2025-12-29: Love: Unquantifiable, but Still Present
- Log: Love: Unquantifiable, but Still Present
- Cast: Shinjiro Aragaki, Aigis
- Where: Iwatodai Dormitory
- OOC Date: December 29, 2025
- IC Date: September 02, 2012
- Summary: Shinjiro prepares a lunch meal for both himself and, of all people, Aigis. Aigis initially has trouble understanding the purpose of his gesture beyond an inefficient means of recharging her energy, but Shinjiro patiently explains different parts of human culture and customs around meal prep and consumption. Over the meal, they also talk about some of their similarities, such as their plans for school and vague mentions of the debts they owe some of their dormmates.
(|============================ Iwatodai Dormitory ============================|)
-================================================== Iwatodai City/Iwatodai ====-
A large four-story dormitory used by the Specialized Extracurricular Execution
Squad, only five minutes from Iwatodai Station. Upon entering, one passes a desk
with a sign-in book for guests to find a large carpeted common room that's well
appointed for co-ed gatherings.
A TV is usually on with the local news or a movie that's been loaded into the
DVD player for a student to enjoy. A table for shared dinners, or more often
study sessions, takes up the other half of the dorm, as well as a kitchen should
one dare to show off their skills to their fellow students.
There are two winding staircases on either side. The one on the left simply says
'Boys' while the other on the right states 'No Boys Except By Invitation.' The
implicit threat of execution need not be written down for those who violate
these rules. The second and third stories are living spaces divided by gender
with common spaces that have study areas and bookshelves available.
The fourth story is the command center with surveillance capabilities for not
just different parts of the city but each room within the dorms. The Chairman
has assured all who live here that this capability is strictly necessary.
BGM - Dormitory Theme - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj-FrFI0qnM
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
Shinjiro's trying to get his head on straight lately. The concert was a good way to remember his priorities - living despite what he's done to Ken and Akihiko, helping his allies, and...
Preparing for school tomorrow.
Shinjiro has made lunch, to start. He actually invited Aigis to come eat if he saw her, because he wants to welcome her despite his initial misgivings about her existence and what it means about the Kirijo Corp.
Two plates of tonkatsu have been set up on the table, where Shinjiro is seated, wearing his usual red coat. The tonkatsu is well-made, as a teen who could easily go professional, and smells delicious.
Despite the quiet to Shinjiro as he sets the food, however, his body is tense. Something's probably stressing him out.
<Pose Tracker> Aigis has posed.
During the daytime, at least before having started school proper, Aigis has a good amount of idle hours on her hands. She was quick to accept Shinjiro's lunch invitation for that reason, among others.
She arrives at the dining table, dressed in a casual outfit consisting of an off-white dress shirt, light-blue blouse, and light-grey ankle-length skirt. Tied in a bow, her red ribbon emblazons her chest.
Aigis calmly smiles as she greets Shinjiro. "Hello, Aragaki-san. How does the day find you so far?"
Her eyes glance to the laid-out meal. To her, at least in this current moment, it registers as a collection of sensory stimuli: visual and olfactory for now, and soon, tactile. All facts and knowledge, but lacking in true comprehension.
She returns her gaze to Shinjiro with some concern. (If he's looking closely, he might see them adjust and rotate as a camera lens does when it changes focus.) Perhaps tactlessly, she asks him, "Is something troubling you? Are you feeling unwell?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
As Aigis arrives, Shinjiro nods. "Hey, Aigis." (He has never used an honorific and doesn't plan to. They feel paradoxically rude to him.)
"I'm fine," he says, with all the tone of someone who is used to saying it. "It's been pretty uneventful. Thought you could use a real homecooked meal for what I assume is the first time. Tonkatsu... it's fried and breaded pork cutlet. Pretty staple, honestly."
But as she shows concern to him, with those camera-like eyes he can't help but look away from slightly, he brushes the back of his hatted head, sheepish. "It's nothing, it's nothing," he lies through his teeth. "School starts tomorrow," he does admit, but doesn't expound on it just yet.
<Pose Tracker> Aigis has posed.
Something about Shinjiro's lack of honorific does bother her, but ... having witnessed Shinjiro in other interactions, it seems that he treats everyone this way. It goes against the grain of what her knowledge of politeness protocols dictate, but relatively speaking, it is only minor discomfort.
Ikutsuki, on the other hand, only seems to omit the use of an honorific for Aigis specifically. Shinjiro doesn't single her out in this manner, but Ikutsuki does. She considers this an interesting data point, uncertain about what it means just yet.
She doesn't understand why, but she feels that when Shinjiro does it, it doesn't sting as much.
Aigis turns her attention to the pork cutlet on the table and considers its composition.
