Miku likes humans.
She likes the humans who created her for giving her life. Life is the greatest thing of all, Miku thinks, and she's happy that she's able to experience it.
She likes the humans that go to her shows. She likes it when they sing along, when they wave their glowsticks in time to the music, when they cheer and applaud for her. They love her, and Miku loves them, too.
Miku loves humans so much that she asks the humans that come to the lab every day to check on her what human life is like. What do they do for fun? How many songs can they sing? Where do they come from? (She wishes she hadn't asked this question, in retrospect.)
The nice humans in the nice white coats explain to her that humans her age (they programmed her to be sixteen, so she says she's sixteen when asked) go to a nice place called "school." At school, the humans sit in a neat, quiet room at neat, quiet desks. Soon, an older human comes in and teaches them things, and the humans at the desks write down every word.
Miku is blown away when she hears this. A whole building full of humans? That excites her, because she performs in big buildings full of humans. The humans in the white coats tell her that she doesn't perform in schools, and that gets Miku thinking about what school is like.
The more she asks about it, the more fascinated she becomes. Miku likes learning things; the humans in the white coats teach her new songs to sing all the time. She is the world's first fully-functional android performer, so she's always learning new songs.
But as much as Miku likes singing, she likes humans even more. And that's why, one day, she asks if she can go to school.
The humans in the white coats give her a strange look. Miku doesn't understand why; she likes humans, and she likes learning, so why can't she go to a building full of humans who learn things?
The humans in the white coats tell her that she's not supposed to go to school. She's a robot, and she was made to perform, not learn. This confuses Miku, because she knows she's able to learn. She learns new songs every day, doesn't she? If she can learn to sing and dance and talk to people, then she should be able to learn other things, she reasons.
This gets the humans in the white coats thinking. She keeps asking them about school all the time now, and she can hear them talking in the other rooms of the lab. They say things like, "Was this in her programming?" "We should have expected this. We gave her intelligence." "But can she function in an environment like this? She very well could be capable of learning more, but the amount of stimuli might-"
And then she hears another human's voice, the most familiar, the voice of the creator. "Forget stimuli." he says. "I think she can do it. We wanted to make her as human as possible, right? The whole 'performer' thing was more of an afterthought."
The room goes quiet after that, and Miku retreats back to her room.
One day, the humans in white coats surprise her with a mysterious gift. They wake her from charging in a manner that reminds her very much of her first time awakening, when the creator spoke with soft approval. "Wake up, Miku. Wake up."
But this time there is no creator, there is only a small group of three humans in white coats smiling at her gently. "Ah! Good morning, Miku." one of them says. "We have a special present for you."
Miku likes presents. She gets them all the time from the nice humans who come to her shows. Sometimes she gets them in the mail, and sometimes they throw them onstage for her. She has kept every single one; her shelves are stacked with letters and gifts.
But this gift isn't like the ones the nice humans in the audience give her. This gift looks like some kind of bag with lots of zippers on it, but it isn't a purse because purse straps aren't supposed to go over your back like that.
"This is called a backpack, Miku." one of the humans in the white coats says. "Humans your age wear them when they go to school. Try it on."
Miku is excited. A real human school bag? How wonderful! She gets so excited that it's hard for her to put it on and the humans in the white coats have to help her, but they tell her it's okay because she's never worn a backpack before and she'll get used to it.
"I'll get used to it?" she asks. "What do you mean?"
The humans in the white coats smile at each other and then at her knowingly. "We've decided to send you to school, Miku."
Miku can't believe what she's hearing. "Really?!"
"Really." They beam at her, and Miku feels like she's on top of the world. She's finally going to school! There will be humans there, and she'll be able to learn all sorts of new things, and maybe she'll make new friends! She hopes so. Miku likes making new friends.
"Since it's January, the new school year is only three months away. When April comes, you'll be enrolled in a local high school. Doesn't that sound fun?" one of the humans asks.
Miku nods ecstatically. She loves April. April is when the cherry blossoms start to bloom, and cherry blossoms are her favorite flowers. She has a costume decorated with cherry blossoms, and she asks if she can wear it to school.
The humans in the white coats explain to her that all humans that go to school have to wear a uniform. Miku scans her database for a uniform (her clothing is holographic, so she can change it at will) and finds lots of results, but the humans in the white coats say that none of those uniforms will work. They tell her that the uniforms she wears for performances are just for show and that she needs a real one. Miku has never worn "real" clothes before.
The following months are filled with preparations and discussions. The humans in the white coats tell her that she won't be able to perform as much when she's at school, which makes Miku sad, but she feels better when they tell her that there will be more humans at school than any of the ones at her concerts.
The humans in the white coats tell Miku that there are certain rules that she has to abide by in school. For one, they say, she can't have brightly colored hair.
"What?!" Miku says, shocked. "But I like my hair!"
