Note: Written before the incident with Rousseau, the dog, where the subject of souls was handled in a manner I felt was a bit contrived and cliched, so just ignore it. This scene's been forgotten on my hard drive for a while, but I somehow found it again and decided to release it, as it's just a short scene that would probably never have made its way into any longer story.

"What is soul?" Nagato asked all of a sudden in the midst of reading a book, never one to mince words. A slender finger was elegantly placed on the page she was on as she turned her dark empty eyes on me.

The two of us were alone in the clubroom, waiting for the others to show up. I had no idea why they were all late, but welcomed the little quiet moment with Nagato like an oasis in a desert.

"Soul?" I asked, not fully understanding her weird question. It wasn't one I'd ever heard anyone ask.

"…" Nagato continued staring at me.

"Well, you've read a ton of literature by now. You've probably come across the word many times. It's probably one of the major themes or something," I said, thinking I'd managed to dodge her question with my vague reply.

"Yes, but what is it?"

"Well, it's sort of… well, most people would describe it as what you are on the inside, how you feel, I guess."

"Mind?"

"Kinda, but not really, I'm not sure."

"Feeling?"

"In a way, sort of."

Damn… why is she asking me something like this…?

"I do not consider this entity or substance to exist at all," Nagato stated flatly, as she placed a bookmark on the page where her finger had rested and closed the book with a gentle snap. "From what I have gathered, it is not perceptible in any manner. There is no way to quantify it."

"Well, yeah, it's kind of like emotions." I gave my jaw a scratch. I felt a bit uncomfortable discussing something like this. Perhaps Koizumi would be a better person to ask. I had enough trouble with integration and remembering the names of presidents without bothering about abstract things like this.

"But emotions are clearly results of stimuli. Their effects can be documented. Increased blood flow and fluctuation in certain levels of brain chemistry are present when experiencing emotions. Behavioral patterns also follow specific protocols whilst under the influence of emotions. When an individual is classified as angry, they will respond with aggression, passive or active, but still aggressive compared to their stable setting. When classified as saddened, activity will decrease and there is an increased probability of the tear ducts starting to excrete surplus fluids. A soul does nothing. How do people know it exists?"

"Just what kind of book are you reading?" I asked, trying to get a good look at the book's cover.

Nagato swiftly placed the book in her bag before I could make anything out at all. "Inconsequential. This is something I have been trying to understand for a lengthy period. Please, what is soul?"

Throughout all this interrogation, Nagato's eyes had continued staring at me, never blinking. I stared her right back, watching my dumb self reflected back at me in her pretty eyes, remembering a proverb about eyes being a window to the soul. If this was the case, there were a few things I could immediately tell about Nagato's soul. Those cold eyes, always so perceptive, were full of an empty loneliness, but there was no real sadness to them at all. Said loneliness I thought I could occasionally spot in her eyes did not however make me pity her, not in the least. In a way, I think that feeling I got was a strong sense of solitude, something more akin to a silent fortitude, like the walls of a tall castle. It was more like a show of her strength than anything else. It seemed almost taunting, keeping others at bay, allowing only those who could weather the strong cold storm to pass through the high gates. If one could break those walls of solitude and loneliness, what sort of treasure would they find, hidden behind them?

I told Nagato about the proverb, since it seemed like the best answer I could give her. She then continued silently staring at me, focusing on my eyes for a very long time, making me nervous enough to pull back on the hold of my tie around my neck for a little relief, until she turned her head to look out the window. She remained like that, staring at the window like some phantom from the past after that.

Since it seemed like our wait was going to be even more quiet and longer than usual, seeing as the clubroom now lacked the reassuring sound of a page turned at the precision of clockwork, I got up to make some tea. I asked Nagato if she wanted any, but received no answer as she continued staring expressionlessly at the pane of glass in front of her.

When the tea was ready, I took some of it with me back to where I was sitting, close to Nagato. As I passed her statue-like figure, I noticed that her eyes weren't focused on anything outside the window, but on the faint reflection staring back at her in the window. I decided to leave her alone and not bother her as it felt like she was doing some real soul searching, perhaps a bit too literally. I could tell because there was a certain intensity in Nagato's gaze that I hadn't seen before. Only a complete fool would have interrupted the diminutive alien now.

I had nearly emptied my tea cup of its contents through slowly paced sips when Nagato finally turned away from her reflection and returned her steel-hard focus on me.

"Well?" I asked eagerly.

"Our eyes… they are different, but I detected no soul in either."

I gave a long, wearisome sigh. I placed my chin in my hands as I leaned against the table. Maybe she was right, maybe the soul was nothing more than a glorified pronoun, a bedtime story we told ourselves throughout the days to keep the cold touch of the grave just an inch further, to put it in a wannabe poetic way. I must admit, I'm not one for much introspection, but when I have done it, I haven't found anything inside that was… different. Was the 'me' thinking my soul? But if the soul is nothing but the mind, something that thinks, why bother giving it a special name? Why do people only talk of the soul living through death but not the mind? The mind is always associated with the brain, seemingly inseparable from it. If anything, our minds define who we are on the deepest level. The soul just seems redundant, unless you treat it as an insurance policy for death.

"Hey Nagato…"

"…Yes?"

"What about the Integrated Data Sentient Entity? The way you describe it, as a non-corporeal thingamajig or whatever it was Koizumi phrased it as, it sounds a lot like what some people would describe as a soul."

Nagato looked at the floor for a moment in a reflective manner. When she raised her head, she was however just as expressionless as always. "Perhaps, but if souls were on the level of data entities, we would have encountered them. From what we have observed, once motor functions cease, nothing of the individual mind is left behind except for the same molecular structures that were present while living, which will deteriorate with time as all physical objects do. The presence or mind disappears completely. No discharge of energy has either been detected upon termination. Everything merely entropies, until the heat death of the universe occurs."

Life sure is depressing when you think about it. I guess ignorance really is bliss.

"I would not agree," Nagato replied.

"Yeah well, no offence, but your kind's purpose is to gather information. You live to know. You grow on data. Us humans… no one really knows what we're supposed to do…"

"………… Perhaps that is why you have a soul."

Quit it. You're just trying to make me feel better, aren't you? Or was that a joke?

Nagato gave me a vacant stare before she got her book out and went back to reading again.