Chapter 13
A dark room where shadows had settled heavily.
[When the switch is pressed, white light comes on.]
[That my life would change forever….]
As a holographic-rendered mirror ball softly illuminated the pitch-black room and the lyrics of an old jazz-pop song sung by a male vocalist echoed through it,
a man whose face was half-covered in distorted tattoos sat on the sofa, listening to the song.
His name was Bogus.
He was the boss of the Bogus Gang, which had been earning a fearsome reputation in Area 49 lately.
The thing about gang organizations in Risk City was that
several were born and several vanished every day, making them much like mayflies.
The Bogus Gang had yet to rise far above that level, either. Even if they became a little famous, they were still mayflies in the end.
Therefore.
The Bogus Gang was standing on the brink of a very important turning point.
“Um, Boss….”
“Hmm.”
A nonverbal expression telling him to state his business.
Bogus considered this time spent peacefully listening to music extremely important.
Whenever the illegally implanted magic circuits began to burn, listening to soothing music eased the pain in his body little by little.
“…Wasn’t the truck a bit excessive? Of course, I understand that you consider that little brat extremely important, Boss.”
The reason was that the life signals of the three gang members sent as a warning had been cut off.
After hearing the news, Bogus ordered ten armed men to attack the grocery store using a truck modified to be bulletproof.
Whether that grocery store was truly an ordinary place or was being backed by an organization with some other purpose.
It sounded like an excessively harsh measure.
The subordinate swallowed hard.
Considering the behavior Bogus had usually shown, it was obvious what his reaction would be without even seeing it.
But despite his subordinate’s insolent remark, Bogus did not raise his voice.
“Come here.”
He beckoned the subordinate toward him with a small motion of his fingers.
The subordinate stopped in front of Bogus.
Smack!!
His head turned to the left.
A drop of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
“How do you feel right now?”
“…I’m sorry. I dared to say something insolent.”
“No, I’m asking you to be genuinely honest.”
For someone who had just slapped his subordinate, Bogus’s expression was surprisingly indifferent.
He still seemed focused on listening to the song.
“…Well….”
Getting slapped could only feel absolutely awful from the moment it happened.
But from the subordinate’s perspective, it was difficult to put his honest feelings into words.
- Hey, I said be honest.
- Huh? This bastard’s actually being honest.
- You think your military service is a joke─.
Things usually went that way.
It was a progression all veterans knew.
Perhaps Bogus had not really expected an honest answer from his subordinate, because his voice continued amid the gentle jazz-pop.
“You must feel absolutely fucking awful. You got slapped, so of course you feel bad.”
“……”
“So what should you do? Would hitting me on the cheek make you feel better?”
Bogus shook his head.
“No, no. At the very least, you’d have to pull the gun out of your coat before you could calm down.”
“…What? No, I wouldn’t. That’s not it.”
“Ha, you idiot. Don’t you understand a metaphor? I just mean it figuratively.”
He sank deeper into the sofa and summed up what he meant.
“What I’m saying is that no one in Risk City who gets slapped on the right cheek will ever offer up the left. So if you ever find yourself slapping someone’s cheek, smash them so thoroughly that they don’t even think about fighting back.”
The subordinate could not bring himself to raise his head.
Bogus’s voice sounded as though he were saying it directly to him.
Seeing his subordinate’s reaction, Bogus grinned and bared his chrome-plated teeth.
“Look at you, scared shitless.”
Bogus slowly closed his eyes.
He focused on the flow of the air and the sound of the song.
The bullets had already been fired, anyway.
All that remained was to wait for the result.
“Enough. If you have nothing else to say, get out. Handle ordinary matters yourselves.”
“Understood. Then I’ll come back to see you lat─”
“Shut up for a second.”
“……??”
A curse suddenly burst out.
The subordinate stopped speaking and firmly shut his mouth.
His cheek was still tingling, which also helped him make the right decision quickly.
