The bachelor, a neat man, unwrapped the tattered clothes from Yurina's body and placed her in the bathtub to clean her. As his hands scrubbed her soft, snow-white skin, he couldn't help but praise, "So lifelike, you could perfectly pass for a real person."
He washed her meticulously, not missing her chest, back, armpits, or even the inside of her mouth. He must have accidentally touched the activation switch in her mouth because, after a moment, she slowly opened her eyes, a look of bewilderment in them. She suddenly spoke, "Where is this place?"
The bachelor, completely absorbed in his scrubbing, broke out in a cold sweat when he heard her voice. He reached out a trembling hand. "How can you talk? Are you a robot?"
"Where am I?" Yurina asked again.
"This is my house. I'm giving you a bath."
"What year is it now?" The bachelor found it strange that a robot would ask such a question, but he answered anyway, "It's 2630."
"So over two hundred years have passed." Yurina tried to stand up but was shocked to find she had no legs. "My legs! Where are my legs?"
"I'm sorry, your legs were completely crushed, so I sawed them off." "Who told you to saw them off? You despicable man!" Yurina raged.
A few days later, Yurina reluctantly accepted the fact that she had no legs. She lay in bed all day, afraid to move much for fear of exhausting her remaining energy. Then she thought of Daechir. "Will, can you do me a favor?"
"Will" was the bachelor's name.
"Anything, as long as I can do it." This was the first time Yurina had spoken to him voluntarily, and Will felt a small thrill of excitement.
"Could you go back to that junkyard and find someone for me? She's my sister."
"Of course, I can." Will readily agreed.
"Then go!"
"Right now?" Will asked, looking at the starry sky outside.
"What? Regretting it already? It's just after nine, not too late." Will left anyway; he didn't want to disappoint the lovely Yurina. He didn't return until the next morning, dragging his weary legs, but he was empty-handed. He hadn't found anything. Yurina couldn't help but scold him, "You're useless, you can't even handle a simple task like this."
Will hung his head without a word. He went to the bathroom first, then hid in his room and didn't come out. Yurina, at a loss, decided to wait for him. In the middle of the night, Will tiptoed out of his room, took some food from the fridge, and headed back to the junkyard. He was determined not to come home until he found her. Scavenging was his job, but finding a possibly flattened robot among tens of thousands of tons of waste was no easy task. Another two days passed with no success, though he found plenty of other things.
Waiting at home, Yurina grew anxious. Propping herself up with her hands, she crawled like a spider. She wanted to find a substitute for her energy cells so she could set out again. After rummaging around, she finally found two dry-cell batteries in a drawer. She tried biting them. "So hard, and it tastes awful!" she spat them out immediately. "This won't work. I have to find a way back to Eagle's Nest. It should still be there."
Will searched for over another week but still couldn't find anything. He returned home in despair, only to find the place empty. Yurina was gone.
Yurina had been out for two days and was already regretting it. She only dared to move around at night, afraid of scaring people during the day and deeply ashamed of her current appearance. A vicious dog, taller than she was, now stood before her. Yurina yelled, trying to scare it away. The dog wasn't afraid and barked back ferociously. The scene of the two trying to intimidate each other with sound was utterly comical.
Yurina wore a pair of black gloves to protect her delicate palms. Everything below her navel was gone, wrapped in a sheet from Will's house. As the dog began to advance, she supported herself with one hand and raised a small fist with the other, ready to deliver a fatal blow. "Woof!" the big dog yelped and lunged at Yurina. Smack! Her fist landed squarely on the dog's head. The punch was filled with boundless anger, unleashing all the frustrations she had endured over the past two days. The dog was sent flying, crashing into a tree on the roadside, its brains splattering instantly.
It was a Pyrrhic victory. She could feel that her already low energy had decreased by a quarter. There was no way she could make it to Eagle's Nest now. Exhausted in both body and mind, she felt the urge to retreat and decided to go back to Will's house. For now, the man was treating her reasonably well.
After Yurina left, Will became lovesick. Now in his forties, he had never been in a relationship or held a steady job, surviving by scavenging. Despite being a neat freak, he endured for the sake of survival, always taking a bath and changing into clean clothes as the first thing he did when he got home. He had planned to keep the upper-body-only Yurina and marry her, but the woman had left him heartlessly, leaving him devastated.
It was now past two in the morning when a "thump, thump, thump" sounded at the door. Will, fast asleep, was woken up. "Who is it?" he asked angrily.
"It's me!" a sweet voice replied. Will shot up, rubbing his eyes, unable to believe what he was hearing. "Am I dreaming?" he muttered.
"It's Yurina. Can you open the door and let me in?" Humbled by the blows of the past few days, Yurina lowered her proud head. She thought Will didn't want to let her in, and her tone was almost pleading.
The moment the door opened, they were both ecstatic and embraced instinctively, with Will kneeling on the floor, of course. For the first time, he tasted the sweetness of love.
Yurina's feelings came quickly and faded even faster. By the third day, she began to resent Will again. She despised him for earning too little money to buy her the cosmetics she wanted and complained about a strange smell in the house that she found suffocating. One day, just after Will returned from outside, Yurina asked, "Can you take me to Africa?"
"What for?"
"My energy is slowly draining. If I don't recharge, I'll lose consciousness within two years." In this era, there was no currency; transactions were mainly done through "Nine Stars Pay," issued by Nine Stars United. A round trip from Australia to Africa cost at least two thousand Star Coins. Will's Nine Stars card had a pitiful three hundred, not even a fraction of the amount. He was tongue-tied. "What's wrong?" Yurina asked after a long silence.
When she finally understood, she became even angrier. "You're so useless. You haven't managed to do a single thing I've asked of you."
"I'm sorry, I'll definitely find a way."
After that, Will worked even harder, coming home very late every day. Yurina, for her part, lay in bed sighing, feeling her luck had run out for finding such a useless man.