“I’m sorry, too.”
He stood up. I craned my neck, because my face was now level with his thick, metal thighs. Clanker turned away abruptly, and it gave me a first-seat view of his metal buttocks. They were surprisingly shapely. Someone at VerdeLumen must have spent long, exciting nights designing his lower body.
“I’m sorry for propositioning you when you clearly said you’re not interested,” he said, walking away to the other end of the pool, where he turned to face me. “And I didn’t mean to put your face level with my crotch just now. I mean, I did, but I shouldn’t have.”
“You did?” I raised an eyebrow, getting up with a small groan. My knees creaked. “You know what, I don’t need to know this right now. Gosh, this onsen looks amazing. The only reason why I’m not in there yet is that I’m genuinely afraid I’ll fall asleep and drown.”
I giggled at the thought. Wouldn’t it be funny to survive assassins and lethal bots only to drown in an onsen?
“I’ll come in with you,” he said at once.
“Won’t you rust or something?”
He made a comically offended face, and I snorted with laughter. “Fine, I know you won’t rust. You’re made of titanium and whatnot. And your hinges are well-oiled.”
I burst into a snorting laughter that couldn’t be stopped. I couldn’t even justify why it was so funny, but—oiled hinges.
This was somewhat normal for me. I was exhausted and burned out on adrenaline, a state that usually brought on drunken-like hysteria.
“B-But what if your processors get wet and—and you’ll get stuck playing something stupid on a loop, like, I don’t know, that kiddie song about a shark…”
I cackled, imagining it. Through the tears blurring my vision, I saw his torso become a screen, on which a recording of my face appeared.
“But won’t you rust or something?” the Sera on screen asked, looking perfectly clueless.
“Oh, I get it!” I wagged my finger at him. “You’re saying that if you end up playing something dumb, it will be my face? That’s savage. I approve.”
His torso turned opaque again. I had a brilliant idea. “Wait! I wanna watch the snake milking porn. Ooooh, in the onsen! That’s gonna be nasty. Can you play it for me?”
Clanker didn’t reply. Instead, he walked up to me in three enormous steps, tilted my head back with a knuckle under my chin, and pressed his mouth to mine. I hiccupped from shock. It took maybe a second, and he pulled away, holding me at an arm’s length.
“The alcohol content in your breath is negligent,” he informed me. “So why are you acting like this? Have you taken any drugs?”
“You kissed me.” I pressed my fingertips to my lips, where they still tingled from the hard, smooth touch of his metal ones. It was barely a kiss, too. Just a brush of skin against metal.
“No. I used my breathalyzer module to test you. You wouldn’t be able to string two words together if I kissed you.”
My hazy tipsiness transformed into a soft, curious sort of awareness in an instant. I stared at him, his features intent and a bit angry, and suddenly felt it. What a kiss from him would be like.
It would be hard, smooth, merciless. Hot, because he could control his temperature, but dry. Would he use his tongue? Did he have a tongue? I’d only seen teeth inside his mouth. Oh, what a curious, curious thing.
“Your pulse is elevated,” Clanker muttered, turning his face away. “I’m sorry. Again. I’m supposed to get rid of this crush, but I only make it worse, don’t I?”
“Crush?” I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re what, three days old? You’re a baby!”
“I’m twenty,” he said, his voice dropping low and grumpy. “Which is probably too young for you, anyway.”
I shrugged. “How are you twenty?”
“Charlie tested my mental age. He’s over a hundred, just so you know.”
I nodded sagely. “It kind of makes sense. He was so enlightened and understanding with me, like some sort of monk. I was a ball of anxiety and a nightmare, and he just smiled beatifically. He’s a saint. We should buy him a halo!”
Clanker watched me for a moment. “A halo, or an aureola.Searching for aureolae… Found them in a shop carrying devotional items… Choosing the color…”
“Get him a pink one!” I squealed.
“Order complete.It should arrive at his address within two days. I wrote him a note, too, quoting what you just said in lieu of explanation.”
