It's Nothing Special

"Thank you so much for letting me know. I survived thanks to you. But... how did you know? Did you perhaps already have information on that sword?"

"Huh?"

Tony had a bewildered expression, as if he hadn't expected such a question, when I asked about what happened back then.

"You're asking about that?"

"Yes. Why?"

"No, it's really nothing special. It's not like I deserve words of gratitude for it, and it's not like there's some huge secret hidden behind it..."

He said, awkwardly scratching his head.

"I just took a glance and it looked like there was an activation device on the handle, so I told you. Honestly, it was weirder that you hadn't noticed it. Was it because the situation was so urgent?"

Is that so?

Then again, if it's a katana with special features, it's practically common sense for the trigger to be near the handle.

But it was under the handle—deep inside, to be exact. It wasn't an easy spot to find.

Of course, I had felt around the handle back then too.

But nothing really caught on my fingers, so I was able to find it only after Tony sent me the message.

No matter how I thought about it, 'I just took a glance and knew' seemed a bit strange.

The text I received back then was also less of a guess like 'Isn't it under the handle?' and more of a definitive tone, as if he was certain it was under the handle.

When I asked a bit more about it, Tony looked sheepish and scratched the rim of his ear.

It was his habit to scratch a body part with his fingernails whenever he was in a tough spot.

"Uh, I wasn't going to say this much, but... here, look at this."

Saying that, he pulled one of his eyes wide open to show me. The pupil of his widened eyeball moved from side to side.

On the cornea next to his softly glowing brown iris, faint letters briefly appeared and disappeared.

'Sheiko Vision'

I immediately recognized it and asked.

"Is it a lens? Or an eyeball?"

"An eyeball, and a high-end naturally cultured eyeball at that. I paid a lot of money for it. It's only one eye, and I have to get it regularly inspected and maintained every year, but... it's pretty useful. It isn't the frontrunner in this field for nothing."

Sheiko Vision. It is a large corporation that proudly holds the number one spot in the industry for optical lens and eyeball manufacturing and research.

I heard they were acquired a few years ago and integrated as one of the affiliate companies of the megacorp Valentine, but it seemed the company name remained the same.

I was astonished.

Sheiko eyeballs were widely rumored to incorporate incredible technological prowess, but at the same time, they were exorbitantly expensive.

"Wow... you must have a lot of money."

"How much money could I possibly have on a bartender's salary? I just tightened my belt and made a bit of an investment. As you know, I'm pretty well-versed in new tech. I also like cybernetics modifications."

That was certainly true.

Leaving Dragon President out of the equation, out of the remaining three employees at Dragon's Lair, the one most familiar with cyberware was definitely Tony.

It was a given for me, since I had no implants other than the mental switch.

As for Sey, who knows what she was like on the inside, but on the outside, it was hard to find any particular signs of body modification.

On the other hand, while it wasn't obvious on the outside, Tony had a prosthetic arm, and I knew he had quite a few modifications to body parts like his legs, feet, chest, and stomach.

You could also spot small, metallic chrome protruding parts embedded in his ears or jaw to match the latest fashion trends.

But to think he didn't stop there and even swapped out his eye.

Before crossing over to Dusk City, I was someone who had been terrified just getting LASIK surgery after getting accepted into college.

For someone like me, replacing an entire eyeball was hard to even imagine, but Tony, a cyberpunk native, was different. He was incredibly open-minded.

Considering the era, Tony might actually be the normal one and I might be the abnormal one, but... anyway, it was surprising.

"Ahem, ahem. So I've been putting this eye to good use in various ways... It'd be better to just show you directly."

Saying that, Tony pulled a connection jack out from the terminal he was holding and suddenly plugged it into a small port near his temple.

For a moment, his eye wavered, and the terminal display showed a [Connecting...] sign.

The screen crackled with static for a moment before Tony's field of vision was projected exactly as he saw it.

The world seen through his eye was... wow.

It was like looking at a scene from a first-person game.

"I wondered just how good an eyeball's performance could be, but it's seriously amazing. The framerate alone is overwhelming, and since the optic nerve density is high, the resolution is incredible too. The correction ability is also..."

I ignored Tony's trivial explanation filled with unnecessarily technical terminology and looked at the screen.

At the top of the vision interface, biometric indicator notifications were floating.

*Warning: blood alcohol content is above standard levels. alcohol moderation, sufficient rest, and sugar and water intake are recommended...

Phrases like these scrolled by, and at the bottom, various hormone levels, cyberware connection status, heart rate, and the like were flashing.

On top of that, next to his gaze looking at me or Sey, a data memo smoothly popped up as if it explained a game NPC.

[Scan Result. Name: Nakamura Aaron. Affiliation: Warawa. Origin: Neo Tokyo. Criminal Record: None.]

"Wow, it has all sorts of features."

"Ah. That's not a built-in function of the eyeball itself, but an auxiliary program I installed... It has this feature too."

Seeing him so excited, showing off this and that like he was explaining a newly bought toy, made me wonder how he had held back from bringing up the Sheiko eyeball until now.

Listening to him brag made me crave body modification too. So this was why everyone was always going on about cyberware, cyberware.

If it weren't for that damn unidentified person risk, I would have gotten two or three implants fitted by now too. It was a shame.

While I deliberately ignored Sey's pathetic-looking gaze and continued our romance-filled, manly cyberware talk, Tony tapped the side of his eye.

