Chapter 12
It was a movement that bordered on instinct.
Not a reaction following the usual flow of thought, but a response so fast it was as if the words “Fuck, move!” had been shouted directly from my eyes to my nerves.
‘Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy….’
An eight-ton truck with broken steering was charging toward the grocery store, so the fact that my feet hadn’t frozen in place was already something to be proud of.
At this rate, it wouldn’t be out of place to play this as a highlight reel at my funeral.
Setting aside the minor issue that my funeral looked likely to be held as soon as tomorrow.
“Huh? What was that strange sound… Urk!!”
I grabbed the backs of their necks tightly and threw myself into the grocery store with both of them.
Michael was heavier, so I put a little too much force into it, but even he must have considered not getting hit by a truck far more important than being strangled.
Further inside.
Inside.
Deeper.
I launched myself far enough in that the truck could no longer push its way in.
“…What on earth is going on?”
“Shut up and keep your head down!”
I firmly pushed Michael and Rivera’s heads down.
“You don’t know what cover is? Cover? Hide in a bush? Well, I suppose you might not.”
After that brief silence passed.
Kwaaang!!!
Soon, the entire building began to shake.
Mass is destruction.
The truck was obviously heavy, and it had slammed into the building without stopping, so the dust billowing up alone was enough to create a thick cloud.
At the same time.
Countless fragments skimmed over our heads.
‘……Ah.’
No.
I muttered without realizing it.
The entire world felt as though it had slowed to a crawl.
For an instant, it seemed almost as if everything had stopped.
‘That glass wall.’
Because the mysterious stains on the outside wouldn’t disappear, I had spent all day wiping it down at first.
How many days had it taken me to clean all of that? Haha.
The memories I had made with the glass wall shattered along with it.
‘What about the products on the shelves?’
When I first arrived at the grocery store, the shelves had been filthy with thick layers of dust.
I wiped away the dust and organized the products.
When it had finally taken on the appearance of a proper grocery store, I had felt an indescribable sense of emotion.
All those products spilled messily onto the floor.
Very slowly.
‘And finally, the electronic clock.’
I nearly threw myself forward without realizing it.
Tick-tock.
The clock’s color, which had guided me comfortingly like a lighthouse beacon, was gradually losing its luster.
My effort.
My time.
My grocery store.
“Sleep well….”
I’ll clean you up again for sure, so close your eyes for now. RIP.
I didn’t know whether it was just my imagination.
But a single droplet slowly rolled down from the corner of my eye, which had somehow grown moist.
“…What on earth happened?”
“A truck came and crashed into it.”
“……What?”
Michael looked flustered even after hearing my answer, unable to grasp the situation.
Same here.
I was extremely flustered.
Cars were made to travel on roads.
I never expected a massive truck to ram its entire body into a building—not even the Japanese army during the Pacific War would have done something that absurd.
But that only lasted for a moment.
I heard the footsteps of people climbing down from the truck that had finished its violent parking maneuver.
“Hey, wasn’t that the little brat who was at the entrance just now? The one the boss told us to watch out for?”
“Huh? Was she? I didn’t see her.”
“I told you not to drive while high, damn it.”
Their rough, swaggering way of speaking.
The words boss and little brat.
This didn’t seem to be a simple case of drunk driving, and they all appeared to be members of the Bogus Gang.
One of them raised his voice.
“Hey!! Stop wasting time and come out! If you come out now, we’ll kill you nicely!”
“So this is the place, right? Where the dead guys are?”
“Yeah. We’re sure the signal cut out here.”
I listened in on the gang members’ conversation with one ear while looking at Michael and Rivera.
We couldn’t stay hidden behind the counter for long.
“Listen carefully. Don’t raise your heads until I tell you it’s okay. Don’t even think about stepping out to help. Michael. Are you listening?”
“…Y-yes.”
I considered telling them to sneak away, but that seemed like it would only put them in greater danger, so I simply told them to stay still.
But Rivera seemed to have no intention of listening to me. She grabbed my sleeve and opened her mouth.
“…Then I’ll help you.”
“Tsk, how dare a little kid talk back….”
“?”
