Ch.90013 Work Record – Too High a Price (4)

Even after returning to the company, there was no call from President Yoon. Either Manager Dewey Novak was still looking for a solution, or the method I suggested had worked well.

Either way, this wouldn’t be resolved so quickly. He might make calls to various places, but ultimately, rescuing the employees of Investigation Division 6 was entirely up to him.

Would K be angry if I told her about this? I thought she might actually say I did the right thing. After all, her goal included apologizing to Manager Dewey Novak, whose life she had ruined.

I had dipped my hand into the sugar jar of revenge and tasted its sweetness. Instead of burying my hand in it and gorging myself, I was satisfied with that sweetness and let go of the jar. I couldn’t predict what Manager Dewey Novak would do.

He might try to shoot K on the spot, calling her the enemy who took his life away. What should I do then? “K has suffered enough too” would definitely not be an appropriate thing to say. I knew that.

Rather than worrying about that, finding the last factory of Transparent Eyes should come first. There were too many things to worry about. As soon as I arrived at the company, I brought up the translucent UI again and contacted K.

The connection was almost immediate. This time, I spoke before I could hear K’s voice. My tone was relaxed, but I knew I wasn’t actually relaxed.

“I’m calling about catching up on pending work again, but have you found anything?”

“I do have something… but not yet! Honestly, when I suddenly got a call from Bellwether’s security chief, I thought I’d been caught too. My teeth were chattering! Besides, what can I do when you’re in the same boat?”

She answered without specifying what the pending work was. I let out a comfortable laugh before responding. I knew there was nothing to be so afraid of or scared about… and my body moved according to that thought.

“But I’m sure you haven’t just been sitting around doing nothing. I want to hear about your progress too. Have you found the factory?”

“Not yet on that either. I found a list of closed factories, but I still don’t know which of the non-closed ones are operational. In times like these, I can’t exactly go around investigating the wasteland while making up excuses…”

Even though the Special Operations Division had been caught, according to Manager Dewey, an intensive audit of the Legal Assassination Team was still ongoing. Moving now wouldn’t be a good choice.

“Anyway, so! Spend some time with Eve today. Just sending you out to buy alcohol during our gathering isn’t enough, you workaholic! How many days has it been since you nearly died?”

“About… three days, I think. Or four? I even got a new body, so that should be enough.”

A sound close to a wry laugh came from across the line. Thinking about it, it was indeed a rather stupid thing to say, so I decided to let it slide with good humor rather than trying to argue.

“That’s not enough at all… Icarus flew to escape prison and tried to reach the ground. He didn’t need to live in the sky forever. Rest on the ground a bit, you fool!”

“You really love that Icarus story, don’t you? Alright, alright. Then… contact me if you find anything. I’ll come right away. A Bellwether-made bioweapon at your beck and call. Isn’t that nice?”

“Bellwether doesn’t need any more test subjects, you know? It’s just that you’re… a strange one. I’ll believe in you. I’ll help you. That’s how it is. Why is that so simple? I know the answer. Because it’s the right thing to do! Right?”

The Legal Assassination Team had already arrived at the private hospital where the Shepherd had laid me down. Considering what they might have tracked to get there, it was obvious what risk K had taken to come there.

After listening patiently, I shot back. It felt like waiting for an opponent to empty their magazine before reloading, but the difference was that there was no malice between us. That’s why it was comfortable conversation.

“That’s rich coming from someone who pretends to be so worldly but still sent a drone to the hospital knowing they’d be tracked by the Legal Assassination Team, isn’t it?”

“Ugh, that’s… Oh, whatever! When you don’t give an inch, you’re such a bad guy, so I’ll call it even! I’ll contact you if I find anything!”

She was quite immature, even to the point of unilaterally cutting off communication and running away when she ran out of things to say. Looking at her inner thoughts, she didn’t seem much different from when she hacked Bellwether to prove herself.

She was timid and tried to brush off serious matters with jokes. After pressing my face a little until the smile faded, I pressed Eve’s contact. This time it took a bit longer.

Eve’s voice still sounded somewhat cold at first glance. Not many people knew how fragile a person was inside that icy shell.

“Hi, Arthur. You probably won’t suffer from the alcohol… but did you get home safely yesterday?”

“I called you after I got home yesterday. You answered while drunk with sleep. You said in an uncharacteristically relaxed voice that it was fine as long as I got home safely…”

I heard a brief groan suggesting she didn’t remember what she had said. Eve had drunk quite a bit at dawn yesterday, apparently considering my return something worth celebrating.

Thanks to that, her bike was still in the office building’s parking lot, which wasn’t such a bad thing. Sensing she wanted to change the subject, I did it first.

“Anyway, I want to bring you the bike you left behind. I can ride it over and give it to you, right? Or I could pick it up and go downtown, then spend some time in the city… you know.”

