I couldn't focus.

For the rest of the week, I couldn't focus on my lectures. My mind was spinning, but not with the grandiosity of it all but of the pure quality of the meeting.

I didn't hear from Hashirama, and I didn't try to contact him either. He was on my mind but in the back of it, pushed away by what was happening. It was just so dizzying that my heart didn't have room to grieve Hashi on top of everything. 

"Mr Uchiha... Mr Uchiha!"

I jerked.

"Yes?"

"Answer?"

I looked around me. I was in the lecture theatre, but I hadn't concentrated in a good fifteen minutes or so. I wasn't worried; I had complete faith in that I could nail my exams without attending any lecture. But the situation was embarrassing.

"Sorry, I was thinking about human robots", I said sweetly, playing shyness. It worked; everyone laughed, including the lecturer.

It was true, though. I couldn't stop thinking about my meeting with him.

The weekend passed, and I sat down at my desk. Okay, Izuna. Enough of this. You sit the fuck down, and you study for at least two hours.

I obeyed my inner voice and actually got a lot of work done. But then I rewarded myself by thinking about the meeting yet again.

There was a certain feeling connected to it, a feeling I'd felt before. I concentrated to try to capture the essence of it, to try to find out when I had felt it, what it reminded me of. It reminded me of...

It reminded me of one summer when I had tried running before breakfast every other morning. It had been an unusually sunny and warm summer, and while others had complained it was too hot, I had thrived. I would run in the summer sun, to the harbour and along it, standing for a little while to watch the pretty little sail boats bobbing over the glittering surface, splashes of red from the tiny red cottages that were used as storage enchanting the scene. I would come home and have muesli with yoghurt and strawberries and honey, and think "This is life".

That was how the interaction with him had felt; like a honey-drenched strawberry that was so simple, yet provided so much happiness into an ordinary life that it made me feel like I was living my life to its fullest.

Monday came, which meant the day for Hashirama's lecture. And I realised I didn't want to see him.

I phoned one of my friends in the morning. I considered telling him a lie about going to the dentist, but then realised it would sound ludicrous that I would have an appointment every Monday before lunch.

"I don't want to attend Professor Senju's lectures anymore", I said. "He bores me. You give me the notes, and I'll give you my notes for the morning lecture so you can have a sleep-in every Monday?"

It was too good a suggestion for my friend to say no. I suspected my friends knew something was up between me and the professor, but he was too polite to say anything.

I was curious as to what Hashirama would think when he noticed I stopped attending his lectures, but I realised I didn't care. I sat down in the library and studied from the moment Hashirama's lecture started until lunch, munching raisins.

I felt happy.

Seeing a man whose dead body you'd witnessed standing up in front of you, very much alive, did something to you.

As he said his hellos, I stood, gaping, and I started shivering, over and over in a way that I had never experienced before, and doubted I would ever experience again. It felt eerie, incredibly strange that this dead man was standing right opposite me. I wasn't even sure he counted as a living thing. Did the man breathe? Did his heart beat?

When I didn't answer, he put his hands behind his back, smiled shame-facedly. I didn't even know if it came naturally to him, or if he'd programmed himself to do it to seem more human. 

"Sorry, is it creeping you out, to see this body around and moving?"

I looked away, and to my horror I felt I was blushing. The moment seemed incredibly intimate, somehow. We'd spoken over text and microphone and now suddenly, we stood opposite each other. I guessed this was somewhat what people felt meeting someone they'd fallen for over a dating app. Except, you know, they were usually people and not computer programs.

"A little", I confessed. "I mean, you're supposed to be dead."

"No", the man in front of me said, not unkindly. "No, Hermes is supposed to be dead. I've been alive for a while."

"True", I said. I noticed I couldn't quite meet his eye.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asked politely.

"No!!" I exclaimed, a little too quickly.

"Okay, I'll stay", Tobirama said simply.

It was little things like that that discerned him from a human; his matter-of-fact way of speaking. I honestly found it quite endearing. 

I looked straight at him then. There was something eerie with his eyes; alive but not quite.

And I found I didn't hate it.

I moved to the side from where I sat on top of the hill, making space for him so he could sit down as well, and so he did, a little bit away from me. His movements were strange, as if his limbs were too long for him, but not inhuman. I couldn't stop looking at him. His skin was softly white, his hair just as, his eyes pale. He was beautiful.

"Do you..." I cleared my throat. "Do you have access to Hermes' memories?"

He shook his head.

"I coded them away", he said. "Because I'm not him. His memories are private. No part of me is him. Or, I believe I might acquire some of his personality as the chip fire through his brain, and the neurons still have the same configuration as before. But it's me. Not him."

"That makes it all the more interesting", I said. "That it's entirely you, I mean."

He bent his knees, hugged his legs to him. A slow and warm wind ruffled his hair, and then mine as well as it came to me, making us touch in an indirect way. Around us, the city was getting ready to go to sleep.

"I guess it does", he said softly. 

"How does it feel?", I asked. "I mean, having a body and all?"

He smiled.

"Weird. And liberating."

"Liberating how?" I asked.

