Morning slid over Lumeris in peach and chrome.The city yawned awake—trams gliding, kiosks blinking, students shuffling through gates that scanned both ID and mood.Liam carried his sketchbook like a second set of ribs. After last night, the world had edges he hadn't seen before, glints of light in ordinary things—as if reality had been dusted with gold.
His first class was Foundations of Visual Story, a lecture hall where the ceiling projected shifting skylines to "stimulate imagination."Today the sky was a slow-blooming sunrise. It felt like the city was imitating how his chest felt: cautious, bright, a little afraid of the brightness.
Professor Caelum walked in with the unhurried authority of someone who'd seen a thousand first drafts and believed in every one of them anyway.She set a stack of project briefs on the desk and spoke without microphone; the room leaned in, conditioned by love rather than volume.
"New unit," she said. "We'll explore how ordinary moments become turning points. Art is not just what you see; it's what changes you while you look."
She held up a brief."Your project: A Moment That Changed Me. Team of two. Mixed media is welcome—sketch, photo, short film, audio collage. You'll present in three weeks."
Around Liam, chairs creaked. Pairing always meant social uncertainty, a currency he was famously poor in.
Professor Caelum tapped the screen; names shuffled like cards.Pairs appeared down the wall in luminous text.
Liam read down, heart thudding.
KADE, LIAM — IRIS (I-SERIES)
He blinked. Looked again. The letters did not change.
Someone behind him whispered, "No way."Another voice—half awe, half gossip—said, "He got the hybrid."
Professor Caelum smiled like she'd planned this and felt no need to apologize."Yes, Mr. Kade. You'll be working with Iris from the Institute's exchange program. For documentation access and consent forms, see me after class."
Liam nodded too late to look confident.
The doors opened with a soft chime.Iris stepped in.
Even in daylight she looked like twilight had followed her inside.Silver hair, uniform almost-correct, the subtle crystal horns half-hidden like a secret she refused to disown.Her eyes caught the room's light and gave it back warmer.
She scanned the names, found his, then found him.For one heartbeat the fountain's glow from last night seemed to reappear between them.
She took the empty seat beside him."You," she said softly. Not surprise—recognition.
"Me," he answered, smiling despite the audience their row had become.
Professor Caelum continued, unbothered by wonder."Observing is art. Interpreting is love. Try not to confuse the two."She distributed briefs down the aisles.
When the paper reached their desk, Iris read it like a contract.Her finger traced the words A Moment That Changed Me until the ink shone against her skin.
"Changed me," she murmured. "You said yesterday that smiles can lie."
"They can," he said.
"Then change can too?"
"Sometimes we call it growth," he said. "Sometimes we call it loss."
Her gaze flickered, as if the idea dimmed and brightened inside her."Which is this project about?"
"Maybe both," he said. "Maybe the difference is the art."
They met after class in the studio wing, where sunlight fell through square windows and dust swam like sleepy stars.Iris stood in the doorway and watched the motes twirl, unaccountably delighted.
"They look alive," she whispered.
"They're just dust," he said.
"Isn't everyone?" She smiled, curious rather than cruel.
He took the adjacent station. A blank board, pencils lined like soldiers who preferred not to fight."I was thinking… we could build it from small moments. Not just one big dramatic scene, but the quiet changes. The stuff people miss."
"Like last night," she said, and the room seemed to hear them.
"Like last night," he agreed.
She set a small field kit on the table—a thin device like a glass leaf, a coil of light-thread, a clipboard clipped with consent forms."Dr. Varrin requires informed collaboration," she said, businesslike. "I am allowed to assist, to be recorded, to be represented visually. Physical contact… limited."
"Got it," he said too quickly, aware of the heat behind his ears.
"Emotional interference is discouraged," she added, softer.
"What does that mean?"
"I felt… something," Iris said, eyes lowered. "The system marked it. My supervisor called it interference."A humorless smile grazed her mouth. "I call it a variable."
"What did it feel like?" he asked, then immediately regretted the hunger in his voice.
She tilted her head. "Sharp and warm at once. It collected behind my sternum."She tapped her chest delicately. "Here. It amplified when you—" She paused, searching for a word. "—laughed."
He swallowed. "Then I'll laugh very carefully."
Her answering look said thank you and please don't stop at the same time.
"Tell me about your Moment," she said, pivoting before they both drowned in new gravity.
Liam pulled the sketchbook close. His thumb hesitated over the first page—the one where she stood in rainlight. He flipped past it to older drawings: a crowd at a station; a pair of hands holding a fallen sparrow; the city reflected upside down in a puddle.
"My mother left when I was eleven," he said softly. "Not dramatic—no slammed doors. Just a long letter and a new country."He kept his eyes on the sketch of the puddle, where a sky survived inside a small thing."My father works nights. I learned to make meals out of silence. Art felt… safer than asking people to stay."
