episode_0016

I was lying on a clinic operating table somewhere unknown, completely at the mercy of this chrome whore.

“Fuck… Wh-What is this?!”

I fumbled, my hands brushing my face.

The deeply sunken dark circles and skin troubles from corporate overwork were gone, and the dry, lackluster skin that had been subtly appearing as I approached my thirties was now moisturized and glowing.

“Ahaha! Isn’t it great that you don’t need anti-aging treatments, Oppa? I’m actually jealous~”

“Fuck! What kind of anti-aging treatment changes your entire physique?!”

The disgustingly expensive telomere restoration treatments that rich people smeared on their bodies were fundamentally limited, as they were based on reducing the body’s age from an already fully grown body.

For example, like the former director of EPSB, there’s a limit to how much the treatment can do, meaning they can only look around their thirties at most.

But this body, it felt like I had just turned twenty.

Even in this fucked-up world rampant with PC culture, machismo hadn’t disappeared. There were still people who would rant and rave about you being gay if you looked young or well-groomed. My already difficult days as an Asian man were about to get even shittier.

“Shall we introduce ourselves now? My name is Mason Black. Would you tell me your name, Oppa?”

“John Doe.”

“John Doe? An unidentified person?”

“It’s originally a different name, but other guys mispronounce it, so I just introduce myself with this.”

The ritualistic, mechanical Q&A about my name, which I must have gone through hundreds of times by now, passed, and I fumbled at the bandage wrapped around my chest.

“Damn it, you can grope around with a doll later, just call the doctor. I need to hear about my condition.”

*Smack!* As I smacked the butt of the doll who introduced herself as Mason, urging her, I felt a sensation in my hand and the soft jiggle of synthetic subdermal fat.

How perversely modified must she be to create such exquisite jiggling?

As I admired Mason’s performance as a sex body and smacked her butt a few more times as if beating a drum, Mason pouted.

“I understand that you can’t control the surging vigor now that you’ve suddenly gotten younger, Oppa, but I’m not some cheap doll-like whore, am I?”

“What?”

“So, I’m the owner of this clinic~”

Mason deliberately flapped the wrap gown she was wearing, which barely covered her.

I thought she was just cosplaying, given the operating room concept, but it seemed I had made a mistake.

“Fuck. What kind of doctor dresses like that?”

But I felt wronged.

Wasn’t this more maniacal than the micro bikini Luna only wore after I pleaded and gave her 10,000 credits?

Even in Eclipse Point’s individuality-重視 society, where guys jerking off on the street were rare, Mason’s attire was undeniably close to that of a sex doll soliciting customers.

“Are you going to criticize someone’s taste? And you, Oppa, like this…”

*Press* Despite my poor physical condition, there was a heavy pressure pressing down on my penis, which showed no signs of calming down, as if it was in its prime.

My penis dug into the cleft of her buttocks.

Like a hotdog, my penis felt both the coolness of the synthetic epidermal layer, which was inherently lower in temperature than body heat, and the gentle warmth rising from her body, simultaneously.

“You’re not really in a position to talk big when your dick is standing at attention like that, are you~”

“…Then don’t climb on me.”

“Anyway, it seems it’s time to satisfy each other’s curiosity.”

Mason gestured to an electric tray inside the clinic, pulling it over and showing me a shattered case placed on it.

“First of all~ the reason Oppa turned into this cute little thing is because of a certain ‘item’ that was inside this.”

“Damn case… they should’ve made it sturdier. So what exactly was inside it?”

“It was really hard to figure this out~ Aren’t you going to compliment me?”

“What is that again… Ugh…”

People who often exposed their bodies and underwent extensive modifications, replacing parts with artificial ones, often had a screw loose somewhere, separate from being chrome psychos.

For instance, at a time when the 22nd century was approaching, there were lunatics who, calling themselves rogue swordsmen, would carry a traditional sword – not a plasma blade or monomolecular blade – and single-handedly raid a mafia hideout.

Surprisingly, there were quite a few such lunatics, and they frequently caused trouble.

Perhaps this woman was also a lunatic who had adopted such a ‘concept’.

I recalled reading a single line of advice floating around the net that said the wisest approach in such cases was to play along.

“Okay. You did well.”

“Hmm~ it feels obligatory, but this is also…”

Mason’s pink eyes, glowing as she sat atop me, and her tongue flicking out, looked quite threatening.

Was she not just playing a role, but truly a pervert?

“I’ll let it slide this time, Oppa. Next time, you have to do it with more sincerity, okay?”

As she licked her lips, I thought that if I had met her when I first arrived in this city, I might have shriveled up and run away in fear.

No matter how I looked at it, her body seemed more suited for sex than for combat, yet her intensity was greater than any gang member I had encountered.

At any rate, I verbally agreed to her terms and was able to hear the situation from Mason.

Ricardo had brought me to the clinic in a complete wreck.

They tried to quickly prepare for surgery because it looked urgent, but due to ‘a certain change’, my body kept transforming, so they only managed to remove the subdermal armor and smash grenades that had originally been inserted.

During the ‘change’, my condition rapidly recovered despite no biological treatments.

And it had been three days since I had been lying unconscious on the operating table.

“…So, I got younger because of some item inside that case, and that saved my life?”

“There’s a complicated scientific process involved, but if you summarize it in one sentence, yes, that’s about it.”

While I understood that the shattered remains had saved me, I wasn’t particularly happy.

After all, the case, which was the corporation’s objective, was now damaged, and the fact that it had accidentally been used on me would inevitably lead to a deep entanglement with the corporation, for better or worse.