“It’s definitely not a good day to meet downtown. If you ride it here and leave it, how will you get back? Mine is an old model without auto-driving, so I can’t have it follow you back.”

“Mine has auto-driving, so I can bring both and ride mine back. I’ve also got an AI assistant now, so I could leave it to them. Should I come now?”

I shouldn’t get used to using Chance for things like this. But Chance was also the one who asked in my head while listening to my call with Eve if talking to her made me feel better, so it should be fine.

“Yes, come now. But… there will be more people today. A family of Hollowwood Creek escapees is staying here. The timing is what it is, and I didn’t want to move them out of the city, so I’m hiding them here.”

Eve’s voice became a bit gloomy when she mentioned the family escape. She had said her father was someone who proclaimed it was better to bury a dead daughter than to have a daughter become an unbeliever.

“Anyway, not everyone in the family wanted to leave the Creek. The kids are shouting that they should go back to the Creek. Maybe the parents are always the wiser ones. Don’t you think?”

It seemed like self-blame was creeping up on her again. Her father’s words led her to leave and become a killer, while the Hollowwood Creek children refused to escape.

Of course, it was a contradiction. It wouldn’t have been wise in any sense for her to continue living in Hollowwood Creek with a number she couldn’t even remember. The Creek was inefficient.

If all you’ve seen since childhood is the landscape of Hollowwood Creek, and all you’ve learned are the Creek’s laws, could you really believe that the entire world outside the Creek is a corrupt place? I couldn’t really know.

All those products made by Hollowwood Creek Pharmaceuticals spread to what they call the corrupt outside world. They’re used to save the people of that corrupt outside world. Is that okay? I couldn’t tell.

“Eve, you didn’t escape the Creek to become a killer. That was just the result, something that happened by chance. I’ll come now. It won’t take long.”

This would be the first time I’d spend a holiday like a holiday since the coup ended. I went down to the office parking lot, placed my fingertips on my bike, and connected Chance to it. I ordered it to follow me.

I got on Eve’s bike and started riding down the road. The term “old model” wasn’t always such a bad thing. At the very least, the feel of riding an old model was often better than a new one.

I think I heard that because people before that war were used to engines running on gasoline, older bikes artificially created vibrations and noise to make them feel like pre-war items. That was probably why.

Newer ones were always too quiet and clean. Everything had the feel of overly refined and smoothly molded glass and plastic. I rode down Sepulveda Boulevard with its barriers.

Beyond the barriers, drones belonging to Farmers Corp. were spraying neutralizers. It was thanks to those neutralizers that the toxins filling the sea, whose natural recovery ability had died, didn’t spread further.

Humans always ruin everything. This earth, this era, their own lives and freedom and everything else. But the speed of fixing things is getting faster. If we speed up even more, we might be able to cross the crevasse.

The present, not fast enough yet, was a transitional period. A transition of the era, of people, and of the city. All I could do, all I was capable of doing, was burning gasoline.

With such thoughts, I arrived at the villa area where even gangs kept quiet. Once a place full of wealth, happiness, affluence, and certainty about the future, where only scandals, parties, and laughter prevailed, but no longer.

I couldn’t properly imagine the pre-war landscape that I didn’t know. To me, this was a ruined town where lower-class people gathered around past glory.

I hid the bike as I headed toward the villa where Eve was staying. After quietly knocking on the door and waiting, it soon opened. Eve was there. Behind her, I could see blonde people.

Adams and Eves. The identical people of Hollowwood Creek. People with faces full of worry and fatigue, willingly shouldering burdens they couldn’t bear for things they had never experienced.

As soon as the door closed, Eve naturally placed her hand on my shoulder and leaned her face against my chest. As if confirming again that I was truly alive, she whispered quietly while embraced.

“You don’t need to help, Arthur. Those two people are ones I decided to help and brought here myself. Maybe… those kids will get better too. Maybe.”

“Ah, I covered the bike with a tarp. And… I didn’t come with the intention to help, but is it okay to just talk? It would be awkward to suggest we go upstairs to talk alone.”

Eve’s hand lightly tapped my chest. Due to my shock-absorbing skin, it didn’t make a sound beyond the fabric touching. Eve looked up at me with a slightly prim expression.

“That’s helping. I didn’t call you to make you do something. This is…”

“It’s what I want to do right now. Isn’t that enough?”

Eve’s hand moved to my face. I briefly closed and opened my eyes as her fingers gently pulled down my eyelid.

“It’s enough, but… I don’t know. Your eyes just looked scary. They’re kids who won’t listen to reason, so go talk to them. Be prepared to be cursed at.”

“I’ll handle it in five minutes and make sure we can go upstairs to spend time together, don’t worry.”

