[Novel: Venus Syndrome] [792] I Hate Women in Love

Haruka Manose, who works as a fitting model—a so-called "moving mannequin"—at the Korean-style feminine brand "HANEUL" in Shin-Okubo, was meeting with her junior high school classmate, Tamami Uminozono, who also lives in Shinjuku Ward, at a cafe.

Tamami has always been a top student, currently attends Waseda University, and says she aims to work in the media in the future. (Main Story595Episode). She is an intellectual who usually provides cool-headed commentary on domestic and international news, but it seems she has recently fallen in love and is quite happy.

However, what came pouring out of Tamami's mouth, now that she was in love, was a torrential flood of information of such staggering volume and complexity that it far exceeded Haruka's capacity and was beyond the understanding of any ordinary person.

Moreover, in her excitement, she was completely losing control, mixing in her native Satsuma dialect.
"—Dengana!? So, if you think the tilde (~) in his 'Understood, that helps~' is just a mere symbol, you're making a huge mistake! That is his own personal deconstruction of the 'power structure of text (written characters)' that we have been unconsciously defined by since the genbun-itchi movement in modern Japanese literature! Even though he is a science and engineering guy who usually only mutters objective facts and is extremely logos-centric, that curve of pathos (emotion) in the tilde (~) that suddenly appeared there... That is definitive evidence that his rigid semiotic system was distorted from within by the external stimulus of my existence! Oh, wait, Haruka? Don't look into the distance with a nihilistic face, listen to me! Even from the perspective of media theory, the non-verbal heat he encoded into that single tilde, jumping over the limited interface of a smartphone, has an energy structure that rivals the collective unconscious frenzy of the masses who crowded around street-corner televisions in the 1950s. I am currently in the middle of a solo scoop (thorough investigation), leading the vanguard of mass media into the uncharted frontier known as his mental world. Honestly, my brain's database, which has interpreted the nuances of his LINE messages from a socio-psychological and semiotic perspective, has already exceeded 40,000 characters, and I'm convinced it's a documentary that will carve out the future of communication in the post-truth era, far more than the thesis I have to submit for my media cram school next week. Just think about it: if he had entered the tilde as a mere symbol, the aesthetics of the dynamic vector of his finger's trajectory in flick input wouldn't be explained, and that is nothing but proof that the extremely emotional and Dostoevskian existential fluctuation behind the 'mask of rational judgment' he usually shows me resonated completely with the signal I sent saying 'I'll show you my notes'!? Or rather, the fact that he evaluated the characters in my notes as 'neat and easy to read' isn't just at the level of practicality, but should be interpreted as a spiritual manifesto bordering on fetishism, where he intuitively detected the intellectual aura dwelling in my handwriting—that is the correct critical reading for someone aspiring to work in media! To dismiss and report (interpret) that as merely an extension of business communication is a defeat of literacy, and it's equivalent to a violation (rape) of the romantic complicity that is irreversibly forming between him and me! Hey, are you listening!? That plot from the night in junior high when we looked through the gaps in the Tenmonkan arcade, sharing our vague longing for the big city and swearing to dominate the world with the weapon of language, is now being materialized right here in the extremely secular and chaotic cross-media scene of Takadanobaba, through him as a medium (media)!! So, I have no intention of consuming this phenomenon as a mere fleeting 'bragging session'; rather, I intend to parse the entire history of our LINE messages, and while mobilizing insights from psychoanalysis, dissect (sample) every single character to analyze the correlation of emotions in context—"

A barrage of words hammered into her eardrums without giving her a moment to breathe. Haruka had completely stopped thinking.

(...She sure talks a lot... I don't like women in love...)

She didn't say it out loud, of course.
At that moment, retro background music from a cable broadcast or something began to play, sounding inappropriately cheerful.

"—Hey, wait, did you hear that phrase just now? 'Women in love are beautiful.' This phrase might look like just lyrics to a pop song at first glance, but if you approach it logically, I have to say it contains a very serious flaw, or perhaps an interesting cognitive distortion."

