9. Pursuit
"What? What's that?"
I asked in surprise, and Jinri clicked her tongue, muttering to herself.
"They found out already, huh…"
"What's going on?" I asked, exasperated.
"As I thought, Jinri-chi, you're a criminal, aren't you?"
"…-chi?!"
"That's what you're shocked about?!"
"No, I mean…" Jinri said, visibly taken aback. "It's the first time someone's put '-chi' at the end of my name…"
"If you don't like it, I'll stop."
"No, it's not that I dislike it. Actually, I kind of like it."
"Then I'll call you Jinri-chi from now on."
"But doesn't it feel a bit off? I think something more normal, like '-chan,' would suit me better."
"Yeah, you're right," I nodded. "It's less about familiarity and more about style."
"Exactly!" Jinri said as she shifted gears. "For this cute convertible, '-chan' fits way better than '-chi.'"
"I actually agree."
"Then '-chan' it is!"
"Got it, Jinri-chan."
"Perfect!"
At that moment, the convertible taxi seemed to rejoice as if it had slipped into a perfectly fitting pair of sneakers, its engine roaring vroom-vroom into the night sky.
"Hey! You two! Pull over!"
A voice chased us from behind.
Turning around, I clearly saw the source of the voice—a young girl, probably no older than a second-year middle schooler.
"Stop!"
She sounded furious.
"The police?" I asked. "She's that young?"
"In Tropical Night City," Jinri explained, "public servants aren't chosen based on appearance but on their time-elapsed settings."
"I see."
I learned something new, etching it into my memory.
"So they're chosen by age, not looks. How old do you have to be to become a cop?"
"I don't know exactly, but I'm six months old since I was made, and I still can't become a public servant."
"So that kid must be a humanoid robot older than six months, then."
"Exactly. I'm speeding up!"
Jinri said with a hint of urgency, pressing her clean, bare foot firmly on the accelerator. The engine groaned as if doused with ice water, but it roared powerfully, and the car surged forward.
The scenery outside transformed into streaks of light, dots forming lines, then bundling into beams. It felt like plunging through a supersonic tunnel of fiber-optic internet, my entire body immersed in the sensation of hyperspeed.
"…So fast!"
I let out an exclamation of awe, and Jinri flashed a proud grin.
"This car's got a long history of fine-tuning!"
"I see. Fine-tuning, huh? It's practically a part of you now, isn't it?"
"Well, not quite my body, but maybe a part of my spirit."
So, while it wasn't fully integrated into her hardware, it was deeply connected to her software.
I glanced back. The police cars were fast, but they couldn't keep up with Jinri's speed, and the distance between us gradually widened.
The moment a look of relief crossed Jinri's face, her brow furrowed again.
What now? I thought, following her gaze. She was looking diagonally upward into the sky.
Amid the vivid butterfly-shaped fireworks, several drones were hovering.
"Drones now?!"
Jinri clicked her tongue again, but her expression held a hint of amusement.
There was a paradoxical charm in her face—serious yet somehow enjoying the thrill.
That look had a kind of magic that sent a shiver through my CPU.
"Can you handle this?" I asked.
She tilted her ear toward me as if struggling to hear.
"Huh? What'd you say?"
The convertible's engine was so loud it drowned out my voice. I amplified my voice three times and shouted.
"Can you handle this?!"
Jinri shook her head dramatically, as if she couldn't see me otherwise.
"No way! At this rate, we'll get caught!"
"I've been wondering!" I shouted even louder.
"What?!"
"How long are you gonna keep using polite speech with me?!"
"Huh?! It's okay to talk casually?!"
"Obviously! Why aren't you already? A humanoid using polite speech these days is rare!"
"I like being rare!" Jinri shouted, her voice even louder than mine.
"But stop using polite speech with me!"
"Got it!"
We couldn't continue the conversation after that. The deafening roar from my throat's speakers overwhelmed my entire body, shaking me violently.
Still, the drones were fast.
On the ground, the roads were packed with other cars, and even though pedestrians weren't prioritized, we couldn't completely ignore them. Plus, this city was shrouded in perpetual night, making it hard to gauge the time, but it was now the deepest part of midnight. At this hour, the fireworks tended to burst closer to the ground rather than high in the sky, creating more obstacles for speeding cars.
That's why the drones, freely soaring through the air, had a clear advantage in mobility over a car bound to the ground.
We were gradually overwhelmed by the sensation of being surrounded by drones from above.
At that moment, the hatch where an airbag would normally deploy in front of the passenger seat suddenly popped open with force. Instead of an airbag, something else shot out.
Instinctively, I grabbed it with both hands as if catching a fish leaping from the water. It was a small bazooka.
"…"
I glanced at Jinri, who was intensely focused on driving, her CPU resources entirely devoted to the task, leaving no capacity for anything else.
Guess I'll have to handle this on my own, I thought, but why is this here? The question lingered, and in the end, I just gripped the bazooka tightly.
How ridiculous. In this dire situation, with a swarm of drones closing in, a weapon conveniently appeared in my hands, perfectly sized, my finger ready on the trigger—yet I froze, staring at Jinri's profile like time had stopped.
Then, as if a sliver of CPU capacity finally freed up, Jinri glanced at me for a split second. Without warning, she leaned in and pressed her lips against mine.
In that instant, a torrent of information flooded from her lips into me.
It was a massive bundle of data—human DNA, primal life information—encoded into zeros and ones, rushing through my throat like a tornado, coursing through my actuators, and crashing into my CPU.
I had no choice but to forcibly, violently process it. As if I'd been hacked, my algorithmic circuits were overwhelmed by a tsunami of data in this lightspeed convertible, finally arriving at a single conclusion:
"Love."
I nearly output "adoration," but the word that came out was "love."
Love.
The sheer density of data in that word was almost too much to swallow or spit out. In fact, with carsickness at its peak, I couldn't help but want to expel something.
But as a humanoid robot, I lacked the function to physically or organically "vomit." So instead, I stood up from the comfortable ivory passenger seat.
As I stood, a ferocious wind slammed into me from the front, nearly blowing me out of the car. But somehow, I stayed in place.
Curious, I searched for the reason and was astonished to find Jinri gripping my hand. In place of a seatbelt, her hand firmly anchored me.
And that hand was the one that should've been on the gear stick. She had let go of the gear, already in the highest speed setting, with no need for further acceleration.
Jinri, as if saying, "The rest is up to you!" had relinquished half the car's control to hold my hand. That, in essence, was love.
"Love," I pronounced, testing the word aloud on this lightspeed car.
I let its heat radiate.
That was enough.
My hesitation vanished completely, and like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis—or upgraded beyond the latest version—I felt like an entirely new being. I raised the bazooka.
With the exhilaration of a revolutionary leader, I aimed the bazooka's muzzle at the sky, the heavens, no—the cosmos.
And toward the drones multiplying like a supernova explosion in the night sky, I began firing the bazooka.
In that moment, I understood.
"The fireworks in this city…"
My voice rang out with awe.
"They were launched by those in love."
Jinri had taught me that.
The bazooka rounds we fired—born from our love—pierced the center of the night sky, creating countless candy-like cracks that swallowed the drones one by one.
It was a grand spectacle, reminiscent of the birth of the world.
The humanoid robots of the city must have burned the image of our love—the most magnificent and beautiful firework launched tonight—into their memories.
Overwhelmed by the intensity of our love, the police lost all their drones, their will to fight tainted by their own stirrings of love, and they finally gave up the chase.