Chapter 39
Jingle, jingle.
When the bell hanging by the entrance rang, my gaze naturally turned in that direction.
It wasn't a particularly motivated movement.
I had already given up hope that a normal customer would come in.
As expected, another homeless man in shabby clothes was looking around repeatedly as he entered the grocery store.
I told you not to come through the front entrance during the day….
‘…Good grief.’
What's the point of saying anything when they have no intention of listening?
Homeless people who didn't even follow such basic rules were usually quite far removed from the category of ‘normal people.’
“H-Hotdog Man…!”
“How may I help you?”
“Ah, n-no. I'll come back to buy something later. Today, that's not it, I mean. …Oh, right! I came here to repay the kindness Hotdog Man showed me!”
“Yes, sir.”
I answered in a voice as dry and emotionless as an android with its emotion module removed.
For the record.
Of all the homeless people who had said things like that, not one had ever actually acted like the magpie who repaid a kindness.
The closest was Michael….
That bastard was a problem for the opposite reason, constantly making complicated arrangements for things no one had asked him to do.
The dirty homeless man who had entered the grocery store didn't look to be in very good condition either.
For the record, in the cyberpunk world, saying someone's skin was in bad condition meant their biological flesh had peeled away, leaving chunks of metal exposed here and there.
At that point, he looked more like a robot than an android, but the standards of the people in this world were difficult to understand.
The half-machine, half-human homeless man hunched over while his hands trembled.
“Why are your hands shaking so much?”
“Ah. I-I didn't take enough medication….”
“Good heavens.”
I really did see all sorts of things.
After seeing only normal people like Michael and Rivera, I might have been confused, but
this was actually the average appearance of the homeless people on the Old City streets.
The losers of District 49, saturated with alcohol and nicotine at the simplest level, and emotion suppressants, hormone injections, and psychotropic drugs at the more complicated level.
I couldn't begin to describe how shocked I was when I heard that all of those things were legal.
Of course, only products sold by corporations were legal.
As someone who never even put anything bad for my body into my mouth, I couldn't understand this sorry state of affairs.
Oh, and hotdogs were fine.
I checked the ingredients separately, and they were perfectly wholesome.
A complete food rich in carbohydrates, protein, fiber, and fat was a hotdog, not a hamburger….
Bang, bang, bang—the verdict is final.
Anyway.
As I merely stared at the (drug-addled) homeless man, he pulled an unidentified inhaler from inside his clothes.
Oh boy.
“Do you have asthma or something?”
“U-uh? N-no. T-this is, um….”
This is frustrating. Stop stumbling over your words already.
But he probably wasn't trembling of his own accord, so I calmly waited for the homeless man's explanation.
“Th-the B-Black Mamba. It's the Black Mamba series.”
“What's that?”
The homeless man suddenly began pronouncing his words clearly.
“The nonaddictive, clean-effect new product from Soma Company. The Black Mamba everyone is talking about. It's a Recurve-class tranquilizer. …Y-you don't know this either?”
How would I know that?
I boldly shook my head.
The world's oldest language─body language.
The homeless man thrust the inhaler toward me with a trembling hand.
Apparently his hand wouldn't move properly according to his own will, because he was gripping his wrist with his other arm.
“It's r-really good. This stuff. I-I was incredibly lucky to get it, too…. S-so I'll give it to Hotdog Man.”
“What a fucking lunatic….”
“W-what…?”
My thoughts had slipped out before I realized it.
I sighed and waved my hand dismissively.
“I don't need it, so take it back.”
“R-really? This? Then how am I supposed to repay this kindness…. Ah, no, that's not it. H-Hotdog Man, I can't repay your kindness without this…. F-food is precious, you know.”
Perhaps it was because this was a world steeped in extreme capitalism.
The homeless people in the Old City all understood the value of food.
“……”
No, but why were they trying to repay that kindness with some suspicious drug whose identity they didn't even know?
