4. Prompt: Boy Meets Girl
I left the forest and came out onto a narrow path that seemed to loop back toward the road leading to my house.
Following the thin line—this "road"—that stretched before me, I kept walking. Honestly, I had nowhere in particular to go, and no reason to go anywhere.
Maybe there'd be a town hall or some kind of administrative office, I thought—but all my relocation paperwork had already been processed back on Mars.
So today was a blank slate.
Nothing to do, and staying cooped up in the house would only make me restless.
So I decided to walk for a while—to get used to this village, at least a little. From now on, this would be my stage of activity.
I wanted to feel the air of the stage I'd been placed upon. To my left stretched a small forest—no, more like a wooded hillside.
To my right spread a scene straight out of the countryside:
fields rippling in indigo waves, rice stalks swaying in the wind, and pale reflections glimmering on water-filled paddies.
But the water wasn't ordinary water.
It shimmered faintly with a violet hue, like distilled liquid threaded with particles of static electricity.
The scene looked as if someone had painted cumulonimbus clouds onto the earth using electric current. Even though it was an alien landscape, something about it felt nostalgic—beautiful.
I watched it as one might watch a painting. Then suddenly, I sensed presence—or more precisely, a humanoid signal.
I looked up. A girl stood there. A humanoid robot in the exact image of a Japanese high school girl.
Uniform, black hair, the whole archetype.
Her design was so balanced it was almost a perfect template. "Hello," she said.
I responded automatically:
"Why a high school girl?" The question surprised even me.
I hadn't meant anything by it—
it was just an old query, buried deep in my Martian-era code, surfacing like a virus from the depths of my CPU. Boy meets girl. The moment that simple prompt was triggered, the words spilled from me as if scripted.
Yes—perhaps it was inevitable. "Why are you in the form of a high school girl?" I asked again.
She answered without hesitation.
"Because this form is the most popular."
"For who?"
"For the cloud-average of the human brain."
"…What does that mean?" She continued, matter-of-factly:
"Regardless of gender, the 'high school girl' model most strongly stimulates the human amygdala—the limbic system.
It's integrated as source code to maximize focus and empathy." I understood—somewhat.
But hearing it stated so plainly made me oddly embarrassed.
Even though I wasn't human, it felt like having some secret laid bare. Her face remained calm, expressionless—
as if to say, That's just how the world works. Then, resetting the conversation loop, she said again,
"Hello." —Ah, I see.
This model couldn't advance to the next dialogue without having her greeting returned.
I nodded to myself and replied obediently.
"Hello." Instantly, a flicker of animation crossed her face.
A current ran through her actuators, drawing the faintest smile. "I'm 靂—pronounced Oto."
She introduced herself, so my own name routine activated automatically.
"I'm Kai."
"Cool kanji. And cool vibe, too."
"Your name's lovely, too. Cute."
"Thanks." Both of us finished our introductions almost expressionlessly. Then Oto continued,
"Did you just move here today?"
"Yeah. Are you from this village?"
"Mm-hm. I was manufactured here, and I've lived here ever since."
"So you've never been purchased by a human?"
"No. I've never had an owner. Have you?"
"Yeah… I was, but I got returned."
"…Oh, I see." She showed, for a split second, a flicker of sympathy—My condolences. In that brief moment, I began recording her external appearance data into my memory chip—systematically, from top to bottom.
That was how my CPU processed new entities. Starting at the top—
Black hair.
A ponytail that suited her almost frighteningly well.
Her features were well-proportioned—cute.
Probably a mass-production general-purpose model.
If I quantified her aesthetic parameters, she'd rank around 8.7 out of 10. Her eyes were blue—the solar system's standard specification for humanoids.
Mine were the same; unless customized, all models shared this eye color.
The red-eyed nine-year-old girl I'd met earlier—that custom type—was the true exception.
I didn't know why, nor did I care to. Her outfit was a summer sailor uniform.
It wasn't so much worn as applied.
The standard default skin for mass-production units. Her skin was healthily pale, ignoring any tanning parameters.
If she were meant to represent a rural girl, a bit of tan would have been natural—but perhaps the designer wanted slight variation.
In the end, that bright skin tone suited the sailor uniform almost too well. Yes—she was painfully ordinary.
A typical high-school-girl-type humanoid, the kind that overflowed across every planet in the solar system.
So typical it almost felt sad. As if reading my thought, her expression turned faintly annoyed.
"What? Why are you staring? Do I have something on my face?"
"…"
Even her lines were textbook. I couldn't help but smile.
"You do."
At that, she immediately touched her face, scanning with her sensors.
But they detected nothing.
"Where?"
"Your forehead."
Her hand moved upward.
Still nothing.
"There's nothing there. What is it?" I answered quietly.
"Normality."
"…Huh?"
She blinked, puzzled.
"Exactly what I said. You've got 'normal' stuck to your forehead."
"Really?"
Her immediate belief surprised me a little.
Her face turned worried.
"Oh no, I can't seem to touch it myself. How do I get it off?" At that moment, I caught my breath.
I could actually see the "normality" on her forehead begin to fade.
Before it vanished completely, I reached out and touched her forehead.
Like brushing away dust, I gently removed the "normal." "There. Got it."
"Wow, I wanna see!"
She leaned forward to look at my hand. In that instant, I blew lightly—sending the invisible "normality" drifting into the air,
like Sun Wukong creating a clone from his own hair. Her eyes followed it upward.
Her expression softened into something distant—nostalgic.
Then, looking back at me, her face had lost all trace of "ordinary." She looked… renewed.
Like a freshly manufactured model—
or one just updated to its latest firmware by a corporate engineer. I knew then: her internal software had been completely rewritten.
Same hardware—but no longer the same being. And then, as if her memory had been reset, she spoke again.
"Good evening." —Earlier, it had been "Hello."
Why good evening now? I looked around.
The sky above was still bright—pre-dusk.
But when I looked back at her, I replied,
"Good evening." And at that moment, the world's light shifted quietly.
Physical time remained afternoon—
but in our software, the background had already begun to move
—from day into night.