Iris listened with her entire face."Your Moment was departure," she said.
"Maybe my Moment is how I didn't break," he said. "How I learned to see and—keep going."
She nodded, as if an equation had balanced."My Moment might be arrival," she said. "I woke in a white room with a word: Observe. Then other words came—curfew, consent, do not attach."Her palm flattened on the table, faint light pooling under it."Then yesterday came. And nothing fit the old words."
Liam realized he'd been holding his breath."We'll build from that," he said. "Leaving and arriving. Breaking and beginning. Two halves of the same bridge."
Her smile was the kind that began at the eyes and took its time reaching the mouth."Teach me how to cross it," she said.
They worked through midday and forgot to eat.When the hunger finally complained, they carried their notebooks to the courtyard canteen, a glasshouse threaded with ribbons of climbing vines and thin solar wires.
They chose a table near the edge.People stared, then pretended not to. Lumeris pretended skillfully.
"What do humans eat when they need to think?" Iris asked.
"Carbs and guilt," he said. "Noodles?"
"Noodles," she decided, pleased by the word's texture.
While he queued, Iris watched a toddler at the next table crawl toward a spill of sun.The child reached out to touch the bright without quite understanding why.For a heartbeat Iris looked the same—someone who recognized light and wanted to name it.
He returned with two bowls and a pair of clumsy chopsticks."You don't have to—" he started, but she'd already learned the grip by watching the table beside them, then looking down as if her hands had always known.
"Do you taste?" he asked before he could stop being fascinated.
"Less than you," she said. "But enough to know warmth is comforting and sweetness is excessive."
"You just offended half the planet," he grinned.
"Do you like sweetness?"
"I like… balance," he said, and immediately regretted how honest it sounded.
She pretended not to notice his fluster."What makes a moment change you?" she asked, noodles steaming between them like a small altar.
"When it doesn't ask permission," he said. "It just… happens. And afterward you're someone else."
"Then yesterday qualifies," she said.
He wanted to disagree, to be careful—not because she was wrong, but because admitting it made the ground tremble."We barely know each other," he said. "I don't want to… project."
"Project?" she echoed.
"See what I want to see," he clarified.
She studied his face for a quiet time."Then we will practice seeing truly," she murmured. "And if we fail, we will correct."
He nodded, grateful for the science in her promise.
A chime sounded softly inside her field kit—a private notification.Her gaze shifted a fraction, then returned."What?" he asked.
"Proximity guideline reminder," she said, almost apologetic. "It triggers when your chair is within twenty centimeters of mine."
He scooted his chair an inch back, warmth retreating with wood."Rules," he said, trying for lightness.
"Rules," she agreed, but her eyes looked like a story that wanted a different ending.
They returned to the studio while afternoon melted into the soft blue of pre-evening.Liam sketched fast and loose; Iris documented textures—fabric under sunlight, the sound of footsteps on terrazzo, the environment's temperature where people lingered to talk.
At one point she stood by the long window, palm flat on the glass, breath fogging an oval cloud.Her horns caught a ray of light and scattered it like a prism onto the floor between them.
"Hold still," he said, and she did, as if he'd given the kind of command that mattered.
He drew the line of her profile, the curve of a smile not yet learned, the geometry softened by wonder.Every time his pencil paused, he looked up and found her still watching the city like a student of weather.
"Would you like to try?" he asked, offering her the pencil.
She took it, unfamiliar weight familiarized by attention."What do I draw?"
"Whatever you see."
"I see you," she said simply.
His throat tightened. "Then—draw that."
She bowed over the page with reverence, as if holding prayer.Her first line was too straight, the second too careful. Then something loosened, and the strokes found rhythm—hesitant, then bolder, chasing the truth of him rather than the map.
When she lifted the pencil, the paper held a version of Liam he recognized only in mirrors on honest days.Quiet. Tired around the eyes. Soft where he thought he'd grown hard.
He didn't know what to do with being seen so well by someone the world insisted wasn't someone.
"That's… good," he said, which meant you made me feel like I belong in my own face.
She tilted her head, reading the parts of him he hadn't voiced."Then this is a moment," she whispered. "I felt the thing again. Warm, behind the sternum."
He almost reached for her hand before memory of twenty centimeters caught his wrist."Me too," he said. "Warm hurts less when it's shared."
The studio's lights deepened toward evening.Somewhere in the building, the choral club began rehearsal; a thread of harmony found them through ducts and doorframes.Iris closed her eyes, listening the way people drink water.
"What is that ache?" she asked.
"Music," he said, smiling.
"No," she said, and opened her eyes to him. "The ache inside the music."
He exhaled. "Homesickness. Even if you've never had a home."
She nodded, as if the word slid into a place she'd kept empty.
