Dorothy: I'll have a Gut Punch.

Jill: Coming right... eh?

Dorothy: What?

Jill: N-Nothing...

【Gut Punch】

Jill: H-Here...

Dorothy: Stop looking at me like that!

Jill: Sorry.

Sorry, you took me by surprise.

Are you okay? It's weird for you to order something like that.

Dorothy: Yeah, I'm just trying out stuff.

Did you know Lilim tongues are designed to identify food using the chemical components?

Our tongues were designed with the human ones in mind.

For example, the first flavors that we detect are sour and bitter, just like you guys.

I checked my personal specs and apparently, my sensitivity is set to 1.2235x.

That makes me hate those flavors because I feel them harder.

Jill: Why all that... exposition?

I mean, I'd lie if I say I wasn't interested, but why?

Dorothy: Well, after last time, I got curious and started checking how many of my systems worked in detail.

For example, the tips of my fingers are so sensitive to vibrations, you could make a seismograph with them.

Jill: Huh.

Dorothy: And checking that, I've found that it's all based on how humans work.

And that got me thinking about what you said.

I mean, for my systems to work, humans had to understand how they work.

And after all those discoveries, they're not any more or less artificial.

Why should I be?

I don't know, looking up all of that suddenly made me feel... real.

It was the opposite of what I felt last time, I feel like I'm here right now.

Jill: Glad to hear that.

Dorothy: Alright then, let's try something sweet now.

Jill: Here.

Dorothy: Ah, nice.

Jill: To be honest, it's a bit surreal for me.

Dorothy: What?

Jill: I'm here talking to you and you're answering like any human would, you're even expressing happiness.

I remember when I was a kid, I usually tried to strike conversations with AIs.

But after a bit, they'd just... start looping through their built-in answers, repeating the same things over and over.

That always made me crash back into reality.

When I think back to that, having such advanced AIs like you here right now, it's... amazing.

I don't know, it makes my inner child happy to see something she always dreamt of.

It helps when I feel particularly cynical.

Dorothy: Aw... you flatter me.

Jill: Besides, I've always thought about humans like nature's Lilim.

The method might have been different, but we, too, evolved from a more simple form ages ago.

If Lilim manage to create biological life years from now, it will all have come full circle.

Dorothy: So what should I take from this is...

You love me?

Jill: Don't overdo it.

Jill: Anything else?

Dorothy: Let's go with a Sugar Rush.

Jill: Ok.

【Suger Rush】

Jill: Here.

Dorothy: Even in doubt, my love for these is real.

Jill: How romantic.

Jill: So I take it the solipsist problem got solved?

Dorothy: Yup.

All the... reality crisis started the other day.

My mo-... guardian...

Jill: Call her mom, nobody's judging you.

Dorothy: M-Mom decided to meet with the mother of her daughter's girlfriend.

It was a very emotional meeting. They both said they felt like they closed a long chapter.

I was moved, but that's when it set in.

"Why was I moved?" "I never met any of them, so where do these feelings come from?"

"Why do I feel things?" "Do I really feel them?"

"What tells me someone else isn't pressing a button to make me feel that?"

"What tells me I'm in my body?" "What is 'real'?"

BOOM!

Jill: ...

Dorothy: Oh, don't worry by the way. I'm fine.

Jill: Thank god, it's unnatural to see you down like that...