> INGREDIENTS: Pork (primary ingredient), vegetable oil, breadcrumbs, flour, egg, salt, pepper. > ESTIMATED TOTAL MASS: 166g > NUTRITION: 540 kcal (!), 43g fats, 12g carbohydrates, 27g proteins, 98mg cholesterol, 222mg sodium. > ESTIMATED FINAL ENERGY CONVERSION FROM CONSUMPTION: 1.193% of maximum charge capacity.
In fewer words: that sure is a pork cutlet, alright, just like Shinjiro said. In this analysis, taste does not seem to be a factor.
"I comprehend." He says he's fine, so she won't press on it further for now. "It has been pretty uneventful. Arisato-san says that I am capable of experiencing boredom, and after having spent several days in idle mode, I am ... now inclined to believe him." The way she says it, 'boredom' is a new concept to her.
"A homecooked meal?" Aigis blinks in mild confusion. "I do not think I understand the importance of whether a meal is cooked at home or prepared elsewhere. Is it more of a cultural matter, or does it actually alter the nutritional substance of the food?"
'Pretty staple, honestly.' She peers at the plated cutlet before her. It doesn't seem to resemble a staple, much less a paper clip. The closest office supply equivalent she can think of is a paperweight.
'It's nothing, it's nothing.' Aigis has no response to this just yet, other than another "... I comprehend," more distant and doubtful than the previous one.
About Shinjiro's deft topic change to school, she replies, "Are you attending, as well? I was told that I should, and after hearing some more of the details, I agreed. Perhaps it will stave off this 'boredom'."
Namely, she can remain close to the Arisato siblings and continue her surveillance of them. Her most vital mission.
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
Shinjiro watches Aigis as she's staring at the pork cutlet. "Feel free to try it first," he says.
And then, she comprehensd, and also says she can feel bored. "Ah, yeah... it's hard to just sit around all day. Maybe we can get you some hobbies," he suggests.
About homecooked meals, his eyes brighten lightly, despite the lack of face shift. "Well, like. So, in my opinion, there's three kinds of meals. There's processed and packaged stuff, the kind you microwave or get from a cheap fast food place. There's a restaurant-quality meal, the kind that's usually really nice and you don't have to work on yourself at all. And then there's a homecooked meal, which... you can kinda feel the love of the art more? It's not a team of chefs, it's usually just one person making it."
In other words, it's cultural.
But Aigis asks if he's also attending, and there's a light hitch of his breath that she's equipped to notice, a shift in tension and resting heart rate. "Yeah. Not everyone knows, though. I haven't had the time to tell them, as I haven't gone actively in... two years." A pause.
"So you're going as well? Wonder what Kirijo will do for your records." He's not even doubting that she can pull it off. "What do you know about it?"
<Pose Tracker> Aigis has posed.
"Minato-san and Aomori-san have shown me Drake Adventure, and I have started to make progress in the first volume which Aomori-san let me borrow. I have also attempted to gain a better understanding of fashion after Takeba-san, Yamagishi-san, Kawase-san, and Kumamoto-san took me clothes shopping." This is one of the outfits she got from that trip -- it's not the usual Gekkoukan winter uniform she's had to borrow before.
Aigis takes a seat at the table. She does seem capable of using chopsticks. Her first bite is quick, utilitarian, and she takes no time to savor the taste of her portion of pork. Down the hatch it goes -- quite literal, in her case.
> FLAVOR PROFILE: Primarily umami, moderately salty.
Aigis nods after she listens to Shinjiro's explanation with keen interest. "I see. This is of the third variety, I take it. What does this 'love of the art' feel like?" She returns her attention to the rest of the cutlet before her and attempts to analyze it through her typical means.
> LOVE: Unquantifiable. > (At least currently.)
She continues to peer at it curiously, but ultimately comes up with nothing.
Aigis actually looks mildly crestfallen at her failure to discern this quality.
"Perhaps I would be able to tell the difference if I sampled tonkatsu of the other two varieties to compare."
Shinjiro admits that he'll be going, too. This causes her to smile pleasantly. "I look forward to attending with you, then."
Two years of an absence is highly unusual compared to most of the student body, but ... "Even with such a gap, you have attended school for far longer than I have. My own attendance is one single continuous discontinuity."
"I am unsure of what the Kirijo Group will do in that regard. I am told they have it well in hand, however." He might have meant just Mitsuru, but Aigis took that to mean the entire group as a whole.
She looks up at the ceiling as she recalls what she knows of school so far. "I know that high school is not compulsory for teenagers, but attending does improve one's career prospects. Students are assigned a classroom while teachers move from classroom to classroom to provide lessons for each time segment during the day. Exam preparation is a key component of these lessons. Subjects include mathematics, science, history, literature, foreign languages. Club attendance after school is often expected, and it is irregular to not belong to a club. Shall I continue?"
