Superstar From Age 0

The stage went dark.

Seo-jun and Kim Joo-kyung quickly put on the clothes they had hidden behind the table.

They had practiced many times, so when the stage lit up again, they were both wearing different outfits.

Of course, only their tops were changed.

A woman who had finished her meal stood up and widened her eyes when she saw Yoo-jin.

“Yoo-jin, your hair has grown a lot. Come here and sit down. Mom will cut it for you.”

Yoo-jin sat on a chair.

The woman took out a cutting board from somewhere and trimmed Yoo-jin's hair, which didn't seem to have grown much, while humming a tune.

Yoo-jin closed his eyes at the gentle touch of his mother. He felt a warmth in his heart.

He wanted to remember this moment forever.

“Mom!”

The woman turned around with a surprised expression.

A upload bar appeared on the monitor. Without the woman's command, Yoo-jin himself had accessed the storage device connected to the spaceship.

“I set the download to be free, but upload?”

‘Someone might think that's dangerous.’

Some of the audience members who liked SF thought,

“No ordinary android can do that! That's my son!”

The woman was delighted.

“What did you save?”

“I wanted to keep the memories with my mother forever.”

The woman was really happy with that one sentence from Yoo-jin.

After trimming his hair, the woman and Yoo-jin sat on chairs and chatted happily.

While peaceful music was playing, a new object appeared on the monitor that only showed stars.

Yoo-jin noticed it and told the woman.

“Mom. There's a spaceship coming. It might be a bad person, so I’ll check it out.”

“I can only trust you, Yoo-jin.”

Person.

The android's heart skipped a beat.

He wondered if his energy circulation device had malfunctioned for a moment and touched his chest briefly. He tilted his head and stood in front of the monitor.

“Spaceship. Spaceship. Please connect to communication.”

“Damn it. What are you?”

The man's face appeared on the large monitor. He looked rough and worn out, with scars on his face. Yoo-jin frowned slightly without realizing it, as he had only seen warm and fluffy things so far.

That was,

something an android couldn't have,

intuition.

“Call my mom!”

“There is no mother here.”

He felt that this man would bring misfortune.

As Yoo-jin felt, the audience also immersed themselves in the changing atmosphere.

“What are you talking about, you tin can?”

Tin can.

Yoo-jin paused for a moment at the word he had never heard before and opened his mouth.

“That word…”

“Yoo-jinaaah!!”

The woman came out of the room and saw the monitor.

She screamed like she had never screamed before.

Yoo-jin looked back at her.

It couldn't be,

but he felt like he was just a machine,

his heart pounding with anxiety.

“Mom.”

“Mom. Why did you make that tin can?”

The man interrupted Yoo-jin's words.

“Never mind that. Just open the door. This thing is almost broken.”

“Oh, okay. Just wait a minute. I’ll open it right away. Right away.”

The woman pushed Yoo-jin, the android, aside and stood in front of the control panel.

Of course, she didn't have enough strength to push an android, but for some reason, the android felt weak and gave way.

The woman pressed several buttons, and soon the man disappeared from the monitor.

And on the right side of the stage, a man appeared in a rough-looking outfit.

It was the man who had been on the monitor.

The woman ran to him. The man answered her with an annoyed expression.

Yoo-jin's eyes were fixed on his mother since a while ago. He bit his lower lip nervously. He fidgeted with his hands that were holding each other. Of course, he didn't have such a habit set up for him.

“Oh, can you sell me that spaceship?”

“Sure! Of course I’ll sell it to you.”

“It takes about a year to get to the mall from here, right? That's why I told you to buy a new model earlier…”

The android just watched all of that.

His eyes met with the man's.

The man scratched his chin.

The woman next to him didn't seem to care about him at all.

If it were him, he wouldn't do that…

He choked up.

He felt something indescribable, as if something had broken inside him.

“This is what you made, mom?”

“Yes… yes… I thought you were dead…”

His mother was crying, but he couldn't move an inch. The spaceship seemed to revolve around the man.

“It's amazing. You're different from other androids. Do you have emotions? Are you angry? Annoyed? Hey, tin can.”

“…I'm not a tin can.”

“Then?”

He analyzed him several times, but it was not a malfunction.

His lips seemed to tremble.

He clenched his hands that were holding each other.

“I'm, Yoo-jin.”

“Huh.”

The man snorted and burst into laughter. He held his stomach and laughed loudly.

The woman looked at the android with resentment.

The android felt like his eyes, his visual device, were broken by the gaze of the mother he saw for the first time.

“Wow. Nice to meet you.”

