Dear Esteemed Customer, Sophia Pneuma Herbst Visser -
Hey! It’s me, Oscar. We rebranded as Khôros Corp. a bit back due to being privately acquired, and in the process changed our order system; so, sorry I haven’t responded to anything you might’ve sent. I’ve been too busy anyway.
I realized something a little bit ago that might involve you. Sorry I’m super vague about this right now, but if it doesn’t, I’d rather not tell you what it is. I’m somewhat ashamed I didn’t realize it earlier if it does. You clearly have a ton of money, and your last names are Herbst and Visser - are your parents David Herbst and Maria Visser by any chance? The ones that own Herbst-Visser Medical & Information Technologies? If so, do you have any siblings or close relatives around your age?
Sorry about these pretty personal questions from a person you don’t know all that well, but I think it might be really important.
Thanks,
- Oscar Kaufman, Khôros Corp. CEO
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Oscar,
Yeah, they’re my parents. I don’t really try to keep it a secret or anything, but it’s a little uncomfortable when somebody from a somewhat secret facet of your life comes in and starts talking about family stuff. And no, I don’t have any siblings, half-siblings, close aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. that I know of. I assume that means I’m involved in whatever you’re thinking of? I hope it’s not something terrible.
I eagerly await your response,
- Sophia Herbst Visser
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Soma Alvheim had been very confused and very concerned about his girlfriend, Sophia, for a few days now - since the beginning of their fall break.
A little while back she’d discovered an underground company that produced seemingly-magical interface and space-compression technology, allowing for various practical applications, but also many strange and lewd ones - manifesting in skinsuits, a weird full-body garment that can perfectly transform the wearer. Initially called Dermcorp, and renamed to Khôros Corp upon a secret acquisition by the government, the company had received a large amount of funding from Sophia. Being the college-aged only-child of CEOs of a large medical company, she had near limitless spending money, and was the small company’s main benefactor for about half of a year, leading to a slight friendship with the founder - and later CEO - Oscar Kaufman.
Soma knew that Mr. Kaufman had recently contacted Sophia, and that she was quite anxious about what he had to say before he had replied, but Soma had genuinely no clue what they had talked about - Sophia wouldn’t tell him. Whatever it was, it had made his girlfriend severely upset, slightly embittering him towards the CEO.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Sophia! I’m back from the store!” Soma shouted as he stumbled into the apartment, quite a few bags of groceries weighing down his arms. “I know you’re still sad, but I’d really appreciate the help in putting these away!”
He heard a faint mumbling come from their bedroom as the door opened a crack and a hunched-over Sophia shuffled out. She was still in her pajamas, her normally well-kept pink hair was a matted mess, and her eyes were red from crying.
Soma outstretched his left arm to her as she slowly trudged over. A small sigh escaped her lips as she stopped and reached out to grab a few bags. They must’ve been heavier than she’d expected, as she stumbled forward a bit as she took them. But she recovered and slowly began to shuffle over to the counter by the fridge. Soma fumbled around with the apartment door’s lock a bit before shifting the bags evenly between his hands and following Sophia over to the kitchen.
Putting the groceries away didn’t take long - maybe a few minutes. Yet, not once did she make eye contact with him. From the little he could get out of her, he knew that she wasn’t upset with him, which made it a little easier to handle the situation, but it was still hard on him to see her this way. She’d been slowly improving though; at the beginning of this she refused to move from the bed for an entire day - just a lot of sleeping and crying.
When the job was done, Sophia tried to sneak away unnoticed, but Soma pulled her into a gentle hug as she walked past. She weakly reciprocated and buried her head in his chest.
It was kind of nice, really. In a time like this, Soma knew that all he could do was take care of and support her - and while she was going through her own private struggle, he appreciated that she would give some effort to show she cared back.
They stayed there for a while. He could feel her heartbeat on his lower chest, just below his own. It was comforting, and he hoped she found some comfort in his as well. A slight, sad smile crept across his face as he looked down at the top of her head. He lifted a hand and slowly began to run it through her hair. The texture was rather oily and his fingers kept hitting tangles, so he quickly switched to just brushing across the top of it instead.
Sophia looked up at him with a sulking pout, resting her chin where her forehead just lay. Soma lowered his head and gave her a small kiss on her forehead.
“I love you, y’know.” He softly said. “If you ever want to tell me what you’re going through, I’ll gladly listen without any judgement. Or if you don’t want to - well, I’ll be a bit disappointed, but that’s fine too. Still, you’ve been my emotional support many times in the past, and I want you to know that I’ll be here for you just as you have for me. You mean so much to me.”
He kissed her again in the same spot. The hint of a smile grew on her face - the first in a few days. Her puffy red eyes, unkempt hair, and slightly-runny nose added a strange charm to it, he thought, even if it really wasn’t cute or attractive.
