Chapter 16

”The date go well?” was the first thing his butler said when the next morning. Sun Fang looked up from his breakfast and frowned, taking a moment to realize what the butler was talking about.

Finally, he smiled. ”Yeah,” he said and shoveled cereal into his mouth, ”it went well.”

”Don’t talk with your mouth full,” his butler chided. Sun Fang ducked his head and didn’t say anything else until he’d finished his meal. His gaze drifted to the clock above the kitchen doorway and he eyed it distractedly. He didn’t have anywhere else to be, but he was still beset by those old habits. He’d spent so long living on a carefully constructed plan where every action had been weighed before he’d taken it; every minute planned so he could get the most out of everything.

It was a little harder to break those habits than he’d thought. He found himself constantly restless, feeling like he had a places to be and the need to hurry before he was late—but those things didn’t exist anymore. He had personally made sure that they wouldn’t.

Sighing, he pushed the empty bowl away. Boredom didn’t sit well with him; maybe he should find a hobby. Something that would let him feel like he was accomplishing something.

”Do you have any hobbies?” Sun Fang asked his butler.

The butler started and turned to face him. ”No,” it said in the same mechanical tone it said everything. It didn’t seem the least like it found the question weird though. It said, ”Why do you ask?”

Sun Fang theatrically sighed, ”I think I need to find one.”

”Okay,” the butler said. It moved to take the empty dishes and get started on cleaning them, and Sun Fang left the kitchen behind him. The more he thought about it, the more the idea of getting a hobby grew on him.

He hummed under his breath as he went over to a computer, silently settling down in front of it. His hands flew over the keys as he turned on the screens, watching them come to life with nary a sound. The little effect signifying they were turning on played out on them and he turned the volume up, letting it wash over him. His finger tapped on the table while the other hand turned on the starnet and directed him out on a journey of discovery.

Start by searching hobbies… Sun Fang leaned against the backrest as his eyes drifted over the results that came up on the search engine. Dancing, writing, art, gaming, music; a variety of things popped up on the screen. He hummed under his breath again, scrolling down.

He wasn’t sure what hobby he wanted to do, but he figured that there was no harm in simply trying them out one after another until he found something he liked enough to stick with. Which one would he try out first? While he liked writing to spur on chaos, he didn’t feel any particular fondness or need for the act itself, so maybe not that one.

Art, likewise, wasn’t something he’d ever held a lot of interest in. Gaming was fun—there were certainly lots of games he had wasted a lot of time on in his youth. And while he loved music, he’d never particularly wanted to make some on his own. It could certainly be fun, though. One thing he did have a kind of residual interest in from his delinquent youth was sculpturing.

Having decided, he instead searched for sculpture classes for beginners at his city. It was a pretty big city, so quite a few results came up. He carefully scrolled through them, looking through their portfolios, their testimonials, their prices, their location, and their general attitude toward beginners.

In the end, he found two that he thought were the most promising and he decided to schedule in drop-ins to see what it looked like in real life. If he liked one of them well enough, then he had found his first hobby attempt.

After he was done with this, he wandered back over to the kitchen. He rested his hip against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest, spending a moment just observing his butler. It was in the middle of wiping the floor, the movements the kind of mechanically repetitive that a human couldn’t replicate.

It noticed him quick enough, of course. Sun Fang was sure it had to be specially aware of him, with the way it never failed to notice him. It didn’t look up as it said, ”Do you require anything, Young Master?”

”Do you want a name?” Sun Fang asked. It fired out of his mouth before he could think, a thought that had been brewing inside him for years. Of course, he’d never been able to say it. It wouldn’t have been tolerated; acting like his butler was an actual person.

Maybe he might have been able to spin it like naming a pet—a non-sentient being he was fond enough of to give it a name and train it to respond to it. But it felt disingenuous and sleazy and those things had nothing to do with the butler he’d known his entire life. It was worth more than that—it deserved more than that.

His butler stopped wiping the floor (a startlingly human gesture, ceasing what it was doing to show surprise) and turned to Sun Fang. It looked like it was considering what to say, and Sun Fang uncrossed his arms, shoving his hands down in his pockets and fiddling with the fabric in them.

He forced himself to not look away.

”Why do you assume I don’t have one?” his butler unexpectedly asked.

Sun Fang squirmed and scoffed, ”You told me you don’t. Did you lie to me?”

”No,” it said. ”No, I don’t have a name.”

”Then, do you want one?”

His butler looked at him in silence for a long uncomfortable moment. Sun Fang wasn’t breathing, he registered somewhere in his brain.

Finally, his butler said, ”I’ll let you know if I find one I like.”