After that day, I made sure I never saw her again.
I avoided her on purpose, like she was made of glass and I would shatter her just by standing too close. A year slipped by that way, quiet and colorless, and eventually I was transferred to a new class.
Siri was in that class.
I told myself it was a coincidence. I told myself I could do it again. Avoid her. Pretend she didn't exist.
But Bryce decided he liked Siri. He made sure everyone knew it. He leaned too close, laughed too loudly, spoke about her like she already belonged to him. And because I was always with him, because I carried his things and ran his errands, I was always there too.
I tried to disappear. She wouldn't let me.
Siri talked to me first. She talked to me when I was running the errands, and then when I was writing Bryce assignments. I tried avoiding her but she talked to me anyway.
When I was with her, I felt normal. Human.
Outside of that, nothing changed. No one else spoke to me. Bryce still treated me like an object he owned. I carried his bag. I wrote his notes. I stood where he told me to stand. None of it mattered as long as Siri smiled at me like I was real.
Then Bryce noticed.
He realized she wasn't impressed. That she wasn't his.
He vented that anger towards me.
At first, it was small, almost petty. He took my lunch and ate it in front of me. He locked me out of classrooms and let teachers yell at me for being late. Then it escalated. Locked in bathrooms for hours. Someone always "accidentally" bumped into me hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs.
I thought it was a punishment for being a monster and never fought it.
But then something happened that I had never felt before.
Rage.
On Bryce's birthday, the entire class gathered at his house.
I remember the bright rooms and Bryce dragging people from one place to another, pointing out expensive furniture, glass cases, collections he barely understood but loved to own. Everything glittered. Everything felt excessive.
After the adults left and the house settled into a lawless buzz, he crossed a line.
He told me to grab Siri and pull her into his bedroom.
The words barely left his mouth before my fist moved.
The next instant, I was on the ground. His lackeys kicked me from all sides. Pain flared and flared again.
That day, I learned two things.
The first was that fighting humans is nothing like killing beasts. When you hunt, you don't punch. You strike where it ends quickly. Cleanly. No hesitation. No second chances. Nothing I ever hunted lived long enough to take the second breath.
Bryce wasn't a beast.
He was human.
When my punch landed and blood spilled from his nose, he reacted instantly. Rage answered rage.
The second thing I learned was that humans are social creatures.
People intervened.
Siri was the first. She shouted. Others followed. Someone shoved Bryce back. Someone else pulled me up by the arm. People stood between us.
For days afterward, something unfamiliar happened.
People spoke to me without being told to. They asked if I was okay. They saved me a seat. They walked with me between classes. They treated me carefully, like I might break, but they stayed anyway. Some of them even tried to make me laugh.
For the first time, I wasn't only human when I was alone with Siri.
But it didn't last.
As the days passed, people drifted away again. By the end of the week, it was only Siri who still walked with me, who still sat next to me, who still spoke to me like nothing had changed.
Being with her was enough. It was more than enough. And that was what terrified me.
I knew how this ended. I could already see her fading from me.
This time, I wasn't ready.
So I decided to fix myself.
I started training.
Every day, I practiced smiling. Alone in my room, in front of a cracked mirror, I replayed moments with Siri in my head. The way her eyes softened. The way her lips curved when she laughed quietly. That bought a smile on my lips. I tried to summon that feeling again and again and force it onto my face. I watched my reflection closely, adjusting, repeating, memorizing.
It didn't take long to get it right. At least, I thought it was right.
But the first time I tried it near a kids playground, everything went wrong. The kids stared at me, then started crying. Some ran away. A few were so scared they even peed themselves.
It turns out the smile that came easily to me was not a kind one. It was sharp and wrong, more like a devil's smirk. Babies cried, children panicked, and even dogs backed away when they saw my face.
It mimicked the smirk of the Asura god that Goku's villagers worshipped.
So I started over.
This time, I changed my approach.
I knew where my real smile had come from. Not joy. Not Siri. But Pain.
So I used pain again.
Every day, without missing a single one, I went up to the school rooftop and stood in front of the crooked mirror. I slammed my forehead against the wall, or drove my fists into the concrete, or cut myself where no one would ever see. Knuckles split. Skin tore. Blood smeared across the gray surface. Sometimes I hovered at the edge of consciousness, the world thinning to a ringing haze.
