"A System Error Named [Kindness]" or "Logistics Named [Gentleness]" ☔ The Total Cost Until a Stranger Offers Me an Umbrella ☔ [Revised and Reposted Version]

⛆ It is raining.

My shoulder, having misread the forecast, was becoming damp by the second under the eaves of the station.

At that moment,
an unknown individual next to me made a move toward me.

"Please, use this. I have a spare," they said, offering a vinyl umbrella ☂.

"Thank you very much."

Ending the process with that single phrase is the social protocol.

However, a different calculation had begun in my brain.

I could not help but calculate the total amount of physical and economic resources spent for this "supply" to reach my hands.

Sunk costs spent on inventory maintenance

First, I break down the fact that the person was carrying a "spare."

A folding umbrella weighs about 200 to 300 grams.

The act of carrying this every day
means that they have continuously imposed that weight as a load
on their own skeleton and muscles every single day.

It has also continuously occupied the finite storage space of their bag.

It is nothing less than a prior investment they have been paying for the sake of an "unidentified person in need" they might encounter someday.

Furthermore, the individual purchased the umbrella with money earned as compensation for labor, and through the supply chain of manufacturing, distribution, and sales, it converged at this very moment on the single point of "me, getting wet in the rain."

Years of time are condensed into this one umbrella.

Speech as risk management

The act of speaking to a stranger
carries clear "risks" in modern society.

The discomfort of rejection, the risk of being reported as a suspicious person,
or the psychological cost of simple awkwardness.

They scanned all these uncertainties in an instant,
and as an optimal solution to the visual information that "the target's (my) shoulder is wet," they accepted the risk.

This is not a product of emotion.

It is a provision of resources free of charge,
requiring extremely high-level judgment.

Heat propagation as a survival strategy

Why has humanity continued this irrational transaction for thousands of years?

From a biological perspective,
this is a survival strategy known as "mutual aid."

Even if it is an asset loss at the individual level,
if this data called "kindness" is synchronized across the entire herd, the survival probability as a species statistically improves.

The debt of the umbrella I received today
is stacked in my brain as an "unprocessed task," and when I next discover someone who meets the conditions,
an execution command will be issued automatically.

By repeating this exchange, which should not mathematically add up, the frictional heat of the massive system called society is maintained.

A completion notification for successful logistics

I leave the eaves of the station,
open the handed-over umbrella, and start walking.

The sound of rain echoing through the vinyl
is no longer just the sound of rain.

It is a completion notification of "successful logistics"
that was correctly delivered above my head after vast resources and logic were optimized.

After piling up such cold-blooded calculations,
a value that simply cannot be divided remained.

It seems that the world calls that residual heat
"warmth"or"emotion".