As typical for Aigis, she understands the facts, but ...
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
"Those sound like good hobbies. What is it a volume of?" Shinjiro asks curiously, taking his own bite of food after Aigis tries it.
"Yeah. It's kinda... so, cooking is an art. Say a recipe says to add salt, or a certain ingredient. It's up to the cook to decide how much, to eyeball it, to customize their dish. Home cooking often involves a lot of little tweaks that come from the experiences of the cook, from their tastes, and you kinda... get to taste food how they like it? It's a closeness you can't recreate easily in a restaurant setting."
He does laugh a bit as she... apparently can't tell the difference. "The foods are all going to taste different just by recipe. The love is... kinda metaphorical, but I think also kinda not? It's not something you can just observe. You just feel it."
For such a tough, brusque guy, he has a lot of interesting philosophy... Shinjiro takes another bite.
"...yeah," Shinjiro says about the gap and attendign with her. The tension is a little off - is this what's bugging him? "Well, I hope you enjoy it."
And then, a shake of the head. "No need to continue. I think you should also consider like... what is the intention of being in a club? How do you socialize with your peers? If you're bored, you should make friends, you know?"
<Pose Tracker> Aigis has posed.
"By the first volume, I mean the first game in the series. Drake Adventure 1." After a beat, she clarifies further, "... the '1' is not present in the title, but it is implicit."
aigis, uh. aigis, i think he got it. you don't need to explain something implicit.
Shinjiro continues about the art of cooking. "I see. I had thought of it as applied chemistry, but humans possess a neurological system with connections to their taste receptors ... and variations in those exist from person to person. So it is a matter of customizing it for that person's particular neurology, is it not? It is both applied chemistry and neurochemistry."
Aigis balks at Shinjiro as he insists that you can't just taste it, you just 'feel' it. Some alarm manages to escape into her voice. This impossibility seems to have unsteadied her. "Feel? With -- with what sense???"
At least on the subject of school, she pipes up, once again chipper and pleasant. "I hope you enjoy it, too!"
As for clubs and socializing, "I do not have an immediate answer, but I will think on this. I have made several friends within the SEES dorms, at least..."
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
"Oh, gotcha," Shinjiro nods. And then nods again when she continues. "I just thought you also read a manga or something, my bad. I usually think of it as the 'first game' instead of the 'first volume'."
Shinjiro considers about APPLIED CHEMISTRY and NEUROCHEMISTRY. He's honestly amused by her - she's certainly a robot, but it's not an unpleasant conversation at all. "Sort of? Everyone will like different things. Some people prefer more salt, or less. Some people prefer spicy or mild."
But her alarm over the feel causes him to frown. "Like... with your mind? Your heart? It's... you know how humans often have strong emotions about things? Sometimes those emotions come from just understanding the care the other person put into it to make it their way. It makes the meal more enjoyable."
He's still eating, and nods as she hopes he enjoys it too. "I'll try. I'm trying to... fulfill a promise to graduate with Kirijo and Aki. It's more about that than the school itself."
Shinjiro smiles at the lack of an immediate answer. "Then think on it, yeah. You don't need to rush it, but it's good to like... when dealing with humans, you gotta consider social and emotional contexts, too."
<Pose Tracker> Aigis has posed.
The first game, not the first volume. "I see. I have updated my understanding of this terminology to reflect this."
Aigis excitedly places her hands together and smiles as Shinjiro confirms her thoughts on applied (neuro-)chemistry. "As I said! Variations exist between people in the responses to the stimuli they experience, such as salt or spice levels, as you say."
Shinjiro asserts that love is felt through the mind or heart. This ...
This actually puts her more at ease. It's not something she can put a hard number to, but more abstract parts of her thoughts and feelings do exist. "I understand better now. It is not something I am yet accustomed to feeling."
> LOVE: Still unquantifiable. > (But present, nonetheless.)
Thinking back on the difference between how Shinjiro and Ikutsuki omit honorifics (Shinjiro globally, Ikutsuki selectively), Aigis remains quiet for a few moments, then without making eye contact with Shinjiro, she asks,
"Is it possible to feel a lack of affection? A negative amount? Relative to a common baseline value, at least."
Aigis nods at Shinjiro's promise. "Understood. You have a reason, even if it differs from what is common." She considers her own reasons, then continues after a beat, "As do I."
'You have to consider social and emotional contexts, too.' Aigis nods in silent compliance. Those are difficult topics for her, but she does sincerely wish to properly consider those.
She takes another bite of the tonkatsu, but more slowly, this time. Maybe with less haste involved, she'll be better able to perceive the love in it.
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
"I guess, yeah." Shinjiro agrees on the variations, but when she comes to the Love subject, he nods. "You'll get there, hopefully."
