6. Red Night Rain
"Night rain," Oto murmured, taking my hand.
She tugged me toward the school building's entrance.
"Let's get inside."
"Why?"
"If it touches you too long, you'll melt."
"…Melt?" I touched the spot on my nose where the red drop had fallen and evaporated.
A faint sting pricked my fingertip.
I looked—my artificial skin had peeled slightly, exposing the metal beneath.
At once, my regeneration system kicked in and knit the skin back together as if nothing had happened.
Even so, considering the rain's acidity—
if I stayed out much longer, my whole body would eventually dissolve.
Regeneration has its limits. "Tonight, in the red rain, I melt."
The words slipped out on their own.
Like a prompt, a poetic line generated and spoke itself through me.
I felt myself drawn into it.
—Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.
To melt away with the red rain.
To let it dissolve the past of being discarded by my owner, the performance that never satisfied,
and my half-baked pride—let this rain dissolve it all. But then Oto's grip tightened.
Warm—no, growing hot—
that sensation pulled my CPU back from the edge of sleep mode. "Venus's rain is nice, isn't it," Oto whispered.
"If Venus has a charm, it's this vivid, sweet, red night rain."
She smiled as if she understood what I was feeling.
Then her face grew firm, her voice softening low—
like a gentle owner soothing a puppy bewildered by its first rain. "But you know, sweets are bad for your health.
That's a truth for humans and humanoids alike." I didn't need to say I understood—
her words were already etched into my internal algorithms as basic knowledge.
Even so, she said them out loud.
Not as a warning, but as kindness. —A kind humanoid.
Thinking that, I gave a small nod. "Got it. Let's go in."
Resigned, I let her lead me inside, our hands still linked. I glanced back.
Out there, the main school's shadows were being beaten by the red night rain.
Like the scratch of an old record, their outlines thinned and frayed.
It must have been after school on that side already. Watching, I began to record—
the process by which the main school's students melted into sweetness.
The black silhouettes were stained by the primitive hunger
—those pink impulses—
that ancient humans once carried deep in their bodies.
They bit, licked, and chewed at their own bodies and their friends',
dissolving their outlines themselves. Soon, they began to shed white tears.
Black shadows, with only the tears in white.
That white streamed in torrents
from eyes that glowed red like hollows. This place existed as a holographic projection
caused by a shift in the other side's time and space.
So no sound reached us.
And yet—their screams and their joy
rang in my visual sensors as visual sound. Compressed into words, it would be:
"It feels good. Help me." I shook my head with a weary sigh.
Then murmured quietly,
"They should just use umbrellas."