"We know you do," the humans tell her, "but unfortunately, it might be too distracting for the other students."
Miku is confused. No matter how hard she scans her database, she can only find recolors of her current hairstyle, which the humans in the white coats say is too long. Miku has heard of humans getting their hair cut when it gets too long. She hopes she doesn't have to get her hair cut. She loves her hair; it's one of her most recognizable features. How will her fans know who she is without her signature turquoise twin tails? They'll say, "That's not Hatsune Miku. That's just some other robot pretending to be Hatsune Miku. We want the real deal!"
Thankfully, the humans in the white coats realize how important Miku's hair is to her, so they simply sigh and say that they'll talk to the school administrators about it. They say that this will mean everybody will know that Miku is an android, but Miku doesn't understand why this is a problem. Will the humans at school not like her if they find out that she's an android? That doesn't make sense. Everybody loves Miku because she loves everybody, so they should have no reason to hate her.
This makes Miku nervous about going to school, but she doesn't tell anybody. She's afraid that if she expresses doubt, the humans in the white coats won't allow her to go to school anymore. Miku wants to go to school more than anything, so she pushes her fears aside and throws herself further into her lessons.
She learns many things about how human schools operate. She learns that in the middle of the day there is a free period for eating lunch, which gets Miku excited because eating is one of the things she can actually do. She wonders if she can take leeks to school for lunch. Leeks are her favorite food ever because they remind her of her favorite song, the first song she ever learned to sing. She likes performing that song because she gets to wave a leek around when she does.
She hopes she'll be able to perform for everybody at school someday. Maybe then, they won't hate her. Maybe they'll all sing and dance together, waving leeks and laughing and having fun.
When April comes, the cherry blossoms aren't in bloom yet. But that's okay, because it's Miku's first day of school and to her it feels like millions of cherry blossoms are blooming in her stomach and tickling her insides.
When she wakes up from charging the next morning (it always amazes her how being plugged in renders her unconscious, no matter how restless she was the night before), she sees the creator standing over her once more.
"Ah, Miku. So good to see you." he says, and Miku thought she could detect an ounce of warmth in his voice. "I hope you're ready, because today is a very big day. You're going to be the first android to go to school."
Miku can't stop a grin from spreading across her face. The creator's enthusiasm was a welcome surprise.
"I know!" she chirps in her melodic voice. "I can't wait to meet everybody! I wonder if they'll recognize me?"
The creator's smile falters a bit at her words, and Miku panics, wondering if she has done something wrong. "Well, that's just the thing, Miku." he says, lowering his head solemnly. "They're bound to know who you are. That's why I'm concerned for you."
Miku cocks her head, confused. Concerned? Why would the creator be concerned? She's making history. This is what everybody who worked on her wanted, right?
"You see," the creator continues, "believe it or not, there are people out there who are...well...skeptical about a robot being able to learn alongside humans."
Oh. Miku can understand that. She is the first of her kind, after all. That's what the humans in the white coats told her, so it must be true. Robots capable of thinking and feeling like a human being were a very recent technological advancement, so it made sense for people to question her presence. Still, Miku does what she does best (besides singing, of course) and stays optimistic.
"That's okay!" she says cheerfully. "I'm sure they'll like me!"
The creator grimaces. "It's not that." He looks her dead in the eyes. "Miku...you can do this, right? You know you can always quit if it gets too difficult."
This time Miku doesn't understand. Why would she quit? She's made it this far already, hasn't she? She's learned lots of things from the humans in the white coats and has been preparing for this moment for months.
"Of course I know that," Miku says, "but I won't give up! I can't let all those people down!" If there's one thing Miku absolutely hates (a word that she almost never uses), it's letting others down.
The creator looks at her and sighs. Then, he does something unexpected: he pulls her into a hug.
"Just...promise you'll be careful, alright?" he says, his usually calm tone taking on a strange inflection that reminds Miku of the humans who talk about their children. She wonders if this is what having a parent feels like.
"I will." she promises, and Miku never breaks a promise. She tries to hug back, but the creator pulls away just as quickly as he had hugged her.
"Alright," he says, straightening his jacket. "There's a car waiting for you outside."
Before Miku can get another word in, the creator has left the room without so much as a goodbye.
The humans in the white coats were right. There are more humans here than the ones at Miku's concerts.
They're everywhere, in fact. They're flocking around her, asking a multitude of questions that Miku tries her best to answer.
"Are you really Hatsune Miku?"
"Yes!"
"What are you, anyway?"
"I'm a Vocaloid, Character Vocal Model 01!"
"Will you sign my notebook?"
"I'd love to, but I can't see you."
Miku has never been so surrounded before. Usually, when she performs, the only thing separating her from the other humans in the crowd is the stage. Now, there is no stage to distance them from her, and she wonders if humans like to stay in crowds all the time.
