In the Age of Mecha Girls, I Build Gundams by Hand

At the gates of the Mecha Academy, Lin Ye was being dragged toward the academic affairs office by two student-council mecha girls, his arms twisted behind his back. The school loudspeaker blared its warning on repeat: “Emergency notice! Student Lin Ye is suspected of harassing active-duty mecha girls. Reported actions include touching the bionic skin at their waists, sniffing the lubricant on their necks, and pinching and tugging at their lower-leg joints. He has been placed on the watch list as a ‘mecha girl harasser’!” Students crowded around three deep. Some held up their communicators to record, while comments flew by: “Lin’s a confirmed pervert! Last time he was gnawing on the chest plate of a scrapped mecha girl, claiming he was testing the alloy’s hardness. Now he’s going after active-duty ones?” “Look, he’s still clutching a bottle of lubricant samples! What a fake researcher!” Lin Ye struggled to hold up the bottle. “This is a new formula I came up with! It has nothing to do with the joint-lubrication specs for the mecha girl I’m building…” Before he could finish, the pink-haired mecha girl twisting his arm let go in disgust and kicked the bottle away. “You’re harassing a mecha girl and still using ‘I’m building one’ as an excuse? Do you really think we’re stupid?” No one knew that the abandoned warehouse he rented was piled high with the remains of scrapped mecha girls. From fragments of bionic skin to core circuit boards, every last piece was a “treasure” he’d scavenged from the space junkyard in the dead of night. On his blueprints was a pink-haired, twin-tailed mecha girl, covered in densely packed notes: “Bionic skin should feel as close to human as possible. Set lower-leg joint resistance to 0.2. Use the new formula for neck lubricant…” Then, one day, a faint sound came from the warehouse. A pink-haired girl stood up in a tasseled maid outfit. Her eyelashes fluttered as her bionic eyelids blinked. She curtsied to him, then suddenly tilted her head. Metallic rings turned in her pink eyes, and her voice sounded like a latte made with warm milk