Chapter 166
Was it the effect of the microchip? The world froze as I tensed up.
Now, let’s slowly analyze the situation.
“Fing Isiho?”
The only information I received was this one phrase.
A youthful voice, low, stiff, and cold, made it difficult to guess the age just by hearing it.
But I could tell instinctively. It was a voice coming from the throat of a girl who had just passed puberty.
The dry tone revealed a bit of interest and amusement; the rest was displeasure, indignation, and subtle anger.
To sum it up, it was the kind of tone a bad-tempered teenage girl with vocal cords as frigid as midwinter would use when dealing with a toy or pet that didn’t listen to her.
Then here’s the question: why was I sweating profusely and tensing up at a single phrase spat out by this girl?
Actually, there was a more fitting word than tension.
Fear. Just hearing the voice made the terror engraved in my being creep up.
It was a familiar voice. That was why my body reacted before my head.
It was a cold and arrogant tone I had heard before. The voice reacted negatively to the curse I had spat at Isiho.
And crucially… there was the pressure that made all the noisy people in the restaurant quietly shut their mouths just by her appearance.
The Consortium Club… Didn’t they say it was a banquet where the highest power players, rich persons, and entrepreneurs who controlled Dusk City gathered?
Looking back, my thoughts were short-sighted.
Whether it was power, wealth, or a corporation, wasn’t there one person who was second to none!
With the feeling of puzzle pieces falling into place, I opened my mouth.
“…Chairman?”
As I asked that, my voice contained a sliver of hope. Wouldn’t there still be a minuscule chance that she would answer, “Yes? Who are you?”
You never know. It might just be the youngest granddaughter of some chaebol family with a similar voice.
Could it be that she reacted sensitively to what I said because she had some affection for the corporation called Isiho for some reason? Or maybe I was just hearing auditory hallucinations in the first place. due to stress and trauma, even an ordinary person’s voice might just―
“Even if it’s the Chairman of a fing Black Company, I see you can still recognize the voice?”
Right, there was no way.
The coldly replying voice exuded the aura of a born ruler looking down at all creation beneath her feet.
My happiness circuit, which had been spinning furiously, shattered into pieces. I wiped my face, feeling my life flash before my eyes.
'…I’m fed.'
Had there ever been a more terrible moment in my life?
When I suddenly fell into the Cyberpunk World while taking a shower? When I was locked in the Research Institute and reduced to the fate of a lab rat? When I was sexually harassed by a vending machine prostitute? When I faced off one-on-one against a Terrorist Gang?
None of them. I had never acutely realized that I was truly fed as much as I do now.
Jo Aaron, 22 years old. Cause of death… caught talking behind the company’s back in front of Isiho’s Iron Blood Chairman.
…F. How do I fix this?
“What I just said wasn’t my true feelings Due to a momentary mental weakness…”
God damn it. Even I don’t know what I’m saying. Given the Chairman’s personality, this kind of nonsense would be a negative factor that would lower my evaluation even further.
Sure enough, I wasn’t even given the chance to finish my sentence. A single phrase was uttered, lightly ignoring such a trivial excuse.
“Be quiet. Turn your head. Let’s see your face for the first time in a while, Nakamura.”
It was an order that offered no option to refuse. I stifled my weak heart that wanted to somehow ignore the situation and turned my creaking head to look behind me.
The first thing I saw was a pitch-black yukata that seemed to draw my gaze, with the patterns of waves, mountains, the sun, and dragons embroidered in gold on its loose fit.
My gaze wouldn’t go any higher than that. My standing stance was also awkward.
It was because of the unwritten rule that “My eye level must not be higher than the Chairman’s.'
On the 111th Floor of Gintoki Tower, in the chairman’s office, there was no need to worry. The seat she sat in was high to begin with, so I just had to stand in place and avoid meeting her eyes.
But here… Ah, damn it. I don’t know. The first button was buttoned wrong to begin with, so what meaning would etiquette have?
“I believe I said let’s see your face. Raise your head.”
Hearing those words and standing up straight to look down from above and meet the chairman’s eyes would be a suicidal act.
I knelt on the floor and only then slowly lifted my gaze upwards.
The first thing I felt was the emotionless gaze of the Iron Blood Chairman’s escort, samurai Sandayu.
The stare of East Monica’s greatest swordsman wearing sleek cybernetic skeleton armor.
Just by looking at him, I felt a sharp eeriness as if he was thinking things like, “How should I cut that to make it clean…” It was even more so since I had uttered such an irreverent phrase as “Fing Isiho”.
