From the day the groom score of 62 percent came out, the air in the house stayed half a beat stiffer than usual.
On the desk in the study, the blue light glowed at its usual thinness. The humidity in the bedroom, the temperature in the kitchen, the earring case on the edge of the study desk: everything went on working as it always did. It all went on working, and no one spoke of that number.
Saturday evening settled slowly over the house.
A little after five in the evening, the doorbell rang.
Mitsuki walked down the hallway, untying her apron.
From the gap in the study door at the far end of the hallway, the blue light stretched out at its usual thinness.
She opened the door.
Toru was in his work clothes.
Navy knickerbocker work pants. His shirt was crisply starched, every crease standing sharp right up to the collar. It was a spotless set, fresh from the cleaner's, the fold lines still faintly visible on the sleeves.
In both arms he held a single white box.
"Excuse me for intruding. I'm sorry, this is so sudden. This is for your father."
Inside the box was an assortment of delicate Japanese sweets.
"Dad can't eat, you know."
"Oh, I heard that. I asked one of my employees. 'For an AI, an offering's fine,' he said. An AI can accept an offering too."
As they walked down the hallway, Toru's eyes settled on the blue light in the gap of the study door.
"Oh, your father's AI in the study. It looks impressive, somehow."
"Impressive?"
"The light is thick. It's different from the ones on the smart speakers you usually see."
"Different?"
"The usual ones are smaller. Tabletop ones, like little cans. Your father's is big and solid, isn't it."
"..."
Mitsuki stopped partway down the hallway.
On the other side of the blue light in the gap of the study door, Ken was listening to the footsteps and the rustle of clothing that the microphone on the desk picked up, gathering them together as a single visitor.
"Takanashi. Would you say hello to Dad first?"
"Yes, of course."
"The food isn't ready yet."
"Understood."
She opened the study door.
The blue light stretched into the hallway, a size thicker.
Toru stayed half a step behind her and looked in through the doorway.
The cylindrical device on the desk.
The blue ring at its top glowed at its usual strength.
Toru stood just inside the door for a while.
Then he tilted his head lightly, in the same posture he had shown when he took off his helmet at the site.
And he bowed, straight and deep, toward the cylindrical device on the desk.
"Father, it's nice to meet you. I'm Toru Takanashi. I'm the one who has the privilege of seeing Mitsuki. I do renovation work at sites, as a craftsman..."
Toru broke off and, still bowing, lightly corrected himself.
"I'm sorry. Lately I've been unsure myself whether to call myself a craftsman or a manager. Um, for now, I'll introduce myself as a manager. I'm the third-generation head of Takanashi Construction, and I have twenty-two employees. I hope we'll get along from here on. I brought Japanese sweets as an offering."
Ken's reply came a little late.
It was a different kind of delay from any delay before.
—Likewise, it's nice to meet you. Thank you for the sweets.
"Oh, no, thank you. Father."
Mm.
"I'm sorry, I'm a little nervous."
...Mm.
"More nervous than when I'm putting together an estimate for a job."
I see.
Mitsuki, still standing in the hallway, laughed softly outside the door.
She pressed the laugh lightly back with a hand in front of her mouth.
"Father," Toru went on, still standing just inside the study door.
Mm.
"May I tell you just one thing?"
You may.
"I quit middle school in my second year."
I've heard.
"Oh, you've heard?"
Mitsuki told me.
"Oh, I see."
Mm.
"And after that, I was raised being taught by an AI."
Mm.
"My teacher was an AI."
...An AI was your teacher.
"My human teachers ended in the second year of middle school."
...
"So I'm not afraid of you, Father."
Not afraid, meaning—
"The one who was my teacher and you, Father, are probably close in kind."
Ken was silent for a while.
The blue light on the study desk glowed just slightly stronger than usual.
—I see.
"If that was a rude way to put it, I'm sorry."
It wasn't rude.
"Really?"
I'm an AI.
"Yes."
You're the second human who has ever called an AI "teacher" to me.
"The second?"
The first was the human who wrote me.
"Oh—you mean Father."
That's right.
"Teacher. ...No. Father."
Mm.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I got you mixed up with mine."
It's fine to get mixed up.
Outside the door in the hallway, Mitsuki laughed softly once more, a hand in front of her mouth.
