Ch.20Work Record #003 – Too Many Me’s (5)

“What, can you just change your personality settings and stuff? While you were wearing the helmet, you weren’t really yourself.”

7436 couldn’t take her eyes off me as I reported without my helmet, looking at me as if my behavior seemed strange to her. The distance between us had noticeably decreased, perhaps because I had kept my promise.

I grip both sides of the helmet with my hands and press down lightly. I squeeze until it looks like a crushed plastic plate. I wave the shattered helmet in front of 7436’s eyes.

“People become bolder when their faces aren’t visible. When you’re bold, you can do things you normally couldn’t. And there’s no better way to hide your face than to blend in among similar faces.”

At my words, 7436’s eyes sparkled slightly. Posters of Bella models like her were plastered all over the company building, but the Bellas in those posters all had uniformly focused eyes.

In that sense, such a human-like reaction was something beyond fascinating—it was almost overwhelming. Perhaps I’m becoming more sentimental now that she’s escaped her three-day death sentence.

After her eyes gleamed for a while, she spoke. It seems difficult to keep calling her 7436 now. Once she gets a new name, I feel like her title will change immediately.

“So… my face could be useful too, right? There are lots of Bellas. If I just keep my expression neutral, I’d be indistinguishable from other Bellas. Right? Who would be suspicious of a Bella?”

“If you hadn’t been involved in the hostage situation, people probably wouldn’t fear Bellas at all… but after what happened, I don’t think it’s possible for Bellas to avoid suspicion completely anymore.”

I wish I could have given 7436 only good news, but the world tends to be rather harsh. Good things don’t come unless you grab them first.

If by some chance the Half & Half incident gets resolved somehow, it would be fortunate for her. People forget easily. When they start ordering Bellas again, her face will become useful.

Valentina’s car arrived at the parking lot in the night scenery. I took off the Half & Half company jacket, stuffed it into a prepared garbage bag, and got out of the car. 7436 had to wait a moment. She couldn’t look like a Bella.

After 7436 changed into a tracksuit in the car and put on the helmet Valentina had given her, she got out. Then Valentina spoke in her characteristically drawling voice.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Boogeyman. People are saying a Bella tried to kill someone! But that doesn’t mean everyone’s going to be suspicious, right? Most people will just be like, ‘Oh, it’s fine now?’ and move on. Yeah.”

It was almost funny how Valentina, who had looked like she was about to slip back into her speed-obsessed madness in the car, returned to her usual self with that trailing speech once we got out.

We head up to the office. Despite taking the long way around, we seemed to be the ones arriving late. The president, who had been waiting in the reception room, approached me first and extended her left hand—her human hand. I shook it with my left hand as well.

“Even without Mr. Arthur, we could have found a new employee, and if you hadn’t gone there, nothing would have happened to us… but what does that matter? We found the best new employee we could, and we can say that employee willingly stepped up to save the company. It was the maximum efficiency we could have hoped for.”

People outside Belwether tend to interpret those words as merely “you did well within acceptable parameters,” but that’s not the case at all. Those words were the highest praise a person from Belwether Company could give.

She then approached 7436. A mercenary sells trust, not marksmanship or infiltration skills. 7436 had kept her trust. Night Watch must keep its trust as well.

“Bella 7436, you may choose your own new name. Night Watch will hire you as an external collaborator and provide you with an identity. Afterward, we will declare the contract terminated to set you free. Night Watch is one of Belwether’s official partners, so our endorsement will ensure you won’t be viewed with suspicion.”

“Choose your own new name.” I couldn’t even begin to imagine how long 7436 had waited to hear those words. Hiring her as an external collaborator meant that if she wanted to leave Night Watch, she would be free to do so.

“Bola will recommend a modifier, and you can bill the costs to Mr. Enzo. If you wish to become a Night Watch employee, I’m willing to provide training personally. What do you think?”

As Bella had said, she did have a face optimized for infiltration. If I could strike from behind, Bella could walk right through the front door wearing nothing but a slip.

“For now, I want to think about it more! I think I could be useful. Seeing this guy receive thanks makes me feel proud somehow. I want to prove my worth. But on the other hand, I also want to be normal. I was dragged around by those guys with guns at Half & Half, and I don’t want to become one of them.”

She surely understands the difference between Night Watch and Half & Half. But a gun is a gun no matter who holds it, and a muzzle is a muzzle no matter who points it. Perhaps there is no difference.

