His father hadn’t spoken to him in weeks. The house had grown into a silent machine: fridge hum, bathroom drip, door creak. Every sound was accounted for. Every silence… observed.
Then came the noise that wasn’t part of the script.
A scream.
Not loud.
Just… misplaced.
Kai walked into the hallway like a ghost walking back into its home. His mother sat motionless on the couch, staring blankly at the floor. No TV. No phone. No pulse in her expression.
“Kai,” she said without looking up, “your father’s in the garage.”
He didn’t ask.
He went.
The light above the garage flickered in binary morse: ON. OFF. ON. OFF. Like the universe trying to decide whether this moment should exist.
The garage smelled like metal fatigue and burnt patience.
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Kai’s father sat on a wooden stool. In front of him, a workbench.
On the workbench—blueprints.
Not for machines.
For people.
Diagrams of Kai. Labeled emotions. Predicted rebellions. Countermeasures for empathy. Like a man who tried to understand his son by dissecting the idea of fatherhood… and failing miserably.
“Didn’t mean to scream,” his father muttered, not turning around.
Kai didn’t move.
The silence between them wasn’t awkward. It was nuclear. Pressurized. Historical.
“You ever just realize… you weren’t built for this?” his father whispered.
Kai’s voice didn’t quiver. “I realized I was built for something else.”
His father chuckled. Brokenly. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? You were. You’re not like anyone. You don’t belong here.”
Kai stepped forward. “And you tried to fix that.”
His father finally turned around. Eyes bloodshot. Tears unshed.
“No, Kai. I tried to break it. And you didn’t let me.”
That Night.
Kai found the final letter two days later.
It was typed. Not handwritten. Like his father had outsourced even this final truth to a machine.
“You were the last algorithm I tried to solve.
And I failed.
So maybe you’ll solve yourself.
Or maybe you’ll write a better world.”
The garage door never opened again.
The body was found by a neighbor, two weeks later.
By then, Kai had already left.
Not physically.
Just… conceptually.
He rewrote himself.
Stripped away the hope, the need for belonging, the anchor of family.
He didn’t become a monster.
He became a glitch in mourning.
End of Chapter 63