Ch.260Work Record No. 037 – Keep Your Feet on the Ground but Fill Your Eyes with Stars (2)

Attaching the voice module itself was simple. Since they were the same specifications, all I had to do was remove the current voice module and attach the new one.

Should I be impressed that this simple replacement enables me to fire ear-splitting ultrasonic waves and cringe-inducing infrasonic waves with a range of twenty meters? I suppose that much is worth mentioning.

I transfer all the voice data stored in the previous module to the Calliope module. It was a name that inherited the arrogance of those war days, but my mockery was sufficiently expressed by giving the Panacea rifle a new name.

A message appears on the computing assistant indicating that a new device has been detected, and soon the Calliope module stabilizes. I test my voice, but no sonic weapon erupts. It’s definitely stabilized.

Belatedly, I follow Noah into the Hive along with Simon. I was worried he might greet me as a freelancer again, but this time there was a different employee behind the scanner.

I pass through the scanner naturally, and apparently being recognized as an ordinary mercenary, I’m allowed inside without any special remarks. Sometimes even freelancers don’t want to be freelancers.

The Hive was bustling. Most mercenaries treat Wednesday and Thursday as their weekend. It was only natural that there would be too much work on weekends and early weekdays. The table Noah had secured in advance was probably the last one available.

I casually take a seat at the table already stacked with boxes of beer. Riley, sitting snugly next to Noah, takes out a bottle and offers it to me, but I deliberately decline with a smile to Noah. Again, I hear groaning.

Only then do I burst into laughter and grab a beer. It might be synthetic beer, but in LA where temperatures have already reached 27 degrees by the end of February, as long as it’s cold, that’s all that matters.

Soon it will rain almost every day. On relatively good days, it might just drizzle a bit, but when it really pours, it will flood the entire world.

The Bible, which I started reading to understand Hollowed Creek’s weapons, contained God’s promise not to judge humanity with water again. Perhaps humans were the first to break that promise because of that war.

Still, there’s no problem. Even if He really tried to judge with water, people wouldn’t die from drowning in rain. We always damage ourselves, but we don’t let anything other than ourselves destroy us.

While engaging in pointless conversation with Noah’s group, dedicating only half my attention to it, I start these meaningless thoughts when a familiar figure catches my eye. It’s the woman I saw when escorting Polaris.

I believe she was from N-Enter’s Fragment Collection Department. They extract people’s memories to use as material for virtual reality modeled after the pre-war world. She still had an expressionless face.

No, not completely expressionless. She looked somewhat disappointed. The bartender was also sighing and looking around. I hear what sounds like an apologetic voice.

“Well, it’s not like we can create seats out of thin air… I can’t just hand you a glass and tell you to stand in the middle of the bar. It’s nothing special anyway, so perhaps you could try making it according to the recipe…”

She was a woman with a cool appearance. She’s still wearing the Nature & Nature Entertainment uniform. Her silver-gray hair reaches down to her waist, and her bright yellow eyes seem quite determined.

Contrary to her appearance, which suggested she wouldn’t be stubborn and would leave, she spoke rather persistently.

“No. I must drink it here, even if I have to stand in the middle of the bar. The signature product of the Hive, which claims to be a haven for Los Angeles mercenaries, only has meaning if consumed at the Hive.”

Perhaps this is a natural attitude for an employee of a mega-corporation that specializes in tourism. Coincidentally, there was an extra chair on the outside of our table. I nod to Noah.

“Hey, there seems to be someone in trouble… Any objections to sharing our table? She looks like a corporate employee on a business trip who’s just heard there are no seats available at the Hive she stopped by on her way back.”

Noah finally notices the company employee from the Fragment Collection Department. Seeing her determined attitude, he nods slightly. Simon was grinning as if about to say something mischievous, so I turned on the noise canceller.

“Well, our freelancer lord. Is her appearance to your taste?”

I counter with my own joke. We always expect to see someone’s embarrassed face.

“Just by looks, she’s more Wilderf’s type. Isn’t that right, Wilderf?”

“Yes, uh, what? No, I… or is it? Maybe it is.”

After naturally deflecting the joke aimed at me and passing it to him, I burst into laughter and stand up. I turn off the noise cancellation space and head in her direction.