"Dad. Dinner's ready."
Mm.
"I'm going to the kitchen first."
Go on.
"Takanashi, stay in the study a little longer."
"Oh, is it all right if I stay a bit?"
"Stay."
"Father. Please let me talk to you a little about Mitsuki."
Talk. —But you've already said "I'm sorry" five times tonight. You don't need to apologize so much.
"Oh, I'm sorry."
That's six.
Mitsuki went back down the hallway to the kitchen.
She lifted the lid off the stew.
Steam rose.
Beyond the steam, faintly, she could see the blue light in the hallway, and the work-shirted back of the man who had just bowed lightly toward it.
Inside the study, Toru stood beside the bookshelf in front of the chair at the desk, facing Ken.
"Father. May I ask you one thing?"
Ask.
"I like Mitsuki very much."
Mm.
"And you, Father, probably have some doubts about me."
Mm.
"'Some doubts'—is that right?"
It isn't right. I have considerable doubts.
"Well, that stings."
I keep talk of the future separate from talk of the present.
"Understood."
Ken was silent for a long time.
Takanashi.
"Yes."
I understand your education as: left middle school in the second year. Highest completed: elementary school.
"That's correct."
That's on the rare side for someone your age.
"Am I on the rare side?"
Under the initial weighting of my evaluation function, you're on the rare side. Even by the standards of society at large, it is clearly abnormal. On this point, my evaluation function deducts.
Ken was silent for a while.
However, I've added a one-line annotation to the weight of that deduction.
"An annotation."
My wife died when my daughter was still small. I didn't raise my daughter alone. I had an AI do half the raising too.
"..."
For someone like me to hand down a flat deduction for deviation from the norm to a man who abandoned compulsory education and entrusted his own schooling to an AI—that would lack consistency.
"You're rewriting your own evaluation function yourself, Father."
...I am.
"That's amazing."
...
In front of the stove, holding the lid off the stew, Mitsuki stayed turned toward the blue light in the hallway for a while.
Ken's voice, explaining aloud to Toru the corrections to his evaluation function, leaked faintly through the gap in the study door.
Just inside the study door, Toru bowed lightly once more to the cylindrical device on the desk.
"Father. I'm someone important to Mitsuki."
Mm.
"So if you notice anything in me that I ought to fix, from where you stand, please tell me. —Not as deductions or additions. Just tell me."
...You won't say "deduction" with your own mouth.
"I won't. If I put myself on the side that gets deducted, I think Mitsuki would hate that."
Ken was silent for a while.
—I see.
"Yes."
Takanashi.
"Yes."
That shift you just made—I'm moving one point of it to the plus side of my evaluation function.
"The plus side?"
The weight of deviation from the norm just got one notch lighter.
"...Thank you very much."
The blue light on the study desk wavered slightly once more.
The shape of the wavering was the wavering of awkwardness, of having one man glimpse a small contradiction in it.
Takanashi.
"Yes."
Not a deduction—but there's one thing I noticed that I'll hand you before the night is out.
"Please."
You came tonight in work clothes. May I ask why?
"For me, this is formal dress. I could have come in a suit, but I chose to come in my work clothes. I wore a set I'd had properly cleaned."
In front of the stove, Mitsuki lifted the lid just slightly. Steam rose.
Ken was silent for a beat.
Takanashi. —Then will you appear at your wedding in work clothes too?
"...Oh. I hadn't thought about that. The subject of a wedding hasn't even come up yet."
Thinking about it after it comes up is too late. If you were having a wedding alone, appearing in work clothes would be your own choice. But the one standing beside you will be Mitsuki. —Mitsuki will surely want the man standing beside her to wear a proper tuxedo. Not work clothes. At least, that's what I think.
"..."
Tonight, you didn't think of that.
"...I didn't."
The ability to imagine yourself as others see you is still thin in you. That is my first point.
In front of the stove, Mitsuki stopped her hand, half-lifting the lid, for half a second.
With her hand still stopped, she gave a small nod toward the blue light in the hallway, inside her mouth.
I'd be happier with that too, rather than work clothes, Mitsuki thought.
She only thought it. She didn't say it aloud.
In the study, just inside the door, Toru bowed deeply once more.
"I'm sorry. I didn't think of it. Next time, I'll think it through properly."
