A Three-Minute Confession

Three minutes. That was exactly how long it took for Jonah Stewart, howling in pain, to come to his senses and spill everything he knew.

Most people were like that. human will rarely lasts longer than the cooking time of curry or ramen.

The method was simple. She gripped his remaining fingers and slowly applied pressure in the opposite direction whenever he hesitated to answer. By the time it was all over, the young Yang-achi had thoroughly soaked his underwear with piss.

‘He’s been really weird lately. Even when he came to school, he was hard to spot, and though he was always a scatterbrain, he seemed unusually distracted by something else… So, uh. As the class president, I went looking for him to teach him a lesson and earn some lunch money. Kids definitely said they saw him, but he wasn’t showing up to class. He didn’t even show up at the labs or net cafes that losers like him usually hang out at. So I had half given up, but after school… I ran into him.’

Jonah Stewart shuddered all over, as if recalling a memory he wanted to forget. For whatever reason, he couldn’t bring himself to speak, so the patrol officer had to apply her grip strength as if ready to squeeze his fingers again.

‘A-a-ah! I’ll talk! U-um, where I met him was: I saw him at the Necro workshop where he works.’

“Necro?”

It was an unfamiliar name, but she at least knew the concept. It was a specialized profession unique to this wasteland district, which was covered in mountains of junk and overflowing with scavengers.

When scavengers unearthed somewhat valuable cyberware waste from the trash, the Necro workshops would dismantle it, pick out the usable parts, and distribute or sell them. It could be seen as a kind of symbiotic relationship.

‘Yeah. He’s a nerd who’s good with machines. He gets good grades in that stuff… but I guess he works there because he’s short on money. I only found out recently myself.’...