I understood that she wanted to help, but staying still was how she could help me here.
[…Dyu.]
“You stay still, too.”
[……Dyu? Dyu??]
“I’ll call you if I need you.”
I said that because if the 20mm turret opened fire in a grocery store that had already been half-destroyed, I felt like the building might genuinely collapse.
And for some reason, I didn’t feel as though the situation was that dangerous.
‘There are about ten of them. Three are carrying rifles, and the rest have handguns.’
Is this just bravado?
My heart was frighteningly calm.
Only anger continued to burn endlessly.
I answered myself.
Probably not.
“…What a pain. Hey! Go check inside.”
In the meantime, the gang members seemed to have finished preparing to search the grocery store.
Step. Step. Footsteps approached from this direction.
When a gun muzzle appeared above the counter, I abruptly thrust myself up.
Once again, the world began to move slowly.
The gang members wore startled expressions as they looked at the target that had suddenly appeared.
And the completely wrecked interior of the grocery store.
‘Fuck.’
A vein bulged on my forehead with a sharp crack.
Heat rose along with a low curse.
At the same time, a cold thought seeped in: Had my personality always been this hot-blooded?
‘The treatment I received.’
That was the only reason that came to mind immediately.
But so what?
That wasn’t what mattered right now.
“Th-is—ba-stard—wha—”
It felt as though about ten seconds had passed.
But the gang member blocking the counter was still speaking in an unbearably slow voice.
His fingers tightened.
‘I can’t dodge bullets, can I?’
The moment I made that judgment, I moved.
I reached out and snatched away the handgun he was holding.
His fingers bent backward in the opposite direction.
Within that sluggish world.
I aimed at the joints of the gang members behind him and pulled the trigger.
Bang! Bang!
My first targets were the ones carrying assault rifles.
I could have aimed for their heads, but for now, I focused only on incapacitating the enemies.
The fact that the world had slowed down didn’t mean my shooting skills had improved.
I fired after focusing properly—or so I thought.
Out of the seventeen rounds in the magazine and the one bullet already loaded in the chamber, only six of the eighteen shots struck their targets.
Still, with an accuracy of around thirty-three percent, I could probably enlist as an honorary XCOM operative.
Three gang members fell while screaming.
All three had been carrying assault rifles.
“Aaargh!”
“…Shit! What the hell is going on?!”
I smashed the jaw of the gang member whose handgun I had taken with the grip, knocking him unconscious.
Then I vaulted over the counter.
And continued my charge.
I looked over the faces of the confused gang members and lashed out with my foot.
It looked like a light kick, but the gang member struck in the abdomen had his waist bent into a right angle.
“Guh…!”
I pulled back before the drool could even reach me.
And at the same time, I felt a chilling sensation.
I saw another one trying to pick up the assault rifle that had fallen to the floor.
I threw the empty handgun I was holding and struck him in the cheekbone.
“What kind of movement…!”
The handgun wasn’t particularly heavy, but it was enough to halt his actions for a moment.
When I drove my fist into him in that state, the unpleasant sensation came through my skin in its entirety.
A broken tooth lodged in the back of my hand.
The sensation of my opponent’s jaw breaking.
Whenever the sudden sense of reality made me want to recoil, I kept seeing the grocery store’s punctured, shattered interior.
At this point, there was no way the other side wouldn’t fire their guns, too.
I narrowly avoided the handgun muzzles with acrobatic movements and incapacitated the gang members.
“Ghk, ghuuuh….”
“Grrk.”
Leaving the writhing gang members behind, I shook the teeth embedded in the back of my hand loose.
And that was that. A clean end to the situation.
‘…There’s no way it ends that easily.’
Ten gang members had come after me in a truck during only the second attack.
I didn’t think this would be the end of it.
The result of ignoring the first warning had been truly horrific.
As I looked at the grocery store, which had been transformed into a complete ruin, a gloomy feeling rose within me. Fuck.
“W-what on earth happened….”
“Hotdog Man!! Are you all right?!”
The homeless people in the street reacted with horror as they saw the grocery store’s terrible condition.
I waved a hand dismissively and returned to the counter where Michael and Rivera should have been.
