Chapter 43
Sunday, March 27, 2107 AD.
The alarm kept ringing amidst the sound of the pouring rain.
Trrrring—
I fumbled with my hand and grabbed the Cyberwatch at my bedside, which was vibrating loudly not just once, but over and over again.
"It doesn't even feel like I slept much... Ah."
A groan naturally slipped out as soon as I checked the time with bleary eyes.
4:57 PM.
It was time to get up right away, wash up, eat breakfast, and get ready for work.
I'd rather cry. What did I do wrong to have to get ready for work as soon as I open my eyes? I couldn't even use my free time today.
My body felt as soggy as seaweed. I couldn't bring myself to pull my body out from under the Synthetic Fiber cover.
Of all days, it had to rain on a day when I was in such bad condition, though Dusk City was a city where it rained frequently anyway.
"Ugh—."
I gritted my teeth, pinched my stiff body, and forced myself up. Every muscle in my entire body, from head to toe, throbbed and complained of pain.
The mirror display reflected eyes that looked unusually hollow compared to normal.
Greasy hair and the distinctively weak double eyelids that appeared whenever I was tired were also visible.
I had no right to tell Tony he looked shabby. Right now, my own appearance looks no different from a bio zombie.
"I wouldn't even feel this wronged if I hadn't slept..."
I have slept more than enough.
Just the time I spent passed out at the bar yesterday was about five hours.
On top of that, after waking up and getting off work with Sey, I came into my room, lay down, and fell asleep and slept straight for about ten hours until now.
All together, I had slept for a whopping fifteen hours.
It was staggeringly twice the recommended sleep time for a Korean.
Even after sleeping to my heart's content like this, I still couldn't overcome my drowsiness; my head was half-asleep, and yawns kept coming out.
It felt like the desire to sleep had encroached upon my entire body, leaving me with nothing but the thought of wanting to sleep more.
Just what in the world happened while I was sleeping for me to end up like this?
It seemed the microchip in my head was using sleep as fuel or something.
Just how much more did I have to sleep for it to be satisfied? Shouldn't the side effects be slowly coming to an end by now?
Grumbling, I stood up and rolled up the rusted window shutter like always.
With an unpleasant screech, the transparent plastic window revealed itself.
Swaaaaa—
The sound of the rain pounding against the metal surface pierced my ears.
It was a downpour.
Rainwater poured down relentlessly as if trying to submerge the city in water.
The view outside the window was barely visible due to the luminous lights blurring beyond the streaks of flowing water.
If this continued for just a few days, Dusk City would end up looking similar to Old Tokyo, which was said to have been submerged. Of course, that wouldn't happen.
A sigh naturally escaped at the thought that today's commute wouldn't be easy either.
I had to get ready quickly if I didn't want to be late.
I blankly stared at the orange holographic fish swimming through the hazy air between the forest of buildings in the distance before lowering the shutter again.
The noise of the falling rain sounded muffled again, as if it had been trapped.
And then
Thud.
Roll.
I also heard the sound of something heavy dropping and rolling on the floor.
It seemed I had dropped an item by the window while closing the shutter.
The sound was quite loud. I just hoped the downstairs neighbor wouldn't come knocking because of the noise.
When I turned my head, I saw a large transparent capsule sprawled on the hexagon-shaped floor.
...Did I have something like that in my room?
It was an unfamiliar object.
Just in case, I carefully nudged it with my foot to flip the surface over, and only then could I figure out its identity.
*Inside the closed PVC plastic case, which was slightly larger than my hand, there was an actual human hand.*
It was the Man Hunter's hand.
The way it squirmed inside the capsule like a severed lizard's tail was quite impressive. It seemed there was still electricity left inside even though it had been cut off.
The artificial skin on the exterior was twisted to the point where its original shape was hard to recognize, and the metal joint protruded hideously, squeaking.
Ugh, gross.
Personally, it wasn't an item I preferred enough to want to keep in my room.
That was also why I had just carelessly placed it on the edge of the windowsill.
I originally had absolutely no intention of taking it, but Sey handed it to me before we parted ways when getting off work yesterday.
She had said it was my spoil of war and that I had the right to have it, so I should take it.
When I first received it, I was honestly freaked out. Even if it was a spoil of war... I thought, where would I even use a severed Man Hunter's prosthetic arm?
Keeping it would only make me feel uncomfortable, and I'd just feel awful every time I looked at it.
I wanted to refuse, but doing so felt like it would be rude to Sey, who had kindly handed it to me sealed in a capsule case.
Accepting it for now and then throwing it away separately in a place like a scrap junkyard would similarly go against etiquette.
Unable to show my distaste, I accepted it with a subtle expression, and Sey noticed like a ghost and said.
“You don”t seem to like it. Still, hold onto it for now. If you sell it to a good buyer, you'll easily get tens of thousands of City Dollars. If you're lucky, you might even get up to a hundred thousand.'
My eyes shot wide open upon hearing those words. I wondered why I hadn't thought of that.
My monthly salary was a little over 30,000 City Dollars, but this was a whopping 100,000 City Dollars.
Come to think of it, it was an ultra-expensive military-grade prosthetic arm.
Even if it was just a severed portion, there would be plenty of junk dealers drooling and rushing in just for those parts.
So that was what she meant by spoils of war.
Originally, in any game, the taste of ripping spoils off enemies, selling them, and making money was something special, and it seemed that sweetness remained the same even when the game became reality.
