Ch.266Kanun Company Work Log Page 053 – Neither Fleeting nor Glorious (3)

When starting something new, anxiety always comes first. It’s because I can’t trust my own beliefs, and I’m unsure if what I think I know is actually true.

To avoid being consumed by this anxiety, I had to keep thinking. Did I miss something or overlook anything this time? Probably not.

Was my judgment about his depression emotional? Probably not. If I had thought about my mother’s situation regarding my family, it might have been emotional, but call sign November was a complete stranger.

The only commonality was that he was a former nationalist, but that didn’t influence my judgment. I came to the corporate state before I even knew how different nationalists and corporate citizens were, and now I was just an ordinary corporate citizen.

So, it seems I’ve made a rational judgment, for now at least. That doesn’t mean I’ll continue making rational judgments. When meeting a potentially dangerous person without even wearing body armor, everything is a concern.

It’s somewhat fascinating how people stronger than me, who know more and get involved in more dangerous situations, can walk around with peace of mind. Riley took my hand.

She gives me an eye-smile, as if my startled reaction is familiar to her. I feel a bit… more at ease. I’ve been timid since childhood. Actually, I still am.

“Don’t worry too much, Noah! Kanun has solid backing now, right? Fitz & Morrison will be looking for partners, and the boogeyman will walk out of the bad child’s closet. Isn’t that right?”

I didn’t know exactly what happened when Mr. Arthur was guarding Ms. Polaris… someone I’d only seen online. But one new Hive employee told me something while trembling.

He said that one day, a gang from T Entertainment suddenly appeared in the ruins where he lived and started dominating the area. Then the boogeyman appeared and dismantled the gang members one by one.

He said the boogeyman fired a few shots, but it wasn’t necessary. When a gang member desperately threw a gas grenade, the boogeyman caught it, drank its contents, and sneered, asking if it was a MediTech product.

Above all… after the boogeyman left, when Belvedere’s cleaning team cleared the gang’s remains from the ruins, they found almost no bullets of the caliber the boogeyman used.

Apparently, the gang members suddenly went crazy and shot at each other. It was an unbelievable story, but if Mr. Arthur was the protagonist, it seemed believable.

The new Hive employee told the story as if it were a spiritual experience or a once-in-a-lifetime terror. He was so frightened by his own story that he physically trembled.

But precisely because he was such a frightening person, the idea that the boogeyman would come if something happened was reassuring. What is frightening is also reliable.

“That’s right. Thinking that Mr. Arthur will help us too is really reassuring. Oh, Mr. James is also very reassuring, but… the two of them have a different feel, don’t they?”

“Of course. Mr. James is a complete tank, right? He seems like he’d crash through the front with a bang and handle things, but Mr. Arthur… he’d somehow be walking from behind, dragging a criminal’s corpse, asking if everything’s okay.”

In that moment, both would appear as symbols of hope. That’s why replacing your entire body with cybernetics and loading it with weapons until there’s no space left doesn’t seem inhuman.

It’s because Mr. James was kind. He rescued the unfortunate women of Sin City who happened to be living hellish lives, and he accepted Kanun’s apology. He was incredibly kind.

When you see his face, the three lenses in each eye are a minor difference compared to such kindness. Even his massive three-meter Talos full-body prosthetic seems trivial.

After recounting how many people would come to help if Kanun faced trouble, I could feel more at ease. I could focus on the plan again. The goal is to find out.

Offering him a job at our company is one approach, but that’s a method to use when learning about the other mercenaries working with November.

So… I needed to steer the conversation somehow to say, “You’re depressed, right? The corporate state isn’t the utopia you thought it would be.” After that, I could speak with complete sincerity.

You’re still helping me, Mom. Not just your good side, but your sad and struggling side is helping me too. I kept these unreachable words only in my heart. We need to go for a drink.

As we prepared to go out with everyone from Kanun, Wilder tossed me a small bottle. It was a hangover remedy to take in advance. Wilder flexed his distinctive logistics work prosthetic hand and grinned.

