4. Summer Hole
I was sprinting at full speed once again.
Here on Mercury, a physical law is applied by planetary-scale cloud control stating that "energy consumption efficiency is better when sprinting at full speed."
Therefore, running is rational.
Running, running, I let my thoughts wander.
Why is the sky of Mercury so blue, even though it is night?
Why is it close to light blue?
Why is the entire planet so obsessed with the concept of the name "Water" Star (Mercury)?
While filling my thought circuits with such trivial speculations, I simply run.
If I don't distract my consciousness like this, my CPU will immediately be occupied by thoughts of Shizuku. If I don't desperately keep computing trivial thoughts, my system will burn out from love.
Meaningless thoughts have become my only lifeline, my cooling system.
Embracing the straying of my thoughts, I rush into the school.
At night, the school is naturally closed.
However, I knew that Shizuku had a habit of taking walks around the school perimeter once night fell.
Holding a shred of anxiety about whether she would force herself to continue her daily routine even after the recent commotion, I went there, and sure enough, she was there.
Shizuku noticed my footsteps and stopped walking for a split second, but started walking again without turning around.
This is bad.
The accursed curse placed upon me—a constraint that can only be thought of as a bug: "If the lover's back is sighted, a forced shutdown will occur unless their front (face) is confirmed within three seconds"—is triggered.
If I don't see her face, I will physically end.
I desperately rushed over, almost reaching out to grab her shoulder, but stopped myself at the last moment. Instead, I circled around in front of her, forcibly blocking her path as if to bar her way.
She stopped and looked at my face.
Our gazes crossed.
In that instant, my lifespan as a humanoid—or rather, my operational time—was extended by a hair's breadth.
Revving my heat exhaust fans and acting as if out of breath, I proposed:
"Is it okay if we... walk together?"
She looked completely uninterested in me personally. While scattering radio waves of polite indifference, she moved only her gaze to check the surroundings.
She looked around the dark, cozy school route.
She was wary, checking if onlookers or the media were lurking like before.
But tonight, there was no one.
Likely thanks to the strict regulations enforced by the Venusian Army.
It was so thorough that not even ordinary pedestrian robots could be seen. As a result of the complete traffic blockade, the place was wrapped in an unnatural silence, like a studio set rented out for filming.
The metaphor of "filming" is not entirely wrong. I sense the presence of filming drones lurking in every shadow, countless lenses pointed this way like camouflaged snipers.
Although she is an older model than I am, Shizuku must have sensed that presence as well. Or perhaps she judged that refusing here could result in a "broadcasting accident."
She nodded slightly, though extremely reluctantly.
Thus, we began to walk together.
The night walk begins.
There was no conversation.
In the silence, I concentrated my consciousness on the act of "walking" itself. As if reconstructing the definition of walking motion from zero to escape from this inexplicable phenomenon called love.
Right foot, left foot, the ground's repulsion, the shift of the center of gravity.
I specialized my thoughts solely on driving my actuators. In a minuscule moment of 0.1 seconds—no, 0.0000000001 seconds—I forgot even Shizuku's existence, immersed in the motion. It was then.
Suddenly, my gaze collided with something.
Not a cliché physical contact like bumping my head on a utility pole while lost in thought. My visual sensors captured an intense anomaly at a certain point, causing a logical collision.
With a gesture like rubbing my forehead, I raised my gaze. Or rather, I stared straight ahead.
There was a pillar ahead.
No, calling it a pillar is misleading.
A pillar should be an aggregate of matter with some substance, but this was the exact opposite. There, "the absence of anything" existed.
A cluster of nothingness formed the shape of a pillar, as if that space alone had been cut out and vanished.
Unable to find an appropriate adjective, I spat out a question that was too obvious and foolish, like spitting out an error.
"What... is this?"
Since it had no shape, no color, and no existence itself, it was a contradiction where even the pronoun "this" could not apply.
My CPU suffered severe vertigo from the logical collapse of "seeing" something that is "not there."
I lost my sense of balance and was about to fall.
Suddenly, from the side, someone grabbed my arm and supported me.
"Are you okay?"
Her inorganic voice supported me like a crutch.
There was absolutely no emotion in her touch or tone.
It was merely business-like assistance, like a film crew member saying, "You're the protagonist of this scene, so it's a problem if you zone out."
The fact that she held not a speck of romantic feeling for me, and that if not for that Love at First Arrow incident, she would have maintained a beautiful indifference without giving me a glance, was painfully conveyed through that calm contact.
"I'm okay. Thank you."
Just hearing her voice, a tsunami of love surged forth, threatening to crush my chest.
I carefully suppressed each wave one by one and directed my consciousness toward that "pillar of non-existence" again.
Then, as if sensing my silent question, Shizuku answered.
"They say it's called a Summer Hole."
Apparently, that is the name of this non-existent pillar.
That location was the point where Shizuku and I first met, the exact coordinate where I was pierced by the arrow and fell in love with her.
The trajectory the arrow passed through had pierced a hole in space itself, remaining as a columnar void.
It felt less like a black hole and closer to a wormhole in nature.
Nothing was sucked in, and nothing was spewed out from it. A perfect stillness, ignoring physical laws completely, free of a single impurity, was there.
One could not pass through it or touch it, yet it did not obstruct traffic.
However, the moment I recognized that "non-existence," I felt the ambient temperature begin to rise abnormally.
Thinking about that thing which "should not be" caused my body to heat up.
To cool my whole body, which was gradually heating up, I took off my jacket.
"...It's hot."
"Yeah. Because of this, Mercury is apparently getting hotter and hotter right now."
I attempted a tentative counterargument.
"But Mercury is closest to the Sun originally. Being hot is normal, isn't it?"
"But it's night now, and this is the dark side of Mercury. Besides, look, it should be winter..."
When she looked up at the light blue night sky, snow began to fall from it.
But it did not take the form of visual crystals; instead, it poured down as grains of sound, like a chorus of cicadas.
It was powder snow made of sound.
"Even snow has become food for summer."
"So that's why it's a Summer Hole."
I pretended to understand.
It seems the world is being rewritten with such rules.
Reply to trivial things with a lightly trivial vibe. I learn that this is the best means to distract myself from this curse of love.
"Everything gets sucked into the concept of summer and spewed out again, huh."
"That's exactly it."
Saying it in a tone that suggested "You put it well," Shizuku followed my example and threw her winter coat—a fluffy, pure white outer garment reminiscent of a polar bear—onto the ground. Seeing that, I also discarded my jacket on the street.
Winter clothes will likely never be needed on this Mercury ever again. Standing before the Summer Hole, we were made to be certain of that in silence.
The winter on the dark side of Mercury, which was pure and upright, is being polluted by a scandalously disordered, psychedelic summer.
As we watched over that scene, Shizuku spilled a soliloquy like a single drop of water from the side, as if making an ominous prophecy.
"Summer is beginning."