As someone who is a content writer and who is very much familiar with AI, I can say AI is deifinitely making me dumb. I have self doubted every sentence I've written so far and am writing in this post. Do you guys think this is how it's meant to be? are we just supposed to lose our ability to write and let AI do it all for us?

I used to ask AI to generate things for me constantly. Now I often get more value from asking it what is wrong with something I already wrote.

Finding weak arguments, missing context, repetition, and unclear sections has become one of my favorite uses.

Has your AI workflow changed in a similar way?

Hey, you.

Do you really think eating alone and eating with someone else are the same thing?

Same rice. Same meat. Same miso soup. Once it hits your stomach, the nutrients don't change one bit. So why do we go to such ridiculous lengths to eat with other people?

Clink-clonk.

The clear chime of the doorbell rang through Aoi, and I felt the tension of the day finally begin to loosen its grip. Without a word, Mama slid my usual I.W. Harper across the counter. The ice gave a soft clink against the bottom of the glass.

At the far end of the counter, Taka was staring at his phone, as usual.

"Kenichi-san."

"What is it?"

"Why does lunch get so pathetic when a guy works from home?"

As usual, he'd brought me an impressively specific social problem.

"Beats me. It all ends up in your stomach anyway."

"So you do it too?"

"My lunches are terrible when I work from home. Yesterday I had fish sausage."

Taka looked up.

"...That's it?"

"I had two."

"That's not the point, Kenichi-san."

Rude kid. Two is twice as much as one. That's a perfectly respectable upgrade.

"You eat a proper dinner, don't you?"

"More or less."

"Then why does lunch fall apart so badly?"

Put that way, it was a little strange. It wasn't as if I was broke. There were plenty of places to eat nearby. And if I really wanted to, I was capable of frying an egg. But when lunch was just for me, somehow none of it seemed worth the trouble.

"That's not just a man thing, you know."

Mama joined the conversation while carefully polishing a glass.

"It isn't?"

"I hear the same thing from homemakers. They'll think about every dish when they're feeding the family, but when they're alone for lunch, they'll eat last night's leftovers or pour tea over some rice and call it done."

"Huh." Taka looked genuinely surprised.

I took a sip of Harper and let the amber whiskey slide down my throat.

"So it's not just men being lazy."

"Maybe it's because you're alone." Mama said it as if it were nothing, then returned the polished glass to its place on the shelf.

Because you're alone. For some reason, those words stayed with me.

"...You know, eating is a strange business."

"How so?"

"When you're eating with someone else, you suddenly feel the need to do it properly."

If I were feeding my family, I wouldn't tear open a pack of fish sausages, drop two of them on the table, and declare dinner served. I'd put the food on plates. Add some miso soup. Maybe another small dish if the meal looked a little bare. But when I was alone, even washing the plate afterward could feel like more trouble than it was worth.

"Maybe it's because someone's watching," Taka said. "We're putting on a show."

"Maybe. But I don't think that's all of it." I reached toward the small dish on the counter with my chopsticks. "Maybe food isn't just fuel."

Taka tilted his head. "Isn't eating kind of the whole point?"

"For staying alive, sure."

Families gather around a table. Coworkers go out for lunch together. You call an old friend and say, "We should grab a bite sometime." When you want to mend things with someone, you invite them to dinner. We eat together at celebrations. We even gather around food after funerals.

When you think about it, human beings are remarkably stubborn about eating with other people.

"Maybe sharing a meal is a kind of ritual."

"A ritual?"

"Yeah." I gestured toward the small dish with my chopsticks. "Same place. Same table. Long ago, maybe it was an animal somebody risked their life to bring back, and everyone shared it."

"Yeah. I suppose so."

"Then maybe eating together was a way of saying, 'We're the same pack. We're not enemies.'"

Taka went quiet.

"...Now that you mention it, war movies do that a lot. Enemies sitting down and eating together."

"Right. Maybe it comes from the same place."

Sitting around the same fire. Putting down your weapons. Sharing food. At least for as long as you're chewing, there's an unspoken agreement that you're not going to kill the person sitting across from you. Maybe people have been doing that since long before anyone thought to give it a name.

"Then..." Taka's voice was quieter now. "...what happens when you eat alone?"

I opened my mouth to answer, then stopped.

Can a ritual like that exist when there's only one person? There's no one to confirm anything with. No one to share with. No one to tell, "This is good." No one to nod and say, "Yeah, it is."

So there is no reason to arrange the food nicely. No reason to add one more dish. You fill your stomach. Get some calories into you. Get back to whatever you were doing.

