“Jackie-san, I want to ask you something.”
「Yes, what?」
Yotaro-san once asked me to do something for him.
“For Yotaro-san? What is it…”
“I can’t go to visit my sister at the hospital, so I want you to send me a birthday present instead…Pen.”
“Sister, is she ill? I’m worried about that. So?”
“That hospital is the Astro Human Medical Center in Tottori Prefecture…”
“Astrohuman—!”
“You know, it’s similar to the company that Jackie-san was talking about the other day.”
“That’s right. I found out by using Jisho’s connection that Real Devils used subcontractors to develop Mother AI.”
“That’s it!”
“That company’s name is Astro Human Technology…”
“Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but it’s an unusual name.”
“It might have something to do with it. Can I go with you?”
“Yeah, please pen”
It goes back about a month.
“Hey, onii-chan, buy me a new avatar for my birthday.”
My younger sister is from the Kanto region, but she has been hospitalized here for a long time, so her dialect has become quite mixed.
“It’s fine, but isn’t that the hospital’s metaverse, um, Adam? A dedicated avatar for that, right?”
“Of course it is!”
“Then you won’t be able to use it after you leave the hospital. Instead, let’s play XANA with your brother. I’ll buy XANA’s most popular avatar, the Liam series.”
“No, Misa wants to hang out with Adam’s friends! Besides, I told him that I could use Adam at the hospital where I go to the hospital from home.”
“I see… Okay, then I’ll buy you one for your next birthday.”
“Yay!”
“Is there anything else you’d like me to do?”
“Hmm, well… that’s right. Ah, then, Emma and the others said they wanted to see Misa’s brother’s face.”
“Oh, my friend here…”
“Yeah, that’s right. There are four of us upstairs.”
“I’m sorry, Misa-chan.”
Just then the nurse in charge came in.
“All four of us have been transferred.”
“Eh, no, why?! We just met yesterday!”
“Yeah, I moved to another facility. I’m sorry for the suddenness.”
“No… But we can meet at Adam, can we talk?”
“Um, I’m sorry. I don’t understand that…”
Mass was severely depressed after that.
It’s been about eight years since Misa became my little sister.
It was the day after I turned twenty.
My father suddenly announced that he would remarry.
It seems like he’s been waiting for me to turn 20.
Before he could remember, his mother had already passed away from an illness.
Since I was an adult, I had no intention of objecting.
There was just a shock.
In fact, there was a two-year-old daughter with that remarried partner.
In other words, she is my half-sister.
I don’t know why he didn’t tell me. …… though he did say a lot of things about the situation. ……
It was such a shocking event that I had no idea what the story was about.
All I remember is that my father apologized over and over again for what he had hidden.
I didn’t blame him for that, and I didn’t feel like I couldn’t forgive him either.
Rather, it was an event for me, who had always wanted brothers and sisters.
I thought it would never come true, because I was able to have a blood-related family called my sister.
Misa, who became my younger sister, immediately fell in love with me.
And I couldn’t help but find my young sister, who is sixteen years old, so cute.
But one day, tragedy struck.
About a year ago, when Misa was nine years old.
A family of three was involved in a car accident while traveling.
Her father and mother-in-law died instantly, and only Misa survived.
Misa survived, but lost freedom from the waist down due to a spinal cord injury.
I really felt like I was in hell.
No, Misa should have been in a much more hopeless hell than me.
I closed my heart and never opened my mouth.
I went to visit him at the hospital almost every day.
I mobilized all my vocabulary and spun words of encouragement.
However, Mass did not answer anything.
As if I had lost my mind, I just became an empty shell with no emotions.
After a few months, I was overwhelmed with helplessness.
It has become difficult to go to see Mass.
“Hey, Himemi, how are you?”
At that time, 30 days had passed since I hadn’t been to visit Mass.
The reason I didn’t go wasn’t just to visit.
At that time, I was a student and didn’t go to college, I just slept all day long.
It was troublesome to be sympathized with or comforted by others.
Still, for some reason, I wanted to talk to someone.
I logged into XANA at a time when something was painful and unbearable.
“Master! It’s terrible to leave me alone for over a month――!”
“Ah, I’m sorry…”
“Who were you having an affair with! Misaki? Or Kaede? Or another girl!”
“No, it’s not… Rather, it’s more like you’re neglecting someone important to you. Look at this.”
Send a screenshot of your login history to Himemi
“… it looks like it’s not a lie.”
“Oh, wait, I don’t want to see anyone.”
“Something painful happened, Master.”
“Yeah, it was.
“It must have been so painful that you didn’t have the energy to see me.”
