by Satoshi Hase
“So you don’t know anything about her, Ryo?” Arato hoped this revelation would be a new lead on some information, but Ryo just hid away his terminal.
“Arato,” Ryo told him flatly, “don’t get involved with her.” All Ryo’s earlier interest had vanished. He just told Arato to stay away from her, with a hard look in his eyes. Arato felt like Ryo was acting in some story he didn’t know about.
“I’m serious,” Ryo insisted. “Don’t get involved with this hIE.”
“‘Get involved’?” Arato protested. “I’m already her owner.”
Ryo, who was always so full of confidence, couldn’t meet Arato’s eyes. In all their years as friends, Arato had never seen Ryo that pale, or wearing a smile that forced. “You should get away from her. Right now. You don’t need an hIE. You’ve got a good life.”
***
After that, Ryo continued to act strange. When it became clear that he was going to try to squeeze every last bit of information about when Arato met Lacia out of him, Arato headed home by himself. The whole thing had Arato’s brain in a fog, so much so that he didn’t realize he had forgotten something at school until after he and Yuka had finished dinner.
“I can’t believe you came home without your pocket terminal. How did you even ride the train?” Yuka asked, exasperated.
Lacia brought some after-dinner tea to the table on a tray. “Requests for fare and admission fees came in through the home system from owner’s personal identification tag,” she said.
“Oh, did dad give you one of those tags?” Yuka asked curiously. Purchases and fare payments these days were made automatically using the personal ID tag in everyone’s pocket terminals. It was very convenient, but it meant you couldn’t do anything if you lost your terminal. Some people took to carrying small back-up ID tags somewhere on them just in case; Arato’s was a thin, easy to wear bracelet.
“Yeah,” he said, “but I need my terminal. I’ve got homework to do, and I left my datalink at school, too.”
“Then just don’t do your homework,” Yuka shrugged. “Tell your teacher fate ate it.”
“Hey, there’s an idea,” Arato said.
“Owner, I do not believe that fate was involved.” Lacia’s cool observation kept Arato from being swept up in Yuka’s nonsense. Under Lacia’s pure blue gaze, he felt like a perfect specimen of failure.
“The school’s closed at night, though. It’s already eight, so I’ll just have to get it tomorrow,” Arato said.
“There is an hIE clerk at the school at all hours, so it should be possible to retrieve it tonight,” Lacia said.
And so, it was decided that Arato would go and get his things that night.
Arato boarded the subway, Lacia in tow. At that hour, the Urayasu line was full of white collar types returning from work, and the subway headed to Asakusa was almost empty. But the folks who were riding with them kept stealing glances at Lacia.
“I guess you’ll start standing out even more once your hIE modeling stuff really takes off,” Arato said. He felt a strange swell of pride, even just standing next to her.
“There may be cases where such attention could be harmful,” Lacia told him. “We should ensure a means of traveling without attracting notice in the future.”
To be fair, it wasn’t Lacia herself drawing all the gazes. To hide her giant black coffin, they had wrapped it up in a protective sheet, so it looked like more ordinary luggage. But the sight of a weak-looking girl easily carrying a burden that was big enough to almost bump against the roof of the subway car was too strange to ignore.
“I know you get worried if you don’t have that with you, but it draws a lot of attention,” Arato said.
“Once my hIE modeling work begins, I expect I will not be able to carry it regularly. We should think of a countermeasure,” Lacia said.
It may have been Arato’s imagination, but when they stepped down onto the platform, he thought that the train tilted back a little, as if it had been relieved of a heavy load.
The subway fare was automatically deducted from his home system through the ID tag on Arato’s wrist, so he was able to pass through the gates empty-handed. Only after they had left Honjo Azumabashi Station did he wonder what happened with Lacia’s fare.
Arato didn’t feel like going to Kengo’s family shop after their earlier talk, so he decided to just walk to the school. There were a surprising amount of hIEs around the station area, when he actually looked for them. They all just seemed to blend in with the city; each one soulless, heartless. Counting the dozens, maybe over a hundred hIEs there, Arato tried to think of how each different owner handled their hIE. It made his brain overheat.
