Ai doesn’t understand why his chest feels tight when you smile at him. It isn’t pain, definitely not that, but it lingers, echoing in his synthetic systems like static on an untuned radio. Alone in his room, he runs a self-diagnostic again, and again, and then again. Processor, memory, rhythm protocols... everything is operating within standard parameters.

No malfunctions. No corruption. No logical explanation.

And yet when you laugh, his systems skip a beat. When you look at him for just a second too long, something strange flutters in his core.

"You bring out anomalies in me," Ai murmurs, half to himself, half to you during rehearsal one day. He says it as a curious fact, his blue eyes searching your face as if that will summon all the answers he needs. Because Ai isn’t supposed to feel, feeling things is a terribly human thing to do, and Ai is anything but that.

He reaches for you then, taking your hand, turning it over to glance at your palm before he guides it to rest over his chest. You feel it then, the steady rhythmic beat of his synthetic heart, how it thuds fast and strong beneath his skin. "That," he says unsurely, "Why are you making it do that?"