Source
https://kakuyomu.jp/works/2912051600327232539
The front-facing camera on a smartphone is a product of self-love and compromise.
It pretends to be a mirror, flipping the world to suit the subject’s convenience and expertly concealing any flaws.
It was 2:30 in the morning. I was sitting on a bench, pondering the ethics of such imaging devices.
“…Hey, when I’m dancing, what does it look like from an objective perspective?”
Shizuku, who had been stretching next to me, suddenly asked that.
“What do you mean, ‘how’?”
“Well, I’m wondering if I look like an idol. You can’t see your own movements, right? There’s no mirror.”
“That’s true… As long as the optic nerve connects directly from the back of the eyeball to the brain, humans can never see their own appearance directly. It’s a structural flaw, isn’t it?”
“I’m not talking about human anatomy. I mean, more like, the first impression.”
“The first impression, huh…”
I thought for a moment, then relayed the objective facts as they were.
“A suspicious person performing a strange ritual in a park late at night, or a fairy who failed to reconcile with gravity and crash-landed.”
“That’s just awful! Seriously, that’s not helpful at all!”
Shizuku puckered her lips and kicked a pebble on the ground with the toe of her sneaker.
“If you want an objective perspective, use this.”
I took a black plastic rod out of my backpack and placed it on the bench.
“What’s this?”
“A smartphone tripod I bought at the dollar store.”
“Why are you carrying something like that around? Minato, are you the type to take selfies?”
“It’s because of the crows.”
“…Crows?”
“Lately, I’ve been trying to outsmart the crows that rummage through the convenience store trash cans. I bought it to record and analyze their behavior patterns, but the moment I pointed the camera at them, they got suspicious and stopped coming around. So, this tripod lost its purpose and was just taking up space in my backpack.”
“Using equipment meant to deal with crows to film me… I have mixed feelings about that… Wait, did you actually buy this for me?”
“…It’s strictly for dealing with crows.”
Shizuku glared at me and the tripod in turn, but eventually let out a small sigh and said, “Oh, whatever.”
“Then, just film me for a bit. I want to check my movements properly once.”
“I don’t mind, but there’s no appearance fee.”
“I don’t need one! If anything, I’m the one asking you.”
I set up the tripod a little in front of the bench and mounted my smartphone on it. I launched the rear camera and adjusted the angle. Shizuku, standing under the streetlight with a slightly nervous expression, filled the frame.
“Here we go. Recording.”
“U-uh-huh. …Somehow, knowing I’m being watched by a machine makes me suddenly nervous.”
Shizuku took a small, deep breath and began to dance.
The choreography she called the “Fairy’s Dance”—after watching it a few times—was starting to be recognized in my mind as a movement with a strange sense of rhythm.
However, ten seconds after she started.
As Shizuku turned, her foot caught on a slight dip in the ground.
“Ah!”
With a short scream, her body lost its balance dramatically. Then, in spectacular slow motion, she landed on her butt.
“…Ouch.”
“That was a spectacular landing.”
“Shut up! That doesn’t count! There was a dent in the ground!”
“Don’t worry. It’s just that Earth’s rotation went slightly haywire, causing a gravitational distortion right under your feet. It’s not your fault.”
“You’re definitely making fun of me, aren’t you!? Ugh, just delete the data!”
As Shizuku, her face bright red, came running toward me, I held my phone high to protect it from her.
“I’m not deleting it. This is going to be an important archive, second only to the crow ecology records.”
“It won’t be! Just give it to me already!”
Shizuku stood on tiptoe, trying to grab my arm. As she did, a faint, sweet scent of shampoo wafted from her.
In the cold midnight air, it felt as though the temperature was slightly higher right there.
I lowered the phone and played back the video I’d just recorded.
On the screen, Shizuku was clumsy, and her steps were far from perfect.
But strangely, through the lens, she seemed to radiate something much closer to her true nature as a “fairy” than she did to the naked eye.
With a joyful smile on her face, even when she fell awkwardly, every single moment shone brightly on the screen.
“…You really look like you’re having fun when you’re dancing.”
I found myself muttering that without even realizing it.
“Huh?”
“Nah, never mind. …Anyway, about this video—it’s taking up a ton of space on my phone. I’ll send it to you, so I’ll delete it from my device.”
“Oh, wait. My phone’s storage is totally full right now with photos and apps, too.”
“So what are we gonna do?”
“Hmm… Well, why don’t you just make a random account on some video site and upload it there? Make it private or something. Then it’ll work as a cloud storage substitute.”
“Is there any point in making it private? No one’s gonna see it anyway.”
“That’s true, but! Just in case—one in a million chance—someone does see it, it’d be embarrassing, right?”
“You’re way too self-conscious. It’s like saying you’d be embarrassed if you threw an anonymous message in a bottle into the vast ocean and some random fisherman happened to read it.”
“…Fine, just go ahead and upload it publicly. No one’s going to see it anyway, and it won’t show up in search results, right?”
Shizuku sat back down on the bench, looking resigned.
I did as she said, creating a new account with a random username, leaving both the title and description blank, and uploading the video from earlier.
“Upload complete.”
I checked the text on the screen and shoved my phone into my pocket.
“All done. In a way, that’s illegal dumping, isn’t it?”
“Hehe, thanks. Ugh, now that I’ve moved around a bit, I’m getting hungry. Minato, cocoa.”
“I’m not your wallet, Shizuku san!”
Even as I said that, I stood up, fished out a hundred-yen coin, and headed for the vending machine.
At that moment, I had no way of knowing what kind of ripples the message in a bottle I’d tossed into the digital space would create a few days later
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