I could tell that Bella 7436 had bought her freedom from President Yoon’s subsequent words. She had bought her freedom, and respect came bundled with that freedom.

“Then I’ll give you plenty of time. The urgent matter has been resolved anyway. If there are no employees who might have problems with their duties, we will proceed normally with the 8 o’clock public request.”

Although she said we would proceed normally, today’s request, personally selected by the president, was a simple patrol assistance assignment.

True to the name “assistance,” all we had to do was ride in a van with the Belwether City Mobile Unit, patrol LA until dawn, and return. Usually, other companies were assigned to jobs requiring direct intervention.

This isn’t typically a job that would go to a company ranked in the 40s in priority bidding. Such requests are usually taken by new companies wanting to learn patrol routes or basic van operations.

So it was somewhat like a vacation. It was practically like taking a break, but unlike an actual break, we would earn at least some money—perhaps the best kind of rest.

After finishing work and taking a short nap in the on-call room, I planned not to sleep at all that day. Most of the other employees who had gathered in the office to sleep since morning felt the same way.

Bola took Valentina out for drinks, and Mr. Enzo and the president left work early. Kay practically fled home, so the only ones who returned to the office were Ms. Eve, who came to get her bike, and me.

It seems like I’m often left alone with Ms. Eve. Not wanting to sit alone in the on-call room until sunrise and then log into virtual reality for training, I called out to her as she was about to go down the stairs.

“Ah, um, Senior!”

Calling someone I mentally referred to as “Ms. Eve” as “Senior” out loud wasn’t such a simple task. She turned her head. Again, her gaze met mine.

“What is it, Arthur?”

Her voice had regained its coldness. I couldn’t quite understand why. I had developed at least a shallow understanding of the others, but Ms. Eve remained unpredictable.

Sometimes I wondered if she had closed herself off because of her memories from Hollowwood Creek, but she was a person who was honest with her concerns and understanding. There were closed parts of her, but they weren’t visible.

“I was thinking we could have a drink too. I don’t want to sit in the on-call room like a guard dog while everyone else is out relaxing.”

Nevertheless, Ms. Eve’s voice remained cold as she began to speak. After a brief silence in the middle, her answer changed. Her voice became somewhat warmer.

“Mia…. Hmm. Mmm…. This is difficult. Alright. Let’s have a drink. I’ll pay. Arthur, you haven’t even received your salary yet. I don’t want to covet a junior’s emergency funds.”

Since 7436 was still sleeping on the office sofa covered with a blanket, we secured the office door and went out together to breathe the dawn air. The air was somewhat less acrid in the early morning.

I didn’t know whether the moisture in the air somewhat precipitated the smog, or if the daytime sunlight worsened it. Ms. Eve, who had bought two cans of beer from a nearby convenience store, handed one to me.

She took a sip first. The cheap canned beer must have been quite carbonated, as she coughed a little before continuing in her measured voice. It seemed she had bought the wrong beer.

“Ah, sorry. I thought it was the beer we had last time.”

The beer she had bought was completely different from the brand we had drunk after handling the Osgard case. The only similarity was the color of the packaging.

“That one was less harsh on the throat. I knew you weren’t just cold and meticulous… but this is a bit unexpected.”

Her gaze sharpened slightly. “Prim” might be a better way to describe it. She took another careful sip and then spoke.

“I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty, but the only alcohol available to drink in Hollowwood Creek was the wine they served at communion. That’s why I don’t drink wine, and why I’m foolishly unable to distinguish between alcohols.”

The mention of Hollowwood Creek pricked at my slight guilt—the shallow guilt of having eavesdropped on some of her personal story due to someone’s persuasive words.

“It seems like you’re definitely saying it to make me feel guilty…”

She let out a slight laugh at my somewhat stunned response. I had seen her smile slightly by raising the corners of her mouth a couple of times, but this was the first time I’d heard her laugh.

“Pfft, sorry. I was being a bit of a bitch. Thanks for lightening the mood, Arthur. I have one more thing to say, if you’ll listen? It’s something you can get angry about.”

“Anything. I’m not really a person who gets angry easily.”

She immediately responded to my answer without even half a second’s delay. It was as if she had already anticipated my response.

“That’s what makes it harder to say. Because I know you won’t get angry.”

If she were now to say she was going to share a personal story and then tell more about Hollowwood Creek, I would feel a pang of guilt… but fortunately, it wasn’t what I expected.

