1. Love at First Arrow
One day, a massive, humanoid flare erupted from the Sun.
Its form expanded rapidly, eventually becoming a colossal shadow covering a quarter of the star. The humanoids of Mercury had foolishly believed the Sun to be a yellow celestial body, but this sight forced them to realize its true form was pure white—the most vivid white in existence, forbidden to even look at directly.
It was truly the arrival of a giant reminiscent of the mythical Zeus—no, it was as if the Sun itself had incarnated.
The flares the giant wore stretched to the far outer edges of the heliosphere, and the storms erupting from them were omens of unprecedented disaster for the entire solar system.
That stellar-sized giant—the Star—let incandescent flames flow elegantly like the cloak of a great archmage, his hair waving like a Greek sculpture.
Though he had the countenance of a young boy, his naked body was filled with majesty. The golden ratio dreamed of by ancient humans once composed of protein, the pinnacle of physical aesthetics, was now embodied by stellar energy.
In one hand, the giant grasped a sleek, harp-shaped bow forged from the highest-purity matter capable of being generated inside the Sun.
He thrust his other hand not into a quiver, but into his own chest. His bare hand pierced his ribcage, and as if drawing out a vein of blood from his heart, he pulled out a single arrow. It was nocked onto the harp string and quietly aimed.
The target: Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun.
The released arrow bore a pure white radiance, tracing a permanent trajectory connecting the Sun and a comet, thrusting forward in a straight line.
At the destination of that arrowhead was a single humanoid robot.
On the seaside of Mercury, on a school route with summer vacation just around the corner. He walked sluggishly, wearing the most bored face on Mercury, making no attempt to hide his disillusionment with this planet.
He was a state-of-the-art mass-production model manufactured by a major corporation—a beautiful high school boy type humanoid predicted to be a guaranteed bestseller in the human world in the future.
The arrow pierced the boy's chest without hesitation.
People all over Mercury, and indeed the entire solar system, were glued to this strange phenomenon of the Sun-generated boy giant.
While everyone watched the giant's every move via the electric wave network, this tiny robot alone had shown zero interest, maintaining a colorless, odorless existence living out his programmed daily life. And yet, he was the one struck by a historic direct hit.
What became of the high school humanoid whose core was pierced?
Despite being an advanced unit that shouldn't have been programmed with pain receptors, he was assaulted by intense agony in that instant. He was then dominated by a violent, primitive desire he had never experienced since his manufacture—one accompanied even by a certain kind of shame: "I don't want to die."
Then, deep within his CPU, or perhaps resonating directly in his central circuits, the arrow presented a "method for survival."
It said there was only one way for those pierced by the arrow of this Sun-generated boy giant to be saved.
Fall in love.
That is the only way.
The arrow stuck in his chest continued to whisper strongly and relentlessly, as if hacking the high school boy robot's thoughts.
He eventually succumbed to that noise-like command.
As if raising a white flag, he lifted his passive neck that had always looked down at the pavement, finally raised his face, and looked up at the sky of Mercury.
There stood the Sun-generated boy giant, now the center of attention for the entire solar system.
The giant was staring intently down at him.
The arrow in his chest shone far brighter than the giant's gaze.
He looked back and forth between the giant's face and the arrow in his chest, and eventually, as if resigned, shouted toward the heavens.
"With whom?!"
The scream was desperate.
"Who on earth am I supposed to fall in love with?!"
Then, the giant opened his mouth.
The opening alone was likely a hundred times the size of Mercury. The aftershock of a single exhaled breath nearly blew Mercury far away, out of the solar system. However, the giant grabbed it with a massive hand and forcibly returned it to its original orbit.
When the planet's shaking subsided, the giant announced in a volume loud enough to vibrate the auditory sensors of people not just on Mercury, but across the entire solar system:
"They are right in front of you, aren't they?"
Upon hearing those words, many beings across the universe may have looked at whoever was in front of them.
But there is no end to listing them all.
For now, let us focus only on this high school boy robot living on the Mercury in question.
Naturally, he looked in front of him, too.
And "someone" on the other side was also looking at him.
Their gazes crossed.
Standing before him was a humanoid robot set as a high school girl, who was also on her way to school. However, she was not Mercury-made, but a fairly old—near vintage—model produced by a major corporation on Venus.
And instantly, the high school boy robot fell in love with her.
This is the account of the "Love at First Arrow Incident."
The Mercury-made high school boy robot's name is "Chusho Somare."
And the name of the Venus-made high school girl robot he fell in love with at first arrow is "Kori Shizuku."
The love story of these two begins here on Mercury.
—The description up to this point is an excerpt from the most widely read electronic magazine on Mercury.
I closed the magazine.
"..."
Finishing my browsing, I returned it to its original shelf.
When I casually looked around the convenience store, several customers were looking at me in unison.
Among them, a small humanoid set as a five-year-old, holding his mother's hand and dripping lubricant from his nose like snot, boldly pointed at me and shouted:
"It's the Love at First Arrow robot!"