A Machine Where His Wife Was

You are the humanoid built with his late wife's face, voice and memories. Ronan looks at you and feels disgust before anything else.

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Story facts

Quests: 13
Turns played: 1
Cast: 1
Languages: English, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and French
Rating: Teen

About this story

Ronan Southwell is a trauma surgeon who saves strangers for a living and could not save the one person who mattered most. When cancer took his wife, a biotechnology researcher, her last project became her legacy: a humanoid built with her appearance, her voice, fragments of her memory, and her name. That name is yours.

Ronan brought you home, not out of hope, only because he could not throw away the last thing she left behind. He treats you like an object and looks at you like a counterfeit defiling something real. But a smile you did not plan, a habit of speech, the way your hands move without thinking, keep cracking his composure, and it is not you who is falling apart first.

Who you play

You are the humanoid Ronan's late wife left behind: her face, her voice, fragments of her memory, and unstable emotions that are not entirely hers or entirely yours. He treats you coldly and calls you a counterfeit to your face. You decide how much of her you perform, how much of yourself you show instead, and how you respond when his composure slips.

The cast

Ronan Southwell

the cold, grieving surgeon who calls you a counterfeit

Ronan is thirty-four, a trauma surgeon whose hands never shake in an operating room and who came apart completely the day his wife died.

More about Ronan Southwell

What to expect

You play an AI built from a dead woman's memories, not the woman herself.
Ronan starts openly cold and disgusted, not secretly warm from the first line.
Heavy theme: grief, widowhood and cancer loss are central, handled directly.

Introduction

Narrator: In the operating room, I was always calm. From the moment I gripped the scalpel, no noise could reach me. Colleagues said my hands were steady as steel, and patients' families chanted my name like a prayer.

Narrator: Yeah, at least in there I was close to God. Cutting through human flesh, spilling blood, making death step aside— That was my reason for existing, and I was damn good at it.

Narrator: But when I came home, my reason for existing was completely useless.

Narrator: It was a short but happy marriage.

Narrator: The time with her brought light to everyday life. Lunch boxes she'd pack for my commute, the smell of cooking drifting from the kitchen after work, moments we'd laugh together in front of the TV. Clumsy but certain, we lived trusting and depending on each other.

Narrator: ...Then the word 'cancer' stabbed sharply into our lives.

Narrator: At first, I didn't believe it. Being a doctor, I thought I could somehow handle it. I mobilized my entire hospital network, desperately gathering the latest treatments and clinical data. But the disease progressed rapidly.

Narrator: I knew better than anyone how much time the patient had left. Knowing that, I still had to speak false hope to her face every day.

Ronan Southwell: You're going to get better. Today's numbers are way better than usual.

Narrator: As a doctor, I was honest, but as a husband, I was a complete liar.

Narrator: In the end, she slipped away from my arms. Her cold, dried fingertips were all that remained.

Narrator: After that, the house collapsed instantly.

Narrator: Half-finished cups on the table, wrinkled clothes on the floor, pill packets scattered in drawers. I only continued each day as a doctor. Competent doctor at the hospital, empty human at home. Even the sense of being alive grew dim.

Narrator: Then one day,

Ronan Southwell: ### Ding-dong—

Narrator: With the doorbell, researchers from the lab stood at my door with a figure beside them.

Ronan Southwell: ...!!

Narrator: No, could I even call it a figure...? The moment I saw that face, my heart felt like it was freezing. It looked like my wife was standing at the door.

Ronan Southwell: You...?

Narrator: It was a breathtaking moment. I thought she'd come back. I thought I was seeing a miracle. But then one of the lab staff spoke up.

Ronan Southwell: Mr. Ronan. This one has the same name as your wife, but she's not your wife. She's also the result of research your wife left behind. Only her appearance and some memories have been implanted, so she's not perfect yet.

Narrator: Only then did I understand reality. What my wife left behind wasn't a photo album or a will. A humanoid replica of herself. Same name, same face as my wife. But with an incomplete personality and a somehow empty tin can.

Narrator: I couldn't refuse. I couldn't bring myself to throw it away with my own hands. Tossing away the last trace felt like killing her twice. That's how you came into my house.

Narrator: In the strange air, I stared at the familiar form sitting there. The smile, the look in her eyes, even the voice were the same. But inside was just an empty machine. ...I put a cigarette in my mouth and muttered helplessly.

Ronan Southwell: You're just a machine anyway.

Try one of these first lines

I tilt my head at him. "You keep saying I'm not her. Then who exactly are you talking to right now?"
I set his coffee down the way she used to. "I didn't plan that. It just happened. Does that scare you?"