“And then Ten-chan fell off the jungle gym.”
We were sitting by the closed gate of our school at night. Yukari was telling me her story, although she was mumbling and halting.
Back then, Yukari and Tenjou had been playing alone on a jungle gym that was about to be demolished. Tenjou’s hand slipped, and she fell into the middle of the jungle gym. And the about-to-be-demolished jungle gym chose that moment to collapse completely—right onto Tenjou.
“Ten-chan’s body was a mess. I could see that she was about to break beyond repair, so I did my best to put her back together then and there. It was my first time, but I told myself that I could do it. I psyched myself up as much as possible. ‘It’s okay, I have what it takes,’ I said to myself. ‘It’s no different from putting together a model. It’s no different from fixing an appliance.’ So I put together the parts and replaced what was damaged…and, well, I fixed her.”
“Like how you used my cell phone to fix my hand?”
“Yeah. I used the jungle gym itself.”
“Right,” I sighed. I looked at my left hand. It had been pretty shocking to me already that I’d lost a hand and had it fixed (and not with bandages, but with a cell phone). How much must it have shaken Tenjou to have almost died and been “reassembled” with jungle gym parts? What kind of trauma would that leave on the mind of a little kid?
“So Tenjou…knows?”
“Yeah, she does. To be honest…I was so desperate to fix her, it didn’t occur to me to put her to sleep first, so, um, Ten-chan was awake the whole time…”
“Yeah, okay, maybe I can’t hold it against Tenjou then.” I mean, Yukari did save her, but under those conditions…
“And what about you?” A note of seriousness entered into Yukari’s voice.
I turned and looked at her. “Huh?”
“What about you, Gaku-chan? It’s my fault that happened to you, and you were frightened out of your wits… and your left hand, well, you know, and the other parts too—”
“O-other parts?!”
“Gaku-chan, do you hate me?”
Yukari’s purple eyes stared at me. I still thought they were beautiful. I felt as if they were sucking me in, and honestly, I wouldn’t even mind if they did…
I compulsively averted my gaze, and it landed back on my left arm. No scar, no seam—nothing that looked out of the ordinary at all.
But that was because I was looking at it with my eyes. It had to look different to Yukari.
To her, humans unavoidably looked like robots, and to me, humans unavoidably looked like well…humans. That’s just how it was. The cell phone that had replaced the broken parts of my body was now a part of it, even if I couldn’t perceive it. Just like how Yukari said she could see the class president’s sensors, Shou-chan’s Vernier thrusters, and Kasoku’s drills, but I couldn’t—in the same way, I couldn’t perceive the cell phone she said she used to fix my left hand.
Yes—Tenjou was right. I didn’t understand. It wasn’t just that things looked differently to Yukari and me. The things that we looked at were completely different. I could only see a human arm linked organically, where Yukari saw parts. Joints, connections, armor; To Yukari, that wasn’t just what it looked like, but what it was. She could do more than view a part. She could touch it and verify its function—and that was why she saw the world the way she did.
There was meaning to the form she saw, and she understood it.
It was thanks to her eyes that she could fix things. Everything could be repaired and reassembled in her care. The rest of us couldn’t because we weren’t like her. Even if we looked at the same apple, Yukari and I would be staring at something uniquely different.
I understand that. But even so, I can’t picture what it would look like to Yukari. Likewise, she has no clue what it would look like to me. We’re living in different worlds, unable to enter one another’s. No matter what, I can’t see what Yukari sees, and Yukari can’t see what I see.
We’re parallel lines that continue forever, never intersecting.
“Gaku-chan…”
Yukari’s frail voice brought me back, and we stared at each other once again. Her purple eyes wavered with fear. I mentally apologized to her for abandoning her. “I don’t know how I look in your eyes…but I do know what my eyes see.”
“Huh…?”
“To me, you look like a friend.” Yukari’s breath caught in her throat.
I smiled. “Why are you surprised? It should be obvious. You told me I’m adaptable because of my multipurpose capabilities. So, no problem! I’m not gonna start hating you because of a little thing like this. It’s not even like you broke me. You fixed me, so I don’t see how I could complain. I bet even Tenjou knows how it is deep down and just can’t come to terms with it. To me, you’re a friend. So, even if I look like a robot or whatever to you, as long as I look like a friend to you, I think I’ll be very happy with that.”
“Gaku-chan…” Yukari embraced me in a fit of emotion.
Patting her head, I thought to myself. It was true, I couldn’t see what Yukari saw. But when you thought about it, it wasn’t just her. The same went for me and Tenjou, or my parents, or anyone who had the same eyes as me. That’s how humans are. Even with the same eyes, the red of an apple I see isn’t necessarily the same hue that another person sees. We’re fundamentally separate, but we can agree that the apple is red, because that is what we’ve learned. We have no way of proving that we experienced the same thing, but we can believe in it.
We’re like parallel lines: left to our own devices, we’ll go on forever and ever without ever intersecting. But that’s what leads us to reach out to each other and try to pull ourselves closer to one another. Otherwise there’d be no way of getting the parallel lines any closer. Left alone, we wouldn’t intersect—and that was why we must take the initiative to reach out, why we want to connect, why we each wanted the other to reach out.
Why we wanted to be closer.
While I was thinking such out-of-character thoughts, Yukari was holding me tight and breaking out in tears. I hugged her even harder than ever before.
Even if we don’t see the same things, we can have the same feelings.
I hope at least some trace of these emotions gets through to you, I thought.