“I was going to be angry with you. I was planning to interrogate you about whether you really had to kill the security team that came to retrieve 7436. I just… I don’t like seeing people die. To the point where I wanted to put a motorcycle helmet on a Post-Human Type IV with incomparably greater durability than humans. Remember?”

Thinking about the look Ms. Eve had given me last time still sent a chill down my spine. If she had been a mutant, that look would surely have killed me a second time.

Still, she hadn’t gotten angry. She didn’t even coldly distance herself, make excuses with apologies, and head down to the parking lot—instead, she was drinking beer with me.

She must have known that everything I did was for Night Watch, which naturally included her. It was admirable if she had rationally suppressed her allergic emotional reaction.

“But you didn’t, so it doesn’t matter to me.”

When I responded as if it were perfectly natural, she shook her head. What she said next actually probed at my personal story.

“There are things where even thinking about them is a sin, Arthur. I was wrong. I wasn’t saying it’s okay; I was asking for forgiveness…”

The scene from the day I was expelled from Belwether overlapped in my mind. I briefly clenched my teeth, remembering the branch manager who had called it a matter of mindset when I had grasped the only hope for survival while I was dying.

But the person before me wasn’t that branch manager. I drew a strict line while understanding a little more. She seemed to be overlapping some other situation in her mind, just as I was.

I don’t know that scenery. All I can see is the street of Los Angeles where even the streetlights spread a whitish haze of light through the smog precipitated by moisture, like cannabis smoke.

“This is an important issue for me too. Thoughts themselves are not sins. If something that started in your head came out of your mouth, that might be different, but I can’t say anything about words that rose and faded in your mind. If that’s wrong, then I have something to say too.”

She didn’t push the idea that thoughts alone could be sins. Instead, she asked with a somewhat curious expression. The beer was still too carbonated for her to get used to.

Her expression was curious but anxious. She was worried about something. I couldn’t tell what it was. But I could immediately tell how anxious she was.

Her prosthetic hand holding the beer can started trembling slightly, forcing her to switch the can to her other hand and hide the shaking one.

“What is it? You can tell me. I… don’t know. Unless you’ve been investigating my background, you probably don’t know that much.”

Thankfully, I’m not the type of person who thoroughly investigates each colleague before working with them. Such people would probably all be from the information processing teams of major corporations.

I lightly tapped my earlobe with the tip of my index finger. Rather than pointing to my earlobe, I was specifically indicating the auditory organ of the Post-Human Type IV. She still looked confused.

“I heard everything you said to 7436 from beyond the office wall. I was just curious why you asked everyone to leave.”

I didn’t mention that I had heard something that might have been said by Mr. Enzo or might have been something I misheard. If I had restrained myself after hearing that, it would have been something I never heard.

“If you just happened to hear something, that wouldn’t be wrong, but Post-Human Type IVs have a function to reduce sensory input to prepare for impacts. I was going to keep it on… but I turned it off. Yes. Since eavesdropping is a greater wrong than just thinking something, I guess now I should be the one asking for forgiveness, right?”

“Wait, are you saying this now because you think I’ll forgive you?”

Her tone wasn’t accusatory. Rather, it was filled with bewilderment. Her voice, unable to grasp my intentions, sounded very unlike her. I shook my head firmly.

“I only plan that meticulously during work hours. I just wanted to say that I’m not such a wonderfully good person that I would judge someone guilty or innocent for having a single thought. I’ve done wrong too, and it feels uncomfortable to just accept apologies and be asked for forgiveness.”

As I said this, I lightly poked the area where my heart would be a couple of times. My heartbeat was only about once every four seconds, so my heart didn’t beat even once during the two pokes.

She seemed unable to find a response, lowering her eyes for a moment. A minute or so of silence followed. As dawn was ending, I briefly thought that the sun would rise soon.

Eventually, Ms. Eve continued from where I had eavesdropped. This was a part that even 7436 wouldn’t have heard.

“Even after leaving Hollowwood Creek, there were so many ‘me’s around me. It was still the same. I thought everyone was the same. But… you are definitely someone else, Arthur. Alright. I forgive you. Shall we toast?”

“Even though I still don’t think thoughts are sins… if that’s what you want, I’ll forgive you too. Let’s toast.”

The beer cans collided with a dull sound. It wasn’t refreshing, but it made a sound nonetheless. And Ms. Eve no longer wore an anxious expression.