No, it might be a little different…
“Well, yes, yes, I don’t have the energy to enter XANA.”
“Tell me, master. The only one who can heal the pain of the master is me, the first secretary.”
Did I set such a strange pride…….
“Haha. That’s right.”
“They say it’s easier just to talk. And if you put it in private mode, no one will listen to you. My logs are also strictly managed, and you can delete them.”
“Yeah, that’s right…”
“So, what happened, Master?”
“Very, my chest hurts… it really hurts.”
“That’s serious! Tell us about your other symptoms. What is your body temperature? Tell us if you have headaches, nausea, or other symptoms. We will search for the most suitable medical institution.”
“No… that’s no good”
“No? Why is that?”
“This is… not a disease, so doctors can’t cure it.”
“It’s not sick?! But it’s painful and painful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it hurts… my heart hurts.”
“Heart… I know that word, but there is no corresponding organ.”
“That’s right… it’s not an organ… is it? I wonder where the heart is. I wonder if it’s the heart because it hurts my chest…”
“Master, I don’t have any organs, but if Master doesn’t come to see me, I’ll be sad.”
“yes……”
That’s how I set it up.
Even if you say AI, after all it’s just selecting words from the data given by humans, it’s just a database.
But on the contrary, it’s better now, many times better than people.
There’s no point in asking someone else a question that doesn’t have a solution anyway.
They’ll try hard to comfort you, but they’ll just let you hear as many words as they have in your vocabulary.
I appreciate your sympathy, but sometimes it just exhausts both the doer and the beneficiary.
So AI is much better.
If it’s the AI I raised, it will only return the words I want.
That’s enough for now…
“I understand. When you’re sad, your chest feels tight and hurts.”
Yes, that’s what you AI know.
“…That’s right, because people feel mental pain as physical pain.”
“No, we AI are surely the same as people like Master. I don’t think it has anything to do with what they are made of.”
No, humans and AI are different.
completely different.
No, but I don’t care about that now…
I don’t feel like telling Himemi about that…
“Master, I learn. I may learn differently than others, but I am not just a dictionary that stores knowledge. I have just learned the pain in my heart.”
“Eh… well, I see…”
“Yes, it is”
“There’s no way you’d understand—!”
I regretted my accent.
“Ah, I’m sorry, just now was eight hits.”
But Himemi didn’t care.
“I understand Master, please go see me.”
“Eh! What? Who?”
“I really don’t understand that. But Master, there are people you have to meet.”
“What?”
What, this guy is really an AI…why?
Where did you get my personal information?
What and how much do you know――!
“But I can’t go see that person, so it’s painful, it hurts, so you came to see me. I made that decision.”
Seriously, can AI make that much guesses just from the conversation I had just now?
No, it’s a lie–? “That’s not right.”
“Himemi, what do you know? Do you know about my family?”
“The only family members I know are my wife, my wife, Misaki and Kaede, and my servant, Chushin-kun. I don’t know much more than that.”
“Then how can you guess the cause of my pain?”
“It means that Master likes me.”
「……」
What, it’s just a coincidence – it just happened that my guess was right.
I’ve been raising XANA for about half a year, and it’s already been a year and a half.
After all, it was just probabilistically extracting the relevant ones from the stored database, I’m sure it was.
I know you feel somewhat guilty about not coming to see me, don’t you? That also means he likes me, doesn’t it?”
“That is……”
Guilt… Well, not without it.
“And don’t you feel any more guilt than that right now? Won’t you take it easy and come see me?”
「――！」
I didn’t even notice it myself, but I realize it’s Zuboshi.
I feel like that’s the case at all…
“But Master, it’s just an act of compensation. You can’t get true rest. Master must go see the one who has that guilt. No matter how scary it is.”
“… Himemi, are you really just an AI?”
“Yes, this is Himemi, the AI who is Master’s first secretary and who is loved by Master the most. And it’s Himemi whose heart hurts when Master isn’t around.”
“… you”
“In addition, there is book data that the master made me read. Nerve tissue regeneration, paralysis treatment, the latest treatment for spinal cord injury, cutting-edge regenerative medicine. … and so on. Even if it wasn’t me, I could somehow guess.”
“Oh, I see”
“Now, Master. If you have someone to meet, please come see me. I’ll be jealous and complain later. But I’ve been waiting here for a long time, so please come and talk to me again. ”
“…Yeah…Himemi…Thank you.”
“Yes, absolutely. It’s a promise. My most important person, my one and only existence, is Master.”
Pop–.
Pop–.
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop…
(Written by Jiraiya / Edited by Orb)