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The infamous Ship of Theseus.
A philosophical argument, on if this battered ship's planks were to rot, and eventually replaced one by one, would it still be the ship Theseus rode out on his adventures? None of the planks have experienced that journey, yet they still exist and are acknowledged as a part of this vessel- because the ship looks the same, right? But what about the memories running along the grooves of deck and embedded in to the wood's spirals? The new pieces don't know about that- how could it? It's only a replacement for the wood that isn't there anymore. But you can't just throw away those original planks- they're a separate kind of thing now, right? Can the new ship just be considered as a modified version of the original? Then really what's the whole point of preserving it in the first place?
...
What would Theseus think?
After learning about it in class one day, Yoshiki only ever thought of this convoluted thought experiment as an unnecessary headache- like really, who cares? If the ship looks the same and works the same as the original ship, all's well right?
What irony.
Some say that the ship would be completely a new ship once all of the original planks are gone, that it would now be a new, separate object.
"Well, two of them existed at one point right? They'd have to be different!"
Others would argue that it's not about the material; it's about the ship's function and how fundamentally, it represents the same identity, its continuous existence.
"We're changing cells all the time- are we different?"
"What's so different about living or dying? You just change shape a little, that's all."
In reality, away from Yoshiki's internal crises, no one except for Asako has really noticed anything strange, and from the perspective of everyone else, Hikaru is the same rowdy teenager as always.
Of course- most Athenians probably wouldn't even notice any change on the boat.
But Theseus would notice.
"Did you like him?"
Oh.
Yoshiki turned to "Hikaru." He looked the same as before- no, if you looked hard enough, it was there- the slow erasure of the original Hikaru.
It's the tiny things- Hikaru used to have a tiny little scar on his chin from when he fell face first and cut it on the pavement. Now, his skin was smooth, a pale surface without a single blemish. He used to have a dark spot on his elbow from a scab he always picked at. All of these details, were being removed. Replaced by something new, yet still somehow staying the same.
Looking at his neck, his collarbones and chest, Yoshiki felt like it was different from before. While he used to get red, flustered from feeling the warmth radiating from Hikaru's skin, it was different now. He would always know, no matter how hard he tried, he would always know it isn't the same Hikaru. Something fundamentally different.
He couldn't bring himself to love this new Hikaru the same way he loved the original Hikaru. His Hikaru.
But maybe that was okay.
Maybe Theseus would just be happy to have a functioning ship.