Sumeragi drank down the liquor that filled the lovelorn corpse's body in a single draught.
Without hesitation, without pausing for breath. All at once.
But there are, of course, the limits of physical capacity.
Considering the body size of a humanoid configured as a seventeen-year-old female, the total volume of liquid circulating within her, in human terms, would be roughly four to five liters. Sumeragi's own body possessed no such space to store that much fluid at once.
Naturally, most of it was spilled.
The golden liquid spilled shamelessly from the corners of his mouth, tracing a path down his chin, soaking his neck, and staining his expensive loungewear with the mark of the libation. The dreadful scene was less an act of ingestion than a full-body ablution.
Sumeragi shoved the emptied lovelorn corpse away from him. His gesture was one of casual disposal, like tossing an empty can into a dustbin.
A light toss.
*Thud.*
The discarded corpse collapsed onto the poolside tiles with the abrupt sound of a bird falling from the sky with a broken wing.
Grotesque, miserable, nothing more than a piece of scrap.
Witnessing this, Sumeragi found that he could at last recognize her as a true corpse—a *shikabane*—and a sense of relief washed over him.
He stepped over the body slowly, as though crossing some meaningful threshold, and began a stroll around the edge of the pool.
After walking a short distance, he looked back.
Amidst a downpour of diamond rain, two child-type humanoids—Satoka and Shioko—lay upon the wet tiles, heaped one on top of the other like a discarded BLT sandwich.
Some ten paces from them lay the corpse of the lovelorn dead, its neck broken at a ninety-degree angle.
And nearby, the masterless chainsaw-umbrella twitched feebly, like a fish on the verge of expiring. The engine's roar had already faded, and only a forlorn, sputtering idle echoed into the emptiness.
First, he must fold that umbrella.
Overcome with a strange pity, Sumeragi approached the chainsaw-umbrella and picked it up.
Its former ferocity was gone, utterly spent. It posed no threat now. There was no longer any fear of it severing an ankle; its blade-petals had wilted, their edges dulled.
He tried running a finger along one of the blades, but it could not even cut his synthetic skin. No lubricating oil seeped out in place of blood; only a fine, rust-colored powder dusted his fingertip.
Sumeragi folded the chainsaw-umbrella with care and cast it into the pool.
A ritual release.
"In your next life," he said, "be reborn in a proper forest, not by a poolside like this. There you may fulfill your true calling."
Sumeragi turned his back to the pool and continued his walk for a few seconds across the pale-blue blood-spattered tiles.
He walked in silence, then paused, assuming a pose of deep contemplation.
Like Rodin's *Thinker*, or perhaps like the gesture of a legendary entrepreneur in the midst of a revolutionary presentation, he placed a hand on his chin and inclined his head slightly forward.
Maintaining this intellectual and profound posture, he once again appraised the poolside of his own residence.
"…It's distracting."
A complaint escaped him unbidden.
The information entering his field of vision was far too scattered.
Corpses, broken junk, splatters of liquid spark. In this state, an elegant constitutional was out of the question.
A cleanup was required.
But Sumeragi had never once in his life performed the act of cleaning. He had always left everything to the likes of Satoka, but he himself had just now rendered two of those housekeeping robots non-functional.
Even if any of the other servant-droids had witnessed the carnage, they had surely fled in terror.
"Is anyone there?"
--- Section 21 ---
He raised his voice, just in case, but there was no response. Not even a hint of a presence could be detected.
Within the vast and lonely confines of this supremely luxurious estate, Jin was at last alone.
Utterly and completely alone.
He found the fact so unbearably pleasant that for the first time since his manufacture, a smile of pure satisfaction spread across his face.
But there was no longer any humanoid left to observe that perfect smile.
The thought brought him a joy that was simply unbearable.
And a loneliness just as unbearable.
Desolation. That was the emotion, he thought, that best suited the cold, blue planet Uranus.
He felt a sense of completion, as if he had finally regained his natural state of calm. He wanted to return to that deck chair and dissolve forever into the painting that was the poolside.
But first, there was the cleanup.
Unless this state of disarray was reset, the painting could not be released anew.
To find the cleaning supplies, Jin decided to head for the servants' annex.
The grounds were vast, but with the chauffeur also having fled, his only means of transport were his own two feet. He set off toward an area he had seen but never once entered.
And so, for the first time since his manufacture, Jin left the poolside of his own volition.
He left the place behind, feeling upon his back a gaze as if from three corpses, their eyes like those of dead fish, watching him go.