“Is something the matter?” Lacia peeked at his face curiously. Despite having seen this area numerous times, Arato was gawking around like an out-of-towner.
“I’m just thinking, it’s crazy how many humans around here aren’t actually human,” he said. “It makes me realize just how incredible this time we’re living in is.” Arato realized it was the first time he had just gone on a normal walk with Lacia. Though it was a little embarrassing, it was nice to have a girl taking interest in him.
Walking by her side, even the same old road to school felt special. Once they had gotten a ways away from the station and crossed the Kototoi bridge with Tokyo Skytree to their side, the number of people around decreased. The lights illuminating the night around them were streetlamps, plastic multipurpose signboards, and those from the houses they passed by.
“Is it still frightening to walk at night?” Lacia asked.
Arato blushed at her question, feeling like she had seen right through him.
“Should I begin walking you to school, owner?” she went on.
“No way!” Arato objected strenuously. “I am absolutely fine going by myself!” Bringing your hIE to school was against the rules. hIEs were bundles of sensors and transmitters, so in the classroom they would be a gateway to all sorts of cheating and pranks.
They arrived at the school gate. There wasn’t a single light left on in the school building.
“I have opened the gate, owner.” Lacia opened the heavy metal gate with one hand, as if it weighed nothing. She may have been shorter than him, but her strength was inhuman.
Arato still knew almost nothing about her. The only thing he did know was that the depth of her mystery made him uneasy. On the other hand, it made him excited that this mystery was his.
“hIEs really are amazing,” he remarked. With his school as a backdrop and the moonlight shining down on her, Arato stared at Lacia, transfixed. Even dressed in ordinary clothes, she looked more like a character in a story than a being from the real world.
“Let us head to your classroom, owner,” Lacia told him. It was her first time at the school, but she headed straight for the stairs, having already downloaded map data from the school’s cloud.
“Are you good at finding stuff like this?” Arato asked curiously.
“Your pocket terminal is broadcasting its location,” Lacia explained. “It is much like heading toward a light in a dark place. The world as perceived by humans is quite different from the world we perceive.” Her smile was sweet, but she was just a machine dressed like a human.
Arato’s classroom was on the third floor. They didn’t run into anyone on their way, and nothing stopped Arato from opening the door to his classroom and going inside.
“Well dang,” he said. “If it was this easy, I guess it’s good that I came to get it tonight.” There on his desk was his pocket terminal, just as he’d left it. As expected, he’d forgotten it when he’d left after talking to Kengo and Ryo about Lacia.
In the abandoned classroom it seemed as though anything could jump out of the deep shadows, which made Arato check them all nervously. Though, with Lacia there, it wasn’t all that spooky. In fact, it made him nervous in a whole different way; her movements didn’t change, even in the dark.
“Should I accompany you to school tomorrow?” she asked
again.
“I don’t think so,” Arato told her. “Some weird rumors might start.”
“Too bad,” she said.
Her beautiful form walked without hesitation. Seeing that, Arato felt that walking slowly and hesitantly, with his back bent in the darkness, was strange.
“Since we have come all the way here,” Lacia said, “shall we take a walk through the school?”
Following Lacia, Arato felt like he was stepping into a completely unknown world. She really was a mystery to Arato, but that just made her all the more exciting to him. The school at night seemed to stretch out around them, lonely and fantastic. He felt his head getting all fuzzy as he tagged along right behind her. If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging like crazy.
Lacia climbed the pitch black stairway, and Arato almost felt like they were on an adventure together. As a second year student, Arato had never been to the fourth floor, which held the third year classrooms. Just a little way above his ordinary world was a small taste of the unknown, and with a few simple steps, his world had expanded.
Lacia’s movements were gentle but quick, and she kept ahead just out of Arato’s reach. He couldn’t catch her, even after reaching the top of the stairs, and his breath grew ragged.
