Ch.4949. Candy Bar.

# 49. Candy Bar

I swept away the darkness of the underground with a flashlight so bright it could instantly enlighten even a ghost. With leisurely steps, I wandered through the large and small rooms that connected like an ant colony.

“I guess this building was closer to a Research Lab than a Factory after all.”

Long desks. Various experimental tools including microscopes placed on top. Bookshelves and drawers stuffed with paper, which was rare in this world. There were too many unnecessary items for it to be just a factory that manufactured things.

“This room is particularly spacious. With chairs arranged in a donut shape… I wonder if this was where researchers gathered to present their discoveries to each other?”

I went down the stairs and stood on the platform that protruded from the center of the space. Numerous chairs looked down at me. I imagined people sitting in all those chairs.

“In the past, there must have been enough people to fill this wide space and more. They would have exchanged serious conversations, pondering and cooperating to solve given problems.”

It’s a wonderful and enviable story that I can’t even imagine with my current self.

“But what’s this?”

There was a button with an unknown purpose on the podium in front of me.

Curious about the button whose function I couldn’t determine from appearance alone, I pressed it thinking it might give me another gift. A microphone popped up from the previously empty podium.

—Static noise.

And above my head, translucent windows similar to my Controller’s screen appeared in four directions.

“Ah. I guess when someone gave a presentation holding this microphone, they displayed the necessary materials up there. That’s neat.”

Looking up at the static-filled windows, I spoke various things into the microphone. Hello? Is anyone there? The kind of things a lonely person would typically say.

“……..”

But no matter how much I talked, there was no voice coming back.

With my excitement dampened by my voice meaninglessly echoing through the space, I put everything back as it was and left the room.

“But this building seems to have been built quite a long time ago. Don’t you feel the passage of time throughout the building?”

The presentation room I was just in was clean enough to believe it had been used until recently, but unfortunately, not all places were like that.

Desks were completely cluttered, and bookshelves had fallen over, becoming friends with the floor.

Additionally, ceiling tiles had fallen, exposing wires and pipes to the naked eye, and withering cobwebs here and there gave an overall impression of an old space.

“Still, it doesn’t look like a place that’s been well-maintained by people, so if we look carefully, we might find some decent items.”

It was time to start exploring in earnest, rather than just wandering around. I rummaged through closed drawers and opened cabinets. If I had Maximus with me, locked drawers would be nothing.

“Papers here, papers there. Were they all too serious about their work?”

If researchers were human, they must have left snacks or emergency food somewhere to eat when they got hungry while working.

I don’t know if I’m just unlucky or if the people who worked here were more obsessive than I imagined, but every drawer I opened was full of nothing but papers.

“Instead of writing all these documents and working, they should have eaten and enjoyed themselves more.”

Sigh. I sat down on a chair for a moment. The floor, desk, and drawers were all just papers.

What on earth did they research here to leave so many records?

Slightly interested in the research done by people of the past, I picked up one of the scattered documents and started reading.

“Let’s see… mutation? Modification? What does all this mean?”

From papers with what appeared to be animal dissection diagrams and numerous unknown abbreviations and symbols, there were few letters I could read.

Does this mean they modified normal animals into desired forms? I tilted my head and picked up another paper.

“DAY 7. DAY 8. Judging by the dates written, it looks like some kind of management log, but I still don’t understand what it says. They’re definitely alphabets and numbers I know, but when put together, I have no idea what they mean. I don’t even know how to pronounce them.”

My head started to ache from looking at papers full of long, difficult words I’d never seen before in my life. I grabbed my throbbing head and flung the document I was holding.

“Ugh, I can’t believe just reading this makes my head hurt.”

It’s not like there’s some magic embedded in it. Or maybe there’s some invisible harmful chemical on it. At this moment, the papers here scared me more than guns or bombs.

“People from the past were amazing, learning such difficult words to do what they wanted to do.”

…Of course, if we’re talking about birth year, I’m the much older person, but still.

“If I had been born in the same era as these people and been in the same place, could I have done all this myself?”

I chuckled and shook my head. I couldn’t imagine myself sitting at a desk writing documents full of difficult words and conducting complicated experiments.

After that, I continued wandering around the room, opening and closing drawers repeatedly.

Even though I was told to trust and leave it to them, why was it taking so long?