Since my footsteps are silent, when I was almost upon her, I lightly tapped the floor with the tip of my sneaker to make her turn around. A cold expression, almost gloomy, turns toward me.

Now it’s time for identification. After naturally nodding a greeting to the bartender I already knew, I showed her my mercenary license with some parts concealed. Her artificial eyes begin scanning multiple screens.

She’s trying to determine if I’m someone she’s met before. I slightly reveal my real identity, which I had restricted access to. The screens in her artificial eyes close, and she salutes me with a formal stance.

Apparently, a Four-Corp certified freelancer is of high enough rank to receive salutes from mega-corporation employees encountered in passing. I just can’t get used to this concept of “rank.” I’m just Arthur Murphy.

I acknowledge her salute with a relaxed Belwether-style three-finger salute and speak to the bartender. It’s enjoyable to be someone who appears out of nowhere to solve someone’s problem.

“We happen to have an extra chair. She seems to want to enjoy not just the taste of the drink but also the Hive atmosphere, so if it’s okay with you, could we invite her to join us? Would that be alright?”

“Well, if you’ve agreed among yourselves, there’s no problem. Free…”

I shake my head briefly, and he swallows the word he was about to utter. I nod in gratitude, then receive a bottle of Hive’s special honey whiskey and a glass containing ice and even fake honeycomb.

She quietly follows me and sits in the empty seat across from me. When I offer her the bottle and glass, she opens the glass with practiced skill and pours the drink. She lifts the glass and first inhales the aroma.

Then she downs the strong whiskey in one go. Considering what she said after emptying the glass, drinking it straight was within an understandable range.

“This is terrible. It has no taste at all. There’s too much synthetic honey, and the fake honeycomb turns mushy when it touches the alcohol… The warm flavor doesn’t go with ice at all.”

The Canun employees who seemed to be waiting for her review… and most loudly Noah, showed incredulous reactions. As if weighed down by his position as the boss, he asked as their representative.

“Did you, um, come without reading any reviews? You seem like someone who would be extremely thorough…”

“I read them but ignored them. A Nature & Nature employee cannot rely on mere rumors to handle business. Everything must be experienced firsthand, and we must enable others to experience things directly.”

She still appeared to be someone with firm convictions. After downing a bottle of beer like water, or almost like breathing, I asked her something I’d wanted to ask since our first meeting but couldn’t.

“You have a strong vision. But… you do know that mercenaries can’t easily speak well of Nature & Nature, right? Collecting fragments. That’s fine. Reconstructing the old world. That’s fine too. But…”

She seems eager to interrupt me. I naturally extend my sentence to make it easy for her to cut in, and she naturally interrupts me.

“That’s not what it means. Absolutely not. Nature & Nature Entertainment started with that slogan because it originated from a massive project to restore the pre-war world to the net.”

Mercenaries cannot look kindly upon Nature & Nature’s slogan. It could be considered her slip of the tongue. Unlike her usual stoic demeanor, she let out a long sigh and nodded.

“Sigh. Yes. From the human resources team’s perspective, that’s not entirely wrong. It was meant to say ‘don’t lose hope and never give up,’ but those guys are using it to mean ‘fight to the death,’ so…”

No one is purely evil, and no one is purely righteous. Good intentions are easily corrupted, and people often use only the shell of words rather than their true meaning.

Cultural lag in corporate culture is… easily found. Like the difference between Belwether’s talk of kind efficiency and Walter’s “cold by his standards” efficiency.

Walter was just being a bit of a jerk, but in reality, there are many reasonable opinions about reducing excessively bloated welfare to optimize efficiency to some extent.

As the conversation seemed to be getting heavy, instead of refilling her glass, I pulled out a beer from the box and handed it to her. With a brief nod, she downs an entire bottle of beer instead of sighing.

Among the cold people in this city, not many are cold all the way to their core. She was just businesslike, and my Eve was just self-protective.

She seemed to find her own behavior amusing and bowed her head toward us. She probably thinks she brought up a dark topic despite being invited to join us.

