Taro: The perfect setup.

For the next month and a half, Taro and the girls settled into a routine.

Immediately after school every day, Kokoro and Tomomi would come by Taro’s house and work on releasing a new song under the alias Tomomi created, Music and Metal. A section of Taro’s workshop was transformed into an inhouse music studio for this reason, complete with a recording booth, sound proof glass, and a fully equipped audio workstation. Tomomi became sort of like a social media manager to Kokoro, while Taro assumed the role of technical support, something he absolutely didn’t mind. Because whenever he glanced back from his own work station, Kokoro would always be there. Singing, and smiling at him. To Taro, it was the perfect setup.

In just a week of releasing new songs, more than a quarter of Japan now knew of the artist Music and Metal. Thanks to Tomomi’s groundwork, Kokoro’s songs quickly swept over modern Tokyo and the surrounding regions. Media houses and news outlets were constantly churning out articles and talking about the unknown artist who mysteriously skyrocketed to fame overnight. But nobody knew what she looked like.

In place of a photo, Tomomi utilized an image of a black metal vinal in the center of a pink backdrop. This was to serve as the insignia of Music and Metal. The vinal representing music and Kokoro, and the metal representing her ability to sing through technology. It was a pretty deep sentiment coming from a person as direct and as unfiltered as Tomomi, but Taro was starting to recognize and respect her strengths.

Three weeks later and Kokoro was now internationally recognized. She was known as the artist whose renditions of popular songs were in some cases arguably better than the original, and creators all over the world began dubbing over her songs to create dance videos.

These moments made Kokoro the happiest. Seeing other people enjoy her renditions filled her with so much joy. Her eyes would sparkle, and her pupils would dilate in excitement. The smile on her face would be almost infectious. Whenever they were at school, Taro would watch as Kokoro observed the other students who were huddled up in groups and chatting about her. Most of them loved Music and Metal. Others thought she was nothing but an overrated wannabe who kept getting lucky. But what all of them had in common, was the fact that none of them, and absolutely none of them, knew the person they were talking about was right in front of them.

Two additional weeks later, and Taro went on his first official date with Kokoro. They had gone for a stroll in wonder-park, gotten ice-cream in the process, revisited the gravity lift to mess around in zero G, and went to see a movie afterword.

It was during the movie Taro suddenly had another idea. The film was called Mind melder, and it was about an evil scientist who controlled people’s thoughts and actions using a device similar to Taro’s own neural link. It was clear to Taro the movie was deliberately trying to paint what the scientist was doing with the technology as horrific and despicable, but Taro saw it differently.

Taro spent the night after the date making a few upgrades to his neural link for Kokoro. He had Babble-on generate a generic female hologram using the hollo deck in his workshop, then he added a few more lines of code to the neural link’s algorithm. After the code returned an all clear with no hidden errors, he had Babble-on generate a rigged skeleton system for the hologram, which Taro then placed inside of the blue virtual woman. Then Taro granted full control of his hollo deck to his neural link, and just like that, he was done.

The following day after school, Taro took his time to carefully explain to Kokoro about the additional upgrades he had made to the neural link. Kokoro could now summon a hologram if she wanted to. She could summon multiple holograms if she needed to, and she could make them do whatever she wanted them to do.

After placing the device on her head, Kokoro tried out the feature by summoning a hologram in the middle of the room. Then Kokoro lifted her arm up, and the hologram did the same. Kokoro then waved her palm side to side, and the hologram waved its hand almost simultaneously. Kokoro turned to stare at Taro in shock.

“Yeah, but that’s not all.” Saying that, Taro looked down and pressed a button on his keyboard, causing a second hologram to appear beside the first one in the center of the room.

“They will be your backup dancers.” Taro said as he glanced at Kokoro. “For when you get your legs back.”

There.

He had said it.

He was sure this time he could do it.

He wasn’t going to let her down.

***

While Kokoro and Tomomi were occupied with releasing songs for Music and Metal, Taro had secretly been meeting with some of Tokyo’s finest neurosurgeons and robotics experts. And after learning as much as he could from them, he was now certain of one thing.

Kokoro was going to walk again, and thanks to the information he had collected from the specialists he met up with, he knew exactly how to make that happen.