"I don't think I can make a harem...", Taeyang looked away from me.
What?
'Tch, this makes things more difficult', Lianne clicked her tongue.
I didn't know she had a tongue.
"Why Taeyang? Is there some particular reason?"
He still didn't look at me.
"Is it because of Catherine? You know Catherine would like it if you pulled your hair back and wore a hair band. You can show your stunning face to the world and..."
"Ray."
Taeyang got up from his seat.
He took out a cheap suitcase from behind the showcase. It was covered in dust.
'How old is this?'
'Atleast 10 years', Lianne answered.
Taeyang spoke, "You told me that I had an ambition, right?"
I nodded my head.
He opened the suitcase.
Inside it, there were multiple letters and ribbons.
But the one thing that stood out, was a small glass box.
Upon closer inspection, inside it, I saw a pearly white incisor.
'That!', Lianne seemed to have detected something.
"This... belongs to Sophie...", Taeyang explained.
Sophie Turner? The girl Taeyang likes?
I looked at him and then back at the tooth again.
"Come with me, Ray."
I followed him without questioning.
He took me to his experiment room.
"Sit down", he offered me a chair.
I observed what he did. First, he cut off the house's power supply and turned on the room's electricity with a different source. Then he booted up the gigantic computer adjacent to the main screen. It fired up multiple smaller modulators and the whole room glowed up.
He brushed the hair falling on his trapezius and put on a digital collar.
'He made this all by himself?', Lianne was impressed.
The whole room was filled with holographic words and pictures. Soon, it all changed and I saw the entirety of Reji city.
'What? Where did he hide the projectors?', even I was impressed.
"It injects itself into your neck, so it'll sting a little", he mildly joked and offered me a similar collar.
"Haha, sure", I took the collar and put it on.
Like he had said, the collar initiated forming digital connections through my neck.
'It's trying to establing connection with your soulframe. Should I accept?', Lianne asked me.
'Yeah allow it. Just keep an eye out so that nothing goes wrong.'
Taeyang looked at me and spoke, "This machine connects with your brain. It'll allow us to share a dream space where I can show you my memories."
Is he talking about that dream world?
"Ray, listen...uhm...no nevermind", Taeyang started the process with a translucent keyboard.
My vision went dark.
Soon, I found myself standing in a park.
Two children, a small boy and girl were playing on the swing.
The boy had blue hair and the girl was blonde.
Both of them looked happy.
The boy made a huge smile whenever the girl called his name.
"Tae!", the little girl called him.
"I first met her in this park."
I turned to see Taeyang standing beside me.
"When I was younger, Sophie used to frequently come over to play."
The scenario around us changed and now we were in a room with Taeyang and Sophie playing with dolls.
"We were inseparable. Even in school, the other students used to tease us."
I was listening to Taeyang when I saw that the little girl offered the boy something with her hand.
"This tooth fell on her 7th birthday."
Lianne was right.
Taeyang kept speaking, "That day, I still remember vividly, she handed me this tooth and said..., 'Tae, you're smart. Take my tooth and figure out what is wrong with me.' "
"Tae, you're smart! Take my tooth and figure out what is wrong with me!", the little girl pumped her chest up.
The small boy took the tooth and gave her a determined look. He then said, "Don't worry Sophie! I'll cure you."
I looked at Taeyang standing next to me.
He made a childish smile.
Which turned grim.
The scenario changed again. Now I saw a slightly older girl sitting in class with her head down on her desk. She had a dazed expression and was drooling.
The teacher was waving a flash light infront of her eyes.
"Soon after that, she started experiencing symptoms of forgetting things."
"Amnesia?", I asked.
The view again warped and now we were in a luxurious mansion. The little girl was on her bed and the small blue haired boy was sitting infront of her.
"No", Taeyang spoke, "She vividly remembered...me. Everytime she saw me, she spoke about our previous encounters. But everything else, she forgot. Some doctors said that she was just pretending, while others said it was a mental disease."
I saw the little girl smiling at the boy.
I then looked beside me, at Taeyang again. He was struggling to tell me this. Remembering his past was painful for him.
"In the beginning, her parents used to let me see her. They even encouraged me to come over."
The girl's parents came into the room and chatted with the little boy.
'A child at that age wouldn't know what was happening around him', I thought.
'However, her parents hoped maybe Taeyang could help her get better', Lianne told me.
The area distorted again and now the view was of a hospital room.
"But soon her conditions started to deteriorate. She could no longer recall who she was."
'It must have been painful for him', Lianne spoke with pity in her voice.
I saw the little boy trying to enter the hospital room, but he was stopped and thrown out by security.
The sight around us finally changed to one I could recognize. It was the same Experiment Room we had started in.
The little blue haired boy was crying in the middle of this room. He then got up and glued himself to a computer.
Time started flowing faster in the room.
"My family was always tight on money, however, it was never difficult for me to procure money if I needed it."
The number of computers started growing and so did other digital devices.
"My life as a tech person started with an old computer. I used it to hack into the hospital database."
I saw the little boy get more frail every second.
He was no longer smiling like how I had first seen him.
"Eventually, I heard that she moved to Auspercia for better treatment."
An adolescent version of the boy was now fiddling with a gun. He put the barrel to his head, then inside his mouth and at last, he covered the nozzle with his palm.
Then he pulled the trigger.