Chapter 11:
Marii’s Landscape
I LIKED THIS LITTLE HILL on the way from my house to Yukari’s place. I can see Yukari’s house below when looking from the top, and also, there were plenty of trees that provided good shade to rest in. Whenever I went to Yukari’s house, whether invited or unannounced, I’d always stop there along the way to take in the view. Sometimes Yukari was in the yard, watering the plants, building models, fixing appliances, or playing with her brother or sister. I like to hang out there on the hill and watch her.
Okay, so…maybe I’m a bit of a stalker. But what can I say? It was relaxing to watch something little like Yukari scampering around like that. It just makes you feel all warm ’n fuzzy inside.
All right, all right I know: that’s just an excuse. It’s socially unacceptable, so when I spotted someone already there that time, I got this complicated, embarrassed-yet-angry feeling and an urge to run away. But before I could do just that, Yukari spotted me and said, “Oh, hey, Bob.”
“Don’t call me Bob. No one else does but you, Tenjou.”
It was too late to hide, so I grudgingly walked my bike up next to Tenjou. What was this jerk doing here, anyway?
I spotted Yukari in the yard, working on her bike. We had plans to spend the day cycling together. She had a huge smile on her face as she spun the rear wheel of the upended bicycle. I started grinning myself until I remembered that Tenjou was next to me. I rushed to wipe the goofy look off my face.
But really, what was Tenjou doing in my special place? Was she here by coincidence, or did she come here knowingly? It was a pretty awesome spot. Maybe Tenjou occasionally came here to watch Yukari outside her house just like I did. In that case, maybe we’d actually met here before without me realizing it. Maybe she knew all about how I’d stare from up here for a long time.
…Talk about awkward.
I glared at Tenjou. She was facing forward beside me, giving me a good look at her profile. At that moment, she stole my breath away. Tenjou seemed so very sad as she focused on Yukari’s house. She reminded me of a little kid about to break down in tears.
Before I knew it, I was barking at her, “Why don’t you just freaking make up with her already?!”
“H-huh?”
“I don’t know what happened between you and Yukari, but dragging it on forever like this is so stupid.”
They must have been close back in the day—until Yukari apparently did something to Tenjou. Then all of a sudden, they weren’t friends. It wasn’t that they weren’t close, but that Tenjou saw Yukari as her enemy. Girls are like that though, fighting forever over nothing. It’s not a foreign concept to me, but even so, Tenjou’s behavior made no sense at all.
In most cases, it didn’t seem like Tenjou really hated Yukari, but more like she couldn’t be honest with her own feelings. Then there were times when her expression seemed to contradict that, times when Tenjou would glare at Yukari as if her ex-friend had murdered her parents or something, completely rejecting her with the attitude of someone who’s just encountered a monster. That was hatred, pure and simple. Even as a kid, I could see how fierce that inner violence was burning—but I couldn’t understand why so much of that negativity was directed at Yukari. It completely defied my imagination.
Could it be that, when we both looked at Yukari, we saw something different?
“Geez Hatou, you’re the one who still doesn’t have a clue,” Tenjou said.
“You’re still going on about that? What exactly am I not understanding?”
“Have you heard of a philosophical zombie?”
I was completely taken off guard. “What?”
Tenjou smiled wryly. “To put it simply, a philosophical zombie is a being that sees an apple and understands that logically it’s red, but they can’t actually know that for themselves.”
“Okay…?”
“In terms of appearance and behavior, a philosophical zombie is impossible to distinguish from a normal human being. And don’t get confused by the word ‘zombie,’ either. They’re not reanimated corpses or anything. They show emotions, just like the rest of us. They laugh, they cry, they get mad, and when they see an apple, they say it’s so red and it looks delicious. But the thing is, they don’t actually perceive it as red or delicious at all. Why? Because they have no concrete, sensory concept of redness or deliciousness,” Tenjou explained.
“For example, when we see something delicious, we drool. Why? Because it’s delicious, which we know from firsthand experience. But a philosophical zombie drools because it understands deliciousness from knowledge. It’s not because the philosophical zombie actually thinks it’s delicious, but because they know how to react. The end result is the same, but the difference is profound, don’t you think?”