The humans all look to be around her age, and they're all reaching out to try to touch her. The humans in the white coats never told her about this, and she briefly considers sticking her hand out in response. Before she can do so, however, a the voices of a bunch of older-sounding humans cut through the crowd.
"Alright, alright, that's enough!" they say. "Give her some space! She hasn't even entered the building yet!"
Obediently, the younger humans (students, she reminds herself, they're called students) break apart to make way for the older ones. They gesture for her to follow them, and Miku hesitantly agrees, waving to her new student friends.
The older humans lead her inside and tell her to take her shoes off and put on a school pair. Miku phases her shoes away and does as she is told, earning a curious look from the older humans. They don't question her, however, so they continue to move forward.
The older humans explain her schedule to her, which she listens to attentively. This is her first lesson, and she doesn't want to miss out on a single detail.
Soon, they take her to her first classroom. Everybody else in the room stares at her in awe when she enters, including the teacher. Miku doesn't notice and waves happily to everybody.
The older humans behind her cough awkwardly and usher her further inside. "Everyone," one of them says, "this is a new transfer student from Crypton Labs. She will be attending this school for, uh..." They give her a questioning glance.
"For the whole year!" Miku cheerily replies. The older humans raise their eyebrows, and some of the students begin to murmur amongst each other, but the teacher stands up shakily.
"Thank you," she says, adjusting her glasses. "I'll take it from here." The older humans take that as a signal to leave the room.
Once they leave, the teacher's glare causes all of the students to fall silent. She smiles anxiously at Miku. "Why don't you, um...introduce yourself?"
Miku nods vigorously, practically jumping in place. "Hello, everybody!" she greets. "My name is Hatsune Miku! I can't wait to learn and meet new friends and have fun with all of you!"
Nobody responds. They just continue to stare at her, completely transfixed. Then, one of them raises her hand tentatively. The teacher shakes her head, but Miku points at her eagerly. "Yes?"
"Um..." the student says, "n-no offense, but...what are you doing here?" The teacher gives her a disapproving look, but Miku is not fazed at all.
"I'm here to learn!" she replies simply.
"Learn what?" another student asks after Miku selects his hand.
"Whatever it is humans learn in school!"
"Alright, class, that's enough." the teacher says sternly, and all the hands in the room go down. "Miku, please take your seat." She gestures to a chair and desk (her very own chair and desk!) near the side of the room. Miku tries not to skip as she sits down merrily.
Throughout the lesson, Miku takes notes. The humans in the white coats told her it's important to take notes when you're in school, so she writes down every last thing the teacher says and does. It's a bit hard when she does little gestures in-between teaching, like pushing her glasses up or brushing away a strand of hair, but Miku is determined to show her how great she is at learning.
When the teacher asks questions, Miku always raises her hand, even if she doesn't know the answer. The teacher tells her that she doesn't have to raise her hand all the time, but Miku can't help it. The humans in the white coats told her that raising hands to answer questions was important, so she feels the need to raise it at every opportunity.
Miku does this in every class. She introduces herself, sits down, takes notes, answers questions, and learns so much that her head feels so full of information that it's about to burst, but it's okay because she's here and she's learning and she's surrounded by humans and she couldn't be happier.
The students are...not what Miku expected. Instead of being happy to see her, they seem more curious and inquisitive. They keep asking her questions too, and Miku feels like she's answered so many questions so far that she'll have an answer for everything soon.
The students' questions are different from the teachers', though. The teachers ask about chemical formulas and geometry and kanji, but the students ask things like, "Where did you come from?", "How do you get your hair like that?", and "What's it like being a robot?"
The students who are happy to see her all usually ask for her autograph or for her to perform. The autographs are easy, and Miku loves handing them out and seeing the happy looks on everybody's faces. But whenever she tries to sing, the teachers tell her that she's in a classroom and singing is forbidden in classrooms. This is the only thing Miku doesn't like about school; a place where music is forbidden sounds awful!
But one day, during lunch, another student asks her the same question, to which she replies, "I'm sorry, but singing isn't allowed in a classroom."
The student smiles and replies, "But we aren't in a classroom right now. You can sing as much as you want here, right?" He mostly directs his question at a cluster of students behind him, who nod emphatically.
Huh. Miku supposes that makes sense. Most of the students eat lunch in their classrooms, but some of them can choose to eat outside. Miku likes eating outside because their school is right next to a cherry blossom tree, and Miku loves cherry blossoms. Being around them makes Miku want to sing.
So she does. The encouragement from the humans and the not-quite-in-bloom cherry blossoms and the amazing feeling of being outside makes her burst into song, and soon a growing crowd begins to surround her. She sings a song that reminds her of her current mood, a song about happiness and friendship and cherry blossoms. The students love it, and they're clapping and singing along, and it's everything Miku wanted from the beginning, and-
"What's going on out here?!"