A firefighter had to love fire enough to extinguish it. Had to know it, feel it, and care about it. Hollowwood Creek was a fire I needed to put out.

I entered the living room, brushing aside the two Creek escapees who tried to stop me. Inside were two large blonde teenagers looking only out the window. They were at most sixteen years old.

I could clearly understand why that nationalist clicked his tongue in disgust when he saw me. So this is the expression that naturally comes out when someone younger than you has such a face. I hid my expression.

One of the children pointed at me and started shouting. The brat said something he shouldn’t have.

“That Hollowwood Creek whore said…”

I lightly raised my arm and, using just my wrist, struck that Hollowwood Creek brat’s face with the back of my matte black hand.

With the sound of impact, the kid rolled on the floor. I hadn’t hit him hard enough to kill him. I approached and said:

“If you’re going to curse, curse at me. Even though I hate when people pay too high a price for what they’ve done… I despise those who believe they don’t have to take responsibility for their actions.”

Is his nose bone intact? I knew how fragile the bodies of people without enhanced physiques were, but this was the first time I had to control my strength in such a situation. Since he wasn’t trembling uncontrollably, it seemed his nose wasn’t broken.

“If you hadn’t said that, I would have just sat here and talked with you before leaving. I’m curious about what kind of place Hollowwood Creek is. I don’t know if you’re the older or younger brother, but get up and sit down.”

The other kid, seeing the small evil deed at my waist, helped his brother who had rolled several times and sat him on the sofa. Though his voice trembled a bit, he spoke:

“Fa-Father told us that outside Hollowwood Creek is full of corrupt people… and he was right! To so violently react to calling a corrupted Eve corrupted…”

That father probably wasn’t referring to their real father. Even I could understand that much.

“What is corruption?”

Corruption was becoming dirty. It was a diligent employee becoming lazy. It was following inefficiency rather than efficiency. That was all I knew.

“Corruption is moving away from Hollowwood Creek! Leaving that city where only pure people gather, drinking outside water, indulging in outside pleasures…”

Finally, a word I knew appeared. I leisurely interrupted and said. Despite one of their children having a nosebleed, the parents didn’t intervene. They probably wanted to do it themselves.

“Pleasure. Yes, that’s one word I definitely know. What gives you pleasure? I’m not talking about that… that book doctrine that seems like it was born from your scripture and a programming manual. Just the basics.”

“Devoting oneself to the leader is the natural and proper pleasure of a Hollowwood Creek believer. Abandoning that and escaping the Creek with even their children, those two…”

The kid was about to raise his hand toward his parents but slowly lowered it. He was choosing his words again, so I got up from the sofa, approached him, and asked:

“Why, didn’t you just say that devoting yourself to the leader is pleasure? If something is pleasurable, do it. Even if it’s dangerous or bad, if it’s what you want to do, then you should do it. Right?”

The kid shook his head. I naturally raised both hands to show him. I showed him the back of my hands, which were matte black after being overhauled with an enhanced body and receiving another modification surgery from the company’s support department.

“Are you afraid of this?”

He nodded, looking as scared as when I looked at Mr. Günter. My words must sound like those of an incomprehensible madman to him. That’s exactly how I felt when talking with Mr. Günter.

“Then it’s not pleasurable. Until just now, you were just more afraid of the leader than your parents. Now my hand is scarier than the leader. Do something pleasurable, not something you have to do because of someone scary.”

I learned this from Mr. Günter. Pleasure makes a person human. Without pleasure, one can only function, not live. I leisurely reached out to pat his head and said:

“Then let me ask this. Did I do that? Yes, I did. I did something very bad and shameful, but it was pleasurable. And after finishing that pleasurable act, I came here to do something I can enjoy again.”

I pointed to Eve, who was watching from the threshold of the living room. The kids couldn’t open their mouths anymore. I naturally continued:

“Revenge was pleasurable, but not as pleasurable as spending time with Eve. You should find something like that too. Now that my hand is scarier than your leader, all the things that were pleasurable have disappeared. That’s not true enjoyment.”

After saying that, I got up lightly and returned to the living room. I slightly bowed my head to the children’s parents who were standing behind the door. Either way, hitting someone is hitting someone.

“It was something I couldn’t let slide, but hitting kids in front of their parents is also something I shouldn’t do. I’m sorry.”

I didn’t pay attention to their profuse objections. Taking responsibility and paying an appropriate price was something I could enjoy. I thought it was now time to be scolded by Eve, but she instead took my hand.

“I should scold you… but honestly, it’s a bit better not having to hear those kids talk like inquisitors.”

“I hope what the restaurant owner taught me was useful. Shall we go upstairs?”

Eve poked my shoulder blade with her index finger as I shrugged and played innocent. Judging by her nod, she seemed to know that I had controlled my strength almost perfectly.