Chapter 33
By the time Anna's voice, chattering like a newly hatched chick, was starting to make my ears bleed.
Michael, who had been waiting for us at the grocery store entrance, welcomed us.
“Hotdog Man, you made it back safely!”
Even that strange nickname was gradually starting to sound familiar, so it seemed I had somehow become someone who liked cyberpunk─fusionpunk-style mishmash.
After confirming that Anna was perfectly fine, Michael tilted his head as he looked at the car we had arrived in.
“By the way, what’s with this car?”
“It just sort of happened.”
“…I see.”
He didn't seem particularly curious.
Well, we'd brought the Bogus gang's truck in much the same way.
At this rate, we might end up using one side entirely as a parking lot.
I asked about Walter's condition first.
“How’s Walter?”
“Thankfully, they say his life isn't in danger.”
“Phew, that's a real relief.”
Anna, who had been listening with her ears pricked up beside me, hurried over to Michael.
“Where is he right now…?”
“Ah, I'm glad you're safe too, Miss Anna. Mr. Walter is at the hospital right now.”
“…The hospital?”
“District 49 is still a place where people live, after all. I didn't know at first either, but Rivera knew where to find a doctor. The facilities and skill are fairly decent, so I don't think there will be any major problems.”
At Anna's trembling voice, Michael carefully added,
“Of course, judging by the severity of his injuries, they're closer to serious than minor. But he'll be fine. He'll have to stay in bed for a while, though. Why don't we go visit him together later?”
“Thank you, thank you….”
“You should thank Hotdog Man again, not me.”
I shook my head at Michael's gaze as he looked at me.
“It's fine. I got thanked plenty of times on the way here.”
“Well, that's what he says.”
Then he looked me up and down.
He seemed to be checking whether I was injured anywhere.
“Though, it looks like your clothes are a little torn.”
“I ran into some sort of wrestler there.”
“…Wrestling?”
Ah, he didn't know.
Traditional Korean grappling sports….
“Anyway, it's a thing.”
Honestly, I didn't know much about it either.
Michael nodded calmly.
“Well, it hasn't even been an hour yet. Your clothes are a little torn, but you don't seem to be injured anywhere. I suppose things went well.”
I couldn't easily answer.
What I'd done hadn't exactly been a neat resolution. It was more like cutting through a hopelessly tangled knot in one stroke.
When I carefully remained silent, Michael's eyes began to tremble faintly.
“Hotdog Man….”
“…….”
“It seems you didn't catch up to the car.”
It hadn't been intentional, but that was true.
In fact, I had arrived before the car driven by the kidnappers.
“…Did you perhaps destroy the entire building, like you did with the Bogus gang last time?”
“Not that.”
At my answer, Michael let out a huge sigh of relief.
“Phew, that's a relief. Then why are you like this?”
I answered honestly.
“I did everything except that.”
“…What?”
Michael's mouth fell wide open.
The building was fine.
At least the building was.
There probably wasn't a single person who would be able to walk on two feet for a while, though.
“So, what you're saying is….”
“That's right.”
“…I see.”
Michael had been the person who kept watching me from a position the bullets couldn't reach when I rammed the truck into the Bogus gang.
So he seemed capable of guessing at least roughly what kind of carnage had occurred at Hole Paradise.
With his head slightly bowed, Michael muttered something too quietly for me to understand.
“Hole Paradise, you say…. The forces behind it…. And its owner was definitely…. Hmm….”
I left Michael to his thoughts and
looked at Anna, who was fidgeting with her hands behind me and watching my reaction.
“I have something to take care of, so go to the hospital with Michael. Ah, or do I need to take you there myself?”
Michael answered quickly.
“No, that's fine. I can take the other members—in other words, the homeless people—with me. There shouldn't be anything particularly dangerous on the way.”
“Then I'll leave Anna in your care. You'll come back here after that, right?”
“I will.”
“Then I suppose I'll go see him then.”
I did need to check on Walter's condition.
Michael stepped closer to me and asked,
“If it's something you need to take care of….”
“There were a lot of androids kidnapped in that building.”
I answered while scratching my head.
“I'm not some incredibly kind person, but I couldn't just ignore it after seeing them.”
I planned to drive back to the Hole Paradise building.
At times like this, the absence of law enforcement felt especially glaring.
Twenty-first-century South Korea, I miss you….
Michael chuckled at my words.