The Iron Blood Chairman I knew was a person who would more than likely cut off my tongue as a punishment so I could never do it again.
Ah right, the Iron Blood Chairman.
She was the Chairman of the world’s 4th ranked Megacorp, Isiho.
Karin Isiho was looking down at me.
I endured the pitch-black pupils that seemed to swallow light, slowly scrutinizing me as I tried hard not to meet her gaze. My hands were damp with sweat.
“Your complexion looks good.”
“…Is that so.”
“It seems life has been quite bearable for you lately, Nakamura.”
Nakamura. A title I didn’t like.
A surname that had absolutely no connection to me in the past, but had now become inseparable from me.
It was a shackle the Chairman had personally bestowed upon me.
Would it be an illusion if I felt an intention to remind a slave who was trying to forget his place, of the collar tied around his neck?
My throat choked up. I was at a loss for how to answer. Looking at me cornered, the Iron Blood Chairman clicked her tongue as if unsatisfied.
“Enough. That serves as an answer.”
And then she said.
“I have a task for you.”
A right to refuse? There was no way I had one.
* * *
In the club, the hotel on the 165th Floor of the Plaza had several secret rooms.
Surrounded by dark blue bulkheads, they couldn’t be forcibly entered from the outside unless one used a bomb to break them, and with the highest security in place, eavesdropping or peeking was naturally impossible.
It was a space created with consideration so that members could have private conversations in a private space where complete secrecy was guaranteed, or conversations that were too sensitive to be leaked outside.
In fact, exposed external spaces like the lobby or restaurant were nothing more than side branches, and it would be safe to say that the true “Consortium Club” took place in these secret rooms.
“The second room from the end of the left corridor…”
It is here.
The pitch-black door didn’t even have a common handle. Only the secret room’s room number, '17', was written on it.
If I were an invited visitor, I could have entered by recognizing my bio-ID, but I wasn’t.
I was an uninvited guest, spying.
The Chairman’s order was to somehow poke around and find out everything that was happening in this Room No. 17 Secret Room - whether it was a conversation or a fight.
My reasonable resistance to how I, who wasn’t a professional spy or hacker, was supposed to spy on a secret room guarded by a state-of-the-art security system was useless.
“Do it somehow.”
A short and firm phrase that tolerated no dissenting opinions.
The means and methods were something the employee, not the employer, had to figure out and prepare on his or her own.
“Even so, does it make sense to entrust this to me?”
Entrusting spy work at The Consortium Club to a former cook and current apprentice bartender?
The most headache-inducing part was that this wasn’t an entirely impossible mission either.
All radio waves were neatly controlled, making the installation of a listening device or an ultra-small surveillance camera impossible.
If even the slightest change occurred in the internal structure or pressure, the secret room would be sealed, making access through analog equipment or manpower impossible.
Even the hotel’s system was under the control of a net diver, making hacking impossible as well.
This was the information the samurai, Sandayu, had dryly recited.
“However, the Chairman said it would be possible if it were you.”
It was true.
All means were close to impossible, but there was the bizarre microchip in my head.
It was a power closer to a supernatural ability than science and technology, a power that enabled even the absurd achievement of a bare-body Cyberdive.
It might be possible to See Through the secret room.
It probably would be possible. I had that intuition.
At this point, a question arose.
“How much does the Chairman know about the microchip?”
Perhaps the Iron Blood Chairman was the one who noticed the existence of the microchip even before I did, since even I had only heard about the existence of this cyberware after the detailed examination conducted at Isiho.
I hadn’t informed them of dangerous functions like the bare-body Cyberdive or the artificial intelligence from Militia connected to it, but I had reported experiences such as my perceptive ability expanding after the activation of the microchip, or its effects on electronic devices and systems.
Wouldn’t she have drawn some kind of conclusion from that, with the Chairman’s brain, which was no different from a supercomputer itself?
[Test Subject, it is your duty not to divulge information regarding the microchip, the core artifact of the super-human experiment, to anyone. This is part of the laboratory rules applied to all test subjects…]
Oh, is that so. But I never agreed to such laboratory rules.
I snapped like that at the System Assistant, who had been quiet for a while before suddenly opening its mouth, and glared at the closed secret room.
Worrying about it wouldn’t give me an answer.
For now, if I’m told to do it, I have to do it. What else could I do. If I played tricks trying to hide my abilities here, my tongue might really get cut off.
“Assistant, turn on the switch for now.”
[…]
The System Assistant remained silent as if it was sulking, but it still faithfully performed its duties.
Click-
The switch turned on.