What makes one human?
Is it the tangle of skin, blood, nerve and bone? Are they less human, if they're more chrome than organic? Or is it the feelings, memories, all encapsulated in the electrical impulses that fire off in their brains?
It's one of her interview questions for admission, years ago. Yeoreum lets her eyes drag across the panel of interviewers. There's no one answer, she thinks. Humanity cannot be preserved in anything not human, as much as they try. She recalls the codex of humanity, the blank pages abandoned in the herculean face of the task.
Now, she thinks humanity's defined by the gentle anger that bubbles under her skin, the ever-constant feeling of discomfort that tightens her chest, when Heo Yewon comes visiting.
Her intercom buzzes, and Yeoreum's stomach sinks a little. "Come on up, Wonnie." She straightens up and surveys her surroundings. She'd skipped out on the end of her last class to clean up before Yewon's visit, but 30 minutes is far from enough to get her home up to the other's impossible standards. 30 years might not even do the trick, but the floor's clean and everything's put away, so Yeoreum decides to take her little victories.
Hand on the doorknob, she pauses for a second. A deep, steadying breath before opening it. "You made it!"
GAVE YOU ALL MY BEST ME'S, MY ENDLESS EMPATHY with ♡, for @elusium's yewon.