“…Well, Hotdog Man was always that sort of person. I think I finally understand some of the things I was wondering about.”
“What things?”
“Oh, nothing.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
But Michael continued speaking as calmly as ever.
“The kidnapped androids…. It's a somewhat complicated issue. Especially since our organization hasn't stabilized yet.”
“…How many times do I have to say we're not an organization?”
“Ah, my mistake. A gathering, a gathering. When homeless people gather together like this, it's only natural for a simple social gathering to form.”
He sent me a sparkling signal with a look that said he understood everything.
I almost poked at him with two fingers without thinking.
I barely managed to restrain myself.
“Anyway, that's what I've been worrying about too.”
If we used the truck supplied by the Bogus gang, we could safely bring all of them back, but what came afterward would be another problem.
We couldn't keep them all in the Hole Paradise building, either.
Honestly, what came after a fight was harder than fighting without thinking.
‘We have to bring them back first.’
Unless there was some other good way.
Just as I was continuing to ponder the matter seriously,
“Ah, excuse me for a moment. I suddenly received a call from an unknown number. Hmm, there can't be many people who know my direct number….”
Isn't that voice phishing?
I quietly waited for Michael to finish his call.
Even in the South Korea I used to live in, it was rare to find a homeless person without a smartphone.
Apparently, the same was true in this cyberpunk world.
“Yes, I’m answering the call. ……Yes?? Yes, ah…. I understand. No, yes, yes. All right. I'll pass that along for now….”
A bead of sweat trickled down Michael's forehead.
The weather in District 49 wasn't hot at all.
If anything, it was cold.
Who on earth had called him to make him act like that?
A moment later, Michael ended the call and closed the activated interface.
“Who was that?”
“…Um, Hotdog Man.”
Michael's gaze moved toward me,
then shifted behind me this time.
I reflexively turned around.
A black vehicle pulled to a stop beside Anna, who had taken a step back.
It was a vehicle with a shape I remembered.
Gulp.
Along with the sound of him swallowing, Michael carefully chose his words.
“…The call I just received was contact from the Sparo Rapido Family.”
“Did we do something wrong?”
“No one knows yet…. Anyway, they said they confirmed that the terminal Hotdog Man had been using was broken. Since it would be impossible to make calls, they asked whether you could spare them a little time.”
“…….”
“What power do I have to refuse? So I simply told them I would pass along their message exactly as they gave it to me.”
…So this was passing the bomb along.
Then the rear door of the vehicle slid open.
Last time, they had only opened the window, but this time it seemed they had sent it for me to get in.
I was already busy, so what kind of conversation did they suddenly want to have….
Then a certain possibility occurred to me.
‘…They already knew my terminal was broken.’
That was practically the same as saying they had checked exactly what kind of rampage I had caused in the Hole Paradise building.
I instinctively realized that the mafia family's polite invitation was deeply connected to what had happened at Hole Paradise.
In any case, I couldn't refuse their invitation.
The Sparo Rapido Family was an organization on an entirely different scale from either the Bogus gang or Hole Paradise.
Whew.
I sighed and climbed into the vehicle.
“…I'll be back in a little while.”
“Yes, I'll take Miss Anna to the hospital and return as well. …They probably won't have anything bad to say, either.”
“They'll blame you….”
“Yes, have a safe trip.”
The vehicle's doors soon closed,
and it began moving at a leisurely pace.
* * *
“Hello.”
Just as naturally as could be, the final boss appeared.
Was there no position like vice boss or chief aide here?
But I couldn't say such an insolent thought out loud.
“…Yes, hello.”
“You can call me by my name if you like.”
“……Yes, Ms. Luciana.”
Beyond her faded blond hair, her red eyes glimmered with a deep hue.
I hadn't noticed last time because I had been too distracted, but she didn't look as old as I had expected.
Her attitude was simply so relaxed that her behavior seemed mature.
She was thirty at the absolute oldest─but I might get shot for saying that, so I decided she was in her twenties.
“Hehe, are you still Abel Anderson?”
“…I suppose so. And I probably will be in the future, too.”
What did she mean, ‘still’?
Luciana directed her charming smile at me.
“Aha, got it.”
The faint freckles visible across her pure-white skin made her seem even younger.
It looked as though she had covered their color with concealer, but hadn't erased them completely, which gave her an even fresher appearance.