I wanted to ask the Robot when they could open the door, but I was afraid of hurting their feelings, so I just kept wandering around.

[Hey Mori. Don’t you think it would be thrilling and fun to bungee jump from the top of the Tower down?]

“That’s quite a fantastic idea. How about you come to where I am and try it yourself? I’ll tie the rope for you. It would be the best experience for both of us.”

Still, I wasn’t bored. It was fun to wander around a place I’d never seen before, assuming there were no corpses, and there were plenty of ways to pass time, like reading the papers scattered on the floor, even if it gave me a headache.

Above all, I was happy to receive messages that made me laugh and chat without thinking—stupid messages in a good way.

Lately, I’d been receiving messages about the apocalypse or heavy words about life, which was a bit tough, so I was just grateful to the person who sent me this kind of message.

Just because you talk about difficult things doesn’t mean you can immediately escape the painful reality, so I think it’s much better to talk about things that make you laugh and chat, even if they seem silly.

“Woof!”

“Huh? What’s there?”

“Wooooof!”

While I was pretending to throw someone tied to a rope from the top of the Tower, the Puppy that was wandering the underground with me seemed to have found something.

Following the sound of something being scratched vigorously, I opened a locked drawer and found a small box I hadn’t seen before.

“How did you find this? There’s no smell at all?”

I brought my nose close to the box and sniffed, but there was no smell coming from it.

Could the Puppy’s nose detect a special smell that I couldn’t?

But wait, it’s a robot. It’s common sense that animal noses are more sensitive than humans, but was there a need to implement such a thing in a robot dog?

I’m not sure. Come to think of it, when we first met, it was looking for necessary items like screws and bolts at the pharmacy.

“You might have a special ability to find things after all.”

I patted the head of the hardworking Puppy. The way it wagged its tail as if feeling good was really cute, just like a real dog.

“So what’s inside this?”

With anticipation, I even made sound effects with my mouth as I opened the lid of the box.

“Pfft, I guess researchers were human after all. I suddenly feel a strong sense of kinship.”

Inside the lid were several snacks along with miscellaneous toys. Mostly snacks good for when your blood sugar drops, like candy or chocolate.

“Candy bars… I used to quite like them back in the day.”

I muttered that it had been too long since I’d eaten them as I took out the contents. Naturally, all the brands were unfamiliar.

“No matter what, I can’t eat something this old. Or can I? If it was well-packaged, maybe I could eat it if I boiled it thoroughly…”

My rational restraint loosened slightly at the sight of sweet food I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Having always eaten canned food with strange tastes and hard solid food, I simply couldn’t refuse the snacks in front of me.

But putting chocolate in boiling water would just melt it, and there’s no guarantee that heating it would make it edible.

Objectively speaking, I should leave it here.

“…Hmm hmm.”

However, being an ordinary human, I ultimately couldn’t overcome my desires. Smiling at the slight weight I felt in my pocket, I returned to where I had been. It seemed the Robot had succeeded in unlocking the lock.

“We’re back.”

“Wow, perfect timing! The security was strict so it was quite difficult, but somehow I managed to use my wits to open it like this! But you look happy, did you find something inside?”

“…I didn’t find anything in particular. Just some candy bars that seem to have been made quite a while ago.”

“Hmm… Although they’re well-packaged, considering hygiene, I recommend not consuming them. You’ll definitely get an upset stomach.”

“You’ll definitely get an upset stomach.” The Robot’s words pierced my back like a sharp arrow. That’s harsh!

“I know that. But, but in case of an emergency, I need to eat something like this! I can’t exactly eat my own legs or arms!”

I grumbled as I moved my feet into the wide-open doorway.

…Still praising them for opening the door though.

“…It’s cleaner inside than I expected?”

“Oh no, you shouldn’t say that.”

“What do you mean?”

The inside of the door was relatively well-maintained, and at the same time, it was bright enough not to need a flashlight.

The lights attached to the ceiling of the corridor had lost their light, but instead, the glowing water flowing along the hoses brightened the space from inside the glass on the walls.

“I wonder what kind of water this is that it glows on its own. It can’t simply be water with fluorescent dye added… Huh?”

As I approached the glass to examine the glowing water more closely, I discovered ‘something’ at the bottom of the water-filled space.

Black and red, causing a strange discomfort just by looking at it, it was definitely a piece of flesh from some organism.