Chapter 4: Two

The next day came without sleep. Homunculi did not sleep.

Rose stood at the corner of the room as she had been commanded, quietly watching over the sleeping girl with the slowly rising sun shadowing them both.

The disgusting taste of yesterday's food, the meal she had been forced to eat, lick, and swallow down from the carpet floor, was still fresh in her memories. It was now an impossible thing to forget. Unless her core was to be directly interfered with, she was a being who would forever remember. That, she now learned, had its ups and downs.

She placed a hand on her forehead. The injury she had sustained when her head crashed against her plate was gone. Indeed, she healed fast.

The early parts of the earlier day had been rosy, then terrible, then ridiculously atrocious. She had watched her owner's relief at clearing the scene through her own grief. A person who shared the same face as hers was only all too happy to see her suffering.

It was hard to look at her master the same way again.

"Is this my role?" She muttered, wondering if that was her reason for existing. Was she merely something created to suffer in place of another? Was that what being a body double entailed?

She sighed, eyes blinking through the glamorous window at the other end of the room. Staring below the hill the estate sat upon and into a city slowly being illuminated by sunlight.

Her eyesight was impeccable. A mixture of low, medium, and high-rise blocks and rectangles and squares made out of concrete dotted the land. There were pedestrians and what her core recognized as motors traveling the morning's streets. It wasn't a detailed sight, she couldn't make out faces, nor exactly what the figures' clothing were, but she could see past the distance.

Her vision was well beyond that of a human. In fact, everything about her was. She could survive longer without oxygen, her brain was sharper and she required no sleep. Even sustenance could be disregarded as long as she had a Mana Orb to recharge with. All of this she knew to be true as data floated in her mind with the hum of her core. Everything was undoubtedly well beyond a normal human of her stature. Everything but her status.

The very realization of this confused her. She had been born not long ago but she had already found herself puzzled by the slight world she saw. Was this her views or had her creator imprinted this upon her core as well? She became curious.

'In this world, the word of a human is law.'

She knew a bit about the world. At least, her creator had been kind enough to imprint some information into her. And that bit she did know did not seem kind to homunculi. She was, in the end, a product.

She quelled her thoughts as her master awakened.

"Good morning, N.37." There was a light smile plastered upon a face similar to her own.

Rose, however, realized the girl no longer called her by her name and that fact pained her. She had, in the span of a night, been stripepd down to her product number. Why? She thought. Yet, as much as she could think away forever, she didn't. She bowed and spoke up.

"Good morning, master."

She was dressed in clothing similar to a maid's. The attire she had been given the day prior was gone. They hadn't been able to stand to see a complete spitting image of their relative in the form of a homunculus. They needed her, she surmised, but they did not want her. She stood, relegating that thought to the back of her mind.

"Are the orders from last night void, master?" She asked.

The lady hopped from the bed. Her white, loose, pajamas fluttered with her black hair and she made her way to the front of the homunculus.

Idris nodded. "Yes, you may recede all orders from the day prior."

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Her sigil shined with the hum of Rose's core. An order that directly canceled, or erased, another could only be done through the power of the owner. Rose felt her mind clear as if it had reset. She smiled at the feeling it gave her. No orders made her as free as the girl before her, she thought.

"Alright," Idris said, "Help me try on some dresses. Today is the day."

Of course, she was never free.

"Is this alright?"

"No no, it doesn't match my eyes in the least bit."

Her master fluttered around her, using the homunculus as a model to outfit herself. It was a better idea than simply a mirror. She could see all sides, everything as she pleased. With an order and a thought in her mind, her sigil translated whatever pose she wished to test.

Rose found enjoyment in the process as even she perused the items per her strange tastes.

"What about this?"

"We're going to a ceremony, and you want to wear leggings? Is your taste in fashion that bad?"

Rose shrugged.

"What of this?" She plucked out a jacket of green. "It matches our eyes, I believe?"

"Now you're simply being ridiculous!" Her master rebutted with a small laugh.

It took an entire morning to pick out a matching set of an outfit due to the sheer magnitude of the closet that had been prepped with two of everything. In the end, they chose a black dress that matched their hair, stockings, a small, dark, green hat—one of those you would only see at high-class parties—that matched their eyes, and a pair of heels.

They bathed. Ate. And returned.

Yet, at the end of it all, Rose found that she was the only one dressed.

Her master, instead, stuffed her own outfit into a bag and switched to something more plain. A pair of blue jeans, a white shirt, and a pair of sunglasses as well. Even her hair had been neatly tucked into the hood of a green hoodie. Everything came together to give the lady a safe, recused, presence.

"Hmm?" Rose tilted her head. Had she missed something or another? That seemed impossible. She couldn't forget anything she saw or heard.

"Just follow me and don't speak unless I allow you to."

Another order quickly came about and the homunculus could only follow its command.

It was an odd feeling to walk in heels.

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