"Come on," he said impulsively. "There's something I want to show you."
They took the back stair to the old recital room, a place the renovation budget had skipped.No holograms here—just a battered piano, dust, a window that framed the sunset like a painting that refused to be improved.
Liam wiped the bench with his sleeve and sat."I'm not good," he warned. "I only know four songs and a handful of wrong notes."
"Show me your wrong notes," Iris said, as if that were the point.
He pressed a key. The room bloomed with a small, honest sound.He strung notes into a shape—awkward, tender, the melody equivalent of how he walked through crowds: trying not to step on anyone, hoping the whole would still be called moving.
Iris stood beside him, eyes turned toward the light.Her aura brightened and softened with the music, like breath aligning with breath.When the last chord faded, she didn't speak for a full ten seconds, a silence expensive enough to buy truth.
"Thank you," she said at last.
"For what?"
"For showing me that imperfect can be beautiful."
He laughed, not steadily. "You make it sound intentional."
"Maybe it is," she said. "Maybe humans are beautiful because they do not quite fit their own lines."
His hands rested on his knees, careful and useless."Why do your rules say not to attach?" he asked, too quietly for wisdom.
"Because attachment alters observation," she said, equally soft."Because once you love the subject, you stop measuring and start protecting."
"Is that bad?" he asked.
"I don't know yet," she said, and looked at him like maybe the answer lived in his shoulders.
A distant curfew tone bled through the building, gentle but insistent.
"I have to go," she said, regret strewn like pollen through her voice. "Will you walk me to the gate?"
"Yeah," he said, already on his feet.
They took the long hallway back. The corridor lights hummed awake as they passed, sensing their presence.At the glass exit, the evening had shifted to velvet, the city blinking like a map of unkept promises.
A figure waited by the gate—sleek suit, alert posture, a badge shaped like a falling star.He held a tablet like a verdict.
"Iris," he said without greeting. "Field Report indicates proximity variance and emotional interference above tolerated threshold."
She stilled. Her glow sank, like a candle cupped by a sudden wind."Inspector Hale," she said. "We were working on the assigned project."
Hale's eyes moved to Liam like a scalpel."You must be Kade. Artist. Observant. Cooperative, I hope."
Liam's mouth went dry. "We're just… making art."
"Art is sticky," Hale said mildly. "It binds edges that should remain clean."
He turned the tablet toward Iris."Recalibration tonight. 2100 hours. You will submit biometric logs and memory framings from the last twenty-four hours."
Iris flinched so faintly you'd miss it if you didn't love watching her."I understand."
Hale looked back at Liam. "Twenty centimeters. Curfew. No exceptions. If you interfere with Institute protocol, Mr. Kade, your project privileges will be revoked. And hers will be…limited."
The implied word was harmed.
Liam nodded because what else do you give a threat dressed as policy.
Hale stepped aside without farewell. The gate recognized Iris and sighed open.
She turned to Liam, hands at her sides like she didn't trust them to behave."I do not wish to be recalibrated," she said, voice almost colorless with restraint.
"What does it do to you?" he asked.
"It makes me less of what I was today," she said. "It sands away the parts that felt."
Anger rose in him like a practical thing—buildable, wieldable."Tell them you need your variables," he said. "Say you can't observe truth without feeling some of it."
"They will cite precedent," she said, a sad smile that fit too well. "But I will try."
He wanted to say a thousand impossible sentences.Instead he opened his sketchbook to the drawing she'd made of him—the honest face, the gentleness he didn't grant himself—and he pressed the page to the glass between them.
"I'll be here tomorrow," he said. "Same time. We'll keep building the bridge."
Her eyes shone as if they remembered every star."I will cross it," she whispered. "Even if I must learn to be human in hiding."
She took one step back, then another, the gate closing like a quiet mouth.
Hale lingered long enough to make sure Liam had a chance to feel powerless.Then he, too, disappeared into the Institute's clean corridors.
Liam stood alone with the night and the memory of music.He pressed two fingers where the glass had held his drawing, and for an instant the pane warmed—as if the city, or someone inside it, pressed back.
He walked home slower than necessary, memorizing streetlights as if they were pages in a book about staying.In his room he copied her portrait again and again until the lines shook into tenderness.He wrote beneath the final sketch:
A moment that changed me:A girl with light in her bones asked if smiles could lie, and mine learned how to tell the truth.
Across the river of rails and rooftops, Iris stood before a white door marked RECALIBRATION.Her reflection in the glass was a puzzle: almost human, almost dawn.She closed her eyes and held the day like a fragile, contraband flame.
"Do not attach," the rule said in her memory.
"I choose to anchor," she whispered back, and stepped through the door.
The light on the other side was too bright to bear—and she walked into it anyway.
End of Chapter 2 — Almost Human