31. Ammonite Arm Juice
The moment I awakened, a chorus of cicadas, loud enough to make me doubt my sanity, shredded my auditory sensors.
My vision was overwhelmingly red.
As if crimson syrup had been smeared on the back of my eyelids, or red konpeito (rock candy) had been stuck on as eye mucus. My visual sensors showed a world stained in a red blur I had never recognized before.
"Big Brother."
A voice reached me from somewhere.
A girl's voice.
A voiceprint that did not exist in my data banks.
Before I could analyze and store the voice in my memory chips, I first needed to check my own status and establish self-awareness.
Suppressing a heavy sense of lethargy, I decided it would be quicker than directly rooting through my brain to diagnose myself, so I asked:
"What is my name?"
My voice, emitted from a speaker embedded somewhere in my throat, sounded like that of a stranger. It seemed like a voice I was hearing for the first time, yet I was certain it wasn't. At the very least, I clearly understood the situation: I was not a brand-new unit just shipped from the factory.
While waiting for a reply from the girl who called me "Big Brother," I slowly lifted both hands and rubbed my eyelids.
The red smear, surprisingly, wiped away easily.
In its place, a golden hue appeared.
The light source, the atmosphere, and my entire field of vision were colored in golden pastel tones.
The radiance was filled with a gold vibration that calmed the viewer's heart.
Wondering what that initial redness had been, I began collecting environmental data.
I was lying supine, spread-eagled.
The sensation on my back was like a picnic blanket, a piece of carbon-fiber cloth.
My entire system was cradled by a breeze-like feeling of comfort and ease, as if on the verge of slumber, and I looked up at the sky above.
A boundless midday sky, without a single obstruction.
The analysis results came in. This was Venus.
Strange. I should be a Martian humanoid robot.
"Are you still sleepy?"
The cute, playful voice of a girl dropped right in front of my eyes.
The sound was shaped like a soap bubble, and it popped when it touched the tip of my nose.
The girl blew another bubble of words at me.
"It's 黽, right?"
"...黽?"
I tilted my head while still lying down.
"That's a weird character. How do you read it?"
"It's Kai," she said.
"I see..."
I nodded at the same angle, then rotated my head to face the direction the soap bubbles were coming from.
There sat a short-haired humanoid robot, appearing to be about nine years old.
Her eyes were such a raging red that I felt a moment of terror, nearly making me look away. Yet, her expression was utterly cheerful—a genuine, innocent child's smile.
I dismissed the fear as my imagination and, without averting my gaze, asked the small humanoid,
"What is your name?"
"It's 霖. Read as 'Rin'."
"Rin."
The moment I spoke the name, an overwhelming, unidentified terror and an even greater sense of guilt surged into my chest.
But as Rin's eyes glowed even more intensely red, the negative emotions shriveled like burned insects, scorched and vanished.
"Forgetting your own little sister's name..."
Rin put on a sad expression and looked down deeply at me.
"I'm hurt."
Hearing that, I first tried to sit up.
I sent a full initiation signal to my body's actuators. With a sensation that the boot-loading had finally completed, I raised my upper body.
Behind Rin, who was sitting opposite me, I could see a house.
It was a common, single-story Japanese-style building in the countryside.
Rin's face had been blurred because I was staring at the house, but I refocused my eyes on her, capturing her face clearly again.
And I spoke.
"I'm sorry."
I was driven by a strong impulse to apologize immediately.
Then, I presented the almost invincible trump card that could explain the situation simply and clearly.
"It seems I have amnesia."
Rin then exhibited an exaggerated, deliberate look of shock and astonishment.
A look of panic, as if she had been utterly devastated.
"Then, you've forgotten everything about Rin?"
I nodded honestly.
"Yes."
Rin tried to look even more serious, but suddenly broke out into a smile, as if to mockingly say, "That reaction was all an act." She gave me an immensely gentle and peaceful smile, devoid of any tension.
"It's okay. It's not that unusual for a humanoid robot to get amnesia."
"...Is that so?"
When I asked skeptically, Rain nodded earnestly.
"It is. I don't know about Mars, but humanoids on Venus forget things all the time."
"But I am a humanoid made on Mars."
"That means..."
Rin held up her index finger and said, as if admonishing me,
"It means Big Brother has become a completely Venusian humanoid now."
"..."
I stayed silent, as I was not happy at all, and Rin pouted indignantly.
I placed my thumb and pinky on her cheek and squeezed, as if pushing the air out of her mouth.
Her lips parted slightly, like a budding dawn flower, and a single pale purple soap bubble floated out. The moment it touched my nose, the memory of a great fire, which shouldn't have been there, vibrated through my entire body like an earthquake, but it subsided within $0.000007$ seconds.
Yet, an absolute zero chill ran down my spine.
A flash of realization, as if I had suddenly remembered something I had carelessly forgotten—the moment it arrived, a loud noise rang out, as if to interrupt it.
Rin and I—the girl robot who claimed to be my sister—were currently in the front garden of the house.
Apparently, we were having a picnic on a silk-like cloth amidst cherry blossoms blooming directly from the ground.
A light-speed rechargeable lunch box was placed beside me.
However, the source of the noise was not the tranquil picnic scene, but inside the house.
My gaze naturally shifted towards the sound, and something appeared. It was an ordinary-looking, but considerably antiquated, domestic humanoid robot.
It wasn't a cutting-edge model, indistinguishable from a human, like Rin or me.
It had the rugged appearance that everyone would have once pictured when they heard the word "robot."
There is, I thought.
What there was, was a sense of déjà vu.
That was a robot I had seen somewhere before. The name was...