I clung to the pain as it spread to my brain, sharp and absolute.
When the smile came, small and involuntary. I studied it. I memorized it. Which muscles tightened, which ones loosened, how the corners of my mouth lifted without my permission. I practiced recreating it while the pain was still fresh, while my hands were shaking and my breath stuttered, before the sensation dulled, before my face forgot what it was supposed to do.
The next day, I did it again.
And the day after that.
It took a whole month to get the hang of it. By then, bandages wrapped my knuckles in uneven layers, a few thin cuts traced pale lines along my legs, and tender dents ached beneath my scalp. I returned to the playground with all of that hidden under clothes and practiced posture, my body sore but my expression steady.
This time, the kids did not flinch when they saw me. No one screamed. The dogs did not bark or pull at their leashes. Instead, a few kittens wandered over, tails flicking, curious and unafraid. I sat down in the dirt and let them climb into my lap, their fur warm under my fingers, and I smiled as practised while I stroked their backs.
That was the first time I felt the world might actually accept me.
The next day, I went to school wearing the same smile, careful and practiced, and everything felt different. My classmates started noticing me. A few girls came up to talk. A few guys who had checked on me before spoke to me again, like they were picking up an interrupted conversation. Their voices were casual, curious, almost normal.
But it never went past greetings or brief small talk. No one waved me over to sit with them. I hovered at the edges, close enough to be seen, too far to belong. I was still not part of the human circles.
Then Bryce came back from house arrest.
I told myself I hoped he would attack me again, that he would bully me nonstop. This time, I thought, I would get the chance to build the community properly. The attention, the concern, the bonds formed in defense of me. But he never bothered me. He walked past like I did not exist, his eyes sliding away as if I were air.
I did not want my effort to be wasted. I did not want to lose the chance I had finally found, the chance to erase my fear of losing Siri.
So, for the first time, I hunted a human.
I persuaded Bryce to come with me to an abandoned building, my voice calm, my smile friendly. I still remember what he said when we were alone. "Sorry. We went too far last time. Ignore it. Also, fuck Siri. She is not what I thought."
I only meant to scare him. A glimpse of my devil's smirk, maybe a few punches if he pushed me. That was all. But something snapped, sudden and irreversible, like a wire pulled too tight.
I chased him.
I remember his cries when I twisted his hand, the sound sharp and wet in the empty space. I remember the fear in his eyes, wide and frantic, like he was staring at something inhuman. I laughed the entire time I hurt him, breathless and giddy, like I had discovered a private joke the world was not in on.
I made sure he did not bleed. I made sure the pain was unbearable but invisible. Nothing that would show. Being a hunter helped me. I knew exactly where to apply pressure, how far to go.
When his body started convulsing, jerking like it was giving up on itself, I stopped.
I left him near a road, the fear driven deep into the roots of his soul. I made sure he understood, clearly and completely, that he would never speak about me. If anything happened, it would be an accident. A fall. Bad luck.
Somehow, everything worked. He was admitted to the hospital, and no trouble ever reached me.
A few days later, I visited him there.
I leaned close, smiled, and commanded him to bully me the moment he returned to school. He was shaking, eyes glassy, almost pissing himself when he saw my devil's smirk again.
I loved it. The control. Knowing his entire life bent around my words made me feel alive in a way nothing else ever had.
As ordered, he started bullying me once he came back.
He hit me in class, right in front of everyone. His lackeys surrounded me, fists and shoves coming from all sides. And just like before, Siri stepped in. Others followed. Voices rose. Teachers came running.
After I was saved, the pattern repeated. People checked on me. Sat beside me. Talked with me. Tried to make me laugh. This time, I smiled when they smiled. I made jokes back. I matched their energy, mirrored their concern.
This time, they stayed.
The conversations stretched longer. The pauses felt comfortable. I was no longer just someone to rescue, but someone to keep around.
As I was pulled into the social circle, my fear of losing Siri slowly dissolved, like something poisonous being diluted drop by drop.
Weeks passed exactly as I wanted.
If anything went wrong, if a reaction was delayed or attention drifted, I adjusted my commands to Bryce. To reinforce things, I held a few joyful sessions with some of his lackeys as well, careful and thorough.
By the end of the year, I had multiple secret toys, all of them listening, all of them ready to do exactly what I said.