Chapter 7:
Marii’s Talent
I’M REALLY SORRY for beating a dead horse here, but Marii Yukari really does see other people as robots.
I don’t know if that’s what gave her a deep fascination and passion for robots, but she loves building model kits. Heck, she’ll build any kind of robot. In fact, she’ll build any kind of model too, whether it’s a tank or a castle. It’s mainly plastic models, mind you, but still: she’ll build whatever.
Yukari lives in a house with a little yard, where she has a little shed and workshop with a bunch of tools and equipment I don’t know how to use. The shed’s packed full of all kinds of plastic robots. The ones that won’t fit in the shed go up on the roof like gargoyles or out in the yard like lawn gnomes. They’re all over the place!
It’s not that she wanted all the finished models—I mean, she does like robots—but it’s the process of putting them together that she values so much.
Yukari has a little brother and a little sister—Aoi and Akane—who are in elementary school. They love her to death. Those two introduced her to lots of little kids who can’t complete a robot by themselves because they don’t have the time, skill, or patience. She likes spending her weekends putting together their robots, and now a bunch of kids know her—especially the boys, of course. But even the girls who don’t care about robots can’t help wanting to watch her do her builds. I mean, I was like that when I first saw her at work.
It was the start of summer vacation. I stopped by in the morning, and there were more than fifty model kits piled up in front of her workshop. Man, kids are lazy these days, I thought. Sure, it’s summer vacation, but isn’t Yukari overdoing it? But she didn’t flinch before the soaring tower of model kits. (Those model kits take up a lot of space…) She looked like she was almost drooling as she faced the mountain of plastic parts.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked.
“Oh! Really?” She smiled. “If you want, there’s a wire cutter there. Could you cut all the parts out from the runners?”
The runners are the plastic frames that the parts come connected to. Plastic models come with instructions that tell you how to cut the parts from the runners and assemble them in order, but this girl doesn’t read the directions. No, she delightedly took all the runners out from the different boxes and snipped out the parts one after the other, not box by box. She was mixing them all together, and she didn’t care that she wasn’t keeping the parts ordered by model kit. She grabbed each runner arbitrarily, snipped out the parts, and piled them all on a plastic sheet with zero organization.
“Oh, Gaku-chan, some of the parts are small, so be careful not to miss any, okay?”
“Uh, wait, is it really okay to pile them together like that? I don’t know how you’re going to be able to tell which—”
“Don’t worry,” she reassured me. “I know what I’m doing when it comes to model kits!”
As if to demonstrate this, as soon as all the parts were off the runners, she started putting them together without a glance at the boxes or the instructions. She’d pick one part off the chaotic pile and look at it quizzically. Then she’d put it aside, take another part, and put that one aside too. Or she’d try putting it together with one of the parts she’d already put aside. It was less like a model kit and more like a jigsaw puzzle. She arbitrarily grabbed parts, put them together, and built on what worked. It looked ridiculously haphazard, yet her hands moved swiftly, never stopping. Her confusion lasted only as long as it took for her to get started. Before I knew it, her fingers were moving in flowing motions to put together the robots. It seemed that despite having piled the parts with no rhyme or reason, she still knew where they were and how they should go together.
Ten minutes after she’d started, the first robot was done. The second stood beside it within another seven.
For all that speed, her work didn’t look the least bit rough or sloppy, not even when she quickly used a rasp, glue, and clay as she assembled the robots rapidly without missing a single beat.
I was dumbstruck. “It looks like there are a bunch of different kinds of robots here. Do you know them all? Have you built them all before?”
“Mmm…” was all she said at first. Looking at the boxes placed aside while still working, she answered, “I’ve built some of them before, but I think most of them I haven’t. Lots are new products.”
“You’ve never built them AND you’ve never seen them before, but you know what you’re doing? You know which parts go with which without looking at the manual?”
“Hmm, more or less. I have seen what they’re supposed to look like on the box, and…well, you might think at a glance that all there is to a robot is looking cool, but actually all of these are intentionally designed around certain themes, you know? There’s a reason why they’re built the way they are. Like, this robot’s supposed to fly, so that’s why it looks like this. The important part for this joint is speed, so that’s why it’s like this, or, this armor is supposed to look like a lion. Once you understand the theme, it’s obvious how to put the various parts together.”
“Yeah, but…wow, Yukari…”
She made it sound so easy, but not just anyone could do this. This was virtuosity if I ever saw it. I let out a sigh of amazement.
Yukari smiled bashfully as soon as she noticed my reaction. Meanwhile, her hands launched one more robot into the world. She shook her head. “To be honest, I mess up a lot. Sometimes I ask someone about a model, and what I thought was supposed to be a bird was really an angel, or sometimes there’s really no reason behind the design at all. In the end, it’s just a matter of experience.”
Well, yeah. Given that she saw all living things as robots, she had the most experience of anyone ever. So, this was a talent that her unique perspective gave her, one that she should be proud of.
I started getting excited for some reason. I mussed her hair roughly and said, “Anyway, that’s amazing! You’re amazing! You should do this for a living.”
“Oh! I wonder if I could. I’d like to try being a modeler.”
“A…modeler? You mean a model?”
“A modeler is someone who designs models.”
“Oh, then yeah! You can totally do it. You could be a modeler or a model, Yukari! You’re so good at making these!”
Those purple eyes of hers would help her achieve her dreams, and I’d be overjoyed to see it. I was so happy imagining the future that I couldn’t contain my glee. I mussed her hair some more, but this time, she stopped me. She pensively observed the model boxes stacked in the corner. She looked at them for a long time before saying, “But I guess I’d have to catch up with mecha anime and stuff for that.”
“Well, yeah, I guess. Not that I’d know. But wait, Yukari, I figured you of all people would be obsessed with those shows.”
“Ah, they’re rather…violent.”
“Huh, you think so? But they’re, like, for kids, right?”
“But they’re so violent. So, I just buy the models without watching the shows. I imagine in my head what kind of robots they must be and what they must do while I’m building them. Then later I talk to someone who’s seen the show and see if I got it right.”
“Hmm.”
The box Yukari was staring at showed a manly looking robot with mechanical wings. In one hand it held a glowing stick—a sword maybe?—and it was posing triumphantly. It was surrounded by bits of broken robots. They must have been the main character’s enemies, now all strewn about as mangled remains.
This was just a picture, a picture of things. There was no blood or anything, but…
Finally Yukari got back to building, picking up one part after the other, putting them together quickly but precisely, and occasionally polishing them with a cloth. There was a kindness in her fingers that showed me that she really loved robots and building them.
Without thinking, I muttered, “Maybe I should have you build one for me…”
Yukari immediately pounced. “Really? Then let’s go buy you one later! You know what? There’s this new one, and it’s perfect for you! I mean, I don’t know much about what it’s like, but it sounds so cool…!”
Pretty much any kind of robot is cool to Yukari, I chuckled to myself.
To her, all robots are deserving of love. So anything she builds would be fine with me.