Her mother, Ayumi, cried when she saw the results. “She’s cured,” she whispered into her phone, voice cracking with joy. “She’s normal.”
She became a ghost in a perfect body.
Who are you?
She was also empty.
Reika’s skin was perfect. Porcelain smooth, untouched by the acne or awkwardness of other sixth graders. Her hair fell in a dark, heavy sheet to her shoulders. Her eyes, when she bothered to open them, were the color of rain on asphalt. She was, by every clinical metric, a marvel of pediatric gene therapy. Mdg 115 Reika 12
And survival, Reika realized, staring at her reflection in the dark window of her bedroom, is not the same as living.
The reflection stared back. Perfect skin. Rain-colored eyes. Twelve years old, and already a relic. Her mother, Ayumi, cried when she saw the results
She tried to fake it. For her mother. For the doctors who checked in every three months, beaming at their miracle. She learned to smile at the correct times. To narrow her eyes in mock concentration. To sigh with a theatrical weariness that made her friends—her simulated friends—laugh.
Because MDG-115 had a final, unspoken side effect. It didn't just fix the faulty gene. It rewired the brain’s reward pathways. The ache of loneliness. The sting of rejection. The wild, irrational joy of a summer evening. All of it was just… inefficient data. The procedure had optimized her for survival. Who are you
Reika stood by the window of the hospital room, pressing her palm against the cold glass. She could feel the glass. The temperature. The slight vibration of the city beyond. But underneath that, where a pulse used to thrum with want , there was only a soft, white static.