When I was alive, Serena and I hated each other's guts.

I knew she was the phantom haunting my marriage, so I fought her at every turn. We even got into physical altercations.

But whenever we clashed, Ethan always took her side. He coddled her, trusted her implicitly, and painted me as the hysterical villain.

I used to scream myself hoarse, accusing him of emotional infidelity and begging him to cut Serena out of his life for good. All I got in return was his deepening resentment and his increasingly frequent absences from home.

By the time I was diagnosed with a terminal illness, the fire in my heart had already burned out. Fighting felt pointless.

Now, like a ghost trapped in a machine, I felt almost nothing at all.

After dinner, Ethan ordered "me" to brew some Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. "I" handed Serena a cup, but she claimed it wasn't hot enough.

Following Ethan's instructions, "I" went back and poured a cup of boiling hot water. While Ethan stepped away to take a business call, Serena "accidentally" threw the boiling water right in "my" face.

Now, following Ethan's previous orders, "I" was walking down the hallway to the master bedroom to change out of the stained dress.

I heard his gentle voice coming from behind me: "Did the coffee burn your hand?"

I paused, a bitter laugh echoing in my mind. He only ever used that tender tone with Serena.

"I'm fine, Ethan. But Chloe's eye looks really bad. It's all my fault, I didn't see her kneeling there."

"Because she's an idiot," Ethan replied, his voice dripping with malice. "She's practically thirty. If she sees something dangerous coming at her, she should know enough to get out of the way."

Listen to him. Serena threw it on purpose, yet he blamed me for being too stupid to dodge. The mental gymnastics he performed to protect her were truly astounding.

I walked slowly into the master bedroom, opened the closet, and took out a clean dress. With my back to the door, I unzipped the ruined dress, letting it slip to the floor, standing there in only my underwear.

Just as "I" reached for the clean clothes, the bedroom door clicked open.

Ethan walked in.

Before I could process it, he stepped up behind me. His large, warm hands grabbed "my" waist. Suddenly, with a forceful yank, he spun me around and pinned me tightly against his chest.

The rough fabric of his suit brushed against "my" bare skin.

His voice was full of anger, but beneath the rage lurked a raw, frantic energy I hadn't heard in years.

"Chloe, how much longer are you going to keep this up?" he demanded. "You used to want to rip Serena's hair out! She threw boiling coffee in your face, and you just took it? You served her coffee with a smile? Do you have zero self-respect left?!"

No, I didn't.

Because I programmed the machine to obey Ethan's commands and love him forever.

I couldn't answer his question.

Ethan sighed in frustration. He grabbed my chin, forcing me to look up so he could inspect the malfunctioning red eye.

"Did it really damage your eye? Does it hurt?"

I shook my head. The voice modifier module had to reboot three times before it finally worked, rendering the voice flat yet sincere. "No, it doesn't hurt."

The real me would never have said something like that.

When I was alive and sick, I was always incredibly clingy. In the early days, he would patiently sit by my hospital bed, holding my hand and keeping me company during my IV drips.

But when Serena came back from Paris, his attitude changed overnight.

I remembered catching a severe case of pneumonia, struggling to breathe. I called Ethan, begging him to take me to the ER.

He sighed impatiently. "Do you not know how to dial 911?"

At that moment, my heart completely died. I called an ambulance and spent three days shivering alone in the hospital. Ethan never showed up.

Later, I saw on Instagram that the day I was admitted happened to be his and Serena's "reunion anniversary."

They were at the Ritz-Carlton. Champagne, roses, and my husband—the two of them looking incredibly in love.

The day I was discharged, I stormed into his corporate office and swept everything off his desk. I screamed at him, calling him a cheating bastard.

He glared at me viciously and roared, "If it weren't for you, I'd be with Serena right now! It's because of you that I lost her! You have no right to throw a tantrum!"

"Chloe, look in the mirror! You're crazy! Vicious! A bitch! You aren't even half the woman Serena is!"

He was right. I was crazy then. I was vicious. I was overwhelmingly jealous.

But I was simply a woman who didn't want to share her husband.

Before we got married, he called my fiery personality "passionate." Now, it had become a disease.

So, I built a robot that was my exact polar opposite. She was docile, obedient, and quiet. She possessed all the virtues I lacked.

But Ethan... why do you hate this version too?

You hated the fiery, real Chloe. And you hate the flawless, subservient robot Chloe.

What kind of woman do you even want?

Perhaps... you never loved me at all. No matter what form I took.

Clearly, my mechanical response was not what Ethan wanted to hear.

His hand slid from my chin down to my throat. He struggled to rein in his fury, his grip tightening.

"It was scalding coffee, Chloe. Of course it hurts. You are so damn stubborn! Are you doing this just to guilt-trip me? You're a lunatic."

I thought to myself, Oh, so you knew the coffee was scalding. You knew it would hurt. You just didn't care because Serena was the one who threw it.

I looked up at him, meeting his gaze with one normal eyeball and one glowing red optical lens. My expression remained as placid as still water.

That utter indifference seemed to completely obliterate the last shreds of his sanity.

He suddenly shoved "me" down onto the mattress and pinned me there.

"You want to play the silent martyr? Fine. Then shut up."

He leaned down and kissed "me" forcefully.

For the first time in three years, he made such intimate contact with the android. It wasn't a kiss of love; it was an angry, punishing bite.

But the moment his lips touched mine, I saw sheer shock wash over his face, his eyes widening.

He hadn't expected my lips to be so ice-cold.

It was not the temperature of a living human.

"Chloe, you..."

But when Ethan realized "I" was still completely unresponsive, he opened his mouth and bit down hard on "my" bare shoulder. He used real, vicious force.

My eyes were hollow and dead; I didn't flinch.

He was breathing heavily, his eyes wild. He grabbed my bra strap and yanked it hard, preparing to take things further.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

Serena's sugary-sweet voice drifted through the door. "Ethan? Are you in there?"

Ethan froze. He looked down at me, his chest heaving, his eyes filled with a desperate urge to conquer, and something else—something dark and chaotic that I couldn't decipher.

He took a deep breath, just about to call back to Serena, when "I" suddenly spoke up in an impeccably polite tone.

"Aren't you going to get the door? Serena is calling you."

Ethan looked as if he had been struck by lightning, his face contorting with rage.

"Do you really not care that I'm with her?!" he hissed, his voice trembling with fury.

I processed the question and delivered the pre-programmed response: "Yes. As long as you are happy, Ethan, you can do whatever you want."

"Chloe!!" Ethan roared, looking like he wanted to tear the room to shreds.

Before he could fully detonate, Serena knocked again. "Ethan? I feel dizzy... my chest hurts so much..."

I just stared at him blankly, blinking in a daze.

Ethan clenched his jaw so hard I felt like his teeth were going to shatter.

He pointed a shaking finger at my face. "Fine. Great. Keep playing your sick little games."

He vaulted off the bed, stormed over to the door, yanked it open, and slammed it shut behind him.

Dead silence fell over the room.

I looked at the android lying half-naked on the bed, staring vacantly at the ceiling.

Deep within my soul, I felt a strange sense of relief.

Perhaps, my soul was about to fade away, too.