Work Text:
“Tobio, clean your room already!”
Dr. Umataro Tenma stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. A sharp frown had formed between his perfectly arched black eyebrows. It was eight in the morning and he had to be at the Ministry in an hour. He really didn’t have time to go through the same argument with his son again. Tobio sat on the floor, staring stubbornly ahead, comic books, clothes, and toys scattered all around him. It was Saturday,no school and apparently his son had nothing better to do than laze around.
“Why should I clean up when we have a cleaning robot?” Tobio pushed out his lower lip in a sulk.
Tenma sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “How many times have I explained this to you? So that you learn to appreciate your privileges! We come from a long line of horseradish farmers! My parents lived in a village in Gunma, far away from any technology. They had to work hard every single day. And it’s only thanks to my academic achievements that I received a scholarship, was able to attend university, and am now the Minister of Science! Otherwise you’d be toiling away in a field right now!”
However, his lecturing words seemed to have the opposite effect. Tobio stood up and clenched his small fists.
“It’s always about you and your work! Always, always, always! And you never have time for me! Every time you say ‘soon’ and then you just go back to work again! You’re a liar!”
Tenma’s eyes turned icy behind his tinted glasses. His features hardened. “Tobio, you will apologize now. And then you will clean up here.”
Tobio met his gaze without flinching. “But I’m not sorry at all! And I won’t clean up either!” He grabbed an action figure from the floor and hurled it at his father with an angry shout. Tenma gasped — more in disbelief than pain — as the plastic muscleman hit him square in the chest.
“バカなパパ!”
With those words, Tobio pushed past him and ran down the stairs toward the front door.
“Yeah, just run away! And you don’t need to come back either, do you hear me?!” Umataro shouted after him before the door slammed shut.
~~~
During work, Tenma hardly spared a thought for his son. It hadn’t been their first argument and it probably wouldn’t be their last. Boys that age often misbehaved. That was simply how children were. But Tobio was a good boy. When he came home, Tobio would have come to his senses, cleaned his room, and apologized to him.
If he came home.
With how slowly his work was progressing, he might have to work overtime and sleep in his office again. As usual. He had announced that he would build a grand new type of robot, yet somehow… he lacked the motivation. So far he hadn’t even managed to produce a single damn sketch. Whenever he tried, his mind suddenly went completely blank.
Tenma let out a sigh and took a sip of his coffee.
“Ah, Hoshie… what am I supposed to do?” he murmured, staring absentmindedly at the photograph on his desk.
It showed a young woman with her hair in a bun, smiling at the camera. His late wife. She had become gravely ill when Tobio had still been very young. Even the most expensive treatments had failed to help her. Sometimes it felt as if he were cursed by bad luck. He had been born in the Year of the Horse, an unlucky year, then he lost his wife, and now he had a poor relationship with his son and the worst creative block he had ever experienced.
The intercom buzzed, abruptly tearing him from his thoughts. Startled, he dropped his cup. It hit the floor and shattered into a thousand pieces. A black puddle spread across the carpet.
“しまった!”
A hologram appeared before him. It showed two police officers standing at the entrance.
“Dr. Tenma?”
“Yes?”
“We need to speak with you. May we come up?”
Tenma frowned but gave permission. Two minutes later, the officers entered his office.
“How can I help you?” Tenma asked with a slight groan as he rose from his crouch where he had been collecting the last shards from the floor. “Is there a problem with one of your robots?”
Inspector Tadaki — as his name tag identified him — shook his head sorrowfully.
“No. I think you should sit down, Doctor.”
An uneasy feeling crept over Tenma. “What is it?”
The other officer, Satō, swallowed. “Your son was involved in a traffic accident.”
“Yes, and? Is he badly injured? Which hospital is he in?”
Tenma’s composure began to crack.
“He’s not in a hospital.”
A pause followed. Umataro felt icy claws close around his heart.
“He’s dead.”
The claws dug into his heart and tore it apart. It had to be so. Otherwise he couldn’t explain the pain in his chest.
“Here.”
Tenma looked up. He hadn’t even noticed he had lowered his gaze. A police robot stepped forward between Tadaki and Satō. It was a simple model, naked and just humanoid enough, with two large LED eyes. In its arms it carried a body wrapped in white linen. Casually, as if it were nothing more than firewood.
Tenma stepped closer. Slowly. One step at a time. It felt like wading through gelatin. He pulled the cloth aside. One half of the face was Tobio, one eye closed as if he were peacefully asleep. The other half resembled modeling clay. There was a large dent that had pushed the eyeball deep into the skull, from where it stared outward with a wide, unblinking pupil. The nose was crushed and the lips torn apart, revealing a pearly grin through the gaps where some of the baby teeth were already missing.
Tobio’s corpse hit the floor with a dull thud. Now he could see the arms — grotesquely twisted and covered in abrasions. Some of the fingers could only be guessed at as such, others were splintered or completely severed.
“Oh, I'm sorry. I dropped him,” the robot stated monotonously.
It was as if the world receded into the distance. Tenma’s mind was a perfect machine, but now the screws came loose, gears sprang from their mountings, and rivets flew free from their sockets and ricocheted through the inside of his consciousness. Reality snapped back as if a stretched rubber band had been released.
Without his conscious intent, his hands seized the robot’s head and he began to shake it.
“HOW DARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU, USELESS PIECE OF METAL, TOUCH HIM! AND THEN DROP HIM! YOU SHOULD BE MELTED DOWN!”
He shook it like a madman as tears blurred his vision.
“Please stop! Please stop! You are destroying state property!” the robot protested.
~~3 days later~~
Tenma’s apartment was overflowing. Piles of condolence cards, bouquets of lilies, and containers of food covered every surface. And yet it was empty without Tobio’s presence.
“Hey.”
A hand rested gently on his shoulder. Professor Ochanomizu, one of his former colleagues, looked at him sympathetically.
“How are you?”
Tenma snorted. “How do you think I am? I lost my wife first and now my son. I’m cursed with misfortune. The Year of the Horse, my birth year. Both my first and last name contain the word horse.”
Ochanomizu faltered. “You don’t really believe that!”
Tenma exhaled. “Do you know what the last thing I said to him was?”
“Tenma—!”
“I told him never to come back when he ran out!”
Ochanomizu fell silent. “You couldn’t have known. It was a terrible accident. That’s all. Sometimes terrible things just happen.”
Tenma’s voice trembled. “I will never see my Tobio again. Never hear him laugh, never hear his voice, or touch him. I will never see him grow up.”
Then he looked directly at Ochanomizu.
“I can’t live without him. I just can’t. But I can bring him back. Yes! I have a way. Do you remember the new robot I announced months ago?”
The professor stared at him in horror.
“Tenma, no! Your son isn’t even in the ground yet and you’re talking about...no! You can’t do this! You mustn’t! That would never be your real son! He wouldn’t grow up! You would merely create a copy and only deepen your pain beyond measure!”
Tenma glared at him dangerously behind his glasses. “I am Umataro Tenma, the Minister of Science and the greatest genius of my time! So don’t tell me what I can and cannot do!”
“If you go through with this, no one will be able to help you.”
~~~
Tenma took a deep breath before pushing open the door to his laboratory. Today, he would make history.
“Looks like I’ve found my motivation.”