Ch.277Work Record #039 – A Pointless Dinner Appointment (3)

I would normally try to dissuade someone who says they want to live at their company, but for Mr. Günter, I couldn’t think of anywhere more fitting than the top floor of Belwether’s executive building.

Belwether was what he created after losing everyone he could have loved. Perhaps it was a requiem, perhaps it was safety regulations written in blood, or perhaps it was himself.

A house always wears the face of its owner. My home belonged to versions of “me” that were once the same but now so different—the living room wearing Arthur-2’s face, the bedroom wearing mine. Yet they weren’t so different after all.

In this world, the only thing that wore Mr. Günter’s face was Belwether. So this was his home. The elevator stopped at the penthouse atop the executive building, a place that shouldn’t normally exist.

As I tried to enter with my luggage, Mr. Günter clicked his tongue and stopped me. He was, as always, a thoughtful adult.

“Leave your luggage by the elevator. It would be quite uncomfortable to spend even one night crossing paths with this old man. I’ve arranged a hotel for you, so I’ll send you there after dinner.”

“Ah, I was going to say it wouldn’t be bad if it were just me… but I have my Eve with me. You’ve heard about her, but this is your first time meeting her, and you know? You’re the chairman of a mega-corporation.”

Mr. Günter laughed at my reminder, as if it were something one could forget. He nodded without taking offense.

“You sometimes speak as if I might forget, Arthur. That’s practically a declaration of eternal estrangement. As long as corporate states exist and nationalists exist, no one will ever forget.”

“But I came here more to see Mr. Günter than to meet the chairman, you know?”

That was half courtesy. I did come here to meet Belwether’s chairman. I came to tell Belwether’s chairman that I wanted to eliminate one of Belwether’s partner companies.

Though he surely knew this fact, Mr. Günter responded with a hearty laugh, understanding that bringing my partner for dinner was a peace offering.

“You’re certainly a rare specimen that survived after that war ended. I wonder where such rare stock was hiding.”

“Maybe the post-war world isn’t just ruminating on that war… maybe it’s produced something productive and efficient?”

That wasn’t likely, but I spoke as if I believed it could be true. It’s all barren mire anyway. No action can be truly good. Nor can it be evil. Neither right nor wrong. Everything was just hazy.

Perhaps the man standing before me, Mr. Günter, created this paradigm. He might have designed and assembled all the components of a world he loved and its parts that he couldn’t love at all.

No. It’s all illusion and fantasy. The person standing before me was, at this moment, just an old man who had perfectly figured out how to recreate the kebab he loved when he lived in Berlin.

In the kitchen Mr. Günter showed me to, a large chunk of meat made of layered slices was slowly rotating on a skewer. I could see traces of kitchen modifications made just to grill this.

He watched the rotating meat with satisfaction. I could see the fat dripping from the lamb, and even the smell lacked the fishy odor typical of food substitutes. Perfect real food.

“No matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t get the taste I wanted… It was because I was only making enough for one person. This was ultimately a dish meant to be eaten by many people. Good thing I opened a shop in the apartment complex.”

That seemed to be why he had prepared such a large piece of meat in bulk today. Some dishes only taste right when made in large quantities. Loneliness weighs down a chef’s abilities like an anchor.

It wasn’t particularly fancy food for being invited by a mega-corporation chairman. But considering that he used perfectly real vegetables without any substitute food replacements, it was luxurious in its own way.

When the kebab plates were ready—just like the ones he always served at his shop—I carried them. Though I was a guest here too, only my Eve was treated as a guest by Mr. Günter. I didn’t mind.

“So, the food I barely managed to buy for 10 credits each was actually good enough for a mega-corporation chairman to personally serve to a freelancer he knows?”

My casual joke was met with one from Mr. Günter. It wasn’t that fancy a dish. It was just food with Mr. Günter’s memories, a pre-war memory he wanted to share with others.

Still, it felt much more like real food than some nameless gourmet cuisine. A plate of kebab without any trace of substitute food smell would taste intoxicatingly delicious. My mouth watered.

After three servings were laid on the table, Mr. Günter washed his hands once more at the sink, then turned and sighed as if it had been too long since someone sat at his table.

It was a human aspect. No matter how often animal growls came from his throat rather than human words, there was always a human side to him—perhaps an all too human side.

“To think I’d see this nostalgic scene again. Well, eat up. I can now boldly claim that I’ve perfectly recreated the taste of my memories, so eat thinking of it as a pre-war flavor. Go on.”

There was a hint of nervousness in his voice. Am I reading too much into it? I don’t think so. I could sense the courage that fathers summon when starting a conversation with their son’s partner.

But it was a lie. Mr. Günter couldn’t have been guessing. Getting partner company information from Belwether would make finding such details trivial.

My Eve answered without showing any sign of being flustered. Dignity makes a person worthy of dignity. It was the same now. She answered as if this were just comfortable dinner conversation. It was.

“Of course. When Arthur worked at Nightwatch, I was his senior by quite a bit. I really disliked the name Eve back then, and he would always call me ‘senior’ and act like he didn’t know my name.”

