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My parents would be proud.

“Did I stab you when you said you love me?” When I hit the clone’s small shoulders, the girl collapsed to the ground. So Mina was that weak. Just one move from me and she’d lose her balance. I glared at the girl on the floor. Her cute coffee-colored eyes were wide, staring back at me.

“Ma—”

“Even though you pushed me away, I never left you. Did I?”

I climbed on top of the girl and grabbed her throat.

“I’m such an idiot, right? I loved you despite everything. I couldn’t even get angry at you. But I want to. Sometimes I really wanted to kill you, Mina! But I didn’t, right? I didn’t do any of that, I was a good boy. But still, you left me. Fuck, you left me! You lied to me! Did you ever love me? How can you say I’m terrible? Compared to what you did, mine is nothing! What did I do to you? Answer me!”

The girl’s face turned to purple. “No—nothing… Maste…”

The hand she’d held aloft sank slowly, coming to rest at her side.

The sudden stillness of the body beneath me dragged my consciousness back to the reality. I stared down at the girl. Her curly red hair fanned out, a final, lingering bubble escaping her lips.

She was dead now.

I jerked back like a man who’d just taken a bullet to the chest. The dim light of the room washed over her freckled face, over eyes that were now closed.

I knew this sight. I’d watched her a thousand times when she fell asleep in the garden. I would wait for hours just for her to stir, and only when the sun dipped below the blue horizon would I finally carry her back to her room.

But there was no sun to set in this rotten corner.

“No…”

I stood up and looked down at the red-haired girl. Because her body had grown so quickly, it was now rotting at an abnormal speed. Her skin had already begun to shrink toward her bones, a yellow liquid was seeping down from the broken skin.

Unfortunately, I was familiar with this sight as well. The same old image as what I’d seen in the mirror.

However, I wasn’t as successful as my mother. I didn’t know much about biology either. I stared at that corpse, as it silently endured the pain belonged to me.

“Wake up.” I murmured, then took a deep, shaky breath. “Wake up.” I repeated, my mind filling with some blindly artificial lights. Lights from the past. From that cold table.

“Wake up, little doll.”

With that murmur, I sank to the ground beside the body. My body was no longer under my control. My hands reached for the damaged jaw, mimicking someone else’s movements. Just as my mother used to comfort me, I gently stroked the torn skin.

“Hush, hush, little doll. Live, live, little doll…” The melody became clear in my mind; my voice was as soothing as a lullaby.

“Live, live, for me… little… doll…” I played with the strand of red hair between my fingers. Now the sockets of her eyes turned into the pitch-black, and my face contorted with pain, my calmness faded. The memory of my mother fastening my head back onto my body came flooding into my mind.

The first scream came right then.

A smaller clone who heard the voice came over.

“Master? What happened?”

A single address was a bomb thrown at friendly forces. My eyes blurred, my breathing grew heavier. The room was a battlefield now. The wreckage of a war, a fragmented artificial body, was all that remained.

I lost it, mother. Since the first day, I was destined to lose.

When the first tear fell, I weakly lifted my face toward the ceiling. There was no water nearby, but I was drowning, my windpipes blocked. Air wouldn’t come in or go out. I wanted to cry. I wanted to weep until I died, but even my tear ducts seemed to have given up.

I can’t be this. Please don’t let me be this person. Give me another body, another heart, another soul.

“Don’t look…” I shook my head violently. Don’t look at me. “No one must see. I… didn’t want to. No. I didn’t. I’m not like that. Not to Mina. Anything else is possible. Anyone else. But not her. I will never… destroy her. I…”