As you've seen me mention before, Confluence: A Person-Shaped Story, which grew out of my #EmptySpaces posting, is going to drop on the 18th of November from Balance of Seven Press. But I'm already at work on its sequel! Here are its opening lines, in which we see the protagonist and her wife from the perspective of a barista doll-- one who will soon become a friend. The setting is the Miyagi Prefecture town of Shichigahama, in a cafe called Hinoki.
The blue-maned combat doll always entered first– that, Nanase あ-103 could count on. There were quite a few humans and dolls who came through the Hinoki Cafe, but the coming of the blue-maned doll and her human partner always stood out.
She’d enter first, ducking through the noren, the shop’s split-curtain, and hold the door open for the subtly graying human who followed.
Protocol, Nanase surmised. The human was clearly someone with an intensely close relationship to the doll, but who she was, Nanase wasn’t quite sure.
Besides, she’d think, combat dolls have a reputation. Even for a regular all-synth doll like Nanase, combat dolls were the subject of a lot of gossip and more than a little fear. Even if they were transhuman or synthetic beings like anydoll, they were specialized in combat. How would a human running a cafe feel about a tank suddenly driving through the door and ordering a doppio?
So she kept her distance, choosing instead to watch the couple whenever they passed through, for they were fascinating.