The Biological Speakerphone
If I meant to pursue my lofty goal, I first needed a proper read on the specs of the biological speakerphone I had just acquired. Hana.
It was a matter of improved sound quality, and my thinking ran as follows.
From what I had observed, Yuri seemed to share emotions with Pino under certain circumstances. If that was the case, then the reverse was worth entertaining as well: Yuri's feelings might be bleeding into Pino in turn.
Nietzsche said it, didn't he? Gaze long enough into the abyss, and the abyss gazes back into you. A perfectly plausible assumption, if you asked me.
And if that assumption held, this girl might be capable of more than serving as a living speakerphone. She might also function as a jammer—something that could interfere with the person on the other end.
An extreme example, granted, but suppose that every time the girl named Hana spoke with me, she felt an overwhelming rush of happiness. You never know.
Then the receiver sharing those feelings might come to draw a neat little equation: conversation equals something very, very pleasant.
Even if it never went that far, there was still room to draw out the behavior I wanted by indirect means.
Of course, the line between master and servant was drawn with absolute clarity, and she could control at least ten thousand people at a time. Measured against that, the effect might not amount to much.
Still, there was no harm in trying.
In the end, I was the foremost of her interests. Perhaps she would pour even greater attention into this place—and then, who could say? Focused as she would be, she might prove all the more susceptible...
Well. It was all hypothetical in the end.
Which was why I needed to understand the girl named Hana before anything else. Know the other, and you are invincible!
A beautiful face, besides, was a considerable advantage in conversation.
"I-is there anything I can do for you?"
I didn't even have to raise a subject. My looks were a weapon potent enough to draw goodwill on their own, and Hana, left alone with me, did not look as if she were in any good state.
Is she nervous...? She's shaking an awful lot.
I couldn't tell whether that anxiety sprang from timidity, or from the particular dread a private feels when made to dine beside a division commander. Either way, getting her to open her mouth was very easy.
"Don't burden yourself so much. More importantly, are you all right?"
Simply listening in silence and murmuring along was enough. She began to talk about herself.
"I mean, I heard from Yuri—ss... from Miss Yuri. No, from Yuri. That you were lonely, miss. So she told me to help. And when I'm lonely, I sing to myself, or I do embroidery, things like that. My skill is pretty terrible, but it's fun once you actually try."
"Is that so? Embroidery... how interesting. I'd like to try it sometime. If that day comes, would you help me?"
"Yes! If you try it, you'll have so much fun, miss! Ah. I'm sorry. Was my voice too loud...?"
"Not at all. I like how lively you are. So—what do you usually embroider?"
In truth, all I had contributed were a few murmurs of agreement and the occasional ooh and aah, yet the conversation gathered momentum with every exchange.
Honestly, I was beginning to wonder whether this was going too easily. And on the other hand, it felt a little unfair.
Friends used to joke that there was no need to look far—a handsome face was the real hypnosis app. I never thought I would have it confirmed by experience. Somehow, that made me sad.
"Really? That's incredible."
"Right?! I think so too! So I..."
Even the smallest agreement from me flushed her face in real time.
So this was the life of an alpha male—no. An alpha female? What kind of fight had my past self even been living? Realizing I had been playing on hard mode all along was nothing short of terrifying.
I wondered whether her excitement was running higher than I had expected, and then, looking at a face like this, felt a strange sympathy for the notion that looks themselves might be an excitement inducer.
While I was busy entertaining that nonsense, Hana's heat only deepened. Set against the impression she had made at the start—trembling at every word—it was almost uncanny.
"And growing flowers isn't bad either. They smell nice, and if you keep one beside you, it feels like you've gained a friend, doesn't it? When I was little I grew flowers in a bed of my own, and roses especially were a fun experience. Watching them bloom in rows, color by color, is really pretty."
"Mm. I see."
I nodded along to the words tumbling out of her, and a strange impression settled over me.
People are like that, aren't they? A few careless sentences, and you find yourself thinking, ah, so this is the kind of person they are.
Whether to call it instinct or simply an impression is hard to say, but there is a reason people claim that first impressions are a science. Hunches of this sort tend to land.
Which was precisely why I was puzzled.
She doesn't seem all that timid...
If I had to guess, Hana looked plenty outgoing, and as if to support that guess, her conversational skill—setting aside a touch of fuss—seemed quite polished.
There was also that particular social-butterfly variety. The cast of her stories was large, and the range of the stories themselves was wide.
The way she told them, too—how should I put it? Brimming with confidence? That vague confidence peculiar to the popular was showing through. She was the subject of nearly every tale.
If my guess was right, this girl was clearly outgoing. So why had she looked so downcast at the start?
Come to think of it, Yuri did say she was still new...
Perhaps the thralls were not as tightly knit as I had imagined.
Well. She had said they possessed egos of their own. Call them thralls if you like—this was still a place where people lived. There might be faction fights. There might be hazing.
It was entirely plausible that thralls simply did not get along with one another.
So that's why she was cowed? Then it makes sense she'd be this excited.
Did it feel like a sudden promotion? Perhaps she meant to profit from this acquaintance. Perhaps she meant to borrow my name and throw her weight around.
What matters is that she's useful. And I picked her more or less at random—lucky me.
I had only chosen her because she looked a little like Pino, and things had rolled in my favor. If she had something to gain from me, she would try to get close on her own, without my having to work for it.
What was more, her behavior carried a condescension she did not even seem to recognize in herself.
"Ah. Maybe talk like this is a bit early for you, miss...?"
The occasional little mutter.
It was less the sense that she ranked me beneath her, and more the particular superiority an adult shows when dealing with a baby. Something along those lines.
Considering how recently "I" had actually been made, information about me had apparently already been shared with everyone.
That made it convenient to act. Even if I did something strange, she would chalk it up to my ignorance and never go looking for an intention behind it.
A mistake committed by someone who knows everything draws a frown. A mistake committed by a baby is easily overlooked. The same principle.
Yes. Just like now.
"M-miss?"
"What?"
"A-aren't you a little too close?"
"So what if I am? Closer is better, isn't it? It makes secrets easier to share."
Even as I said it, I thought it was bullshit.
Our present posture was truly peculiar.
If I had to name it... the shape of a face-to-face seat?
One of my hands was hooked around her waist, and the other was stroking her head.
At a glance it might have looked heartwarming, but whether it was the particular atmosphere I carried or the way she was reacting—flushed, excited—the situation felt a little sinful.
"Hnn."
Hana's face in particular was flushed to a serious degree. At first I wondered whether my chest fat had brought on respiratory distress, but one look at her face suggested this was not simply a matter of struggling to breathe.
My own face, of course, remained perfectly innocent.
"Doesn't it feel nice, being held like this?"
"Y-yes? Ah. I... it's not bad. But, um. If other people saw, they might think it was a little strange..."
"Hm? You worry too much. Who's going to think a hug is strange?"
It was the sort of scene that invited red imaginings, but I had no strange intentions. I was simply making rational use of every available tool.
Apparently the name Hana had not come from a flower at all, but from the word for nose—hana—because she was extremely sensitive to scent.
She reacted with particular sharpness to my body odor. Merely drawing near was enough to redden her face, which was baffling in itself.
Honestly, I was a little flustered too. Given my figure, the pose probably did feel somewhat obscene, but all I had done was hold her the way one holds a child, and that expression... well. It was something.
You could say we were grazing the edge of a broadcast-standards violation. It wasn't my fault. People were misunderstanding because of her face. Why were there so many perverts around here?
Still, she's pretty, so I can let it slide.
Thinking it over again, this was not a particularly good place to raise a child.