Just as I was about to tell him I didn't need it,
another homeless man with broad shoulders slowly entered the grocery store.
It seemed they had been watching the inside from outside the whole time.
“You want to repay Hotdog Man's kindness?”
“We'll tell you a good way. Heh heh….”
You look like villains, so don't laugh like that.
They were among the homeless people whose faces I recognized individually.
They were the ones who volunteered to guard my truck or the vehicles I parked, or the mysterious group that traveled around in a pack with Michael─.
They flashed confident smiles as they looked at the bewildered homeless man.
Before long, they all linked arms and left the grocery store together.
“C-can even I do it…?”
“Of course, friend. Have you ever seen Hotdog Man put conditions on the food he gives out?”
“N-no….”
“The same goes for us!”
Their bold, macho backs were striking, like an Uncle Sam poster luring Americans in.
As they did so, they slyly sent me a look and gave me a thumbs-up.
“……??”
I was grateful that they had taken care of the troublesome customer, but I had no idea what their objective was.
For the record, this wasn't something that had happened only once or twice.
No, seriously, what was going on….
Jingle.
Before I could decide what to make of what had just happened, another person opened the grocery store door and came inside.
There seemed to be a lot of people coming through the front entrance today.
Assuming it was another homeless person, I pushed my chair back without much enthusiasm.
“A customer has arrived, and you're just sitting there. Can you really call yourself a diligent small-business owner?”
This is the MZ-style part-time job, so what's he talking about….
When I slightly raised my head at the familiar voice,
“Oh? When did you wake up?”
I saw Walter already walking around on his own.
He chuckled and walked toward the counter.
“Not long. I came here almost as soon as I got up.”
“Didn't you have a hole in your stomach? You must still be in poor health, so why don't you just stay in bed for a while?”
“It's fine. Florence may have a foul temper, but she's fairly competent.”
As expected, perhaps injuries healed quickly here because technology had advanced so greatly.
Since repeating myself several times would only make Walter's ears hurt, I quietly shut my mouth.
Well, I supposed he could take care of his own body.
“So what brings you here? Where's Anna?”
“I had quite a time stopping her from coming with me. It's only been so long since she nearly got kidnapped.”
“Well, she's still young.”
“Thanks for saying that, at least.”
Walter rubbed his face with one hand, and one of his mechanical eyes spun around. Perhaps he thought the brief small talk was over.
He pulled a very thick wad of bills from his pocket.
“And I heard you paid my hospital bills for me. Honestly, I didn't expect you to go that far….”
“Well, I had money to spare at the time.”
I was grateful he didn't call it unnecessary meddling.
I awkwardly wiped my nose and added,
“Someone I know was hospitalized. How could I just ignore that and move on? There is such a thing as basic human decency.”
That said, I wasn't going to turn down a wad of bills just to be cool.
I carefully placed the money Walter gave me inside the counter.
At the same time, Walter's mechanical eye, which had been rolling around in every direction, stopped and stared directly at me.
I refrained from voicing the fact that it was creepy.
“…You really aren't someone who belongs in this city.”
“You saw right through me. I didn't come here by choice, either.”
He sure could read people.
I resolved to develop the habit of downloading games carefully from then on.
Walter seemed to take my words as a joke, because he let out a deep breath and lowered his head solemnly.
“Thank you so much for saving my daughter. I mean it. If you hadn't been there, my life would have turned into a nightmare I could never wake up from.”
“…Be more careful from now on. It's not as if you don't know how dangerous District 49 is, right?”
“Anna wanted to take a shortcut…. Ahem, anyway, I understand.”
Don't give in to your daughter too much, either.
I scratched my head, feeling awkwardly embarrassed.
“Or you could ask Michael, who's in the back, to assign you some homeless people who can act as bodyguards. There are still plenty of decent homeless people in the vacant lot.”
I never thought the words ‘decent’ and ‘homeless’ would be combined into one phrase, but here we were.
Some degree of self-regulation had occurred on its own.
