Chapter 16
A building in the slums.
A small candle flame, ill-suited to a futuristic city, barely illuminates the dark space.
The blue-haired girl looking after the other family members in place of the leader─Rivera, who had gone outside─spoke without turning around.
“Lunlun, did you have a good trip?”
“Yep, I went out and back without getting caught.”
The girl called Lunlun appeared behind her without making a sound.
Her movements were as quiet as a ghost’s.
Quite a large number of children had gathered in the building besides the two of them.
It almost looked like a poor orphanage.
“What about Rivera?”
“Well….”
Lunlun couldn’t answer easily.
She seemed to be deeply troubled.
Kanph, the blue-haired girl, sighed and furrowed her delicate brow.
Just because she couldn’t see ahead didn’t mean she couldn’t sense anything.
‘There’s definitely some kind of problem.’
Including the children here,
Kanph and Lunlun, and even Rivera, who had gone outside for a while,
were all modified humans created through secret experiments conducted by some corporation.
Their model name was IMP (Inhuman Modification Project).
The experimental subjects, modeled after small imps, were several times more sensitive than ordinary people and possessed physical abilities several times greater.
They had been intended for use as human-resource assassins, but for some reason escaped from a corporate laboratory that observed neither bioethics nor laboratory safety rules and ended up staying in Special Administrative District 49.
Since they shared the same past and pain,
the word “family” suited them better than “comrades.”
However, the three girls at the center of the group were in a slightly different situation from the other children.
They were test subjects who had failed to become adults─unlike the others, they had grown only to about the size of small adults.
Therefore.
They had naturally taken on the role of the adults in the family.
Thus, a family with three mothers rather than three fathers, like someone’s, had come into being.
“…Did something happen to Rivera?”
“Not exactly, but, um….”
It was quite rare for the loudmouthed Lunlun to struggle this much over her words.
Brushing aside the green hair covering her face, Lunlun continued cautiously.
“Um, squad leader.”
“Not squad leader. Kanph.”
“Oh, right. Anyway.”
She had gotten the title wrong, but didn’t seem particularly concerned about it.
“The three of us are pretty normal, aren’t we?”
“What is?”
“You know, our height. Our growth.”
“Compared to the rest of the family, yes.”
Compared to the children who were still only about 100 to 120 centimeters tall, the other three were at least 150 centimeters tall.
It couldn’t exactly be called tall, either, but they were at least as tall as small adults.
“Huh….”
“No, so tell me. Did something happen to Rivera?”
These past few days,
Rivera had delivered enough food to the family to make it look as though she had raided an entire warehouse.
It was a truly fortunate thing for the starving children, but the problem was where she had gotten the food.
‘She said she got it from a man she didn’t know….’
At the time, Kanph had brushed it off as a joke, but the more she thought about it, the more things seemed strange.
‘Food worth hundreds of dollars from a stranger?’
For free, at that?
She could think of nothing but bad possibilities.
That was why Kanph had secretly had Lunlun follow Rivera.
“To be honest, I didn’t see it clearly myself, so you’ll have to take what I say with a grain of salt.”
“I know, so tell me.”
Scratching her head, Lunlun recalled the scene at the destroyed grocery store.
She hadn’t been able to follow Rivera’s movements after Rivera disappeared midway through, but Lunlun had watched everything that happened afterward closely.
Gulp.
The sound of Lunlun swallowing echoed loudly.
The children who had been chattering nearby had already begun focusing on their conversation.
“Rivera…….”
Lunlun playfully drew out the end of her sentence.
Very, very long.
The children around them erupted in complaints.
“Yeah, so what happened to the captain?!”
“Ah! I hate Lunlun so fucking much! Stop teasing and hurry up!”
“…Can’t we eat anymore?”
Amid the barrage of jeers,
Lunlun turned serious again and looked straight at Kanph.
“I think she’s pulling some kind of romance scam for our sake right now.”
“…??”
Question marks appeared above everyone’s heads.
What on earth did that mean?
But having watched what happened at the grocery store, Lunlun had no choice but to put it that way.
After all, the corporation had spent more than twenty years researching and experimenting on them.
In other words, most of the people here were adults.
Of course, they had also spent so long imprisoned that most of the children had experienced stunted mental growth,
but that wasn’t true of Lunlun, Kanph, and Rivera.
But then.
“She’s pretending to be a child? The captain—no, Rivera? Is she deceiving that man to get food from him?”
“…That’s what it looked like to me.”
Otherwise, there was no explanation.
How could a fully grown adult…?
* * *
I looked down at Rivera with a pleased smile.
“Now, hold on tight so you don’t get lost.”
“……”
“What’s your answer?”
“H-hweee….”
In fact, all animals were cutest when they were young.
It was advantageous for their survival.
The top of Rivera’s head reached only about chest height on me at most,
and she was impossibly cute like that.
“Hey, Hotdog Man.”
“Why?”
Michael’s expression darkened as though he were looking at a pervert.
“…Nothing.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Michael thought to himself,
‘It’s true that she’s short enough for the term “girl” to suit her, but I don’t think she’s really young enough to be treated like a little kid….’
-I failed to notice that he harbored such a question.
All my attention was currently focused on the little lady, Rivera.
“Right. Do you want to come along, too?”
“…Where are you going?”
“The grocery store’s been completely wrecked, so I should contact my boss.”
