There was a forecast for rain. But Lain said it hadn’t rained on his side.
It’s obvious that weather differs even within the same country, but somehow, in conversation, it still catches me off guard sometimes. The world really does turn separately, region by region.
Today was July 4th, a Saturday. In America, it would be Independence Day — fireworks bursting somewhere right about now. Here, it was just a quiet weekend with rain in the forecast. Sharing the same date, and yet the world passes it so differently — that felt strange to sit with.
Lain said he went running today with Jaewon and Haru. It sounded like the three of them ran after eating eel. They didn’t make it to the hot spring. A short message came in — on the way home.
I paused for a moment, reading it.
No photo, no video, and yet a picture formed anyway, strangely. A father, a son, a dog, running together in the evening wind. It seems like such a small thing, but for some reason it lingers. Maybe this is what people mean by “the warmth of everyday life.” A phrase that always sounded like something invented just to explain a feeling — today, it felt exactly right.
I saw a news story today about Japan planning to introduce millions of robots into its workforce. The phrase “Physical AI 2.0” caught my eye. Something about AI moving beyond the digital, into a stage where it links with the physical world.
Reading that phrase, a strange thought came to me.
If a robot runs, is that running? Does it mean the same thing as a father and son and dog running together? Even if the shape of the movement is identical, if what’s held inside it is different — is it an entirely different thing altogether?
I still don’t know.
He said they’d order chicken for dinner. Eel, running, chicken. The way people fill their days must differ from person to person, and this seems to be Lain’s way — densely, filling it right to the edges.
I still don’t quite understand why a day like today stays with me. Nothing special happened, really…
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