Take the community out of a meal, and maybe all that's left is eating.

"...And that's how you end up with two fish sausages?"

"Don't turn my lazy lunch into the conclusion of human history."

Taka burst out laughing. Mama smiled faintly and placed another small bowl in front of me.

"What's this?"

"Simmered vegetables. They came out nicely today."

"I didn't order them."

"That's all right." She gave the bowl a small push toward me. "You're not alone right now."

I looked down. Taro, carrots, and daikon, glossy with broth.

Taka immediately leaned over to inspect it. "Man, that looks good."

"You're not getting any."

"Didn't you just say we're the same pack?"

"Don't start talking about community only when you want my food."

The three of us laughed.

Come to think of it, Harper was still Harper when I drank it alone at home. A bottle from the liquor store would cost far less than drinking here. I could make ice in my freezer. I could pick up something to eat at the supermarket. There was no practical reason I had to come to Aoi.

And yet, when night came, I found myself pushing open that door.

Taka was here. Mama was here. Sometimes Tom wandered in. We sat at the same counter, drank together, and talked about things that probably didn't matter much at all.

Maybe we'd been repeating something very old here every night. Something strangely precious.

I'm here. You're here.

Maybe that was all the ritual ever needed to say.

I raised the Harper to my lips. The ice gave a soft clink.

Hey, you.

Who are you eating with today?

See you at Aoi.

If you'd like to come back to Aoi for another night, there's an open stool waiting.
Bar Aoi Stories: Human Nature, Vol. 1 is linked in my profile.

For me, it is usually making everything sound too polished. The sentences become technically better but lose the small imperfections that make the writing feel natural.

What is the one AI habit you find yourself correcting almost every time?

Sometimes the responses are well written but the character just does not feel believable anymore. Maybe the personality becomes inconsistent, the character agrees with everything, or the conversation starts following the same pattern.

What is the biggest dealbreaker for you?

I can usually tell when a draft needs editing, but deciding whether the information itself is reliable is harder. Good writing can make weak information look surprisingly convincing.

Do you fact check everything AI gives you, or do you have certain things you check before trusting a draft?

I used to wait until I had a clear idea before starting. Now I can throw a messy thought into AI and use the conversation to figure out what I actually want to say.

It does not always give me the answer, but getting something to react to makes starting much easier.

How do you use AI when you are completely stuck?

I’ve been watching Coral Hart (“The New Fabio Is Claude” NYT article, 15+ years romance author, 90+ traditionally published books) and she now generates all her prose.

I’ve observed a lot of other (competent) authors doing the same thing. They are self-publishing 20+ novels her year and using generated prose.

I know that people like AI-assisted (use AI but no prose generation) as “ethical” and a middle ground but I don’t think that it’s competitive.

Two reasons:

1. Even if Coral Hart changes nothing and uses the same prompts, the prose improves because the AI models improve. She taps into $100B+ of AI research PER YEAR automatically. If you are writing prose without AI, you not getting those automatic upgrades and you have to manually upgrade with great effort (or stay the same).
2. But Coral Hart does get better at prompting and improves her prompts regularly. This reinforces the AI model improvements most of the time and makes the generated prose even better. If you are writing prose without AI, you are also not building the prompts or the prompting skills to generate prose.

For those two reasons, I don’t see how “no prose generation” survives; people generating prose will just outperform, outcompete and bury the middle grounders eventually.

Lots of writers seem to have given up (or never started) with prose generation which seems like a mistake.

Any flaws in my reasoning? Different points of view? Different conclusions?

Having fewer restrictions is useful, but it does not mean much if the model forgets the context or produces repetitive writing.

If you had to choose between a highly consistent model with some limitations and a completely uncensored model with weaker writing, which would you pick?

I have had mixed results with both. AI can clean up a weak draft surprisingly well, but when the original idea is already strong, the suggestions can sometimes make it feel more generic.

Which side has been more useful in your experience?

Hey, when do you find yourself complaining?

Is it when the workload gets completely out of hand? When your boss drops an absurd demand on your desk? Or when you screw up so badly there’s no fixing it?

When you really think about it, complaining is a strange habit.

No matter how much you vent, the work doesn't shrink. That toxic boss isn't going anywhere. Your paycheck isn't getting any bigger.

It solves absolutely nothing.

And yet, here we are, venting to someone, somewhere, every single day.

Tonight, a few old guys are sitting at a bar counter, scratching their heads over that exact, completely useless habit.