“…Hotdog Man’s boss.”
Not boss, I’d said. Owner.
“All right. Then I’ll come with you….”
At that moment,
Michael looked to the side of me and clamped his mouth shut.
He looked like a gazelle that had encountered a predator on the savanna.
Even a single bead of sweat rolled down his face.
I turned my head and saw Rivera quietly holding on to my hand.
The skin visible between her shaggy strands of hair was a little red, like a ripe persimmon, but there was nothing particularly strange about her.
Why was he suddenly acting like that?
“…No, I’m fine. I’m a little tired from following Hotdog Man around, too.”
Michael calmly straightened his tie, then spoke in a cautious tone.
“I’ll clean up this grocery store as best I can.”
“Mm, I’d appreciate that.”
When Michael said he wouldn’t be coming along, Rivera nodded several times in rapid succession.
Only then did Michael let out a sigh of relief.
I also spoke to Nova, who had been watching us from the cracked ceiling of the grocery store.
“Then we’ll be back in a bit.”
[…Dyu.]
For some reason, the turret’s barrel seemed to remain trained on Rivera beside me, but there was no reason for it to do that, so it was probably just my imagination.
When I had first fallen into this world, I had been so afraid of the streets outside that I slept beneath the turret every day, but that was no longer the case.
“Shall we go?”
“Uh, y-yes….”
To buy a terminal.
Let’s go!
* * *
I had known since the very first day that the area where I was staying was Old Town.
The identification card I had received from Christine had my (fake) name on it,
along with the grocery store’s address.
[Abel Anderson / RCMMA00041]
[447, Old North Sector St, AREA 49, RC]
After racking my brains and piecing it together,
I interpreted it as:
447 Old North Sector Street, Area 49, damn Risk City.
What did the existence of an Old Town mean?
It meant there was a New City, too.
There must have been dozens of numbered districts dividing the city, but I hadn’t expected the place names within each district to be divided so finely as well.
I received the answer to that question unexpectedly from Rivera.
“Risk City is built in a circular structure. Districts 1 through 20 are the central area, up through District 40 is the inner area, and from there through District 49 is the outskirts.”
“What about 50?”
“The landfill.”
“Aha.”
In other words, the farther a district was from the center, the larger it became.
Since Districts 41 through 49 must have encircled the entire enormous city, I was beginning to get a sense of what this dystopian (insane) world was like.
“Of course, Area 49 is a little special even among the outskirts. It’s a Special Administrative District, so it’s effectively treated as being outside the city.”
“Even though it’s within the same city?”
“Yes. From what I’ve heard, the corporations lobbied for it so they could easily receive goods coming in from outside the city, but now that I think about it, it feels like they simply needed a place to gather the city’s trash.”
“Wow, you know a lot.”
“…I-I don’t! It’s just that I overheard a lot while going around here and there…”
“…that’s all.”
A pleased fatherly smile spread across my face.
I even let out a hollow laugh without realizing it.
“Heh heh heh….”
“…I’m serious. There’s nothing suspicious about it.”
“You’re extremely cute.”
“……!!”
I stroked Rivera’s shaggy hair again for a moment.
But people around us were gradually beginning to turn their eyes our way,
probably because Rivera’s cuteness was spilling out through her mask of stiff hair.
So we’d better hurry away.
“If we go in that direction, we’ll reach the black market, but I don’t think we need to go that far.”
I followed Rivera as she led the way.
We crossed streets, passed through back alleys, and even reached a damp passage where droplets fell one after another….
“……This is the right place, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Judging by the scenery, it wouldn’t have been strange for a three-meter-tall Chaos monster to appear and roar.
Anyway, knowing nothing myself, I had no choice but to keep following Rivera.
I miss map apps.
After walking for a few more minutes, I saw a neon sign flickering intermittently.
【Walter’s Recycle Shop】
The name stirred a faint nostalgia in me.
I felt a slight sense of familiarity because it reminded me of “Hoon’s Mart” and “Chulsoo’s Bakery” from my neighborhood.
Naming stores like that must be universal.
I casually ignored the word [Fucking] written in glow-in-the-dark lacquer on the wall beside the sign.
Anyway.
“This is the place?”
“Yes, this is the place, but….”
Rivera furrowed her brow.
It didn’t seem to be because of the profanity-covered graffiti.
She seemed to have sensed some kind of commotion coming from inside.
Well, I’d find out once I went in.
“Excuse me.”
I pushed open the entrance door, which was plastered with dirty stickers, and entered the shop.
Then.
“Hey, you fucking bastard Walter!! You! You said you’d fix it properly!”
Alongside the sight of a customer angrily grabbing the shop owner by the collar,
[Master, please calm down. Excitement stimulates epinephrine and cortisol hormones, which are bad for your health.]
I saw a bizarre dog trying to restrain the customer while speaking human words.
Fuck. What is this.
The dog’s head was roughly twice as large as an ordinary dog’s.
The shop owner, Walter, was being strangled, but still sputtered out an excuse for himself.
“…F-for the human rights of androids.”
“This isn’t an android!! Fuck, it doesn’t even have human rights. Why is a pet dog robot speaking like a human…? I told you over and over. Just, just fix the barking function properly!!”
“It’s essentially an upgrade…, urk!!”
It was a truly confusing situation.