My Eve could now use these kinds of stories to break the ice. Mr. Günter’s heavy prosthetic hand patted my shoulder a couple of times. He was proud.

“A man who can’t give small touches of emotion can’t give big ones either. So, you don’t dislike the name Eve anymore, I take it? Or am I wrong?”

My Eve smiled slightly. It was the look of lowered hedgehog spines, a coolness she only showed when with me.

“I don’t dislike it at all. It might be my favorite name now? If it used to feel like sharing a name with over 110,000 people… now Eve is my name alone. At least to Arthur.”

Mr. Günter smiled warmly, uncharacteristically. He could have guessed my purpose from these words, but for now, he surrendered to this warm atmosphere.

“That’s good. Actually, I can’t give much advice about such things. When I first met my wife, I didn’t… you know, fall in love in some fateful way.”

I listened for a while as Mr. Günter reminisced, telling stories from a time before this phantom pain, this real pain that torments him now. Even before that war, love was love.

Perhaps the love that existed then was something purer than the love of this high-speed era. Love without murder dramas and cults dominating cities, without the parade of inhuman technology.

Mr. Günter’s wife… was the only person who could stand in front of the willful Mr. Günter—as willful then as now, or perhaps even more so—and speak harsh truths to him. It’s a common story of love where hatred dissolves.

But the world took even that common story from Mr. Günter’s hands. That’s why Mr. Günter took all stories from the world. He adamantly refused all attempts at reconciliation.

The more I listened to this sweet story that marked the beginning of a path to destruction, the more I could see the city landscape outside the penthouse, covered in smog just like LA.

Dinner time passed in an instant. Even through the time spent drinking coffee brought by household drones, we had so many things to talk about after such a long time. It was a dream from which we had to wake.

The person before me was both Mr. Günter and Belwether’s chairman, and I had come here to tell Belwether’s chairman that I was going to commit a possibly unforgivable wrong.

Without me saying I had more to discuss with Mr. Günter, my Eve said she couldn’t trust me with packing—knowing her personality—and headed first to the hotel Mr. Günter had reserved.

As people left the table, left the house one by one, Mr. Günter’s mania—perhaps the hatred I had inherited too—began to raise its head again. I could see a person once more filled with chilling vitality.

Nevertheless, we moved to the study and were civilized enough to share whiskey distilled before that war. The plain affection in his voice began to dry up as it echoed in my ears.

“You’ve done a good thing, Arthur. You’ve healed wounds that anyone who escaped Hollowwood Creek carries, and made sure they won’t live clinging to those wounds forever. But you’re not satisfied, are you?”

I finally let out an unpretentious laugh. The pre-war whiskey tasted like a memory I’d never experienced. It had a bouquet, but it was something I couldn’t identify.

“It’s not enough. Seriously not enough. My Eve has escaped her past memories, but Hollowwood Creek is still going strong… and once they finish their internal control, they’ll try to reclaim my Eve.”

“And so?”

“I’m planning to bring it down. Since it’s barely held together by a cult leader ruling through divine authority and fear, I think it can be easily toppled by just cutting off the leader’s head.”

Mr. Günter downed his drink and looked back at me. A shallow smile of disbelief flowed across his face.

“I hope you’re not thinking of taking a nuclear briefcase from the war era and detonating it in Hollowwood Creek, Metzgerhund. With how much I trust you. That can’t be such a stupid idea.”

“Of course not. Right now, Belwether is keeping Hollowwood Creek alive as a mega-corporation. I’m going to give Belwether a better alternative than Hollowwood Creek and make them abandon it.”

At my answer, Mr. Günter stopped pouring another drink and looked at me… his eyes shining as if finding this very interesting. Perhaps it was a method no one had tried before.

“A better alternative?”

“Panacea Meditech, of course.”

Mr. Günter clicked his tongue, shook his head a couple of times, and replied. A natural, sensible answer came back.

“You know that’s impossible.”

“It’s just one rock that needs to be moved, isn’t it? I’m honestly a bit puzzled why that rock is so stubbornly blocking the path.”

It wouldn’t be difficult to infer that I was talking about the mutant issue. Mr. Günter didn’t immediately get angry, but I felt like I needed to tread carefully from now on, as if walking on thin ice.

“Is that your goal, or just a passing process? If that’s your goal… it’ll be quite a difficult path. Probably an impossible one.”

“I’m attached to the world Mr. Günter created. I grew up as a person with parental love from Belwether, and I proved the saying that effort is rewarded in this city by climbing up from the bottom.”

I decided that Mr. Günter was not an enemy. I decided to believe that not everything was because of petty hatred. I decided to love what I wanted to love. I continued speaking without hostility.

“I want to hear that this beloved world, this beloved city, this beloved life isn’t experiencing a contradiction. And if it is experiencing a contradiction, I want to resolve it. What do you think?”

I had already rolled the dice with casual affection. I couldn’t see what number came up. But I believed I had rolled the best number I could.