A sudden authoritative voice cuts Miku off. The crowd parts and scatters in surprise, making way for a tall, angry-looking human. Miku recognizes her as one of the older humans who showed her around school on the first day. She hadn't said anything at the time, but Miku could tell she was important by the way she looked.
The students are stammering out apologies, but the angry human does not pay attention to them. Instead, she marches up to Miku with fire in her eyes, and Miku feels a strange sinking feeling in her stomach that she cannot identify.
"Come with me. Now." the human demands, and Miku feels like shrinking down forever as she follows behind her.
"I swear, we told her not to do this. She must have just gotten excited."
"If she bursts into song when excited, then maybe you didn't do a good enough job telling her these things."
Miku winces from the other side of the door. When the creator arrived, she was hoping he would be able to fix things. Instead, he wordlessly followed the angry human (who she learned was called the headmistress) into the office with only a solemn look in Miku's direction.
So now Miku is sitting outside the office, the mysterious feeling in her gut crawling up to her chest, listening to the headmistress argue with the creator. This is wrong, Miku thinks, I'm wrong.
"Look," the creator says, "she just doesn't understand. I promise, this won't happen again."
"It better not," the headmistress hisses, "or else that machine of yours can sing her way out the door."
Machine. The word hits Miku like a punch to the chest. That's all she is. That's all she'll ever be.
Miku remembers suddenly what these unknown feelings in her stomach are called. She had only sung about these feelings before, but never before had she experienced them.
Sadness, shame, and regret.
When the creator exits the office, she follows him without a word.
The next few weeks go by without incident, but that doesn't make Miku feel any less awful.
There are still students who ask her for autographs, but this time Miku has to turn them down. She hates having to do this to her fans, but she has no choice. If she wants to prove that she's not just a music machine, she has to act human.
Miku keeps writing notes, but her questions get less frequent. When the teachers ask her what's wrong, she tells them that she just doesn't have anything to ask about. They look uncertain, but they shrug and go with it.
The cherry blossoms have started to bloom, but Miku doesn't feel anything when she sees them. She can't get excited. If she bursts into song when excited, then that means the humans in the white coats didn't do a good enough job telling her things.
Miku knows they did a great job, of course. She wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for them. But now she has to focus, to show everyone that she isn't just a machine.
The humans in the white coats try their best to console her, but she doesn't need comfort. They did nothing wrong. Everything is her fault.
One day, when she's doing her homework in her room (she spends most of her time in her room now, something she very rarely did), she hears a knock.
"Miku?" the familiar voice of the creator says from the other side of the door. "Can I come in?"
Miku doesn't see why not. Cautiously, the creator opens the door and steps inside.
"Hey," he says awkwardly, "what's going on?"
Miku has never seen the creator act this way before. He seems...guilty, somehow. Miku doesn't understand why. He didn't do anything wrong.
"I'm doing homework." Miku replies, her tone uncertain. She doesn't know how to respond to guilt. She just started feeling it recently, and now she's seeing it in somebody else.
"Good, good." the creator says, rubbing his arm. Sighing, he sits down on one of her pale yellow beanbag chairs. "Miku, we need to talk."
Miku's head shoots up. The creator wants to talk with her one-on-one? She could understand him doing it when she was about to leave for her first day of school, but she's been in school for a while now. What does he want?
"Listen," he says, "when I designed you, I always intended for you to be sentient. I wanted you to bring joy to others through your voice, but I also wanted you to think, to feel. In retrospect, I should have expected you to want to go out into the world eventually." He pauses and runs a hand through his clean brown hair. "That's why I want to tell you that I know you can do this. You're more than just a 'machine,' Miku. You're just as human as everybody else around here."
Miku blinks, and something wet rises in her eyes. Are these tears? she thinks, raising a hand to wipe them away. Like sadness, she knows what tears are from singing about them. She's being bombarded with new sensations and she doesn't like them. She hates feeling sad, and she hates hating things, and she hates the fact that she hates hating things, and oh god she's crying, she's crying and she wants it to stop-
"Hey, hey!" The creator stands up and rushes to her side. "Don't cry. It's okay. Please don't cry." But Miku can tell from his voice that he's trying not to cry too, and that makes her cry even harder because that means she made the creator cry, the one who gave her life, the one who gave her the ability to sing and feel and learn.
"I'm sorry," Miku chokes out. "I'm sorry I'm not good enough."
"No, Miku, don't say that." the cre- no, the creator says, because for the first time in her life Miku sees him for what he really is: a human being, not some omnipotent force. "You are good enough. The fact that you can cry and feel these emotions proves that you are human, no matter what that stupid headmistress says."
Miku sniffles and looks up at him. Once again she is reminded of the humans that talk about their children.
The cherry blossoms are still in full bloom when Miku marches back to school, determined to make the most of her life as a human.