Ch.335The Supporting Character’s Story – The Salvation of Francis Pandy

I’ve done all I could. Or rather, I’ve muttered that kind of self-consolation about a million times. No matter how many times I say it, a bitter taste rises in my mouth.

Yeah, fucking hell. While she’s somehow finding her own corner to survive and even reaching out to the person who killed her, I’m giving up on everything and burying myself here, thinking it’ll make us both feel better.

I knew it was nonsense, but even acknowledging that didn’t reveal any escape route today beyond a bottle of Farmers brand flavored synthetic ethanol—in simpler terms, cheap booze.

Work… well, it didn’t matter if I stayed in this state. The small company I now worked for just wanted to have a former Belwether employee sitting around with the title of “security team,” not because they had any real security issues.

At least I knew it looked pathetic to hide in the bathroom clutching a bottle when the company’s image was at stake, but I didn’t particularly feel like changing anything. This was enough.

For someone who got obsessed with a woman and caused the death of a colleague—a diligent one at that—this is enough, more than enough, absolutely enough. I think I was beginning to understand why fanatics enjoy self-mortification. Sincerely.

Drunk, my thoughts fragment, and these nonsensical ideas float to the surface of my intoxicated consciousness before dissolving again. They say enjoying this feeling means your nervous system is getting fucked up.

Is it that bad? I slowly look down at my hands. They weren’t shaking. I also have a hangover remedy in the injector, so there shouldn’t be a problem. It does strain the liver, but… if it breaks down, I can just replace it.

But lately, I’ve had a nuisance. This time too, as I was looking up at the ceiling, watching the light ripple along with my drunken mind, I heard something like a heavy collision.

Raiding the locker room again. Only when I heard what sounded like someone trying to break the lock on my bathroom stall did I slowly open the door. It’s this woman again.

Some office worker whose name I didn’t know. Helen, was it? Something similar. A woman with short black hair and dark brown eyes was clearly holding a shock baton that had been in the security team’s locker room.

A figure that could sue Half & Half Company. Everyone whispered that anyone who saw her body would think of the Bella model, but her face was definitely different from the Bella model.

Who knows. Maybe a self-aware Bella escaped, got her face completely redone, and ended up here. Feeling thoughts rise and sink across my drunken mind again, I face her with a smirk.

“I think I told you, *hic*, not to raid the security team’s locker room. Even as a one-person security team, I’m still in charge of company security. Even if it’s just full of cheap equipment… Anyway! That’s not what it’s for.”

“Should I just leave someone like Mr. Francis alone, who just drinks all day while collecting a salary? Besides, I’m not just a one-person security team anymore. I spoke directly to the CEO and got reassigned here.”

This woman… acted like she couldn’t leave a person in this state. She could have just let it slide, or even if not, she could have said it was fine since nothing was happening… but she didn’t.

Could I be impressed? A little. I wouldn’t outright deny it, but right now it was just annoying. As I was about to wave her off dismissively, she grabbed my collar and pulled me toward her.

Her eyes seemed to blaze. It’s just the alcohol. After smelling the alcohol on me, she wrinkled her face and spoke as if she might bite the bottle in my hand.

“And stop acting like this is the gutter of your life. To someone from Belwether like you, this might look like a sewer, but… for someone like me, just sitting here is a dream.”

Something inside me churned at those words. She thought I was holed up here because I was half-assing everything. I had been trying too. Trying not to put a gun in my mouth.

I was trying to show that someone who once drove me to the brink of death wasn’t running away through death, and I just needed a minimal job for that.

I don’t know why her words almost made something burst out. It was my fault, and I was the one who couldn’t even take proper responsibility… and it was myself who was dissatisfied with myself.

I had dreamed of a better life than this. I just wanted to wear a Belwether security uniform, meet that woman at the visitor center, and hear her say I looked cool. Somehow work had become like this with no way to turn back.

The indignation that was about to burst out subsided, and I ended up sneering. I knew that mockery was the worst response, but my drunken mind chose the easiest path, not the right one.

“Then dream bigger, Helen. Don’t call being stuck in this tiny-ass company a dream. I want to die, but running away beyond a bullet would be such a fucking cowardly move, so I’m just stuck here.”

But it seems I scratched something in her with those words. When I blocked her wrist as she swung the shock baton heavily at me, she gritted her teeth and spoke.

Lack of understanding easily becomes lack of communication. And people… they try to communicate once or twice, but after that, they completely give up. I was hoping Helen would give up on me too.

But Helen lacked that kind of interpersonal finesse. She just kept pushing forward directly. She constantly repeated my words and acted like she wanted to fight endlessly.

“Being stuck in this tiny-ass company is a dream? Don’t make me laugh, Francis Pandy. My dream was just to live like a human being. Do you know what people whisper about me?”