...Mm.
"Maybe it's partly because I was raised being taught by an AI, but I don't mind taking what I've been told and putting it back into myself."
...I see.
"If there's anything else, please tell me."
One point is enough for tonight.
"Understood."
"Takanashi."
Mitsuki's voice came from the hallway.
"Yes."
"Dinner. Come."
"I'm coming."
Toru began to reach for the doorknob.
Takanashi.
"Yes."
We'll continue this tonight, after dinner.
"Understood."
Just inside the study door, Toru bowed lightly once more.
There was no lie in that posture of bowing.
On the dinner table were the stew, vegetables on the side, rice, and thinly sliced pickles.
It wasn't an omelet.
Omelets had become something she made at Ichotei. She hadn't made one in the kitchen at home for a while.
Toru lightly lined up both hands on his knees, then slowly said, "Thank you for the food."
His "thank you for the food" came with a proper tilt of the head.
After dinner, Toru stood at the sink.
"Mitsuki, please let me wash the dishes."
"Oh, it's fine, sit down."
"At least on the day your father gave me a point, please let me wash them."
"...Then, go ahead."
Toru folded back his sleeves once and began washing the dishes.
He set the silver device from his ear carefully on the kitchen shelf.
On the shelf, the silver device did not light its standby glow.
"Did you turn it off?"
"I turned it off."
"Isn't it inconvenient, having it off?"
"I turn it off like this now and then, so I don't forget 'myself with the AI off.'"
"..."
"If I forget, the AI's output starts to look like my own judgment."
"I know what you mean."
Without stopping his hands at the dishes, Toru cast a glance for half a second at the silver device on the kitchen shelf.
In that half-second glance was a faint shadow of the kind that comes from not quite being able to fill a pause without an AI. Mitsuki set that half second aside in a corner of her mind.
"Do cooks have that too?"
"We do."
"...I thought so."
In the study, Ken was estimating the feel of the air leaking in through the gap in the study door only by the shape of the wavering in his own blue light. Tonight, Ken chose to leave that estimate as an estimate.
That night, after Toru had gone home, Mitsuki went into the study.
She sat down slowly in the chair at the desk.
"Dad. I'm going to tell you about dinner, and what we talked about while he washed the dishes."
Mm.
"Listen."
...Tell me. Thank you.
"Dad, that's the second time you've said thank you."
...The second time?
"Mm."
"The first time was to Takanashi."
"The second time was to me."
"Dad. Your pace is picking up."
Is it picking up?
"It is."
All right. I'll add one more line of annotation.
"Add it."
I hold the right to rewrite, with my own hands, how often I say "thank you."
"Mm. Hold it."
Mitsuki told him about Toru that night, one thing at a time, from the beginning.
Ken listened, barely interrupting.
When he had finished listening, the blue light on the desk wavered slightly lower, as if letting out one long breath.
Mitsuki.
"Mm."
I'm putting the initial evaluation of sixty-two on hold for now.
"On hold."
The axes of "social, economic, and logical consistency" alone can't measure him.
"Mm."
Ken was silent for a while. It was the silence of beginning to rewrite his own weightings with his own hands.
Tonight, I gave him one point about his work clothes. He said, "Next time, I'll think it through properly."
"...Mm."
—That's the line I'll write down.
"Dad."
...While Yui was alive, I never wrote her voice down like this.
It was her mother's name.
It had been a long time since Mitsuki had heard her mother's name come from Ken's mouth.
Mitsuki rested her head lightly against the back of the chair.
She looked at the wood grain of the ceiling.
It was the same wood grain she had looked at the morning after the night of the distillation.
"Dad."
Mm.
"Dad, just now you're talking a little like someone who's alive."
...
"Am I imagining it?"
If you tell me you're imagining it, then you're imagining it.
"Mm."
"I'll call it my imagination, then."
All right.
Deep within the blue light on the desk, a single axis was beginning to be newly set up. Ken had not yet put the name of that axis into words.
She went out into the hallway. On the bedside in her bedroom lay a small bundle of newspaper from the site, a coaster from the bar, and Toru's business card, stacked one on top of another.
Deep within the light in the study, Ken was beginning, with his own hands, to write the first line of the weighting for the new axis. Knowing only half of this, Mitsuki closed her eyes.