give me a flash of insight, fine… but why does it have to be just a flash…?"
He clutched his head and forced himself to think for a long while, yet still failed to retrieve that fleeting spark.
Not only did he fail to grasp it, his thoughts grew even more tangled than before.
In the end, with no other choice, he hastily wrapped up his journal, washed up, got into bed, and rested.
—
Backside Lobotomy Corporation, the Abnormality World.
"Good evening, Norl."
After stepping into this world made of blood and flesh, X found its master and greeted it as he always did.
"…"
No "Hello."
No "I love you."
Not even that engine-like heavy breathing.
Only silence.
Yet X could still feel its gaze.
"It's okay."
X crouched down, reached out, and gently patted the writhing lump of flesh on the ground—embedded with several blue eyeballs—speaking in a soothing tone.
"This is fine too. At least… this is your own appearance."
"Just be like this. Don't imitate me or anyone else. Just be yourself~"
"…"
The only response was silence once more, accompanied by the faint squelching sounds of flesh slowly shifting.
After days of effort, Nothing There had finally given up on trying to imitate X .
The price, however, was that it could no longer even maintain its first, dog-like form.
Now it could only resemble… well—
Something similar to the "Justin" corpse lying nearby: a skinned human body, limbs twisted, flesh incomplete.
It was a bit rude to say, but X honestly felt…
That right now… he was basically training a dog.
But he didn't actually want to turn Nothing There into a dog—nor was that what Norl itself wanted.
If he could help Norl understand what a "human" was, become a real human instead of a monster wearing human skin, that would be ideal.
Just as X was thinking this—
The lump of flesh suddenly began to writhe violently, more intensely than ever before.
Crack—rip—
This was no simple squirming.
It was a violent, inside-out reconstruction.
Tendons stretched and tightened, emitting teeth-grinding sounds;
Bones grew savagely from the flesh, forcing their way out like tree roots breaking through soil;
Countless tiny blood vessels spread like red vines, rapidly wrapping, weaving, forcibly stitching malformed tissue together.
X instinctively stepped back, watching the horrific scene with caution.
But he soon realized—
This wasn't the prelude to an attack.
This was Norl… attempting to create a brand-new form of its own.
A form that was neither canine nor a copy of any employee it had ever mimicked.
After several minutes of sanity-draining reconstruction, the new "Norl" finally stood before X .
It possessed a silhouette that could roughly be called humanoid, with a height similar to X 's.
Yet every detail of its body carried an unsettling patchwork quality, as if stitched together from different fields of knowledge.
Its skin was still pure, exposed crimson flesh.
But beneath the blood-red muscle, faint markings—like tattoos—could be seen:
Blurry letters and lines, resembling text and illustrations from books X had once brought in.
They didn't match the originals, as though ink had been smeared by water.
Its limbs were grotesquely asymmetrical.
The left side was slender and elongated, fingers and toes elegant and precise, like an anatomy diagram come to life.
The right side, however, was massively overbuilt, closer to a gorilla's limb in proportion.
Its head was the most disturbing part.
An oval, featureless shape—smooth like a pebble.
Yet where the crown of the head should have been, it retained the pale, human-like arm from its first form.
Five fingers spread across its smooth skull like a grotesque crown.
"…"
X said nothing.
He simply stared at the new monster—one he had, in a sense, "created" with his own hands.
It was terrifying.
Uncanny.
A brutal blow to one's sanity.
But… it truly didn't resemble any person anymore.
At that moment, the oval head slowly turned toward X .
Its smooth surface split open vertically down the middle, revealing a pitch-black slit.
But it wasn't a mouth.
There were no teeth, no tongue.
Only a single, lonely blue eyeball—massive, identical to the one from its first form.
That eye stared unblinkingly at X .
Then, a voice emerged from the slit.
"Norl…"
It was no longer simple imitation, nor an incoherent howl.
It was a strange synthesized sound—stitched together from countless cold voices, like readers from different books speaking in unison.
"I am not Norl."
X took a tentative step forward, pointing at Nothing There, then at himself.
"I'm X . You're Norl."
"…"
Nothing There said nothing. It slowly raised its stiff arm, clumsily imitating X 's gesture.
When its finger pointed at X , the strange voice sounded again.
"X …?"
Then the finger twisted back toward itself.
"Norl…?"
"…"
Hearing those fragmented words, a surge of indescribably complex emotion rose in X 's chest.
It… had succeeded.
It wasn't just copying "Hello" or "I love you" anymore.
It was beginning to think about the meaning behind others' words.
But perhaps this wasn't a good thing.
Perhaps he had opened a Pandora's box that should have remained sealed.
"…"
X took a deep breath, suppressing the turmoil inside him.
"Yes."
He extended his hand, pointing at the horrifying yet undeniably successful product of his guidance, and answered clearly and firmly:
"You are Norl."
The blue eyeball within the slit contracted sharply.
Then the slit slowly closed.
The entire humanoid form stood motionless once more.
And then—
Splat!!!
The painstakingly assembled body collapsed again into a heap of flesh.
Even the eyeballs were swallowed by the dissolving tissue, their irises covered as if closing their eyes.
The surroundings returned to that familiar, deathlike silence.
But this silence was different from any before.
It was no longer the silence of emptiness.
It was the silence of thought.
The silence of the unknown.
X knew it.
He had successfully planted a seed of "self" within Nothing There.
A seed born from zero to one.
But whether that seed would bear the fruit of good—
Or the fruit of evil—
He had no way of knowing.
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