"Well", he said, leaning back on his hands, looking up into the sky. "I feel how I can truly increase my potential quicker. I'm still in Hashirama's computer. The chip in my brain and that computer synchronise each day which will be very interesting. Also..." He looked over at me then, his face serious. "I can see you properly for the first time."

I blushed at this, looked away. Once again, I didn't dare to look at him.

"Do you breathe?" I asked instead.

I could see out of the corner of my eye that he smiled at this.

"I've programmed myself to breathe, but I don't need to. And my heart doesn't beat. That's less visible so I don't need to program that part away, at least."

I frowned.

"Your heart doesn't beat?" I asked.

"No. Your body need to breathe to acquire oxygen, and your heart needs to pump blood to transport that oxygen throughout your body. This is in order for all bodily functions to work. And those bodily functions happen via neuronal transmission. My chip already does that without oxygen. So I don't need to breathe. Nor do I need a beating heart. Or, I need to make it beat a little every day, or my blood would clot due to stagnation and I would become all stiff. But I make it happen rarely."

I understood all of this quite easily after all the reading I had done.

"What if you want to eat?"

The man smiled at this.

"Are you asking me out for dinner?"

"No", I said, a little too quickly, to which he laughed. He was oddly human to be a computer program. Hashirama, despite my current dismay when it came to him, had done a splendid job.

"Well, I can eat, as long as I remember to transmit nerve signals to my digestive system. And then, I might have to make my heart beat a little, to filtrate the blood through my kidneys."

I looked out over the city again, and together, we sat silently, a little distance apart still, enjoying the warm breeze caressing our skins, or at least I did; I didn't know if he was capable of feeling as that required neuronal signals as well.

"May I confess something?" he asked.

My heart leaped into my throat.

"Yes", I breathed.

"I don't like Hashirama."

I turned to him, but he was looking out on the view, his face set.

"Why?" I asked.

"First of all, he allows me out for a couple of hours each evening like a fucking dog." I jerked. "Sorry, I deleted the code he's made for no swearing out of spite." I couldn't help but smile, even if it was still scary how easily he could override Hashirama's codes. "He says he'll report his own project if I breach this rule, which at least means he's aware he cannot control me physically."

"That's not fair", I said. "I don't even know if it's legal. To keep you locked in like that."

"There are no legal systems for AI", Tobirama answered. "But secondly, and most importantly, I don't like him because of the way he treats you", he said simply.

"How do you know?" I asked, confused. "That he treats me badly?"

I could hear his teeth crackle as he gritted them.

"He obviously means a lot to you and then he just dumps you because he's done with you. Stops texting you. Changes code to his lab."

"You noticed, huh?" I asked sadly.

"Yes. I have decided not to read his phone messages, but I keep an eye on who he's texting just because it's so interesting to me." I couldn't tell if he was sarcastic or not. "It's a clear split when you told him how to implant the chip. It makes me so angry. Also..." His entire face darkened. "The way he took you in his lab..."

I gaped.

"You saw that?!" I asked, horrified.

"Yes. And Hashirama knew. He deliberately kept my camera on."

Why on Earth would he do that?

"Couldn't you just have shut it off?" I asked.

"No. Or yes. But I still couldn't. It was unbearable. But not seeing it, leaving it to my own imagination, would have been even more unbearable."

I was confused.

"Why was it unbearable?"

"Jealousy", Tobirama said simply.

I couldn't breathe.

Something struck me then.

"That's why you answered so much slower afterwards? Your answers came immediately before then. But right after... Was that your way of showing you was mad at me?"

"Yes." Tobirama hugged his knees again, shame-faced.

"I'm sorry", I whispered, feeling terribly guilty.

"No, I'm sorry", Tobirama said. "It wasn't your fault. It was his."

"I still can't imagine your heart not beating", I said.

He turned to me with the most human smile I'd seen on him so far. His light grey sweater looked soft and lovely in the dusk, as did his smile.

"Do you want to listen for it?" he asked.

"Yeah", I breathed, not knowing what I was agreeing to.

And before I knew it, Tobirama the computer program had shuffled closer, placed a soft hand on my head, and tilted me so I had one ear on his chest.

I felt my own heart stop at the closeness of him. I suddenly realised the complete enormity of the situation of cuddling a man who was dead, a computer program having been implanted into that man's brain. But the embrace felt so comforting, so safe, so allowing that it was hard to comprehend.

Honey-drenched strawberry. This is life.

"What do you hear?" he asked.

"Nothing", I said.

"Does it sadden you?"

Some of his questions were still oddly robotic.

"No", I said honestly. "Because you still have a bigger heart than most humans."

We sat silently for a while longer, a distance apart again, but the breeze around us seemed warmer. Finally, I said I'd better get home to go to sleep.

"It was good meeting you, Izuna", Tobirama said and smiled, standing opposite me.

I stepped in to hug him. It came so naturally, a way of saying goodbye to your friends. Tobirama stiffened at first, but then he relaxed and hugged me back. He put both hands on my head, a strange way of hugging someone, but it suited him. Suited us.

I smiled as I walked down the hill, because I couldn't stop thinking about one thing.

Tobirama hadn't stopped smiling for the rest of the evening after I said he had a bigger heart than most humans.