And with a very high probability, it would be for the worse.

“Why do bad things always pile up?”

Most of the cyberware Luna had implanted seemed to have been removed, but basic implants like my combat assist eye, links, and neural sockets appeared to remain.

If even those had been removed, I wouldn’t have had to see the terrifying pile of missed calls.

“The case was being transported by K&H, but the technology in this case is too sophisticated for K&H to have made it.”

“K&H isn’t ‘just’ anything. They’re a reputable brand, at least when it comes to cyberware.”

“I should rephrase that a bit. Would you understand if I said it’s a level of technology not seen in the current market? Including military-grade items produced by Xenotech and Ayakashi.”

Certainly, if that were the case, K&H, who was playing around in the top 300 corporate rankings, could be called insignificant.

Such technology would either be a next-generation technology of a top-tier megacorp that hadn’t been revealed or was still under research.

Honestly, it was hard to believe that such a poorly secured item was something capable of not just ruining a life, but causing a bloodbath.

“The security that soldier mentioned probably wasn’t physical defense, but electronic warfare defense or self-destruction if it came into contact with an unauthorized user… But you, Oppa, luckily came into contact with it while it was broken!”

“…Fuck.”

So, if the transport vehicle hadn’t hit a landmine and done a somersault in the air, my arm would have been blown off the moment I found and touched the case.

I mentally flipped off the squad leader who had already died and glared at Mason with a sulky face.

“So what exactly was inside it? I didn’t see anything specific.”

Even if I was fucked, I wanted to know how I was fucked first.

Mason *snapped* her fingers, and a holographic 3D model in the shape of a cube appeared in the air.

It was the black case before it was destroyed.

“The case you brought can be considered a type of syringe. We found a tube inside where a liquid flowed.”

The cube split open, revealing complex circuits and empty tubular spaces within.

Blue liquid began to fill those empty spaces that converged towards one corner, as if they had once contained fluid. When pressure was applied to the corner where the tubes met, the liquid *squirted* out.

If it was just a syringe of a peculiar shape, it would be an incredible waste of technology.

“If it’s a syringe, couldn’t they just use a normal one?”

“I don’t know much about corporate internal affairs~ but adopting such a unique form is often a deception to hide its true purpose, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have even understood its structure if you hadn’t smashed that case, Oppa.”

Was that a compliment?

Anyway, with the knowledge that the case was a peculiar syringe, I looked down at the bandage wrapped around my chest.

It was cleanly re-bandaged, but it was where the inner pocket, which had contained the case, had been. Blood had flowed profusely from there.

“So, you’re saying I got hit by an explosion and fell, and that thing got lodged in my chest?”

A series of coincidences.

I didn’t know if the outcome was light enough to be dismissed as a mere happening, but meticulously tracing the cause and effect made me chuckle wryly.

“Hoo… What kind of drug is this, to be able to do this to a person?”

“Well~ It’s hard for me to interpret that too, so perhaps it’s easier to think that something inside the drug is continuously performing treatments on your body?”

“What is that? I’m going crazy.”

“Anyway, rejuvenation beyond anti-aging… I know a similar story.”

“Just tell me everything you know.”

“I don’t know that much either, but…”

Mason paused for a moment.

As if it was something she shouldn’t talk about carelessly.

“Do you know that the head of the Ayakashi Group always appears as a young girl?”

“I thought the chairman of Ayakashi was an old geezer that even anti-aging treatments no longer worked on.”

The image of the chairman, who was on his last legs, with leathery age spots blooming all over him, which 2099 technology couldn’t prevent, was the common perception of the Ayakashi chairman among ordinary citizens.

“It’s closer to a conspiracy theory, but it’s rumored that there’s one more floor above the one the chairman uses, and the true ruler of Ayakashi resides there.”

“What the…”

It wasn’t a novel; a shadow ruler for a megacorp like Ayakashi?

“The figure is a young girl, ruling with an unchanging appearance no matter how many years pass~”

“…Never mind. I’ll just find out for myself.”

I gained nothing but another strange urban legend.

More importantly, something constantly performing treatments in my bloodstream.

I felt so uneasy, how was I going to sleep tonight?

“What about Ricardo?”

“He said he’d take care of his family and to contact him when you woke up~ He’s getting a bit arrogant, perhaps it’s time for another lesson. He was quite obedient for a while after he got hit by a grenade when he acted up last time~”

“That sounds familiar.”

Where had I heard that?

If I couldn’t remember, it probably wasn’t important.

I was greedily stuffing myself with roasted tomato and potato-flavored kibble, having gone without food for three days, clad only in Mason’s loose wrap gown.

It didn’t taste like roasted tomatoes or potatoes at all, more like solidified starch ketchup, but it was surprisingly edible, proving the old saying that hunger is the best sauce [a proverb meaning hunger makes any food taste good].

By the way, my original clothes were so damaged they couldn’t be worn anymore, so they were incinerated.

The main reason was that they smelled terribly after I passed through the sewers.

“Still, it’s strange~ He said he’d call every day, but…”

*Bang!* Just then, the clinic door burst open violently, and a familiar tin can appeared, backlit.

“Hey, you…”

“I’m sorry, friend… I tried to stop him, but he was too strong.”

*Thud!* With that, a 213kg alloy organic composite fell forward with a loud crash.

And from behind it emerged a woman with healthy, bronzed skin and a rough scar running across her face. Her eyes glowed ominously as she growled like a lion.

“John, come out.”

“Yes, sir.”