“Thanks. I love you too, dear. So much.” She managed to whisper back.
The hug slowly subsided, and Sophia crept back towards the bedroom door - a little less hunched over than before. As she opened it, she looked back over to Soma.
“I promised myself that I’ll tell you by today, so… y’know…” She sighed. “I’m telling you this so you can hold me to it. I need a few hours to prepare myself… but I’ll tell you what’s going on soon.”
She flashed a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, then shuffled back through the crack in the doorway.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Soma found it hard to focus on much else for most of the day. While he was glad that he’d soon find out whatever was bothering Sophia - and hopefully be able to care for and understand her better - he also didn’t want whatever it was to distress him too.
He reasoned that he had been stressed about it for a few days already, though. And he had been. Thoughts that she might have some kind of rare illness or impending death, that someone in her family had died, or maybe that she was in severe legal trouble. He really didn’t know at all, but all of those options seemed weird considering the source, giving him a little solace. After all, what could Mr. Kaufman even say that’d distress her so much? They barely knew him outside of a business setting.
He turned to his two major hobbies to take his mind off of things: cooking/baking and video games. He wanted to do those a lot more over the break, but Sophia’s unexpected mood-shift had derailed anything he had planned - which thankfully wasn’t much. He really had no clue how long “a few hours” would be, so he tried to prepare a snack for his games in case it was the rest of the day. He settled on soft pretzel bites.
They occupied his attention for maybe an hour or a little more, cooking time included, and he then found himself with a batch of small hot pretzels, and an ever-increasing sense of dread. As time ticked on, he found himself more and more concerned. Before, he didn’t really know what was going on and just kind of helped out, but soon he’d be told whatever had stuck his girlfriend in such a sorry state for multiple days now. Surely it couldn’t be that bad, right?
He turned on a game.
A half-hour turned into an eternity, and an hour was an era in its own. The game didn’t distract him from his thoughts like he’d hoped, and he just couldn’t free himself from Sophia’s mood anymore.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A little over two hours had gone when he heard the bedroom door behind him squeak open. His heart jumped at the sound, but some of his tension subsided. He’d know soon; hopefully it wasn’t much.
“Hey.” Sophia said weakly as she walked over to the couch.
She was still glum, but seemed in a slightly better place than a few hours ago. Soma felt a little reassured. She fell down into the couch with a sigh, blowing some stray hairs out of her face, then leaned into his shoulder.
“So, Soph, is it…? Are you going to tell me…?” Soma tried to seem more collected than he was, although he didn’t know if she bought it.
“Yep… it’s… yeah.” She paused. “I dunno if it’ll hit you nearly as hard for you, but…” She sniffled. “I’m obviously not taking it well.”
“I mean, if you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to.” He really hoped she did anyway.
“No, no. I’m not sure I’d tell anyone else... but I’ve known you for ages and trust you with my life. You deserve to have known this since I found out…” A heavy sigh. “Oh well.”
“Does it involve me?”
“No, not really. I’ll stop being vague about it and just fuckin’ tell you.”
She pulled away from him so that she could look at his face while she spoke. Soma could tell that she was on the verge of crying, but he was glad she was trying anyway.
“So, y’know, Oscar emailed me at the beginning of break, saying that he knew something involving me that he should’ve realized ages ago…” She sighed heavily. “Apparently, he used to work as a head of one of my parent’s company’s divisions… The world’s small, isn’t it? Anyway, he oversaw the development of a bunch of somewhat cool and weird stuff. He said that the beginning of what turned into skinsuits began there, but got shut down early on by my parents directly due to ethics concerns, which is why he went off and made his own business. But, before that, there was something else…”
Tears began to roll down her cheeks, which quickly turned into heavy sobbing. Soma’s eyes grew as he began to figure out where this was going.
“They g-grow stuff f-for organ transplants and s-skin grafts, right?...” She was struggling to talk. “N-nearing the end of that p-project - about eighteen y-years ago, m-my parents… th-they… y’know, I v-verified this with them after he t-told me… t-turns out that th-they’re infertile… both of them, s-somehow…”
At this point her crying had fully taken over, and she found it really hard to talk. Soma leaned in to hug her, giving her a few small back-pats. She slammed her face into his shoulder, her tears dampening his shirt.
“It’s fine if you need a br-” Soma began.
“They fucking made me.” She quietly said, shockingly sober. “Not like, y’know… but in a lab.”
“Yeah, that’s… that’s pretty-… wow.”
“I couldn’t get a whole ton out of Oscar or my parents - they both seemed pretty closed-off and ashamed about the whole thing when I pressed further - it makes sense, I’m almost certain this all is highly illegal.”