And then.
“Ha, damn it.”
Bogus let out an irritated sigh.
“I should have slapped him properly.”
Immediately after those words came out.
A truck moving as though its brakes had failed pulled up at the Bogus Gang’s hideout.
─KWAANG!!
Quite violently, at that.
* * *
“Wait, wait, just hold on a moment, Hotdog Man.
First, calm down.
No, it’s not because I’m carsick from driving the truck.
Yes. I’m not hurt anywhere. I just barely managed to fasten my seat belt.
No, that’s not what I mean. What I’m saying is….”
This really doesn’t seem right.”
“Of course, you’ve already taken down three in the vacant lot, ten at the grocery store, and seven here at the Bogus Gang’s hideout.
You’ve already knocked out nearly twenty members, but we don’t know how many more could be waiting upstairs. So….”
“Wait, I haven’t finished speaking yet!”
“It was a perfect ambush in that the enemy had absolutely no idea it was coming.
Even I, who rode here in the truck with you, didn’t expect it, so I can understand to some extent. And it’s also true that Hotdog Man’s strength makes no sense.
So I’m asking: are you really not from some corporation or noble family? You aren’t? Well, then I’ll take it that way for now.”
“This way. The structure matches the records I checked through the cybernetic eye.
Bogus, the organization’s boss, is probably on the top floor. Unless he’s coming down after hearing all this noise.”
“Um, Hotdog Man?
If that explodes, we’ll all die.
The building was already in poor condition because this base was a fortified abandoned structure, and tampering with the gas pipes would be…. What? You say our building was wrecked, too?
…Understood.
At the very least, we’ll detonate it when we’re ready to escape.”
“You said there don’t seem to be as many people who have converted their bodies to cybernetic prosthetics as expected.
Well, products that can be used in daily life while also serving combat purposes are expensive. It’s all a matter of price.
Let me explain with an example. If someone had a cannon attached to their arm instead of a hand, fighting would be easy, but wouldn’t daily life be difficult?
…You know someone similar? His name is Rockman?
That’s fascinating.”
“We’re starting to see fewer and fewer gang members.
Well, I suppose I would run away, too, if a single person were tearing apart an entire organization in perfect condition.
You say there are two of us? …All I’ve done so far is give directions and sigh.
It really is amazing that not even twenty minutes have passed yet.
Hmm? You’re starting to calm down and want to go back. You’re joking, right? Ha-ha, that was pretty funny.”
“Ah, this is the top floor.
The organization’s boss stays over there.
And since this is my last chance to ask, may I know the name of the organization Hotdog-Man belongs to….”
* * *
“I’ve told you several times, there’s no such thing.”
What organization?
I was suffering through pointless misunderstandings because Rivera had seen the lie I told the gangsters.
Michael gave a hollow laugh.
“You know as well as I do that your story is difficult to believe. How could someone who brought down an entire gang barehanded be an ordinary person?”
“There was someone who turned the entire underworld against himself to avenge a dog and a house. It happens.”
“…Who was that?”
There was someone like that.
A Mr. Wick.
Anyway.
You couldn’t just invent an organization that didn’t exist.
If I kept denying it, perhaps someday I could prove my innocence without having to cry.
“Honestly, even if you had worked as a mercenary, I think you would have made quite a name for yourself.”
I had barely finished listening to Michael when a sharp chill ran down the back of my neck.
I grabbed the back of Michael’s neck as he walked down the hallway and yanked him backward.
Bang!!
A gunshot echoed through the hallway.
If I hadn’t pulled him back just now, Michael would have had a huge bullet hole where a piercing would have been.
“Apparently it isn’t over yet.”
“…Thank you.”
You don’t need to thank me.
He had come to guide me because he trusted me, so the least I could do was look out for him this much.
At the end of the hallway, beyond a curtain with a hole in it.
“Ho, you dodged that.”
Tuk. The sound of a handgun dropping to the floor rang out.
