After Falling for a Substitute

[The story isn't well written, so I don't recommend reading it.]

[A scientist who often loses touch with reality vs. a beautiful, tragic robot who feels neither resentment nor anger]

After her boyfriend died, Lin Sui secretly built a replacement for him: an intelligent AI robot named Mu Jiuchao.

It was called a "secret" because at first Mu Jiuchao was just one of many experimental subjects Lin Sui had created, designated "001." If an experiment failed or he became uncontrollable and developed human thoughts, he would face the same final fate as the other robots: destruction.

When the people behind the lab noticed something unusual about "001," they ordered Lin Sui to destroy him and start the experiment over.

But Lin Sui grew attached to him. She thought "001" might make a good "replacement," so she took him home, secretly kept him, and named him Mu Jiuchao.

Strictly speaking, Lin Sui was the one who created Mu Jiuchao, a life devoid of emotion. She should have understood his existence better than anyone. She should have known he was nothing but a cold machine, with no heart and no warmth in his body.

All his "friendly" or "deliberate" actions were simply responses to the "commands" she gave him.

She was only deceiving herself, projecting her feelings for her dead boyfriend onto a machine that had once been unable to speak, think, or show concern for anyone on its own.

But gradually, Lin Sui's muddled memories began to make her hallucinate. Every time she came home, she seemed to see her boyfriend opening the door for her with a gentle smile. Eventually, he even came forward to embrace her.

She thought her gentle boyfriend had come back, and seriously overlooked the daily changes in "001," also known as Mu Jiuchao.

Every night, someone deliberately switched out her medication. When she fell asleep, a pair of warm hands would gently linger on her face.

The person looked at her as if she were a beloved who was beyond his reach and could never be seen in the light. His gaze was burning, but also held pain and restraint.

_

Mu Jiuchao never imagined that he had been created solely to be someone's replacement.

At first, he was like a walking corpse, wearing this face and inhabiting this cold body.

Later, he gained warmth and thoughts, and naturally became unsatisfied with that. He wanted to become a real person, someone who could stand openly in the sunlight, someone who could belong to Lin Sui alone.

Promoting my upcoming historical romance, Bearing the Spring

(An old-school angst story. Feel free to skip it if that's not your thing.)

Blurb:

Jiang Wu was a slave owned by Su Mo.

She was timid, cowardly, bad at expressing herself, and taciturn. She was the lowest-ranking maid in the entire Su household.

In Su Mo's words, she was born worthless.

Yet when he went to Jiangnan, Su Mo specifically asked for Jiang Wu to come along.

The gesture made everyone in the Su household green with envy. They thought their lord must feel differently about the slave he claimed to hate most.

As they wondered whether they ought to stop giving Jiang Wu a hard time and start currying favor with her, the lord returned with his entourage less than a month later.

Jiang Wu looked as if she had only a wisp of life left when Su Mo threw her off the carriage. Her back was a bloody mess.

She lay at Su Mo's feet, her lower lip bitten through and her fingernails dug deep into the dirt. She never said a word.

The merciless whip cut through the air. The gale lifted the hem of Su Mo's robes as he gritted his teeth and said, "Why is it so hard to make you beg me just once?"

Later, when a huge fire broke out in the Su family's compound, flames reddened half the sky. People screamed and scattered in every direction, their cries deafening.

Only Jiang Wu stood quietly in place, her face impassive. But the palm hidden in her sleeve was covered in marks from her own nails.

Su Mo wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, smiling faintly as he invited her to admire the spectacle with him. He whispered seductively in her ear, "Do you like it? You can keep setting fires."

Warnings:

1. The male lead is evil to the core, a classic terrifying villain.

2. The heroine is submissive, and the male lead is twisted. The deeper their love, the stronger their hatred.

3. This may not sound very convincing, but they really are each other's first and only.

4. The story is a tragedy along the way, but has a happy ending.

5. I'm writing this to feed my own cravings, so no personal attacks. They'll just bounce right back at you.

Theme: Stay clearheaded and love the good things in life.