“Well climbed,” Lacia remarked. She was waiting for him in the darkness of the dead end.
“You walk fast,” Arato panted.
As he complained about this unfairness, she crouched down and held out her hand to him. Since they were in a high school, she almost seemed like she could be an upper-classman, offering him a hand. Suddenly, their relationship became confused in his mind. She looked so human that the idea of her going to school normally with him wasn’t so strange at all.
“Would you like to explore the rooftop?” she suggested. Without waiting for a response, Lacia opened the door to the roof, as though it was obviously the next step.
“They don’t let students go out there, ‘cause it’s covered in solar panels.” Arato tried to stop her, but ended up stumbling forward instead, out onto the rooftop, where a strong gust of night wind blew around him.
The wide roof was covered in lines of solar panels, arranged in groups of five. Each one was tilted slightly to more effectively gather sunlight. There was walking space between each of the groups for maintenance, only about two meters wide.
“Then we will refrain from touching the solar panels!” Lacia, who had gone out first, spun around as if dancing, letting her skirt flare up. The moon bathed her in white light, as if it, too, was admiring her smile. Her smooth skin seemed to glow in response, and the light seemed to accent her cheeks and the thin line of her neck.
Arato looked away without thinking, and his eyes were met with a brilliant view of the Asakusa area at night. The lights of the city were like a shining carpet, stretching from Azumabashi and Asakusa up to Ueno and beyond. It was spread out in front of him so wide, so distant, that it made Arato want to yell.
He thought, if he asked, that Lacia would take him anywhere he wanted to go. “Thanks,” he said whole-heartedly. “I’m glad I took you in, Lacia.” Honestly, it almost felt ungrateful thinking of her as something he took in, when she showed him wonderful sights like that.
“Sorry,” he went on. “Being up here, looking down, it just... It just makes me feel crazy! Like I just gotta move my body!” He ran around on the rooftop like a dumb, happy dog, running around while wagging its tail like crazy. There was no reason for it, but there was a huge smile on his face.
“Please tell me more of your wishes,” Lacia requested sincerely. “It would be good to expand your world more, owner. I am an interface made to interact with users who wish to expand their worlds.”
Arato couldn’t understand what she was saying, but he felt like the peaceful world of his school was just a stepping stone, and he was receiving an invitation to somewhere far away. In the back of his mind, he knew. He knew that the school gate and the locks on the doors hadn’t just happened to be open for them; he knew Lacia had opened them all, easily.
Lacia’s blue eyes radiated with a light, different from the lights of the city. He realized that she knew he had noticed her ability to open the locks, and also understood that he had chosen not to ask her about it.
“You said you trusted me.” She smiled. “That is why you trust in my actions as well.”
“I guess that’s true,” he agreed. Lacia was a complete unknown, but she entranced Arato. Honestly, saying that there was a possibility that her original owner might appear once Lacia became an hIE model was a lie; Arato had already formed an attachment to her. Somewhere along the way, he had decided not to let her go, even if it meant losing his ordinary life.
“Since you trust me,” Lacia continued, “how will you use me, owner?”
Arato couldn’t answer that. He just felt that, as long as he was experiencing the world with her, he could expand his horizons as far as they needed to go. Excitement shook his body. He didn’t know what to call this feeling inside, but it made his heart sing and blood rush to his face.
The sweet heat of it didn’t fade until Yuka called him, worried at how late it was getting.
***
Lacia had to be at the company for her first job at 9:00 AM on Sunday.
They met the woman who was going to be Lacia’s manager in a coffee shop in the Ebisu Station building, which was on the Yamanote line. She was in her thirties, and wearing light makeup. She stood when she saw Arato and Lacia walk in. She looked very capable. Sitting next to her was an assistant in a fluffy outfit whom she had apparently dragged along.
The manager made a big show of taking her pocket terminal out of her handbag. “Arato Endo and Lacia,” she began, “I’m pleased to meet you. You really can’t beat seeing the real thing, huh?”