Inside the room, an extremely vicious, filthy, and foul-smelling man was glaring at me.
“Are you the burger guy, Bogus, or whatever?”
“Bogus.”
“Same difference.”
I was still getting confused.
“Let me ask you one thing. Why did you launch a truck into someone else’s home?”
I hadn’t expected the word ‘launch’ to sound appropriate for a truck, either.
Bogus shrugged at my question.
“I’m the type who prefers to deal with complicated matters as simply as possible. It’s a shame the bullet missed.”
The type who liked getting things for free.
I wondered if he liked sushi, too. Anyway, confirmed.
“And you’re just sitting here listening to music?”
“Rest is important.”
Honestly, I hadn’t expected him to be here.
He must have clearly heard the screams of his subordinates.
Which meant he had simply stayed upstairs and sat there.
“You don’t seem suited to being a boss at all. I can hear your subordinates crying all the way up here.”
“Not really. They were all idiots, so they annoyed me.”
Bogus rose from the soft-looking sofa.
“The Bogus Gang is an organization completed by my existence, anyway.”
“Huh, are you a narcissist? Even you must know that you’re not that handsome.”
If he had a self-destructive streak, maybe, but otherwise.
Of course, there was no way someone who ran a gang in a cyberpunk world could be normal.
‘I didn’t notice while he was sitting….’
He looked over two meters tall.
I had grown taller, too, but I was no match for him.
He even had thick muscles.
Looks like he mixed some protein into his meals.
And what about the tattoos covering half his face?
He looked as vicious as they came.
Bogus’s burning eyes glared fiercely at me.
“…Not a single cybernetic prosthetic. Fascinating. A purist in this day and age. You don’t look like you came from an organ-trafficking farm, either.”
I almost told him about the teaching that one’s body, hair, and skin were gifts from one’s parents, but decided against it.
“You must have taken down all my men and come up here. What are you? A psychic? An enhanced human? A gene-spliced organism? Or perhaps….”
Bogus stroked the tattoos covering half his face.
Soon, a red glow began to well up from the black tattoos.
“A magic-power user like me?”
“…??”
What did he mean, magic power?
Oh, right.
This wasn’t an ordinary cyberpunk setting.
I looked at Bogus with a surprised expression.
Could he shoot flames from his hands or something?
‘…Then, Fireball? Lightning?’
Despite his appearance, he seemed to be a wizard.
My body tensed slightly.
Since I was facing the special element known as magic power, I felt I needed to move cautiously.
And then.
Bogus’s body charged toward me at incredible speed.
So fast that the world, which had been moving slowly, seemed normal for an instant.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t react.
“…It looks like you’ve had magic circuits engraved on your skin. It’s not a proper method, but it does let you use magic power quickly─, urgh!”
When I grabbed Michael, who seemed possessed by Speedwagon, and pulled him back, a huge crack appeared in the floor.
Boom!!
Steam rose from Bogus’s body.
The tattoos, which had turned red, seemed to cause considerable pain, and his expression was twisted in agony.
I shouted without realizing it.
“Wait, you said you were a wizard?!”
How cowardly, using a physical attack.
I had nearly fallen for it completely.
“…Are you making fun of me? No. You are making fun of me. Your attitude has been poor from the beginning.”
His speech became a little more rigid, too.
The heat intensified.
Fiercer.
Sharper.
Michael whispered in a small voice beside me.
“Um, as you surely know. Not every magic-power user can materialize magic power externally. That’s why the title of wizard is only used by noble families who trained their magic circuits through the traditional method. …You did know that, right?”
“I just found out.”
“Ah, then you were just unconsciously making fun of him….”
Michael nodded while looking at me.
Somehow, that rubbed me the wrong way.
Anyway.
From Bogus’s perspective, my reaction must have looked like some serious teabagging.
“…I’ll fucking kill you!!”
His anger erupted like an active volcano.