The man said.

“I'm Yoo-jin too.”

For a moment, everything went dark.

He felt like he had really broken down.

***

The stage lights went off and on.

It seemed that this play showed the passage of time by turning the lights off and on.

The man sat on the chair where the woman and Yoo-jin, no, the android had been sitting.

He had changed his top. He must have changed it while the lights were off.

“How much longer until we get to the shopping mall?”

“They say it’ll take eight months. Not much left. But do you really have to wander around like that? Space is so dangerous…”

The woman's expression looked gloomy. She couldn't bring herself to stop her son who had wanderlust.

“It's only been four months. I'm used to it now. I'm not the type to stick to one place.”

The man leaned back on his chair and said.

One year to eight months.

Four months had passed while the lights blinked.

The man who was pouring wine into his glass from a bottle on the table frowned at the empty bottle and raised his voice.

“Hey! M! Bring me some wine!”

M?

The audience wondered if it was a new character, when someone walked out from the right side of the stage. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Black shoes and neat black pants walked on the stage.

He buttoned up his white shirt to his neck and wore a black tie like a leash. He wore a jacket made of the same material as his pants.

The man who had long black hair tied up like a ponytail and wore white gloves that fit his hands held a round wine bottle. He looked like a butler.

Yoo-jin, no, android M.

M poured wine into the man's glass with a slightly pale face.

The man who was a living person, the real Yoo-jin, looked at him.

“It's amazing, isn't it? How can an android have emotions like that? How did you make this, mother?”

“Well. I'm just trying to make it according to the records, but I can't get the same thing.”

The man chuckled drunkenly and asked the android.

“Hey, what's your name?”

“…I am MOEB-436, made based on the MOEB android model as the 436th one.”

“What? I can't hear you well?”

It probably wasn't true, but the android's expression looked gloomy.

The mean man chuckled.

“I am MOEB-436, made based on…”

M’s voice rang clearly in the ears of the audience.

“…the MOEB android model as the 436th one.”

His voice sounded a bit sad.

***

Once again, the stage went dark and bright.

Time had passed in between. The woman wore the same clothes, and the man wore the clothes he had worn when he first appeared.

The most noticeable change was M’s hair that reached his waist.

He tied his long hair in one and let it hang behind his back. M stood on the stage like a decoration with a stiff expression like a robot.

“Good. I bought a new spaceship, shall we go right away?”

“Yu, Yoo-jin! Can't you stay here for another week, no, four days?”

The man nodded at his mother's words after thinking for a moment.

“Well, four days is nothing. Think of it as a final check.”

The man yawned and headed to his room.

The woman who watched him go back to her room sat on the floor leaning against her bed and started crying.

M walked quietly and stood in front of her door looking at her.

“My mother in my memories always smiled…”

M turned his head sideways.

“If I were her real son, she would be happier…”

He felt something hot from deep inside as if there was something wrong with his parts.

It seemed like that hot thing invaded his storage and judgment device in his head.

The android's head was messed up.

The audience held their breath at M’s silent gaze at the man's room. The silence without even background music was ominous.

Yoo-jin who was pure like a newborn baby seemed to have become M filled with depression and sadness.

M moved his steps and stood in front of the man's room. The man would not open the door to his call, who was just a ‘tin can’.

M turned his head toward the audience, as if looking at the empty air. Then, a new video played on the monitor.

The image of a smiling mother.

It seemed to be controlled by M.

“Yoo-jin.”

The mouth of the android, made with advanced science and technology, opened at the same time.

The audience gasped at the woman's voice that came out of Seojoon's mouth.

“Yoo-jin. Open the door.”

The man who was lying on the bed got up at the sound of the woman's voice from outside the room.

“What is it?”

He opened the door with annoyance and frowned at the sight of her standing in front of him.

“What? You? Mother is…!”

The android covered his mouth with her gloved hand.

He pushed him back with a force that was overwhelmingly stronger than a human's and dragged him to the bed.

Under the red light.

The man struggled as his mouth and nose were blocked.

The long hair of the android swayed behind his back.

A moment later.

The man stopped moving.

The android, or rather, Yoo-jin who regained his name, smiled brightly and came out of the room. He quickly threw away the suffocating gloves and headed to her mother's room.

“Mother.”

“…What?”

The name she used to call M had changed. The woman who was crying lifted her head.

“Please open the door. Mother. It's me, Yoo-jin. You said you would always open it for me.”

“M. What are you doing right now…”

The woman touched her forehead at the sight of the broken android.

“I should have thrown you away sooner, like Yoo-jin said.”