“Well, nothing good. Stubborn. Lacks tact. Besides that… that you look like Bella? I don’t care about such trivial—”

“Trivial my ass, it’s insight. I am Bella. Something went wrong in the cultivation process, so I wasn’t born an idiot, and I escaped after living with those stupid idiots—that Bella.”

She thrust a virtual screen in front of my face. It showed a short internet news article about a Bella who had staged a hostage situation at Half & Half’s clone viewing house. It was something I remembered.

Still, for something like this, wouldn’t they just easily kill a Bella and be done with it? It wasn’t something I sincerely wanted to believe, but her words did carry some weight.

“So this place, where I can at least live like a human, is my dream. Got it? To you, it might be a sewer you fell into after rolling out of Belwether…”

“Don’t talk nonsense either. I wasn’t kicked out of Belwether. I left on my own. I was hoping they’d kick me out, but they didn’t… so I left on my own, and since I couldn’t die, I just ended up here.”

She looked at me as if my words were incomprehensible. Belwether is a dream. Belwether is an ideal. Efficiency was religion, and Belwether was the pope in vestments.

“You seem out of your mind from the alcohol, but you’re saying you left Belwether and came here? That doesn’t make any—”

“Fuck, yes. It doesn’t make sense. When Jaina said she wanted to meet me, I trotted over to the visitor center, only to be paralyzed by the mutant she brought and couldn’t do anything during the terror attack…”

I sent her an article about the Jaina terror attack at Belwether. “Jaina terror attack” wasn’t the accurate name. I heard it was one of the groundwork for the Belwether coup. Not important to us.

And while I was doing that stupid thing, six Shepherds, whom I had thought were just kids, threw themselves in to save our department. I spewed out that terrible self-loathing in my words.

“I made a decent junior colleague, one who actually smelled human, get torn to death, so I couldn’t stay there and drifted around until I ended up here. Yeah, fuck. I’ve given up. But I have reasons…”

“So if there’s another security failure at this company and someone else dies, will you go somewhere even worse and shoot up drugs instead of alcohol? Or will you actually try something? Get your mind—”

At that moment, the bathroom door burst open as if someone had kicked it. A bald man appeared. A gang member. My stimulated mind was rapidly pouring information into my brain. A gang member. Why is a gang here?

During the silence, I scan with security team authority. The gang member had entered here with the authority of one of the employees. An employee whose face I remembered. The guy who had offered me hangover remedies several times.

The lower you go in the gutter, the more kindness becomes poison. Or maybe, like me who let a terrorist into Belwether because I was obsessed with a woman, she might have wanted to introduce her gang member boyfriend to her company.

He approached us. Perhaps thinking Helen and I were having some kind of tryst, he grinned and put his hand on my shoulder. In his other hand was a gun. I’m starting to feel bad.

“I heard the security team was just one washed-up Belwether retiree drowning in alcohol, but it looks like you’re enjoying life more than I thought? Huh? Oh, we’re…”

Helen was giving me a look that seemed to ask what I was going to do. It doesn’t matter. Just because I heard a few sad stories doesn’t mean an adversary suddenly becomes someone I want to save.

But I was annoyed. Angry. I’m someone who had been in Belwether. Someone who had tasted the highest levels of this city, and now being threatened by gang members—it was incredibly irritating.

The injector injects the hangover remedy. Originally, addictive substances with side effects like alcohol were prohibited, so I only started using it after leaving Belwether. My mind rapidly clears.

I knock away the gang member’s hand and take the shock baton that Helen had been using as nothing more than a club, pressing it against the gang member’s lower abdomen. My clearing mind starts to become hysterical.

Don’t half-ass it, Francis. Make sure you do it right, Francis. In this fucking libertarian hell, if you want to climb up, you can’t slack off when you’re working. These were the words I used to repeat before entering Belwether.

Back then, I had some shine to me. There were aspects others envied, things I had achieved. Like a dementia patient clinging only to memories, I reminisce while turning up the power on the shock baton.

Can I shoot? No. Guns are only fired when necessary. Here, I needed to handle this quietly. I stomped on the head of the gang member who had already fallen backward, paralyzed by the shock baton’s current, until it was crushed.

After stomping until sticky gray matter stained my shoe, I spoke with a trembling voice due to the side effects of forcibly sobering up.

Wearing shoes was a problem to begin with. Instead of wasting time on bulletproof suits or whatever fancy gear, I should have dressed for proper mobility. When did I start neglecting even the basics?

I fight down the nausea from the forced sobering. While other emotions didn’t provide enough motivation, irritation and anger were definitely motivating me.

“You’re right, I was stuck in a fucking sewer, Helen. This tiny gang member threatening a Belwether retiree? Management AI, connect to security cameras. I need to see how many more there are.”

I raise the carbine I had kept at my side even in the bathroom. There was a slight smell of alcohol, but maintenance… to be honest, I had kept up with it out of habit. Looks like that pointless habit is going to pay off.