“I’ve drifted into a dark conversation. Anyway, I’m someone who envies the life of mercenaries. Causes can guide people, but they can also wear them out. As for your goals…”

Noah’s is revenge for his mother, Simon’s is revenge for his little sister. The rest of the kids are helping avenge a friend they were close with. Ironically, even my purpose was revenge against Creek for making my Eve unhappy.

Who knew this would be a heavy topic too. While Noah was looking at me as if wondering what to do, I decided to naturally make something up. Sometimes deception can be kinder than truth.

“It’s about becoming someone who can show up to a Belwether security team meeting room in shorts and slippers when called. If I could be that successful, what more could I ask for?”

There’s plenty more to ask for. My words must have been completely unexpected, as Manager Agnes closed her eyes slightly and let out a hollow laugh.

“When I first saw you, I thought you were three hundred times more serious than that… But then again, what other path is there besides moving up? My goal is to complete the pre-war world. Like everyone else.”

The phrase “like everyone else” didn’t sound particularly refreshing. She’s experiencing frustration. Is this how Mr. Gunter felt when he saw me? I watched her for a moment as she listened to Noah’s dream.

Noah’s dream, amusingly, or impressively, or perhaps both, was to start a family, retire from mercenary life, and then create training programs. A stable life is a good thing.

But sometimes, for some people, stability alone isn’t enough. Seeing her eyes taking in Canun’s appearance as if envying it, I spoke leisurely. It felt like something I needed to say.

“You seem to be experiencing frustration, Manager Agnes. It seems like there are quite a few things you want to do but can’t these days. Enough to be tempted by Polaris’s offer to tour the hospital together.”

She starts to become defensive like I was back then, but hearing what follows, she lowers the spines she was about to raise. After thinking for a moment, she tries to laugh it off.

“What? Harassment… no, that’s not it. Whether it’s insight or something obvious, it’s probably the latter. Still, I’m currently following the right cause, so I’m finding my own fulfillment in that. Really.”

“Right or wrong isn’t important, is it? What matters is whether you want to do it or not.”

She tries to laugh it off again with an awkward smile. It felt like looking at myself in a mirror.

“What person in the world gets to do everything they want? You’d have to be at least a chairman of a mega-corporation for that.”

“Conversely, someone who can’t do anything they want would rightly be called a slave. I can’t read minds, so I don’t know what you want. It would be rude to ask. However…”

This time I decide to faithfully follow Mr. Gunter’s words. With a feeling of wanting to share with others the words that gave me direction, I continued with a smile. It was immensely enjoyable.

“I can ask about the reason, right? If you can’t do what you really want, what’s the reason? Is it something you shouldn’t do? Did others tell you not to? It might be something bad or wrong. Which is it?”

She bit her lip. Her cold, businesslike demeanor now seemed filled with groundless anxiety that I might be reading her mind. It’s the emotion I felt toward Mr. Gunter.

It felt like he might have noticed that I was thinking about Eve in my mind. It seemed like he might have noticed the flame of retribution I was nurturing. I was simply overwhelmed by his presence.

“So, yes. It’s closer to others telling me not to… They asked why I would leave a stable job for a challenge. What it is, honestly, it’s embarrassing… what do you think?”

She whispered a nine-letter word with just her lips: “Boogeyman.” The authority I held over her was that of a Four-Corp certified freelancer. Naturally much stronger than the authority of a kebab shop owner.

“I’m the type who thinks it’s enough if it’s enjoyable. Slaves serve, people enjoy. Machines operate, people enjoy the results. Only enjoyment makes people human.”

Am I enjoying myself? Yes, I am. Teasing Noah Verami, Canun’s rehabilitation, embracing my Eve, and working every moment to kill Hollowed Creek.

Manager Agnes seemed about to say something incredulous, so I deliberately preempted her. Is there a sound of a beast howling in my voice? I can’t tell.

“This isn’t idealistic talk. If I hadn’t pursued enjoyment, what would have elevated a rookie mercenary with no experience to the position of a Four-Corp certified freelancer in just half a year? You should do that too.”

I try hard to pass on to her that refreshing sense of momentum that Mr. Gunter gave me. I was definitely enjoying myself now.

“Dreams abandoned because you’re afraid to give up a merely stable life will surely remain as resentment. Don’t let that resentment become a ghost that clings to your ankles. It must be quite a terrible feeling.”