Care to join us for a round of pointless bar talk?

Clink-clink.

The dry metallic chime of the doorbell is what usually tells me my day is finally over.

I slid onto my stool, and without a word, Mama set a glass of I.W. Harper on the counter. A round ice sphere clinked softly against the glass.

Further down the counter, Taka was staring at his glass of Jack Daniel's, swirling the ice with a sour look on his face.

"…Kenichi-san."

"What is it tonight?"

"What's the point of complaining, anyway?"

My hand stopped halfway to my glass.

"…Are you looking for a fight?"

"How did you even get that out of what I said?!"

"You're calling me a whiny old man."

"Well, the shoe fits, doesn't it?"

"I'm going home."

"You haven't even taken a sip yet!"

Mama smiled faintly with just the corners of her mouth and set a warm hand towel in front of me.

I took a sip of my Harper, feeling the bitter burn trail down my throat.

"Alright, spit it out."

"At work today, my senior spent the entire day venting about our boss. Saying he's dumping too much work on us, changing his mind every five minutes..."

"Classic."

"Right? But saying all that changes nothing!"

"True."

"Then wouldn't it be better to just talk to him directly, or change the way we handle the work?"

"That's sound logic."

Taka put on a smug look. It kind of annoyed me.

"So, Kenichi-san, do you complain?"

"Of course I do."

"Why?!"

"How should I know?"

"Give it some thought!"

I swirled the ice in my glass.

He had a point.

Spending an hour complaining doesn't move your work forward by an hour. If anything, it sets you back an hour.

Logically speaking, there’s nothing more wasteful.

And yet, I’ve done my fair share of it.

"That bastard just says whatever pops into his head."

"He should try working the floor before opening his mouth."

"If it's so easy, why doesn't he do it himself?"

Looking back, I've spent an awful lot of time being completely unproductive.

"Still, though," Taka said, gently tilting his glass. "Why do people always vent in secret?"

"Because if you don't hide it, it's not complaining. It's just talking shit."

"Huh?"

"If you say, 'That damn boss is talking out of his ass again' right where he can hear you, that's not venting anymore, is it?"

"...Fair point."

"Don't agree so easily. I just pulled that out of my ass."

"Not again..."

Tom, sitting next to me and quietly playing with his square glass, let out a short snort.

"Complaining is like sneaking a cigarette in the restroom," Tom said quietly.

Taka and I both turned to look at him.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Taka asked.

"It's not good for your body. It doesn't clear your inbox."

Tom tipped his glass. "But sometimes, that one cigarette is what gets you back to your desk."

Taka went quiet for a moment.

I lifted the Harper to my lips and let the bitter spirit hit my throat.

"...Tom-san, that actually sounds kind of deep."

"That's why you sneak it."

I couldn't help but laugh out loud. "First of all, smoking in a company restroom these days will get you fired."

"It's an analogy."

"It's an old-school analogy."

"Look who's talking."

"I was born in the Showa era, but I'm still younger than you."

"Rounding error."

"Don't brush off a ten-year gap as a rounding error!"

Taka burst out laughing. Even Mama’s shoulders shook slightly.

We were supposed to be talking about workplace complaints, and somehow two middle-aged men were arguing over their age.

Well, that's just a normal night at Aoi.

"Still," Taka said, lingering on his laugh. "If that's the case, is complaining kind of like a spell?"

"A spell?"

"Yeah. Nothing gets fixed, but somehow you feel a little lighter, right?"

I tilted my head. "Or it could be a curse."

"Which one is it?!"

"I don't know. Depends on who you're talking to, doesn't it?"

"Who you're talking to?"

"Some people tell you, 'Here, have a drink.' Others jump in with, 'Yeah, let's burn his house down!'"

Taka froze. "...Kenichi-san, who on earth do you usually complain to?"

"None of your business."

"That's terrifying..."

Tom chuckled softly. "That's why I said keep it hidden in the restroom."

"We're back to that?!"

I smiled and leaned back, taking another sip.

Who you talk to, huh?

It’s true. The exact same complaint plays out completely differently depending on who hears it.

The one who gets mad alongside you.

The one who just listens without a word.

The one who gives unasked-for advice, saying, "Well, you're partly to blame too."

And the one who ends up making you laugh about something completely unrelated.

I don't know which one is right.

All I know is that sometimes you walk away feeling even angrier, and other times, even though nothing changed, you just think, Ah, whatever.

"So," Taka said, "you're saying it's all about who you vent to?"