The homeless people with truly rotten tempers even drove one another out.
When I said it casually, Walter nodded as if he understood.
“Oh, and I heard you ended up blowing up the terminal you took. This isn't the exact same model as the one from before, but its performance is better. Why don't you use this as a temporary replacement?”
“This one won't explode, right?”
“I have a few batteries left, but no main units, so there's nothing else I can give you. Still, if you need them, I can at least spare a few batteries.”
“I'm good.”
It wasn't for nothing that the company had gone under.
After actually seeing it explode like a grenade, I had no desire to carry one around in my pocket.
Anyway, a new terminal.
I should at least send Christine a message later─.
Ding.
Just then, a mysterious notification sound rang from the terminal I had received.
Even though I hadn't contacted anyone yet.
‘Spam text?’
I checked the terminal's screen, and.
───────────────
Subject : An email containing something very important
(Photos of perfectly normal female androids)
(Photos of sex toys striking sultry poses in various positions)
(A selfie of Luciana awkwardly making a V sign)
^-^v
───────────────
I quietly looked around.
A message had arrived from a new number the moment I received the terminal…?
What the hell was this.
But no matter how I looked around, I couldn't find the unidentified mafia member spying on me.
Could they have hacked the cameras?
No, that probably wasn't it.
As far as I knew, Nova was the only camera with a lens in the grocery store.
Judging from the photos sent through the message, it seemed they wanted to tell me that all the androids at Hall Paradise were safe.
Seeing the photos plastered with bare skin,
I felt a little dizzy.
Not because I was aroused, but because it was so absurd.
When I froze along with the notification sound, Walter's gaze naturally shifted to the terminal screen.
Oh no.
“……”
“……”
An awkward silence followed.
Walter took a step backward.
“…Could it be that you were after my daughter, an android, from the very beginning….”
“Absolutely not.”
My tastes were perfectly normal.
To clear up that untimely misunderstanding, I had to explain myself for a full thirty minutes.
[…Dyu??]
Seriously, I wasn't.
* * *
I got back the hospital expenses I'd lent Walter, too.
Even the dollars I'd kept as emergency funds.
‘…Around $100,000.’
Maybe it was because it was money from a game, and the currency units were American-style.
I didn't feel that the money I'd spent had gone to waste.
Nor did I particularly feel happy about having more.
After all, I could take care of food, clothing, and shelter at the grocery store.
(Michael occasionally brings back clothes he finds.)
- Androids, huh…. Unfortunately, my shop only carries things for my daughter. Hmm, I've been thinking of moving my shop to this neighborhood altogether. If you just bring me a proper android, I'll take responsibility for maintaining it. …So don't ever go to the shop where my daughter is by yourself.
Since the mafia boss had sent those strange photos, the gratitude in Walter's gaze toward me had faded considerably.
It even looked a little sharp….
No matter how much of a lifesaver I was, there was nothing to be done about a father who treasured his daughter.
I recalled Walter's back, now firmly settled in one corner of the vacant lot, then looked down at the screen of my further upgraded─evolved terminal.
“Can you hear me?”
[…The user's voice has been confirmed. Data loss rate: 2%. Within normal range.]
“Okay.”
When I told him it was difficult to move around carrying a heavy speaker and that I was looking for an android body,
Walter looked a little dumbfounded, but he provided a temporary solution to our problem.
At first, he said it might not work, but after checking Nova's body in the grocery store himself, he tinkered with it expertly.
He said that using a smart chip instead of a terminal would let me create a virtual person inside my head that only I could see.
I would have liked to see a Primate GOAT, Giga Chad, or Agumon appear as my imaginary friend, though.
Still, I was reluctant to plug or implant anything into my body.
Machines were still a little….
Anyway.
I looked up at the enormous sign and said,
“This is the place, right?”
[Yes, that's correct.]
A famous hotspot in District 49.
Not the Old City, but the New City streets.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a place where I could take Instagram photos.
Known as the black market (暗市場).
I had just arrived.