“I know our amateur methods aren’t impressive, Noah. We just need to get him drunk enough to talk about himself, but we can’t get drunk first!”

Wilder was reliable in his own way. My hands weren’t shaking anymore. I became Kanun’s president because I was the person who worried the most.

It was a position I reluctantly accepted when Kanun employees said they could trust any plan if even Noah was comfortable with it… and perhaps this time is the same.

I release my anxiety and lean a bit more comfortably on the people who depend on me. At times like this, I feel more human. It’s not strange for Kanun to head to our destination in an armored van.

For small mercenary companies, it’s common to use mission-specific armored vans for transportation without having separate cars. Just parking it on the street is good advertising.

Today we’re heading to Hive again. I hope whoever gave November that strange turning point hasn’t had a negative influence this time. The concern about betrayed trust doesn’t fade.

Unlike Mr. Arthur, who even concealed his identity at Hive, Kanun was now enjoying its status as a mercenary company affiliated with a mega-corporation that received preferential treatment even at Hive.

When we enter the bar, we get good seats first, drinks come faster… it feels much better than when we were unaffiliated mercenaries. November was waiting in front of the bar.

I mustn’t appear suspicious or tense. After making sure my fingertips weren’t trembling, I extended my hand to him. Even during the brief handshake greeting, he wore an expression full of some kind of conviction.

“Oh, what’s this? I thought a mega-corp affiliate would be just another bunch of traitors, but this is only the second time I’ve received such hospitality in this city. How did I not recognize you guys were solid through and through?”

I should respond with some humor. So… with no time to choose my words carefully, I mumbled almost whatever came to mind. I needed some kind of relatable joke.

“Mercenaries all want to look different from others, so would they reveal their true selves? If you saw their true selves, any mercenary would just look like body armor.”

Even mercenaries who appear to have thrown away their lives and become addicted to the thrill of mercenary work, even arms dealers who look like they’ve just thrown a coat over a running shirt, wear body armor underneath.

Bullets are misfortune. You can tell where they were fired from, but not why they hit you. Misfortune punishes people more strictly and cruelly than anything else. That’s why everyone wears body armor.

November also burst into a short laugh. The implants on the back of his hand, probably standard nationalist military issue, clinked together as he grinned. There was nothing special about his appearance.

He wasn’t wearing clothes with logos or symbols, and the only distinctive feature was the components on the back of his hand. No, more precisely, the military implants all over his body defined him.

From my childhood experience living on federal government land… they didn’t want people to see this modified appearance of soldiers. Because it resembled the corporate state.

Ironically, the more they tried to hide it, the more soldiers longed for the corporate state where they wouldn’t need to completely conceal their implants before taking leave, as it felt natural to them.

Seeing that he hadn’t attached even a span of synthetic skin, I could assume he was a typical nationalist soldier. I naturally brought up the topic based on my prediction.

“Ah, this might be a bit rude, but… you’re from the nationalist side, right? I-it’s not anything else… it’s because we are too. My parents and relatives, we all came to the corporate state when I was young, but originally…”

When I was just stating my assumption, his expression began to harden coldly, making me stutter with nervousness, but his expression softened again when he realized I had a relatable reason.

“You were originally from the nationalist side? No, I really had no idea. Huh, you’ve adapted well, kid. Or…”

“We’re all kids. My friends, who are also Kanun employees, were all from the nationalist side. We were childhood friends.”

I tell him about us. If he’s experiencing a disconnect, the cause of that disconnect must be the feeling of being a nationalist suddenly dropped into the middle of the corporate state. I knew that feeling very well.

So, this wasn’t a ploy to find out more… it was quite sincere. I wanted to offer some comfort that someone in the same situation as him was living well in this city.

This comfort is definitely emotional. I’m being so sympathetic because I’m overlapping my mother’s image with his. Should I restrain myself? I pondered briefly, but what followed was the opposite of my expectation.

