Taro: Invitation

Earlier that morning.

Taro woke up the same way he had gone to bed the night before.

Frustrated and depressed.

The board of Science and Innovations, the same group of people he had always dreamed of one day meeting and impressing with something he had created, that particular group had basically dismissed him and his ideas.

Granted, he was trying to unintentionally go against all of the fundamental values of the society with the idea he had proposed, which might also unintentionally lead to the disaster that occurred four centuries ago when a terrorist group tried to annihilate all human life using cybernetic enhanced super soldiers.

but he wasn’t proposing that neural link devices be used that way. He was trying to have it approved for medical use only, as the technology was no doubt going to help a lot of people who needed it.

Taro was still lying face up on his bed when Kokoro suddenly crossed his mind. He briefly wondered the possibility of a single person having so much hair like she did. And her eyes, he thought. They were so large and blue. They were definitely the prettiest eyes he had ever seen on a girl before.

Even star Iry who most people consider to be the most beautiful woman in the world, didn’t have eyes like Kokoro did. Kokoro was just on a whole other level in terms of looks from most girls Taro had seen. Maybe he was just being subjective, but he didn’t care. To Taro, Kokoro might as well be the very definition of…

Babble-on suddenly floated into the room, interrupting his train of thought.

“Master, I’m afraid you have a call.”

Taro scrunched up his face in annoyance.

“Is that why you barged in and interrupted my early morning fantasizing?! Because you are afraid of a simple incoming call huh? Is that it?!”

Taro was now standing on his bed and pointing an accusatory finger at the AI shaped like a glowing blue tennis ball in front of him.

“My apologies master,” the AI responded. “But the person on the other end says to wake you up if you were sleeping. She says it is an emergency.”

Taro was more baffled at the fact that it was a girl who was calling, not the fact that the person was calling about an emergency.

“Who is it?” Taro asked, relaxing his posture.

“One mis Tomomi Tachibana.” Babble-on responded. “She says she’s classmates with you.”

Taro recognized the name almost immediately. She was the girl he had seen with Kokoro the previous day at school. The girl who had accused him of stealing a glance at Kokoro’s chest, and the same girl who had stuck her tongue out at him shortly before he drove off on his hoverbike. Taro had already come to the conclusion that she was a girl with an extremely raw personality.

“Just tell her I went jogging or something,” Taro said, dismissing the caller and settling back into the covers of his bed.

“Why? So you could get back to your fantasizing?”

Taro’s eyes instantly shot open at the sound of the current speaker, and he prayed the voice he had just heard was Babble-on doing a really good impression of the troublesome girl.

But it wasn’t the AI who had just spoken to him.

“Dummy, I never ended the call.”

***

“So, you want me to invite her over in order to get her mind off what happened yesterday?” Taro asked, after Tomomi had explained what happened with Kokoro on the hover-bus while they were heading home the previous evening.

“Yes. I don’t know if she is still upset about it, but I’m worried about her, so I want her out of the house to get her mind off things.”

“I understand.” Taro replied.

Tomomi now appeared as a fully formed hologram standing in the middle of his room, while he was seated on the edge of his bed.

“But, if you don’t mind my asking,…”

“No.” Tomomi replied coldly.

“You didn’t even let me finish.”

“I didn’t have to. You wanted to know why she was crying right?” Tomomi asked.

“Yeah.” Taro replied.

“No.” Tomomi replied coldly again.

“But why?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“But…”

“Just take out your phone and invite her over.” Tomomi demanded. “Or would you rather I ask someone else?”

“Alright fine.” Taro responded.

“That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

Taro wasn’t really sure how he should have been feeling in that moment. On the one hand, he wasn’t really on board with the whole idea of being bossed around by a classmate he barely talked to before now. But on the other hand, he was kind of excited and looking forward to contacting Kokoro. Potentially spending the afternoon beside her was an imaginary event in his head he now wanted to become reality.

“See you later then.”

After Tomomi’s hologram winked out of existence, Taro went to grab is phone and placed a call to Kokoro’s number. He lifted the phone to his ear and it began to ring.

Once.

Twice.

It was on the third ring Taro realized his blunder, but before he could end the call Kokoro picked up.

“Ah, hey. Umm,”

Taro began fumbling with his words just as his nervous levels skyrocketed. He had called Kokoro, a girl who couldn’t speak, on the phone. What was he thinking?

“So, about the class project. Would you like to come over, I mean meet up later today so we could discuss on any potential ideas we might have?”

To the skies above, that last one was somehow even worse. He almost invited her over to his house. He had never gone out with a girl let alone inviting her to where he lived. And why was he still talking to her on the phone when he knew she couldn’t respond to him in the same manner?

Taro waited, not really knowing what to do next. Then the connection suddenly went dead, indicating that Kokoro had chosen to end the call.

The realization pierced Taro like a knife to the heart. Kokoro was probably angry at him for calling instead of sending a text message. He felt stupid.

He had just set his phone down on the bed and was about to leave when the phone pinged and vibrated. He went back to pick it up and found he had gotten a message from Kokoro.

“Sounds good. Send me your address if it’s no problem.” the message read.

Taro quickly responded by typing in his address and sending it. Then, waiting a few seconds, he got a reply.

“Awesome. I will be ready in a few hours. I just need to finish up some work first. Does 1pm work for you?”

Taro quickly responded again.

“Yes. 1pm is perfect.”

Then Kokoro replied.

“Alright, see you then.”

A huge wave of relief suddenly washed over Taro. He hadn’t made Kokoro angry. That was just his anxiety trying to convince him otherwise.

He smiled as he looked at the brief text messages he had shared with Kokoro. Inwardly, he wished it was going to become a regular occurrence. For now though, he needed to get ready. The girls were coming over. More importantly however, Kokoro was coming over.