When self-loathing’s unquenchable fire is fueled by humiliation, the flames start burning again. I leave the bathroom with the carbine in hand, moving with the building’s CCTV displayed in my vision.

I never believed in Belwether’s creed that dogmatically. Efficiency is just efficiency, not a belief or faith. But sometimes I wondered.

If efficiency is as pointless as I think, why do those efficiency devotees look so happy? Even the six Shepherds, who looked like they came from the same mold, seemed to have their own happiness every day.

And I made that kid, who was living a somewhat fulfilling life, die torn apart. So this sewer suits me. I didn’t intend to deny it. But I did have my own standards.

These gang members don’t belong in my sewer. I’m having existential concerns, and these guys show up pointing guns to rob a small company… it’s irritating.

I scan through the building’s CCTVs as I move up. Most of the gang members were in the CEO’s office. Would there be physical assets in the safe? Probably not. They’re probably planning to hold a gun to his head and demand credit transfers.

I look down at my prosthetic hand. Is it trembling? No. My nervous system might be soaked in alcohol, but the brain-implant interface was still working fine, and the prosthetic was expensive.

There were guys guarding the stairs. I take the elevator. After suppressing the nauseous feeling left by the hangover remedy, I raise the carbine to head height for the perpetrators.

After killing them all, I should find the employee whose credentials they used to enter. I could either ask for another bottle of hangover remedy with a joke, or maybe teach them a lesson.

I didn’t want to think like that Helen woman, but experiencing something like this is terrible. While it’s natural to die because of your own actions, it’s different when others suffer because of you.

As soon as the elevator doors open, I aim at the gang members crouching by the stairs, smoking cigarettes. If they don’t turn their heads at the sound of the elevator opening, death is the next step.

Standing firmly on the ground, lowering my posture, aiming… I pull the trigger. The gunshot was loud enough to make my senses, dulled by long periods of boredom, scream, especially indoors without ear protection.

This isn’t atonement. It’s venting. Ignoring the gang members who died spraying gray matter, blood, and fuel on the carpet floor, I rush into the CEO’s office. I synchronize with the internal CCTV.

Two were still pointing guns at the awkward-looking CEO, while the other two were approaching the door after hearing the gunshots from outside. Shoot the most dangerous ones first. I recall what I was taught.

I aim through the plastic door designed to look like wood, and pull the trigger with synchronized vision overlaid. The acrid smell of gunpowder chokes me, and the afterimage of the muzzle flash remains in my eyes as fatigue.

But the aim wasn’t lacking. On the synchronized CCTV screen, one gang member was dying with convulsions as the bullet hit his computational assist device, sending current through his nervous system. I lower my posture.

By now, they would know very well that the gunshots from outside were targeting them. I avoid the barrage of gunfire in a lowered posture, waiting for someone to kick the door open.

It doesn’t take long. Idiots like that think the opponent is dead as soon as the return fire stops. I approach silently and grab the first one who opens the door, using him as a human shield.

I go inside. The temporary shield did its job well. He blocked three bullets while screaming at his comrades, and I wasn’t rusty enough to fail to kill two gang members during that time.

I throw the gang member who was making gurgling sounds, probably from a lung shot, to the floor and finish him with one last shot. The suit is covered in blood, and the carpet is in an even more terrible state… but I don’t feel bad.

After putting on the safety, I face the CEO, who is drenched in cold sweat, holding only the pistol grip of the carbine. The air is thick with the smell of gunpowder and the cigarettes those guys were smoking. Just like the outside air.

It feels like it’s been a while since I moved with motivation. That motivation wasn’t particularly positive… but at least, this time, I liked the fact that someone was showing a relieved expression thanks to me.

“Well, now it doesn’t feel like a waste of money, does it?”

After that smug remark, I called the cleaning team and returned to the security team’s locker room. It was a refreshing feeling. Was it the feeling of finally doing what I couldn’t do before? Not at all.

What I should have done was far more important than shooting a few gang members, and my failure was far greater than this success. That’s why I had thrown away principles altogether.

But the principle I held in my hands again after a long time… it made me feel good. It was like remembering that what I do has meaning, after a long time.

Was Helen… helpful? I don’t know. Probably not. Wounded people are so buried in their own wounds that they only hurt each other, not heal each other.

I was still mired in self-loathing and pushed everyone away, and Helen came looking for me every day to make me fit her standard of a decent human life, not because she was worried about me.

Maybe if both our situations improve, we could have a more constructive relationship. Like friends or something. Still, the only comfort today came from the experience of doing my job properly after a long time.

From that day on, I quit drinking, and Helen started being less hysterical toward me as the company began to function more like a proper company. We became friends a few months after that day.

Well… we hardly did anything for each other. We just emerged from our own wounds in our own ways and became able to face each other like human beings.

Salvation—such a fancy word. This high-speed city buried in smog was not a place that extended a hand to those who reached out without any intention of getting up on their own.