A male student at the table behind them started, holding up his index finger in a serious tone. The male student in a sweatshirt sitting opposite him took a sip of his blended coffee and frowned.

"What do you mean? 'Women in love are beautiful.' A classical proposition can be made from this. That is, if we define set A as 'women in love' and set B as 'beautiful women,' it's a claim that the proposition 'If A, then B' holds true. What are you complaining about?"

"You're naive. If we assume that proposition is true, then according to the rules of logic, its 'contrapositive' must also necessarily be true. In other words, the proposition 'Women who are not beautiful are not in love' would be proven simultaneously. But this is clearly contrary to the facts. Even individuals who are considered outside the definition of beauty, whether external or internal, can be observed to have hormonal secretions or bursts of subjective romantic feelings. Therefore, since the contrapositive is false, we must conclude that the original proposition 'Women in love are beautiful' is also logically false."

"No, you're ignoring the linguistic context. The 'beauty' Hiromi Go presented doesn't refer to objective aesthetic form. It means the acquisition of 'dynamic beauty' that accompanies the activation of facial muscles, increased blood flow, or improved self-presentation desires due to the secretion of the brain drug called love. In other words, it shouldn't be interpreted as a necessary and sufficient condition, but as a description of a temporary state change—that is, 'if x is in love, x is beautified.'"

"I see, a transformation of state change. But, if that 'beautification' depends on a subjective filter, such as the cognitive bias of 'love is blind' between lovers, then it doesn't have an objective truth value. In other words, it's a fictional beauty that only exists in the mind of the observer (the boyfriend). Generalizing that into 'women are beautiful' and making it a universal proposition is nothing more than information manipulation of the masses by the media, or the imposition of romantic love ideology."

"You always try to sound socially conscious like that, but try a more purely mathematical approach. Suppose we set the standard value for 'beauty' as threshold T. If we treat the increase in beauty due to being in love as a positive component, then for individuals whose initial value of beauty is extremely low, even adding the positive component to the initial value won't reach the threshold T, and there will be cases that mathematically don't reach the 'beautiful' range. Therefore, it is still not the case that 'all' women in love become beautiful. The partial negation that 'there exist women who are in love but are not beautiful' is proven."

"...Wait. According to that mathematical model, how do you explain that female university student over there, who looks like she's from Waseda's Faculty of Letters, who is currently reading her media cram school resume aloud at a speed of about 10,000 characters per second while breathing, and bragging about her love life?"
The male student in black-rimmed glasses glanced toward Tamami. Tamami was still talking, completely in a state of mental boiling, mixed with Satsuma dialect, saying things like "Evidence that the logos was distorted is...!"

"Her case, huh... Analyzing it, as a result of an oversupply of romantic feelings (pathos) in her brain, the neurons in her language area are firing abnormally, and the amount of information is bloating like a bug. Rather than 'beautiful,' it would be appropriate to define this as a 'rapid increase in entropy' according to the second law of thermodynamics, or simply a 'system runaway.' In other words, she's not just exceeding the threshold T, but the parameters are off the charts, causing an unmeasurable error."

"In other words, Hiromi Go's proposition is wrong, and it should correctly be 'Women in love have excessive information,' or 'Women in love tend to cause system errors.'"

"Academically speaking, that is closest to the truth."

The two male university students, with very serious faces, were convinced of the 'victory of logic' and carried their French toast to their mouths with satisfaction.

Right in front of them, Haruka, who was still being bathed in the 'torrent of system errors,' kept her titanium alloy prosthetic hand on the table and quietly turned down the volume of the microphone that had been picking up the conversation of the two behind her.

(...University students in Tokyo, whether in front or behind, are truly, honestly, a pain...)

The chorus of the next song playing from the cable broadcast made the surface of Haruka's cold coffee tremble slightly.

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