Even someone as ignorant of makeup as me could immediately tell that she had carefully done up her appearance.
Unlike last time, when I had seen her in her office, I was invited into an elegant parlor where we sat facing each other.
That made the pressure several times worse.
“Here. Do you like cappuccino?”
“…Yes, I generally like coffee in any form.”
“Our tastes match.”
What kind of frightening common ground was this?
I accepted the cup of coffee Luciana offered as naturally as possible.
White foam billowed softly above the cup.
For the record, I didn't take a single sip before setting it back down.
“Well, you seem to be in a hurry. Shall we get to the point first?”
I prepared myself to listen with an even more polite attitude.
And then I frowned slightly.
“I had all the androids from that shop brought here.”
“…….”
For a moment, I nearly answered, ‘What did you say?’
Sure enough, this was connected to Hole Paradise.
“If we'd left them there, they obviously would have been sold somewhere else.”
“…What do you intend to do with them?”
Luciana didn't seem bothered by my question, which might have sounded presumptuous.
If anything, she looked pleased.
“We'll repair the androids that can be repaired. As for the others, we'll probably fulfill whatever requests they have.”
Fortunately, Luciana didn't say something like, ‘We're just going to use them as scrap metal.’
Of course, I couldn't completely trust her words.
“Weren't you planning to take the androids back with you anyway?”
“…That was the plan.”
“If that hadn't been the reason, you would have blown up the entire building, just like you did with the Bogus gang.”
That wasn't it.
After the ‘art is an explosion’ incident, I had a rough idea of how my image had been established.
Luciana sipped the coffee from above the cappuccino foam.
“Anyway, after seeing what happened today, I thought I could finally be sure, so I called you here.”
“What exactly are you talking about?”
“The fact that you are completely on our side.”
I almost answered stupidly, like a doll that made a sound when pressed.
Before I could ask her why, Luciana added,
“You must know that already. Those damn bastards, the Hakukagumi, meddled with an establishment backed by us, so there's no room for doubt anymore.”
No, I didn't know that.
It was a name I was hearing for the first time.
“On top of that, the owner was connected to a hard-line Luddite organization.”
I hadn't found that out until later, either.
I had only come because Walter's daughter had been kidnapped─.
Beep.
With a small sound, a huge holographic display appeared on the wall.
What appeared on it was….
Me.
It seemed they had hacked the building's security cameras, showing me from several different angles.
Finally, the footage zoomed in on me putting the terminal into the android's mouth and blowing it up.
That bastard sure could fight….
“I told you last time. The mafia's beginnings were as ordinary vigilantes. Things haven't changed much these days, either. Honestly, I don't mind making money or killing people, but….”
She spoke as though she had at least some lines she wouldn't cross.
“People who go too far make me frown. Hmm, that's my reason. In that sense, we've concluded that your organization is quite acceptable, even by our standards.”
In other words, this was a roundabout offer of an alliance.
Or perhaps she was telling us to become her subordinates.
But there was one important fact….
We weren't an organization.
We really weren't.
“Of course, we're different in size, so we can't exactly walk side by side.”
“No, we're not an organization….”
“But that should be fine. With that level of ability and initiative, you'll rise quickly enough.”
“What I mean is, we're not some kind of organiza—.”
“To start with, we'll provide around $500,000 in support─.”
“Leave it to us.”
I answered without thinking.
It was a difficult situation to refuse anyway. Indeed.
…….
In any case.
* * *
After Abel Anderson left his seat.
Luciana, left alone, replayed the holographic footage that had been paused.
The scene changed rapidly,
finally showing the top floor of Hole Paradise.
The footage of the two people facing each other began to play.
Because the building's security was so thorough, the camera audio was unfortunately cut off in several places.
But at the final moment.
- ……God.
BANG!!
A very strong curiosity arose in Luciana's heart as she watched this scene.
What on earth had they talked about?
‘Yeah, I'm curious.’
She was extremely curious about what had made an android who was an extreme Luddite activist call out the name of God at the final moment.
The facts he was hiding, and his identity.
All of it.
In fact, that was precisely why she had taken responsibility for the androids' treatment as well.
‘…I wonder if I could find out by getting a little closer?’
With a thought that might have made Abel Anderson let out a girlish shriek if he had heard it, Luciana took another sip of the cappuccino on the table.
Like a hunter waiting for its prey.
Very leisurely.
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