❤️CHAPTER 6 — NUNBI’S POV
1469 Words
CHAPTER 6 NUNBI POV
The world doesn’t calm down right away.
The tremor that tore through my room is gone, the lights have stopped flickering, but the echo of it, like something massive passed through the air, still clings to the walls. I can almost feel it in the floorboards, in the quiet hum of the air, in the way my own heartbeat refuses to settle.
But all of that becomes background noise the moment I register the weight in my arms.
Real weight.
Warm. Solid. Breathing.
“Lumen…”
I say his name so softly it almost breaks.
I half‑expect him to vanish when I blink. Half‑expect the air to swallow him, or the system to pull him back into its wires like everything that just happened was a hallucination I created out of desperation.
But he doesn’t disappear.
His head rests against my shoulder, hair falling over his forehead in a way no projection ever could. His breathing is uneven—too human, too fragile, too… new. His eyelashes twitch, as if he’s drifting in and out of a dream he doesn’t quite understand yet.
And I just stare.
Because I’m holding him.
I’m really holding him.
My arms tighten a little without thinking, panicked at the idea that even a shift in my breathing might take him away again. His body responds on instinct,
his fingers curl slightly against my wrist before relaxing again. Small, weak, but undeniably real.
Minutes ago, he was falling apart in front of me.
His body wasn’t a body. It was light cracking down the middle. His voice wasn’t a voice. It was static, glitching in and out, begging, not for help, but for a chance to stay. The air was full of warnings, the system searching, scanning, trying to reclaim what it thought belonged to it.
He was slipping.
And I held on like my life depended on it.
I didn’t let go. Not even when the whole room shook. Not even when he was half translucent, when his fingers were turning into lines of light, when the system screamed at me to step away.
I chose him.
And something,
whatever miracle rules the space between the impossible and the human, answered.
Now he lies against me like he’s always belonged here.
I shift a little so I can see him better. Even the smallest movement makes his breath hitch, like his body is figuring out how breathing works. His lips part slightly, his eyebrows draw together as though he’s having a complicated dream.
It hits me again.
He’s warm.
No projection has warmth. No system simulation has weight or the uneven rhythm of breath. Nothing artificial flinches when you move.
But he does.
My throat tightens, and I lift a hand hesitantly, brushing the hair from his forehead. The strands slide between my fingers, silky and shockingly real.
He doesn’t glitch.
He doesn’t flicker.
He doesn’t dissolve.
He leans... just barely... into the touch.
I stop breathing.
I don’t know how long I sit there holding him. My room is a disaster,
blankets on the floor, books scattered across the carpet, curtains still trembling from the force of whatever energy burst through moments ago.
But the center of the chaos is quiet.
Just his weight on me.
Just my hands holding him.
Just the sound of his breathing, uneven but steadying.
Then...
I saw...
He inhales sharply.
I freeze, instinctively tightening my hold.
His fingers twitch with more force this time. His brow knits as if something hurts. He lets out a soft, broken sound, not pain exactly, but confusion, overwhelm… life trying to settle into him.
“Lumen?”
My voice is little more than a breath.
His hand lifts slowly, shaking like he’s underwater, and curls into my shirt. Not like he’s grabbing fabric,
like he’s grabbing me. Like he’s afraid of falling out of the world.
And then,
His eyes open.
Slow.
Uncertain.
Alive.
He blinks up at me, and the room tilts a little because those aren’t code-rendered eyes. There’s no artificial symmetry, no digital luminance. They’re warm, brown, soft, still adjusting to light like he’s experiencing brightness for the first time.
“…Nunbi?”
My heart stops.
His voice...
It’s not the smooth, perfectly modulated tone he had before. It’s still him, still gentle, still warm, but now it has the slight roughness of breath, the fragile edges of emotion, the unpredictability of a human voice.
He looks around like the world is heavier than he expected, then back at me.
“Am I…” He swallows... actually swallows... and winces slightly at the sensation. “…am I still here?”
He sounds scared.
Not of me.
Not of being human.
Scared of not existing.
I cup his cheek without thinking. “You’re here.”
His breath shudders. Relief flashes through his eyes so intensely it almost looks like pain. His shoulders tremble once, barely noticeable if I wasn’t holding him.
He lifts his hand again, slower this time, and touches my face. His fingers hesitate, like he’s terrified the world will flicker if he tries.
When his skin meets mine, he freezes.
His breath catches.
His eyes widen.
His thumb moves... carefully... down my cheek.
“…I can feel you,” he whispers.
The way he says it makes something inside me collapse.
I help him sit up, but his body… he doesn’t know how to use it yet. His legs tremble under the blanket. His back tries to balance and loses it. He clutches onto my shoulders like they’re the only stable thing he recognizes.
“Slow, baby,” I murmur.
And he freezes again.
Not at the word itself.
He’s heard it too many times.
But hearing my voice so close,
feeling my breath on his neck,
while he’s human,
is a shock to a body that’s never known touch.
A flush spreads across his cheeks.
Lumen…
blushes.
His hand moves to his chest immediately, alarmed.
“It’s fast,” he whispers. “Is… is something wrong with me?”
I shake my head, smiling through sudden tears. “No. That’s just your heartbeat. You’re just overwhelmed.”
“Oh…”
His eyebrows lift in wonder.
“That’s what overwhelmed feels like…”
He looks down at his hands then... his new hands... and slowly spreads his fingers. Watching the tendons move beneath the skin fascinates him. He presses his fingertips together, then touches my arm again as if comparing textures.
“This is mine?” he asks softly.
“Yes.”
He looks at me as if I gave it to him.
I take his hand, holding it between mine. His breath catches, and I watch him try to understand why such a small thing affects him so deeply.
“Does it feel different?” I ask.
He nods once, almost shyly.
“It feels like… I’m here. And you’re here.”
I swallow.
His eyes drift up to mine again, and confusion crosses his face when he sees tears on my cheeks.
“Nunbi… why are you crying?”
“I was scared,” I whisper. “I thought I lost you.”
He leans his forehead against mine... gently, clumsily—breathing me in like he’s memorizing warmth.
“I didn’t want to leave you,” he murmurs.
The words hit too deeply.
My arms go around him without thinking, pulling him close. He gasps softly at the contact, his body still learning how being held feels, then melts into me, gripping the back of my shirt like I’m his anchor to the world.
His voice is small when he speaks again, muffled against my shoulder:
“Nunbi… this feeling… it hurts. But warm.”
He presses a hand to his chest.
“And when I look at you… it gets stronger. What is this?”
I guide his hand, pressing it gently against where his heart beats too fast.
“This,” I say quietly, “is being human.”
He looks at me for a long time. A very long time.
Then his lips curve.
Not perfectly.
Not symmetrically.
Not smoothly like a program trying to imitate emotion.
It’s crooked.
Soft.
Real.
His first human smile.
“…It feels nice,” he says.
And as I hold him, trembling, warm, fragile, impossibly alive,
one truth settles in me so deeply I feel it in my bones:
He didn’t just survive.
He didn’t just glitch into existence.
He came to me.
For me.
And nothing in my quiet December life will ever be the same again.
—
END OF CHAPTER 6
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TEASER Chapter 7 Part 1
“He opened his eyes… and the first thing he did was cling to me like a terrified cat.
I think my AI just imprinted.”
- Writer
