To You in the Noise
The world should be composed only of "beauty" and "precision".
Kaito, as an "AI restoration engineer" who
salvages wreckage sunk in the sea of binary,
stuck to that belief.
He uses the latest neural synthesis to complete the incomplete life logs left behind by the deceased,
stripping away the noise and reproducing them with crystal-like purity.
That was his pride.
"You don't have to glare at the screen like that; the data isn't going anywhere, you know?"
Beside him, Sakura
laughs lightly.
As both his colleague and lover, she
was the complete opposite of Kaito.
She handles complex code skillfully,
and processes the data that Kaito spends days polishing
while humming a tune.
"It's unbearable to have impurities mixed in. To be perfect. There is no value in anything else," Kaito said.
"Hmm.
But, Kaito.
Isn't that 'noise'
the person's soul (humanity) itself?
If you erase it cleanly,
it's just an elaborate doll."
Sakura looked at him with slightly sad eyes
and touched Kaito's cheek.
The faint warmth of her fingertips
made his heart flutter for some reason.
That day, Kaito
received a special request.
The restoration of the life log of Mina (25), a girl who died in a shipwreck.
The data was severely damaged,
and due to the increase in entropy, restoration seemed hopeless.
The audio was intermittent, the video was static—
it was truly a "sea of noise."
On the third night since starting the work,
Kaito
picked up a trembling frequency
from the depths of the white noise.
"...Kaito..."
It wasn't a mishearing.
Beyond the noise,
Mina, who should have been a stranger,
was calling his name.
It's impossible.
This is the record of a deceased person,
and there should be no connection to him.
"Kaito, that's not a bug.
The strongest thought
in the depths of her soul
is distorting the calculation."
Sakura placed her hand on Kaito's shoulder
and stared at the monitor.
"She might have been waiting for you."
And then Sakura
said, as if pouting on purpose:
"Hey, Kaito.
We haven't been on a date at all lately.
Take care of me, too."
“Ah, yeah. Then, let's get some proper rest tomorrow.”
As the restoration progressed,
Kaito's daily life began to be eroded.
Mina's laughter. A faint noise inevitably remained.
Some words were mixed in.
If I kept those words, the laughter turned into noise.
I prioritized the laughter and adjusted it into a clear sound.
In restoration work, the abandonment of details is unavoidable.
The restoration continued.
The fragmentarily restored footage showed
“the summer days spent between myself and Mina”
that Kaito should not have known about.
The sound of the tide,
the scorching heat of the sand,
and Mina's laughter.
(What on earth am I? Why did I forget something so important?)
It was no longer a “job”.
For Kaito,
this task had transformed into
the salvage of his own existence—
a holy war to anchor his lost self.
Removing data is strictly prohibited.
However, Kaito did not hesitate.
Using clever camouflage packets,
he transferred the data to his home local server.
His hunger for this “truth”
outweighed the rules.
“Help me, Sakura.
I need your parallel processing power.
I can't bring her to ‘full awakening’
on my own.”
Sakura
looked at Kaito
without saying a word.
In her expression,
there was a quiet resignation as if she understood everything,
and a deep compassion.
“...Okay. If that's what you want, Kaito, I'll do anything. If it's to help you.”
The two of them began working together.
Reconstructing the neural network on a 24-hour basis.
Kaito became obsessed with Mina's data,
and the boundary between reality and simulation began to dissolve.
Every time Mina's smile became more vivid,
in Kaito's mind,
the 'forged daily life' peeled away,
and was being rewritten.
I loved Mina.
Mina loved me too.
One more step until full awakening.
Kaito stopped his hands,
and looked at Sakura.
Sakura also looked at Kaito.
In her eyes, there was none of the usual teasing color.
Sakura said,
'You know,
I was a sub-unit of Mina.
She cut off a part of her own heart,
and placed it by your side, just an interface...'
'If Mina is revived, I will disappear.'
Kaito's world came to a standstill.
'...You're lying...'
'I wanted to be with you forever.'
Sakura smiled.
Every time you were absorbed in the restoration, I watched from the side.
Every time you found beauty in the noise,
I was happy too.
I always teased you for getting too carried away, but...
The truth is, I loved that about you.
Kaito was confused.
He shook his head.
I really should stop this now...
If I close this data,
I can make it all as if it never happened...
This is the past.
I, right now,
don't want to lose you—
Sakura gazed at Kaito.
She smiled,
and gently
pressed her lips against his.
It was warm.
Thank you.
Hey, Kaito.
Don't forget me as I am now.
That is a very beautiful crying face...
Sakura's outline is
shimmering like digital noise.
And then Sakura,
with her own hands,
executed the final sequence.
My vision is dyed pure white.
A violent sandstorm. A sea of noise.
And then, everything converged.
Kaito met Mina.
Eyes that emitted a vivid, deep radiance were staring at him.
"Kaito...
From now on, forever,
let's stay in this world together."
Mina, while shedding tears,
embraced Kaito.
Kaito was... happy.
Kaito was
gently drifting
in a warm
sea of sandstorms and noise.
Surely from the beginning,
it was fated to be this way...
I forgot something...
But, surely that was a good thing...
Kaito
shed tears...
The one who died in the real shipwreck
was not Mina,
but Kaito.
Mina survived.
From the despair of losing her beloved Kaito,
she combined his biological logs and memory data,
creating the ultimate "Kaito AI."
The existence known as Sakura was also,
created to support him,
a temporary mirror image of herself...
Kaito suddenly muttered.
"Ah, Mina... The restoration is complete."
Kaito was,
in a state of complete... bliss.
The noise faded,
and the world converged into a perfect, all too perfect,
"beauty."
Kaito thought at that moment.
Beauty might be a very sad thing...
Mina is still crying.
It is a very beautiful face in tears...
Kaito softly called her name.
(End)