“So, you think Yukari’s a philosophical zombie?”
Tenjou nodded happily. “Maybe not technically, but relatively speaking, yeah, I do. Don’t you agree? I mean, we can’t share whatever Mari experiences through those eyes of hers. If you just look at her, maybe she’s not a philosophical zombie. But from our perspective as people who can’t share her sense of redness or deliciousness, effectively—mutually—we’re pretty much philosophical zombies…oh, by the way, did you know Mari can’t tell the difference between humans and plastic models too?”
There were tears in Tenjou’s eyes. The tears dripped out quietly, but Tenjou didn’t seem to notice as she continued to speak. “Maybe that was a confusing way to put it. It’s true, she sees humans as robots, but she is able to distinguish between human ‘robots’ and model robots. But to her, the distinction isn’t between humans and models. It’s one of height and complexity and autonomy and that kind of stuff. That’s all it is to her. Sentient or insentient? Alive or dead? It means nothing to her! Mari doesn’t make the distinctions you and I take for granted—she’s not capable of them! To Mari, humans and appliances and plastic models are all the very same thing, just with different features and purposes and levels of sophistication! In her eyes, we’re equivalent to model robots!” Tenjou was raving wildly.
I fixed her a careful stare. “That’s how it looks to you, huh.”
“…Huh?”
“Couldn’t you look at it the other way?”
“What do you mean?”
Change your frame of reference, I grumbled to myself inwardly. What Tenjou was saying had already occurred to me. If you took it to its logical extreme, you could say that to Yukari, there was no big difference between humanity and plastic models. And because of that, I preferred to think that Tenjou had it backwards.
I took my eyes off Tenjou and redirected them toward Yukari’s house. There she was, gloved hands, happily working on her bike, whose name is Silver. She told me it was a gift to commemorate her starting elementary school, and she’d been playing with Silver ever since. She had both installed and removed the training wheels herself, raised the saddle as she grew, reinforced the frame, changed the tires and the chain—Yukari had made all kinds of modifications and was still using and taking good care of her faithful companion now that she was in junior high.
So yeah, the other way: it’s not that Yukari thinks of us as plastic models or appliances. It’s that she thinks of plastic models, appliances, bicycles, and stuff as human beings. That explains why she treats all of those things with such care. That explains why she looks so happy. It’s not that humans look like plastic models.
It’s that plastic models look like humans.
Is this an excuse? Maybe. But, you know, at the end of the day, even if the result is the same, I think the difference is truly profound.
I realized that Tenjou was in a trance as she stared at Yukari’s house, so I quietly pushed my bike away from her. “You do you, Tenjou,” I told her. “But just think about it.” I hopped on the seat.
Then I heard her voice behind me. “Hatou, you… If you’re going to stay with her, sooner or later you’re going to find out the truth. You’ll find out just how frightening, just how fundamentally different she really is. And then you’ll understand everything. I’m warning you, okay? You can take my words however you’d like.”
“Yeah. Thanks. See you later.” This time, I properly said my goodbye and rode off on my bike without looking back.
✦ ✦ ✦
I parked my bike in front of the gate and went into the yard.
“Oh! Good morning, Gaku-chan! I didn’t expect you so early. Sorry, can you wait a minute? I’m almost done here.”
Yukari tried to get her siblings to bring me tea, but I told her not to worry about me and sat on the veranda. I watched her from behind as she lubricated Silver’s chain.
“Hey, Yukari?” I asked after a while.
“Hmm?”
“Which do you like more, me or that bike?”
“Wh-wha?! Wha, wha, wha?”
“Uh…never mind. It’s okay. Sorry. Forget I said anything.”
I hurried to wave my hand and gloss over the issue that was making her repeat her cry of panic like a broken record. I put my other hand on my thin, humble chest. Oh, man. I think that cut me deep.
But whatever. She’s known Silver since elementary school. How can I complain, right? Yeah, we’ve still got time…
I looked up to the part of the hill you couldn’t see from here. Like hell I’m gonna let you win this, I thought.
✦ ✦ ✦
Saturday morning, three days later, journalists reported a new suspect in the Tokyo Ripper case had killed a detective and fled the scene of the crime.