11. Mountaineering-Style Delicacy (3)
She gazed out over the entire mountain, seemingly savoring the vivid color data input into her visual sensors. In her own introverted humanoid way, I could see she was quietly but certainly enjoying this climb.
Surrounding us were many other micro-sized climbers besides ourselves.
For some reason, they were also all high school student type humanoids, and as if stamped from the same mold, they were all wearing gym clothes.
However, what they wore were fashionable jerseys from collaborations with famous sports brands or high-end labels. They were enjoying the climb with sophisticated outfits, as if they had just stepped out of a fashion magazine spread.
In contrast, what Shizuku and I were wearing were the plain, dowdy, "independently designed" gym clothes designated by our school.
In this glamorous group, our plainness stood out in a bad way.
Perhaps feeling uncomfortable because of it, the shy Shizuku walked passively, constantly trying to hide behind my back.
Because of that, our climbing pace inevitably slowed down.
"It's kind of... embarrassing..."
Shizuku muttered in a voice that seemed about to vanish.
I took my smartphone out of my pocket and launched the camera app.
Switching the lens to the in-camera, I adjusted the angle so Shizuku and I fit within the frame.
*Snap.*
I took a selfie of the two of us.
When I showed the taken photo to Shizuku, a hologram floated up from the screen.
It was not merely a record of visible light (a still image).
The expected values of what we would face, experience, and taste from now on—future data calculated by summing the predicted values of Shizuku's and my hopes and dividing by Planck's constant—were graphed as silhouettes like virtual star dolls and projected there.
Seeing that shining predictive diagram of the future, Shizuku seemed relieved.
She turned toward me and showed a soft smile, as if a little bit of vitality had returned to her.
The moment I saw that, the main actuator responsible for my heart nearly leapt up.
But perhaps because we were micro-sized, or perhaps the probabilistic fluctuations of the electron clouds were on my side—or maybe I had started to acquire resistance to the bug called "love" for her.
My CPU remained undisturbed, and I was able to avoid a crash.
"Even so."
I held up a hand to block the sun and looked at the world outside the mountain.
We had climbed the cake mountain to around the fifth station, and our charging was reasonably complete. But we had only climbed half of it.
"We're getting pretty full, aren't we?"
When I said that, Shizuku also made a slightly bitter face.
"Yeah. I ate too much. My stomach feels a bit heavy."
I checked her status. Her remaining battery level indicated "3%."
I clicked my tongue.
"You've only charged a mere 3%. That's not enough at all."
"That's not true."
Shizuku retorted discontentedly.
"I told you before, right? Except for right after manufacturing, I've never been charged more than 1%. So 3% is an abnormal state of overeating for me. ...Honestly, I feel like I might throw up."
I see, so that's it.
Her battery gastrointestinal tract is completely unaccustomed to this high-density energy supply.
"Sorry, I was thinking too much based on my own battery standards."
I turned my gaze to the outside of the mountain—to the interior of the café.
In the macro world far away, I could see the giant oval table where we had been sitting.
And around it stood about three boy-type maids.
Waiting for us to finish our climb and return to our original size, their figures looked like giants looking down on this mountain.
At that overwhelming sense of scale, a nasty memory suddenly flashed back.
The Sun-generated Boy Giant.
That single blow that created the Summer Hole, that sensation of my core being pierced, revived vividly, and I dropped to one knee on the spot.
"A-are you okay?"
Shizuku called out to me, albeit passively.
The calculation that "asking this is appropriate as a social protocol in this situation" was transparent in her words, but sensing a tiny color (packet) of genuine worry mixed in, I felt a jumble of happiness and mysterious anxiety.
That mixed emotion birthed an idea.
I shouted toward the macro-world maids watching over us with those giant round eyes.
My voice became an echo, amplified as it reached them.
"Prepare a drone!"
When I ordered this, one of the maids asked back in a giant's voice.
"Why is that?"
That voice carried a vastness that resonated throughout the entire world. It sounded like a creator deity delivering an oracle to a miniature garden mountain made on a whim.
I raised my voice once more.
"We're going back now!"
Then the maid asked, seemingly confused.
"But you haven't eaten up to the summit yet."
"Enough is enough. We ate too much. Further intake will exceed the processing capacity of our insulin-like nanomachines, and the blood glucose simulator looks like it's going to throw an error. We want to cut it short here."
Hearing that, the maids put their three heads together as if holding a "cake conference."
After a low-speed deliberation of about three seconds, they nodded in unison.
"Understood. We will dispatch a retrieval drone, so please wait right there."
Immediately after, a rescue drone with rotor blades like a helicopter flew in.
Shizuku and I boarded it and rode the updraft to leave the mountain.
The drone's ascent performance was tremendous, reaching the summit in an instant.
If we had climbed this distance on our own, my battery might have burst from overcharging.
Just as excessive sugar intake is poison to both humans and humanoids, an excessive supply of energy also puts a tremendous load on the system.
Even more so for Shizuku, who has no experience of being charged over 1%. If she were suddenly fully charged, her CPU, let alone her battery, would likely burn out, suffering irreparable damage.
That is how high-density, dangerous, and delicious that cake was.
The panoramic view of the mountain from the drone was breathtakingly beautiful. It had an overwhelming presence different from the view from the macro perspective.
As altitude increased, the quality of the atmosphere changed.
We inhaled deeply that atmosphere, which seemed to contain the bubbles of a refreshing carbonated drink.
Like filling a balloon with helium gas, we took the cool air into our circulation systems, filling both body and mind.
Linked with that process, our micro-sized bodies began to expand gradually.
Vision distorted, and the world shrank.
No, we were enlarging.
Thus, we returned from the micro adventure tale to the original macro reality setting.
Returned to our original size, Shizuku and I sat down again at the oval table seat where we had been sitting earlier.
Since the climb—effectively the act of eating—had been a fairly long haul, we were both sweating quite a bit. The waiting maids immediately offered hot towels, and we took them to wipe our bodies.
Waiting for the hum of my cooling fans to quiet down, I sipped the hot coffee left on the table to moisten my dry throat.
And I looked at the cake mountain in front of us, about half of which had been "eaten" away.
Surprisingly, the mountain that had emitted such a vivid light blue had changed color.
Perhaps because we had sucked out that cool energy through the act of "walking." The mysterious aqua blue was lost from the mountain surface, and from beneath it, a mundane green color, just like the stereotype, was exposed.
Seeing that, I realized. The energy source of this cake was not carbohydrates, but coded into the "color" itself.
I was intrigued by the structure of that recipe, but I decided to look it up next time I had the chance.
Finished wiping my sweat, and having drained the coffee.
We stood up and paid the bill at the counter.
Just as we were about to leave the shop and I put my hand on the doorknob of the entrance, I realized.
"Ah."
A foolish voice came out.
"We left our uniforms inside the cake."