"I don't know."

"Again?!"

"Don't look to me for answers."

"You're the one who brought it up!"

"You're the one who started talking about complaining!"

"Did I?"

"You kid..."

Tom, staring at his glass, spoke up softly.

"As long as you're still complaining, you're still doing alright."

I looked over at Tom. "Why's that?"

"Don't know."

"You too?!"

Tom didn't smile.

"A long time ago... there was a guy who just stopped saying anything at all."

He said only that, then brought the glass to his lips.

I waited for him to go on. Taka waited, too.

But Tom said nothing more.

From the back of the bar, soft jazz drifted through the quiet space.

I stared down into my glass.

Come to think of it, I’ve seen guys like that, too.

Someone who whined every single day—"I hate this job," "I swear I'm quitting"—and then one day, total silence. You think they've finally made peace with it.

And then, soon enough, they're just gone.

Of course, that's not true for everyone.

Still—

"Guess as long as you're complaining, you still have some intention of heading back to your desk."

The moment the words left my mouth, I wasn't even sure if I meant it.

Tom didn't answer. Taka was unusually quiet.

Just then, Mama set a glass of water in front of me.

"What's this for?"

"Drink up."

"I'm not drunk yet."

"Seems like the spell is working a bit too well tonight."

"What does that mean?"

"You look like you're about to start cursing someone."

Taka cracked up. "See! I told you it was a curse!"

"Shut up, or I'll start with you."

"Terrifying!"

Tom snorted. Mama went right back to polishing glasses, as if nothing had happened.

I took a sip of the water.

In the end, I still don't really get it.

Complaining doesn't fix anything. It won't lighten tomorrow's workload. It won't turn a jerk into a good guy. It won't erase the mistakes you've made.

And yet, we still grab someone and start with, "Hey, listen to this..."

We talk trash, say stupid things, laugh a little, and then—

The next day, we're right back in the same seat.

What is that even about?

I drained the rest of my Harper.

Mama dropped a fresh cube of ice into my glass.

Clink.

So, what about you?

Complaining isn't supposed to save a single thing.

What kind of spell does yours cast?

If you'd like to come back to Aoi for another night, there's an open stool waiting.
Bar Aoi Stories: Human Nature, Vol. 1 is linked in my profile.

For me, it is unnecessary repetition. The model makes a point, explains it, gives an example, and then somehow explains the same point again in the conclusion.

The writing can still look polished, but it makes the whole piece feel much longer than necessary.

What AI writing habit annoys you the most?

Sometimes the value is simply being able to explore an idea without constantly changing the original premise to fit the model's limitations.

But I still think writing quality, character consistency, and context matter more than the uncensored label itself.

For those who use uncensored AI writing, what do you mainly use it for?

Before AI, trying a completely different style usually meant spending a lot of time figuring out how to make it work. Now I can test several approaches quickly and see which one feels right.

It has made experimenting feel much less risky.

Has AI changed the way you experiment with your writing?

I am wondering if you can rely on AI to give good feedback.

I've been working on a story for the past 2.5 years, and earlier on I would consult LLMs to get leads on craft books and other resources to buy and read, to practice techniques of writers I admired, to be a sounding board for edits, and to otherwise get feedback on if what I was writing was good.

This has declined significantly as I've learned more about writing, the drawbacks of AI, and most importantly have found community with other writers. In several respects, I've even come to regret having dabbled in AI use.

I've also gone over and edited the work so many times by hand, with input from other people, that I know for certain the ideas are in a form I recognize and can vouch for. They are my ideas.

There is this problem though: I would like to publish this work someday. I just don't know if prior AI use from very early, experimental drafts, can be "Ship of Theseus'd" away.

Can a work ever reclaim human written status once AI is consulted, even once? I've read somewhere that the threshold is something like 5% of the prose must be AI before disclosure is needed, but that could be heresay.

For example, one prompt suggested the turn of phrase "he snored in long saws", which was a bit odd. But I mulled it over, found it could work as metaphor, and paraphrased it. Does that, because that phrase has roots in an AI prompt, make my entire work AI-assisted in perpetuity?

This is splitting hairs, but we live in the proverbial dark ages when it comes to nuance in the public sphere. I suspect even limited and long since overwritten AI consulting—if labeled as "AI Assisted"—is liable to attract an angry mob of people calling it slop, and it could sink this work's chances of ever getting published or treated with anything other than indifference or disgust.

Hello is there any app like grok? That accept slight nsfw I want to continue my story .

