"Tonight?" she asked breathlessly.
"Tonight," He affirmed.
Yukari let out a high-pitched squeal, grabbed one of His hands in hers, and placed it on her perfectly formed posterior. "You'd better be ready for action," she purred into His ear. He merely smiled at this. His effortlessly sexy smile. Irresistible to girls. Even if, strictly speaking, they weren't "girls" at all.
Watching and listening from the other end of the shadowed hallway, Aigis felt her artificial heart sink. Ever since her activation, the Seventh Generation Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon had known that He was the one.
The one person in all the world that she could not be without. The one to be attended to, cherished, protected, encouraged. Loved. The one for Aigis, forevermore. Even while He was juggling dalliances with other girls almost every night. And frequently on afternoons after school, as well.
The pair of humans parted ways. He retreated into His room. Yukari walked towards Aigis, her pink sweater tight over her slim chest, her black skirt swishing across her long legs. She was an image of flawless teenage coquetry. No wonder she caught His eye.
"Hi, Aigis," she said as she walked by, smiling politely.
"Greetings," Aigis said. There was so much more that she would have liked to say.
Aigis lived in the dorm with three other girls - Mitsuru, Yukari, and Fuuka - and three boys - Junpei, Akihiko, and Him. As the one and only artificial resident of the dorm, and the only artificial member of the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (SEES), and indeed the only non-fictional artificial humanoid robot that any of them had ever encountered, Aigis was quite used to feeling like the odd one out. Like them, she had the power of Persona, a supernatural being of great strength that she could summon from the depths of her own psyche to assist her in battle. She joined the other members of SEES in accessing the Dark Hour, the 25th hour of the day unknown to most mortals, and battling the malevolent Shadows of humanity's collective unconscious in Tartarus: the infernal, ever-shifting tower that erupted from the site of Gekkoukan High School every night.
This was no task for shirkers or cowards, and her teammates were all good-hearted, open-minded people. No one ever deliberately tried to ostracize her, or make her feel inferior. If anyone ever did, they would likely receive a swift and merciless punishment courtesy of Mitsuru, resident ice queen, student council president, and heiress to the Kirijo Group conglomerate that had created Aigis.
But Aigis still had frequent difficulties interacting with the other members of SEES. Natural, unforced interpersonal interaction was something that couldn't be hardwired. It had to be learned, with many mistakes unavoidable along the way. And, as she had been specifically designed and programmed to develop human responses, she naturally felt often-uncomfortable feelings towards the others - feelings that were difficult to process, that seemed to her rational mind to serve no useful purpose.
Annoyance, for example. Or disappointment. Jealousy.
Lust.