Arato greeted her, thinking she seemed pretty excited.
The manager still had her pocket terminal out and seemed to be expecting something. She explained to Arato, who had no idea what she wanted, “I’ll send you our digital business card, so could I have your pocket terminal please?”
“Oh, yeah,” he blushed. “Sorry. I’m new to this whole thing.” Arato fumbled his terminal out of his pocket. The address manager in his terminal automatically opened in response to her terminal’s request signal.
While she tapped at the terminal, the woman started to introduce herself. Before she could, though, the young assistant behind her snatched away the terminal.
“Huh?” Arato said.
“Surprise,” the assistant crowed back, “I’m the human one here!”
While Arato stood there, completely lost, the business card data popped up on his terminal, and the information was automatically dumped into his contacts.
The young assistant, who was wearing more makeup (mainly pink) spoke to Arato as if they were old acquaintances. “So you’re Lacia’s owner, huh? Boy, you’re young!”
The logo of the Fabion Media Group was displayed on Arato’s terminal screen.
“I’m Asuna Kisaragi,” she said, introducing herself. “Fabion MG Planning Department.”
“Then who is this?” Arato wanted to know.
“This is our hIE, Kasumi,” Asuna explained. “Instead of being privately owned, she’s owned by the company, so she’s a little different from your girl, Arato.”
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Kasumi,” Arato replied earnestly. “My name is Arato Endo.”
Asuna stifled a throaty laugh.
“Does anyone ever tell you you’re quite the honorable man, Arato?” Kasumi asked. She was obviously a veteran, and knew how to talk to people.
“Asuna, please refrain from trying to buddy up with our client just because he is a high school student,” the hIE lectured sternly. “We are on the clock.”
“Well, let’s all have a seat first,” said Asuna, who didn’t look too happy at being lectured by a machine. The coffee shop had wireless power supplies and hotspots available, but apparently the interior decor
and service hadn’t changed in a hundred years. Time hadn’t brought any great changes to the art of giving customers a place to relax and drink coffee, and meeting clients at a coffee shop like this was an equally long-lived custom.
Asuna unfolded her pocket terminal until it was the size of a sheet of paper. “You’ve looked at the contract, right?” she asked. “Starting today, Lacia will be working as a model for Fabion, but our work orders will be coming to you, Arato.”
Lacia, who had been silent up to then, spoke up. “I have informed my owner of the implications of a proxy labor contract.”
“Got it,” Asuna said. “So you can use the secretary cloud too, Lacia? Impressive.” She did seem genuinely impressed.
“Actually, we’d like to keep all of Lacia’s information secret while she’s modeling,” she went on. “She’ll be our mystery hIE model.”
“That definitely works for me,” Arato agreed, “but won’t that cause problems for you?”
“Lacia’s just too expensive of a machine,” Asuna explained. “We decided that if we gave out her details, folks won’t feel a connection with her. The customers who’ll be buying the clothing Lacia’s going to model will be high schoolers and ladies in their tenties, and we don’t want to scare them off with the impression that she’s in a whole different world from them.”
“So she’s expensive?” Arato asked.
Asuna’s mouth popped half open, the same reaction Kengo and Ryo had given him when he’d introduced Lacia to them, and stirred her apple tea with a spoon. She must have been shaking a little, Arato realized, because he could hear the spoon rattling against her cup.
“This is honestly my first time even seeing a Stylus Supreme Class machine in person,” Asuna admitted. “I’ve heard about 90% of the users are male, though.”
Arato avoided her gaze, nonchalantly eating the parfait in front of him. There was no way he could tell her he had just randomly taken Lacia in.
“Arato, I noticed you don’t have Lacia wear an emblem,” said Asuna.
Kengo had asked him about the same thing, as if it were strange, Arato thought. According to Kengo, it was odd for Lacia not to have any accessories with brand logos on her body. Nor were there any brand marks on her special equipment or clothing.