This was why those Ronin bastards who made a living by killing people were swarming all over the place.
As a lower class person struggling day by day with rent and living expenses, I found it an irresistible temptation.
It wasn't a Man Hunter's hand, it was a Midas touch.
I even found myself harboring the dangerous thought of whether more troublemakers like the Man Hunter would show up, and whether that would make for a good way to earn money.
“...I should have brought up money earlier. You really like it. If you can”t find a buyer, ask Tony. Tony knows a lot about that sort of thing.'
After looking at me with a slightly pathetic gaze as I tightly hugged the capsule containing the Man Hunter's hand, my eyes turned into dollar signs ($), Sey told me that.
Even I thought it was a bit pathetic to completely change my tune the moment money was mentioned. I was a total snob.
But it was the result of flexible adaptation to my environment.
Anyone would become like me after living for a few months in the underbelly of a cyberpunk city dominated by materialism.
It wasn't my fault, it was Dusk City's fault for making me this way.
Anyway, since it was a severed prosthetic arm holding a value equivalent to my three months' salary, I had to treat it preciously. I shouldn't drop it carelessly.
It didn't look like there was any room for it to get more damaged even if I dropped it a few more times, but still, how unfair would it be if its value dropped by any chance?
I should store it well like this and ask Tony about a place to sell it when I go to work today.
Once I sold it off, I would have some financial leeway for a while. I'd be able to escape from my belt-tightening life to some extent.
Thinking about that, I even found the bizarre and hideous appearance of the severed hand pretty. I felt like I could even give it a kiss.
Heave-ho—
Lost in idle thoughts, I bent my stiff back and picked up the case.
As if reacting to an external stimulus, the dangling thumb of the prosthetic arm suddenly stiffened and scratched the transparent plastic surface.
The sound was quite grating on the ears, but I didn't pay it much mind.
Where should I put this hand to fully preserve its value... I was only worrying about that.
While looking around the cluttered metal shelves in the small room.
Screech—from the fingernail of the prosthetic arm that was scratching against the inner wall,
Click
,
a suspicious sound rang out.
It was a small but clear noise, so my head naturally lowered.
The bent Man Hunter's prosthetic arm was inside the capsule.
The tip of the thumbnail, where the luminescent nail polish faintly glowed, was unnaturally bent back at a ninety-degree angle.
From inside that split metal finger, something slowly popped out.
"...A connection terminal?"
A crookedly shining silver data input/output device, and the memory drive inside it.
It was rattling at the tip of the fingernail as if asking to be connected quickly to an interface.
It seemed the Man Hunter had hidden something inside his prosthetic arm after all.
This somehow smells like money.
* * *
"I don't know if my luck is good, or bad..."
As soon as the route bus doors opened, a squelchy mud puddle welcomed my eyes.
I carefully stepped out into the rain that was pouring down like bullets. I shook my head at the sight of the station floor half-submerged in dirty water.
A thick, fishy smell of seafood that made my stomach churn lingered around my mouth from the morning.
It was because I had eaten the low-grade meal pack that arrived via the meal subscription service, along with the enclosed beverage, leaving nothing behind for breakfast before setting off.
Among them, the meal pack wasn't an issue. It was just safely tasteless like always.
The problem was the beverage.
The taste of the beverage went beyond safe and was extremely peculiar.
Herring Cola, fuck. I don't know what kind of person developed it, but I'd like to see their face.
It was a truly fresh shock, the first such since the Green Tea Cola.
What was certain was that today's Cola Gacha was a massive failure.
And the weather was a gacha too.
Strictly speaking, expressing it as a gacha was wrong, but anyway, it was terrible weather.
From the dark sky, rainwater excitedly pounded against my Teflon-coated poncho as if a hole had been punched in a dome.
An umbrella was useless in this kind of weather. The rain would just curve and come right inside the umbrella. It was better to wear a raincoat as I was doing then.
Perhaps because of the moisture, the inside of my mask felt even more stifling today.
I let out a sigh as I passed through a narrow alley, worrying whether the sagging wires would touch the overflowing ground.
I had hated rainy days for a long time.
It was wet, damp, and muggy.
I didn't want to get up, and I didn't want to do anything.
It was somewhat fine if I just stayed home, but there were days like today when I had to go outside even though it was raining.
Since my school days, my shoes and socks would always get completely soaked whenever that happened, even though I walked around with an umbrella.
Whether it was because of my gait or the way I held the umbrella, anyway, it was the problem.
Just recalling that uncomfortable sensation of smelly water squelching out of my shoes every time I stepped on the ground made me feel like my condition was dropping.
At least in Dusk City, since it rained so much, it was a relief that not only the shoes but even most of the socks were waterproofed...
It was when I was splashing forward, looking only straight ahead down the outskirt backstreet, which I had become familiar enough with to have all sorts of random thoughts.
Someone appeared from the side of an unusually shaded and waterlogged corner intersection.
The assailant, whose face was unseen as he wore a pitch-black painted hat, stealthily blocked my path and spoke.
[Hey buddy, where are you going in such a hurry?]
A modulated mechanical voice, altered to avoid tracking, rang numbingly in my ears.
Without even giving me time to answer, I sighed naturally once again at the sight of the street robber in front of me pulling out a sharply honed dagger.
Wow, to think I'd get hit with a street mugging in a place like this.
What a filthy world.
Following the Cola Gacha, the Alley Gacha on my way to work was also a complete dud.
As expected, I hate rainy days.