Adonis looked at Killian questioningly.
"You have a story? Frankly, I don't think a bedtime story from you would make it any easier to fall asleep, and just a waste of time."
Zenos chuckled.
"Though wasting time is essentially what we are trying to do."
Damien shrugged his shoulders.
"Sounds like you have the perfect thing for us now. Go ahead."
Killian rolled his eyes.
"Alright then, I will."
He closed his eyes and paused for a few seconds. Just when the rest of them thought he wasn't going to speak at all, he opened his mouth.
"This is a story about me."
Adonis' gaze snapped to him.
"Yourself? Are you serious?"
Damien raised an eyebrow.
"I guess it could be more interesting than a bedtime story."
Killian shrugged his shoulders.
"Even if it is more interesting, chances are it won't be by much."
Zenos blinked a few times.
"Then why are you telling it?"
Killian cleared his throat.
"Not too sure. Anyway, I'm telling the story now."
He narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Well, to be quick, I was never really a nice guy."
Adonis rolled his eyes.
"Can't say I'm surprised."
Killian chuckled.
"Yeah, I never really cared about anyone. In fact, I remember having strange thoughts as a kid. Thinking that I was supposed to care about someone, when really I couldn't care less. But in the end, I never really picked up on what it meant."
Zenos blinked a few times.
"Sounds like someone that was born a psychopath."
Killian nodded before taking a deep breath.
"Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I lived most of my life kinda like that, just unable to pity others whenever something terrible happened to them. If I just didn't care, then I would be laughing my ass off without even really knowing why."
He tilted his head to the side.
"There were a few people that had been friends with me for a small duration, but generally speaking it would be over soon. I never really cared about being friends with anyone, so I didn't really try. And they never really liked me, which was fair enough because I was pretty much just an average asshole."
The corner of his lip turned up.
"I honestly didn't understand what was so good about caring about someone else, and was more or less satisfied with what I had."
Damien looked at him strangely.
"Why'd you say that like it was a bad thing?"
Killian clicked his tongue.
"I'm getting to it! Stop interrupting me. I was fine for most of my life, mostly because I didn't understand. Though there was this strange looming part of me that always felt empty. I didn't really get that the feeling was something strange for the longest time, but I suddenly came to a realization one day."
He blinked a few times.
"I was walking down the hard metal street, looking up at all the billboards playing all these advertisements and blinding neon lights flashing in front of my face. It could've just been my imagination, but everything I saw was about romance. About a guy and a girl being together. Whether it was a movie posting, a pitch for some supposedly perfect dating website, or even a commercial for a toothbrush."
Killian paused.
"They were all about two people loving each other."
Zenos nodded.
"That's not all that bizarre. In fact, I'd say that's more common than usual. The general marketing tactic is to get people to believe that a product would somehow attract the opposite gender."
Damien clicked his tongue.
"Do they not realize that it gets tiring after a while?"
Zenos shook his head.
"Maybe for some people it gets tiring, but the results are proof of its efficacy."
Killian blinked a few times.
"Huh. I guess now that I think about it, I somehow never realized all those advertisements were about romance."
Adonis stared at him strangely.
"Huh? How the hell does that even happen? It's blatant if anything."
Killian furrowed his brow as though thinking about it. Though, before he could think on it any harder, Damien spoke up.
"It's like a little kid."
Killian snapped to him with an annoyed gaze.
"Ha? I'm probably older than you."
Damien shook his head.
"That's not what I mean. Think about how a little kid doesn't view anything as sexual, so even if they see some sultry model, the most they would think is that the person was pretty. Then it would turn out after growing up, they realized it was actually an advertisement for a brothel."
He gestured casually.
"It's the same thing, but instead it's romance. Basically, you didn't understand a single thing about it, thus couldn't make any sort of real connection."
Killian blinked a few times.
"Huh... I guess that makes sense."
Adonis furrowed his brows.
"But everyone has been exposed to that kinda thing. Isn't it common sense?"
Killian shrugged his shoulders.
"Guess it ain't for assholes or something.
Zenos' eyes flitted occasionally, but he decided to stay silent. After a moment of silence, Killian cleared his throat again.
"Er- no more interruptions now. Seriously. Now, at the time I was walking down that path, I remember seeing people holding onto each other just like how they did in those advertisements. If anything, it felt more real because there was the sound of their laughing accompanying it. It made me feel strange."
He paused.
"I never really liked romance movies, so I never really watched them. But that day, I decided to try. I watched one of the most highly rated movies, something above love in something metal. Despite being bored out of my mind, I watched it the entire way, all the way to the end of the credits."
Killian blinked a few times.
"And I just thought the movie made no sense at all. How in the world does some guy suddenly care so much about a girl they just saw? They literally just met! They were basically just strangers. Yet, for some reason, they ended up dying for each other."
Damien blinked a few times.
"It's one of the most common tropes, but for some reason it never dies off like the characters."
Zenos cleared his throat.
"To be accurate, while it occasionally dies in popularity, it always comes back with a resurgence sooner or later."
Killian sighed.
"Alright, whatever. And I said no interruptions!"
Damien shrugged his shoulders.
"I was just answering your question."
Killian's face twitched.
"...After watching almost none of it stuck with me. But there was this one part. One part at the very start, where some random guy asked the male character if he knew what it felt like to love someone."
He blinked a few times.
"I thought about that for the entire movie. Because I had no idea what it was like. I never even thought of it before. But now, I was curious. For some reason, I was just so curious. The entire movie was definitely catered to making people feel like they were loved, which I frankly didn't care about, yet I just couldn't stop thinking about that one small part."
Killian took a deep breath.
"How it felt to love someone."
He blinked a few times.
"By the time the credits had ended practically everyone had already logged out of the theater. But there was still one girl left other than me. She came up to me and asked why I still remained in the place, and I responded by telling her I was wondering about that question earlier."
The expression on his face gradually disappeared.
"And she asked if I wanted to try it. Then... I said yes."
Adonis raised an eyebrow.
"That is the strangest love story I've ever heard."
Killian rolled his eyes.
"Leave your comments to the end."
His eyes narrowed.
"Because it isn't a love story."
Without explaining any further, he continued.
"I accepted her offer, and she was a really good person. I was struggling to get a job, but she helped me find one. There was almost always a smile on her face. She laughed so much, even when it was a stupid thing to laugh at. She helped me out so much and even frivolously spent her money to let us live in one of those fancy tech places."
Zenos rubbed his chin.
"I assume that the sudden shift of her personality is coming soon."
The corner of Killian's lip turned up.
"Is that what you were expecting? Well, that shift never actually comes. I never really understood how, but she dealt with a person like me so easily. Even when I fucked up bad, she would never blame me. It came to the point that it was even better than the fantasies portrayed in movies."
He leaned back against the wall.
"We never fought. We never argued over the tiny things, and never really got upset with each other. She somehow just always did things properly. There was a part of me that thought maybe she was just some extremely well-made android that they were experimenting with."
Killian narrowed his eyes.
"But she bled. So that was impossible."
Zenos scoffed.
"It's not hard for a company to engineer an android that would have a layer of skin that could bleed."
Killian slowly shook his head.
"I'm not talking about just the skin. It's far more than that."
Damien furrowed his brow.
"You don't mean..."