There, Michael was clutching Rivera’s leg and grunting.
“…What are you doing?”
“…This young lady kept trying to go outside, so I was stopping her.”
When I looked at Michael’s face, blood was already trickling from his nose, as though he had been kicked several times.
I frowned as I looked down at the little brat.
“I told you it was okay even if you didn’t help me.”
“But….”
Before Rivera could continue, I roughly ruffled the girl’s hair.
Tsk. I said it was okay.
What could a little brat do, anyway?
As I stroked Rivera’s hair, I looked at Michael.
“These guys are the Bogus Gang or whatever, right?”
“You mean the Bogus Gang.”
“Whatever.”
That wasn’t important.
“I’m asking just in case, but do you know where they’re staying?”
“I do, but why….”
I nodded once.
Then I pointed with my thumb at the truck parked inside the grocery store.
“Get in.”
“…Where are you going?”
Why ask?
“Since this side’s main base has been raided, we have to raid the other side’s main base, too.”
That was the golden rule in the RTS genre.
I didn’t know if they were a gang or a bunch of bastards.
But I couldn’t just let this slide.
* * *
I lowered myself into the driver’s seat of the truck.
Perhaps it had already been modified for ramming in the first place, because its wheels still turned perfectly even after it had completely wrecked the grocery store.
Michael sat in the passenger seat with an anxious expression.
“Um, wouldn’t it be better if I drove?”
“No, I’ve played Euro Truck, too.”
“…What?”
I even possessed a Class 2 ordinary license—the license of a true man.
What? Don’t men get Class 1?
That wasn’t important.
Anyway.
Before getting into the truck, I had to sweat bullets leaving Rivera behind when she insisted on coming with us.
I was uneasy about leaving her alone in the half-destroyed grocery store, but Nova was with her, so there shouldn’t be any major problems.
I headed toward the Bogus Gang’s base with Michael, my human navigation system.
Michael spoke in an anxious voice.
“But are you really sure this is okay? Even without bringing anyone else with us?”
Even if I wanted to bring someone, there was no one I could bring.
The other homeless people? I’d be lucky if they didn’t get in the way.
And this anger felt as though it would keep burning forever unless I resolved it myself.
Michael swallowed hard as he looked at me, then his eyes widened.
“W-wait a moment. Hotdog Man. You’re bleeding from your thigh right now!”
“Huh?”
I glanced down at my thigh for a moment while driving.
My old cotton pants had been stained red.
When did this get pierced?
There was less pain than I expected. I didn’t feel much of a connection to reality, either.
When I lightly tore the hole in my cotton pants, something dropped to the floor with a clink.
“…This looks like a 9mm round.”
I was briefly surprised by the bullet that had appeared from inside my pants even though I hadn’t put one in my pocket.
I scrubbed at the blood-stained skin, feeling that something was strange.
“Then the wound must be torn open… Huh?”
There wasn’t a single wound on my thigh.
Michael stared at me with a stupid expression, faced with a reality that made no sense.
“…Are you perhaps actually an enhanced human? Or affiliated with some corporation?”
I didn’t know, either.
It could have been the treatment drug Christine used on me, or it could have been the fact that I had fallen into the game itself.
“Enough. You said it was that way, right?”
“…Ah, yes. That building by the roadside.”
It looked like an ordinary collapsed ruin, but Michael said that the Bogus Gang had fortified the building and turned it into a base.
Okay, target acquired.
“You’re coming inside instead of turning back?”
“…Yes. I’ll go with you. I can’t send Hotdog Man in alone.”
Loyalty was a good thing, but for some reason, that sounded a little creepy.
Don’t tell me this bastard…
“…It’s not like that.”
Michael noticed my gaze, panicked, and waved his hands.
Well, whatever.
“Then buckle up first.”
“What? Weren’t you planning to sneak in from here?”
That wasn’t possible.
Even if only to commemorate the destroyed grocery store.
A building could only be avenged with a building.
As I calmly shifted gears, Michael’s pupils trembled anxiously.
“Y-you’re not, right?”
“Hold on tight.”
“I’ll just get out here—”
I slammed the accelerator all the way down.