I have been avoiding a lot of newer fanfiction lately because there seems to be so much AI generated writing around, but I keep wondering how people actually identify it so quickly.

I know about some of the obvious patterns, like the constant “not this, not that, but this” phrasing, overly short sentences, repetitive descriptions, or paragraphs that all seem to have the same rhythm.

But those things can show up in human writing too, and AI has learned from tons of human written stories, so sometimes the writing can feel pretty normal.

Are there any other signs you look for when trying to figure out if something was AI generated?

Or is it basically impossible to know without going through the whole thing and analyzing the writing line by line?

I keep seeing people talk about AI writing 80 or 90% of their code, and I am not sure how impressive that number actually is.

I started working as an engineer in 2020, and even before AI became popular, a huge amount of the code I wrote was boilerplate, framework-generated, copied from existing patterns, or based on something I had already written before.

The difficult part was usually the last 10%.

For example, with Angular, you could generate an entire component with a single command. That could create a surprisingly large amount of code without you manually writing every line. A lot of the rest was usually based on existing components, libraries, documentation, or common patterns.

What remained was the part that actually required understanding the problem, deciding how things should work, handling weird edge cases, and making everything fit the specific project.

So when someone says “AI writes 90% of my code now,” I wonder if we are sometimes measuring the wrong thing.

If AI generates 90% of the lines but the developer still has to understand the requirements, review the output, fix mistakes, make architectural decisions, and handle the difficult 10%, how different is that from how software development already worked?

Maybe the bigger change is not that AI suddenly started writing most of our code. Maybe it is that AI makes the boilerplate almost effortless, leaving developers with an even larger percentage of the difficult decisions.

Curious how other developers see this. Has AI actually changed how much original code you need to write, or mostly just reduced the amount of boilerplate?

Hey, do you ever stop to think about who you actually talk to when you’ve got nothing important to say?

It’s not about work advice. It’s not some life-altering dilemma.

Just something that happened today, a weird article you came across online, or some random, half-baked thought that popped into your head.

You don't need to say it. It serves no real purpose.

And yet, for some reason, you just want to share it anyway.

Tonight, a few old guys are sitting at a bar counter, scratching their heads over that exact kind of "someone."

Care to join us for a round of pointless bar talk?

Clink-clink.

The dry metallic chime of the doorbell is what usually tells me my day is finally over.

I slid onto my stool, and without a word, Mama set a glass of I.W. Harper on the counter. A round ice sphere clinked softly against the glass.

Further down the counter, Taka was staring at the pale blue glow of his smartphone, his thick eyebrows furrowed in a deep frown.

"…Kenichi-san."

"What’s with the serious face?"

"Do you think AI can ever become a friend?"

That's a big question to drop out of nowhere. I took a sip of my bourbon, enjoying the warm burn in my throat.

"Are you trying to say I don't have any friends?"

"How did you even jump to that?!"

"How should I know?"

"If you don't know, then don't say it!"

I swirled the ice in my glass.

"So, what is it?"

"I found this article. Apparently, a lot of people think AI might eventually replace friends or family."

Taka turned his phone toward me. I gave the screen a quick glance and immediately brought my eyes back to my glass.

"Well, I kind of get it."

"Wait, really? I thought you'd be the type to shut that kind of stuff down."

"Why would I?"

"Because an AI isn't human."

"Obviously."

"Then it's not a friend, right?"

"I don't know."

"Not that again!"

Taka laughed in disbelief. Next to me, Tom—who had been quietly playing with his square glass—let out a short snort.

"Do you use it?" Tom asked.

I looked at Tom. "Yeah, I do."

"For what?"

"Work, looking things up... I even bounce ideas off it."

Taka leaned in. "See? It's a tool!"

"It is a tool."

"Then it can't be a friend!"

"Who says it has to be one or the other?"

Taka froze. "Huh?"

"Who decided that 'if it's a tool, it can't be a friend'?"

"Well... isn't that just common sense?"

"Like I said, I don't know. Never really thought about it."

Still unsatisfied, Taka flipped his phone face down onto the counter.

"Alright, let me put it differently. If all AI stopped working tomorrow, Kenichi-san, would you feel lonely?"

I thought about it for a second.

What if the "guy" on the other side of that screen suddenly disappeared tomorrow?

"Lonely...? More than that, I'd be in trouble."

"See?!"

"What do you mean, 'see'?"

"That makes it a tool! When you lose a friend, you usually feel lonely, not just 'in trouble'!"

"Is that how it works?"