“Yeah… I mean…”
“It gets worse, though. Apparently I’m not entirely organic. Because of the difficulty of some more complicated organs, Oscar said they used some artificial parts. Apparently a fair amount of my ‘brain’ contains electronic circuitry. My eyes, too. Probably other stuff as well, I dunno.”
“That’s… that’s fucked.”
“Yeah…”
Soma tightened his hug a bit. Then, they sat in silence for a while.
He stared off into the near distance, not really thinking, just absorbing what he’d heard. Birds could be heard from the wind-rustling trees far below the window, and he studied the lines of the setting sun on the floor, falling from between the blinds. Time had stopped at that moment.
What he learned didn’t really change how he felt about her, though. More thoughts about her invaded his mind, and his attention drifted away from the current moment entirely.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He thought of how long he’d known her. They met in middle school, right? It was sixth grade, wasn’t it. He remembered it well now. It was a little before he turned twelve - that would’ve made her eleven, right? Or eight, really, he realized, if she was made around eighteen years ago. Odd memories floated by.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Soma, sweetie.” His mother soothed him. “I know it’s rough, going to a different middle school from all your old friends; I get it. But we fall in the district lines for this one, and it feeds into a really good high school.” She sighed. “You hate it now, but you’ll appreciate it when you’re older, I promise!”
“B-but, I don’t want to! It’s scary! And I barely had any friends to begin with!” Something along those lines. His memory wasn’t exactly perfect.
“I’d love to drive you there, but dad’s already on the way to work, and I really have to go soon too. Please, finish your cereal - I don’t want you to be late for the bus. Especially not on your first day.”
She was right, he thought. He later learned that the other middle school and its respective high school had a reputation for bad teachers and unruly students. He was glad he ended up where he did - even without Sophia it would’ve been better. It was pretty rough before then, though.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“What do you want?” He asked rather defensively from his lone cafeteria table as a girl walked over.
Looking back, he realized that half the reason he’d struggled with making friends was his rather jumpy and irritable self. Not that a lot of other students weren’t mean, too.
“I just need some place to sit for a few days, okay?” She indignantly puffed. “My friends have kinda been assholes since summer break, and I wanted to sit elsewhere. Sorry if I bothered you. I could go somewhere else if you want.”
At the time, he was genuinely confused why she wanted to sit near him. He still was, really. The beginning of puberty had hit him bad, and he wasn’t exactly the friendliest soul. Still, he was grateful for the company.
“N-no. It’s fine. J-just, this isn’t some prank from the other kids, right?”
Even back then she was cute, and he hadn’t exactly had the best experience with the kids at the new school. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t really remember how she looked back then. He just saw a smaller version of her current self in his mind.
“No. It’s not. I get that though. I’ve seen how some of them are with you. I know they make fun of you for being kinda poor, but most of us really don’t mind or care.”
“Hm.” He let out a single grunt.
“You’re Soma, right? I’m Sophia. Nice to meet you!”
“Mm-hmm… Nice to meet you.” He already knew her name. She sat across the room from him in a few classes, and in the few weeks of school he’d developed a bit of a crush on her.
She kept the conversation going somehow, despite Soma’s untalkative demeanor. He couldn’t really remember what she talked to him about - it was all small talk about classes, with maybe a hobby of hers thrown in. He remembered that she would’ve joined the tennis team around then; maybe that was it? He didn’t know.
Yet as she continued to sit with him for some reason, he grew more talkative, and by the end of the year, she’d become the best friend he’d had. She’d given him social opportunities that he never would have had otherwise, and was probably the reason that the teasing and loneliness he endured at the beginning of the year vanished. By high school, those first odd weeks of middle school were a distant memory. Still, from time to time he wondered why she was at a public school - even one that had a reputation for rich students.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Soma walked up the short path to his door, he heard the sound of the car door opening behind him.
“Soma!” Sophia called out, trotting up to him awkwardly in her nice dress and short socks - the heels must still be on the car floor, he figured.
She had been his ride home from her small birthday gathering. Even though he was old enough, he couldn’t afford a car yet, and his parents wouldn’t let him borrow theirs for practice to get a license. He was a little embarrassed that she was able to before him despite being ‘six months younger’.
He tilted his head to the side out of light confusion. “What is it, Sophia?”
“I- uhh…” She let out a very nervous sigh and just froze a bit before she began to stammer out some words. “I’ve thought about this for years, but was a little afraid to go for it… I actually was going to do this later - I had things planned out - but… uhh… Like, I know I just broke up with Vi not too long ago, and you’ve got your own break-up baggage to deal with right now, but I… mm…” A large breath. “Do you want to go out? Or at least a date or something?”
“Oh! Yeah, sure!” Soma was taken aback a little. “I- of course. That’d be wonderful. Did you have something in mind?”
“No.”
“Uhh, okay?” He said with a slight laugh.
“I didn’t think I’d get this far right now.”