"Take a look at this too. Actually, I was going to show you this first."

As soon as he said that, the screen completely changed.

The background looked entirely blue, as if a thermal camera had been turned on, and Sey, I, and other heat-emitting elements appeared yellow or red.

This alone was surprising enough, but it wouldn't end here.

, because I knew that the thermal detection function was included in other eyeball cyberware or optic lenses, not just Sheiko eyeballs.

There had to be something more than this.

As if confirming my guess, the screen changed once again when Tony tapped near his eye a second time.

This time... everything else was the same, but only specific parts of his vision were glowing brightly and being highlighted.

: the guide robot, the kitchen display, the surrounding closed-circuit cameras, my cyberwatch, and so on.

The commonality was that they all used electricity and were directly or indirectly connected to the net.

"This isn't the end. Watch closely."

When Tony said that and focused his eye, his field of vision suddenly narrowed and zoomed in, like a camera zooming in.

At the same time, the display internal design, the surveillance camera circuit, and the like could be seen transparently.

...X-ray vision? Structure identification? Whichever it was, it was a ridiculous level of performance. How the hell did they make an eyeball that well?

I asked with a dumbfounded expression.

"Don't tell me you looked through the entire katana internal structure with that back then?"

If that was the case, it was a total cheat.

However, Tony shook his head.

Fortunately, no matter how much of a Sheiko optical eyeball it was, it didn't seem to be to that extent.

"Well, I wish I could, but that didn't work. This scan function is convenient, but if the structure is even a little complex or if it's equipped with an electromagnetic wave projection countermeasure, it just completely stops working."

Aha.

Then again, Kokuyōtō wasn't an ordinary katana.

It was none other than the Schneider family heirloom, a laser light sword that was the culmination of the technological prowess of Tokyo Before Submergence.

It would have been stranger if the security device of such a treasured sword was easily breached.

The internal structure was also incredibly complex, at least from what I remembered.

While thinking that, I suddenly felt dumbfounded.

Come to think of it, I wasn't in a position to call Tony's Sheiko Eyeball a cheat.

Not when I had pierced through the exterior of Kokuyōtō with my bare eyes and witnessed the rings of the plasma engine containing massive energy inside it.

Objectively speaking, I was the one pulling off a ridiculous cheat.

I have felt it since I performed a cyberdive safely and comfortably with my bare body, without any equipment.

It made me reflect once again on what kind of value the microchip in my head held, and what a ridiculous level of performance this implant had shown.

If only I could control it on my own with my own power.

"Anyway..."

Slide.

My thoughts were broken by the sound of Tony pulling the jack out of the connection port and putting his terminal away.

His explanation continued.

"So, naturally, I couldn't see inside the sword with this, but I could see that something under the handle was connected to the internal circuit. That's why I told you. It's really nothing special, right?"

Aha, so that was how it happened.

Now all the circumstances made sense.

When I nodded in satisfaction, Tony asked with a somewhat reluctant look.

"So, anything else to ask?"

"...Pardon?"

"I'm asking if you have anything else to ask."

"..."

I fell silent.

Wasn't the mood shifting to skip Tony's turn at this point?

But Tony, the party involved, didn't seem satisfied with just this.

No, why was that Yangban so anxious to reveal his own secrets? Shouldn't he be thankful if we ended it here?

Was it that he hadn't received enough of the spotlight with just this?

His anxious expression, practically begging me to ask something, looked as if he would sulk at any moment if I didn't throw a question his way, so I just blurted out whatever came to mind.

"Uh, how did you end up replacing that one arm with a prosthetic?"

"I'm a bit curious about that too."

It was a topic that aroused so much curiosity that even Sey, who had been indifferent until now, had her eyes light up.

How did Tony end up losing his arm? Was there actually any truth among the tens of thousands of bluffs we had heard so far?

"No, not something like that!"

But for some reason, Tony still showed signs of dissatisfaction.

If not this, then what on earth did he want?

"Not a boring story like the prosthetic arm, but a secret past, an identity... I'm telling you to ask about something important like you did with Sey."

I had nothing to say seeing him confess like that out of frustration.

Did he even have a hidden identity? A bartender is a bartender.

"Well, I suppose."

And as for Sey, rather than my asking an important and secretive question, hadn't she just revealed her own secretive parts on her own?

"That's true too..."

Seeing him foolishly scratch the bridge of his nose, I sighed and asked.

"Then what, do you have a hidden past or something?"

Honestly, it was a question thrown out without much expectation.

It was clear that Tony had secrets too. But compared to Sey or Dragon President, it felt a bit... underwhelming.

Should I say it was somewhat predictable?

At most, he probably worked as a hacker in the underworld before washing his hands of it and starting fresh as a bartender.

considering how well he handled machines and since being a hacker was a promising profession in Dusk City.

Even in 21st century Korea, there was a coding boom, so weren't there always one or two people studying a programming language like C or Python around?

You could say 22nd century Dusk City had a similar vibe. There was just the minor difference of it being a hacker boom instead of a programmer boom.

Handling Net Programs wasn't an easy task, and there were many cases of people giving up halfway, but still, if you gained recognition for your skills through blood, sweat, and tears, you would be treated generously.

It wouldn't be strange at all to have one or two former hackers around.

Considering what he had shown so far, it wouldn't be surprising at all if Tony was the protagonist of that story.

That was what I thought.

But an unexpected answer popped out.

"I was a Net Diver."