“Don't worry. I got rid of that man for you, Mother.”

The android outside the door smiled sweetly.

Her voice, which was set to be gentle and soft, sounded very cold and ruthless this time.

The woman slowly got up from her seat.

She felt uneasy.

“…What do you mean?”

“The fake Yoo-jin. The man who only made you sad. I got rid of him, mother.”

The woman gasped at the incomprehensible words. A sharp intuition pierced her mind. Fear weighed heavily on her.

“Yoo-jin…!”

She ran madly to the man's room.

And she stopped and covered her mouth at the sight of the bed. She trembled and stepped back a few steps.

“What is this… What is this… Androids can't kill people… There should be three laws, three laws embedded in them…!”

“Mother. Remember. The time we spent together, the happy times. Don't you remember?”

The android showed her hair that had grown long enough to touch her waist.

The woman shuddered at her pitiful expression.

“I never put such a setting in you…”

The android ignored the woman's words that were shaking with fear and continued to speak.

“You told me to eat well, mother. But I got these white hairs. And I couldn't cut them, so they grew like this. Mother. Please cut my hair like you did before.”

The woman got up from her seat. She ran to the monitor and pressed the button.

She looked furious even from behind. She also looked scared when she glanced back.

“You… Because of an android like you!!”

“Mother. Calm down. It's bad for your health.”

The woman's white gown was torn off and her neat hair was messed up as she fought with the android.

Anger overcame fear. The woman shouted.

“You killed my son… The most precious thing? I’ll erase everything!!”

A window that said deleting appeared on the monitor.

The android that comforted the woman stopped working for a moment. He stared at the air.

He happened to look at the audience and they could see his face.

It was a sad expression, as if he knew that his precious memories were being taken away.

The woman walked toward the android with a limp.

“Why did I make something like this… Why!”

She grabbed and shook his collar, but he stood firm with his metal body.

Then.

The red light dyed the stage red. And it blinked. An alarm sounded, signaling an emergency situation.

The woman looked at the monitor in confusion.

The deletion process had stopped completely.

The android was connected to the spaceship, and the spaceship was connected to the android.

The android didn't want his data to be deleted, and the spaceship wanted to delete it.

To protect his precious memories, he quickly infiltrated into the spaceship and tampered with and destroyed all kinds of firewalls.

He didn't have time to analyze what was important and what could stop the deletion.

“Mother is disappearing.”

The android's face turned pale as he muttered into thin air.

Dozens of files appeared on the monitor and turned red as if they were invaded, then returned to normal as if they blocked it, then turned red again.

The audience could tell how fiercely they were fighting by the red light that blinked faster and faster and the alarm that made their hearts beat.

Then, the monitor turned clear and showed the vast space.

The black space and the twinkling stars looked beautiful.

The woman who felt something was wrong ran to the monitor and checked it frantically, then ran back to the android.

“What are you going to do! The steering device is completely deleted! We’ll crash like this! Hurry, hurry and restore it! Restore it!”

They fought so fiercely that neither of them gave in, and everything was erased in the end.

The android's eyes sparkled as if he heard the woman's voice.

He had been staring at the air.

The woman paled as she realized that the loading was over. The android's gaze turned to her.

“Who are you?”

“…What?”

“Where is my mother?”

The android ignored the woman's astonishment at the unexpected words and moved to find her ‘mother’.

“What are you talking about? I made you! Hurry up and restore the steering device!”

The android tilted his head to the side.

His face was more expressionless than when he first stepped on the ground. It was a face that looked like a machine, different from a human. His skin without a trace of blood, his flickering eyes, his long hair, they all seemed to be made.

“No. You are not my mother. My mother is always neat and wears a white gown, and loves her son Yoo-jin very much.”

The woman who had her hair messed up and her white gown torn off by the fight with the android earlier shouted.

“I made you, I made you!!”

“No. You are not my mother. My mother is always neat and wears a white gown, and loves her son Yoo-jin very much.”

The android said.

“No. My mother is, white gown, loves son Yoo-jin.”

He said.

“No. My mother is, son, Yoo-jin, love.”

The android, who had lost most of his data, could only think of fragments.

“My mother is… son… Yoo-jin…”

The red light blinked rapidly. The woman grabbed and shook the broken android.

“Mother… son…”

Under the noisy alarm and the flickering red light.

The woman screamed.

Even the audience who were watching felt their hearts beating faster and clenched their sweaty hands,

The android alone muttered peacefully.

“Mother… mother…”

Crash!

The stage was dyed in darkness with the woman's scream.