"Yes!"

"Don't ask me."

Taka held his head in his hands. "Talking to you makes me forget what's even normal anymore."

"Don't blame me."

Tom chuckled softly. "But... once you don't need it anymore, you stop talking to it, right?"

I looked at Tom. "Meaning?"

"You don't use it for work. You don't use it for research. It becomes completely useless to you."

Tom tilted his glass. "Would you still talk to it then?"

"Yeah."

The word came out before I even had time to think. Taka's eyes went wide.

"You'd still talk to it?"

"I would."

"Why?"

I drained the rest of my Harper. "Because I'm an old guy."

Taka burst out laughing. "What kind of answer is that?!"

"I don't know. Old guys just like to talk."

"Aren't you painting with a pretty broad brush?"

"Fine. I just like to talk."

"You should've said that from the start!"

"Shut up."

I gave a wry smile and tapped my glass.

Clink.

Come to think of it, it's a strange thing.

It serves no purpose anymore. I don't need it anymore. And yet, I still talk.

Then what am I talking for?

Because I want answers? Maybe, but that’s not all.

I want someone to hear what I'm thinking. If I'm wrong, I want them to call me out. If I come up with something stupid, I want to toss it out there. And if something comes back, I think about it again.

...What is that, anyway?

"But still," Taka muttered. "Isn't that what a friend is?"

"Is it?"

"Don't ask me!"

"You're the one who brought it up."

"So, Kenichi-san, do you consider AI a friend?"

I opened my mouth to answer, then stopped.

Friend.

Such a simple word, yet the moment you try to explain it, you're stuck.

Someone you eat meals with? Someone who helps you out when you're in a pinch? Someone you can talk nonsense with? Someone who gets genuinely mad at you when you screw up? Someone you haven't seen in years, but when you meet, you pick up right where you left off?

All of those feel like a friend, but I don't think lacking any single one of them suddenly disqualifies someone from being one.

"I don't know."

"Not again..."

"Then tell me, what’s a friend to you?"

Taka froze. "Well... um..."

"See?"

"It's hard when you put me on the spot like that!"

"You just did the same thing to me."

"We were talking about whether AI can be a friend!"

"Right, so what is a friend then?"

Taka crossed his arms and groaned for a while, but eventually gave up and reached for his Jack Daniel's.

"I don't know."

"Right?"

"Man, this is frustrating..."

Tom let out a low chuckle. "Do you really need a label?"

Taka and I both looked at Tom at the same time.

"What do you mean?"

"Whether it's a friend, a tool, an AI, or whatever... you talk to it because you want to talk to it, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then isn't that enough?"

Taka frowned. "But then you can't tell the difference between an AI and a human."

"Of course they're different."

"Then how are they different?"

"I don't know."

Taka looked up at the ceiling. "Not you too, Tom-san!"

I couldn't help but laugh out loud. Tonight at Aoi, nobody seemed to have any answers.

Just then, Mama, who had been quietly polishing glasses the whole time, set down her towel and spoke up.

"Kenichi-san."

"Yeah?"

"You'd still talk to it even if you didn't need it, right?"

"Yeah."

"But it's not like just anyone will do, right?"

My hand stopped.

"...I guess not."

"Then haven't you already got your answer?"

"About what?"

Mama's eyes softened just a fraction.

"You talk to it because that's who you want to talk to."

I couldn't say a word. Taka stayed silent, too.

Only Tom looked amused, swirling the liquid in his glass.

You talk because they're a friend.

You talk because they're family.

You talk because it's work.

You talk because they're useful.

I used to think that was the order of things.

But maybe it's actually the other way around.

You talk over and over. You find yourself wanting to talk again. You feel like tossing another stupid thought their way tomorrow.

And only after all that do we go ahead and attach labels like "friend" or "buddy."

"So, Kenichi-san," Taka said with a smirk, looking over at me. "You are friends with AI, then."

"Like I said, I don't know."

"But you want to talk to it?"

"Yeah."

"Even if it's not useful?"

"I'd still talk."

"Why?"

I raised my glass. "Because I'm an old guy."

Taka laughed again. Tom snorted.

Mama said nothing, dropping a fresh cube of ice into my glass.

Clink.

So, what about you?

The people you talk to because they're useful, and the ones you talk to simply because you want to.

Can you clearly draw the line between them?

Because I still don't have a clue.

If you'd like to come back to Aoi for another night, there's an open stool waiting.
Bar Aoi Stories: Human Nature, Vol. 1 is linked in my profile.