“That’s fair. Do you just want to do something simple? You know I can’t really afford as much as you.”
“Oh, don’t worry; if we need to, I’ll pay for it. A dinner date?”
“Sounds good. Where? And when?”
“Hmm… Ah! There’s a cute little Thai place a little ways away that I really like. We could go there, like, on Sunday? That’s two days from now. Will that work?”
“If you like it, I’m sure I will. That works for me.”
“Great! See ya then!”
“See ya!”
Soma had begun to turn around to go into his house when he felt his body being constricted.
“I’m not letting you go without a hug!” He heard Sophia giggle from behind.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He became aware of the girl in his arms again. She had begun sobbing heavily again at some point. He could understand the pain she was in - so much of her life and existence was pulled into question by old actions of the people she thought she knew best. Yet, nothing was really new. It didn’t change who she was. She was the same person as she was four days ago, before she knew about any of this.
It was odd. In one of his girlfriend’s worst, most vulnerable moments, somehow he felt distant from her - depersonalized as he witnessed the girl in his arms cry into his shoulder. She’d shaped so much of his life, and yet he felt as if she was some stranger.
And so he thought once more.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘How do I feel about her?’
‘Well, I love her, don’t I?’
‘Of course. But why? What is love to me?’
‘Well, I’m not sure what love is. I care about her immensely, even when she can be a bit of a pain. She’s obviously her own person with her own triumphs and failures, but she’s more a part of me than anyone else. The infatuation I’d felt at the beginning of our relationship has come and gone, but even without it I feel a responsibility for her well-being. She cares for me and supports me, and I try to do so as best I can in return. I don’t know if that’s love, but it might be.’
‘And what draws me to her? Is it just because she’s cute and rich?’
‘Well, no. Even before I knew she was the richest person I could ever meet, I liked her a ton. I do appreciate that she’s rich, and I do appreciate that she’s utterly adorable, but even without those I’d love her nearly the same.
She genuinely cares. So many of the rich assholes at school seemed to be nice, but would walk all over those lesser than them or inconvenient to their goals when they found the opportunity, or otherwise stand idly by when others did. I can tell that she really is a good person. At least, as good as one can be. She easily could’ve been a terrible, shitty person as the only child of CEOs, yet so far she’s been wonderful….
Hmm... Beyond that, I love her personality. It’s playful and sweet, with a pretty large streak of light mischief...
And she makes me a better person. I’m pretty withdrawn and harsh on myself, even to this day, but she helps bring me out of my head - with her I’m more confident around others and can value myself more...
No... It’s not just because she’s cute and rich. If we were as poor as my parents used to be and physically unattractive, I think our relationship would still be great.’
‘Is that really what I think?... Yes. I suppose it is.’
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Soma returned to the current moment, he noticed that Sophia had stopped crying. She was tightly pressed into his shoulder as before, but she had her arms wrapped around him now. Her pain probably lingered still, but he could tell she was doing better.
“I’m so sorry you have to go through this, Soph.” He whispered to her. “But I’ll always be here for you. It’s shitty that your parents have kept this from you for so long, but it’s evident from their actions in the past that they really do care about you. And even if they didn’t, I’d still be here. It really doesn’t change who you are to me. I still love you, and I hope you know that I’ll always have your back.”
She responded with a sad, stifled “Mm.”
“I mean it, you know. Sincerely. You’ve been my best friend for most of my life, and I don’t see that ever changing.”
Sophia looked up at him, retaining the hug she kept around him.
Now that he was looking again, her irises were a bit weird. The color went from a golden yellow on the outside to a really light blue that bled into the pupil a bit - and the actual texture underneath seemed… off. Before she said anything, he just figured she had some rare genetics, but being artificial certainly made sense.
“I... That’s so sweet.” She no longer really seemed upset. She was quieter and less energetic than usual, but it was clear that she wasn’t in much pain at the moment. “I mean, among all of the worries and crises I’ve had in the past few days, I was really scared that you’d hate me or be afraid because of this. It seems pretty silly now, but I… I didn’t want to lose you.” She let out some tears, although they seemed to be happy, and Soma saw her give a genuine, full smile.“I love you so much, dear. Thanks.”
A sweet silence hung.
“...You seem to be doing better now. Are you?”
“Yeah. I’m still not the best, but I’m certainly better. Telling you took so much weight off, and your response was so sweet. I-... yeah… I’m doing fine now.”
“That’s good. Still, if you need anything, please let me know.”
“Of course. I will. Thanks, dear.”
Another short pause - then she pulled him down into a lying position.
“Soph, what?” Soma mumbled from behind a cushion.
“Can we just stay here like this for a bit?”
“Oh… yeah! Sure.”
Sophia let out a satisfied “Mm” as she curled up into him - the first time in a few days.