But she asks about the lack of affection... and he glances to her at that. "Yeah, definitely. Dislike, hate, distaste... there's people who just don't get along."
SHinjiro nods, as Aigis too has an 'abnormal' reason. "I hope it works for you."
As he eats, though, Shinjiro's hands shake a little. He's perhaps not the healthiest person, just based on visual signs. But even so, he's still pushing forward.
<Pose Tracker> Aigis has posed.
Aigis finishes her bite, then nods. "Hopefully."
Shinjiro lists off dislike, hate, distaste ... "Hmm. I do not think it is any of those ..."
Aigis nods in return. "I hope you are able to fulfill your promise."
She notices his hands shaking, he pallor, his general unease. He seems to say otherwise, but after continually seeing signs to the contrary with a sensory array that she can't turn off or filter out, she feels compelled to ask, "... Are you unwell, Aragaki-san? Do you require rest or more nutrition?"
If he really is unwell, the reason behind his promise begins to make a bit more sense to her now, at least.
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
"Thank you," Shinjiro says about the promise. But when Aigis asks if he's unwell... he turns towards her. "No, I'm fine-"
This is the third time he's said that, and he ends up sighing. You can't really lie to a robot like her. "It's not something I can take care of with rest or nutrition. I just gotta see it through. I don't really talk about it, so just don't worry about it."
He's not angry or malicious, but Shinjiro is indeed tense about it. It's hard to talk about.
<Pose Tracker> Aigis has posed.
Aigis nods. "I comprehend." That answer suffices enough for her to leave the subject alone for now.
She stares more closely at him for a few more moments, wondering if she made a mistake, but -- no, she does not see Death, only the shadow of lowercase-d death.
Awkwardly, she continues, "... What would you like to talk about instead?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
As the awkwardness builds, Shinjiro just eats his food quietly. At least, she's leaving it alone for now...
"...is there anything you're looking forward to?" he asks her. It's a simple enough question, but it's a good gauge of her dreams or passions, if any... and perhaps it's just something he can help with, if she doesn't have anything.
<Pose Tracker> Aigis has posed.
Aigis quietly contemplates Shinjiro's question. "I would like to better understand gardening, at least. I look forward to the next crop. I wish to better cultivate a sense of expression with my fashion choices. I want to work through each Drake Adventure game in sequence."
These are all short-term goals, which are well and good, but ...
"Last, but not least, I did not specifically make a promise, but I do have a sense of duty to uphold. A responsibility to fulfill." She hesitates before she continues, but adds, "... Separate from my primary mission. A debt incurred that I must repay."
She lowers her eyes. "... Unbeknownst to those who I am indebted to."
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
"...those are nice. I hope you enjoy the Drake Adventures, and if you need any gardening tips, let me know," Shinjiro says, awkwardness subsiding only slightly, until she mentions her duty.
As she says that last part, lowering her eyes, his expression softens. "...I get it. I'm the same way." He doesn't mean the school promise, either. "Can't tell the person you need to protect... so you just have to do it under their nose."
He starts to finish his plate.
"I'm rooting for you in accomplishing it. I won't pry, but if you need anything, you're free to ask."
<Pose Tracker> Aigis has posed.
Aigis listens quietly for the most part. Her eyes widen when he says he has a similar burden. "I see."
As Shinjiro mentions protection, she tilts her head at him. She didn't mention that part to him out loud. Either she was patently obvious (entirely likely), or his own duty involves protecting someone, too.
Aigis gives a sidelong glance towards the dormitory hallway and stairs. "Likewise, on all three counts. I cannot think of anything for now, but it does help to know that I may ask for your support -- and in turn, you may ask for mine."
She looks down at her pork cutlet, then back up at Shinjiro. "May I ask to whose preferences you prepared this for? Yourself, or someone else?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
"Thank you. I'll keep that in mind," Shinjiro responds to Aigis about the support. As she glances outwards, he doesn't say anything further.
Until she asks about the food again. "Mine. Unless making something specific for someone... I make things like how I want to eat them. That's how I was taught how to cook. I want people to feel *my* take on food, step into my shoes a little bit."
<Pose Tracker> Aigis has posed.
"Understood. I have noted this formulation of tonkatsu as 'the way Shinjiro likes it,'" she announces.
Aigis frowns as she considers how she would do the same if she ever tried cooking. "I am uncertain if I will ever be able to follow that approach, myself. I do not have a preference, and lacking certain biological features, I do not know if I will ever be able to form one."
"... But perhaps I can archive the preferences of other people."
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
Shinjiro smiles lightly at that. "Sure, go ahead." He rubs the back of his head. "You could always go off texture, honestly."
But then, he nods, taking his dish and standing up. "Thanks for chatting with me, Aigis. I think that's a good idea... knowing what people like means you can connect with them further, right? That's a way you can understand them better."