“Maybe I should have brought some comrades or someone with me? You all look so… what’s the word. Happy. Haven’t you ever felt that? How should I put it… that…”

Was it this simple? I knew this was a city where people who mock kindness need kindness, and even those who ignore goodwill desire it, but I didn’t know it would be this straightforward.

Perhaps someone who shares opinions so easily is also easily influenced by others. The world often operates more haphazardly than I think.

Now I decided to say what I knew. It was still emotional. But I decided it was fine as long as it worked.

“You feel like this isn’t the place you wanted, right? When you’re in nationalist territory, it seems like everything would be better in the corporate state, but when you actually come… the corporate state is just another cesspool where ordinary people live.”

I deliberately used stronger words than I normally would. He burst into laughter and nodded. He began to lament. It’s good that the pre-emptive hangover remedy will be unnecessary.

“Ha, really… yeah. The federal government bastards at least tried hard to make the world look like a place where people live, but here… it’s just, yeah. Just the bare face. That makes people depressed, you know? Extremely.”

He was quite an honest person. Being able to open up and talk to others is generally a good trait. It’s just that some people exploit such good traits.

Now I didn’t need to act. Now it was enough to speak as Noah Verami, who had seen once-nationalist family members adapting to the corporate state.

“Ah, I came over with my family… and they had the same reaction. It seems too inhuman here, and it’s depressing because it feels like no one else realizes it. Everyone felt that way.”

Here, November revealed his twisted part. He clearly showed where he found the outlet for his depression. It was strange. Abnormal. Something that shouldn’t be.

“It’s all because these damn mega-corporations are heartless. The corporate state just makes false advertisements about being meritocratic to lure people here, and treats people like consumables of the city…”

Still, the fortunate thing was that it was a common repertoire. This means we can somehow work with it, right? I refine my words in my head again. Kanun was an excellent counterexample. Probably.

“If this city was like that, and everyone’s life was that way, Kanun wouldn’t have wanted to buy Mr. Pedro a drink, right? How could the world be filled with only such people?”

“That’s why it’s worse. It’s a world not full of such people being turned into such a place, get it? Doesn’t that make you angry, ki… no. What’s your name?”

“Noah, Noah Verami. And, what do they even gain from it? The person who helped me most in my life was actually…”

I was about to say more, but November shook his head and cut me off. There’s no point in forcing my perspective on someone who believes differently. Riley also squeezed my hand as if telling me to stop.

“Enough. Enough. Talking about this with kids will just make me look like a nationalist bastard. Let’s just drink more, kid. I don’t want to develop bad feelings toward you. Okay?”

I need to pivot here. I briefly considered how to change direction, but ultimately decided to go with my original plan. Would the flow of conversation be natural? I’m not sure. Everything is anxiety.

“Then… I guess you wouldn’t consider joining our company, Kanun? For an unaffiliated mercenary, you were able to handle an eleven-member gang by yourself. That’s impressive.”

“Ah, that… *sigh* I wouldn’t have joined even if you weren’t a Fitz & Morrison affiliate. I work with some guys. They helped me when I was suffering from that depression you mentioned… they’re quite precious connections, man.”

They didn’t seem like such precious connections. It clearly seemed like an intention to use this combat-proficient nationalist ex-soldier mercenary. Am I being narrow-minded? Maybe. I was always the subject of my own doubt.

“Is that so? Either way… if they’re people who eased that depression, they sound like good people. Can I hear about what kind of people they are? I’d like to see if they’re better than our Kanun.”

This remark seemed to land well. Instead of his expression hardening, Pedro refilled his empty glass and grinned.

“Ah, I’m not the type to speak ill of someone buying me drinks, but still… definitely, in terms of talent. Yeah, in terms of talent. They are more skilled than you guys. They felt like comrades.”

Despite the content of his words, his tone was quite teasing, so it didn’t feel that bad. The fact that I was approaching the moment when I could get the information I needed completely erased any discomfort.