Chapter 56
The grocery store’s mornings began early.
When the dark sun slowly emerged above the smog-shrouded sky, the vacant lot grew noisily crowded with people waiting for breakfast distribution.
Most of the homeless, naturally, did not have proper homes.
Their very name was homeless.
They kept warm by the flames in drums to escape the frigid dawn air, getting by while relying on one another in groups of three or four.
Of course, that was possible because this was the ‘grocery store vacant lot.’
In District 49, it was normally an ordinary sight for the homeless person right beside you to change professions and become a scavenger, robbing people of their possessions—mainly implants or internal organs.
No one had deliberately intended it, of course.
But something that could be called a sense of community was gradually beginning to take root among them.
“…Oh, it’s the boss!”
“Today must be lucky. I never thought I’d get to see the boss’s face first thing in the morning.”
“Boss! I got this totally killer all-in-one video yesterday, so if you need it, just let me kno─.”
“What the fuck are you saying to the boss right now…! Boss, don’t worry. We’ll handle it.”
“……Oh, great Hot Dog Man.”
It was clear that ‘a certain person’ had played a special role at the center of it all.
Behind Hot Dog Man─Abel Anderson, who had come out for a morning walk around the vacant lot, followed a giant wearing filthy rags.
The masked man let out a low murmur of admiration at the sight of everyone comfortably—and sincerely—respecting their boss.
“…Indeed, indeed.”
An abandoned dog─.
The ragged ninja, once known as Shadow and now having chosen the name Cat for himself, had a strangely glittering, opaque gaze.
“It is exactly as I imagined.”
But despite hearing Cat’s admiring exclamation, Abel Anderson merely muttered to himself while recalling something one of the homeless had said.
“…That kind of video would be fine, though.”
“Hmm, what did you just say?”
“…Nothing.”
This was why being idolized too much was also a problem.
* * *
Even now, I seriously considered going back to the group of homeless people from earlier and asking them to share that ‘totally killer all-in-one video.’
However.
There was no denying that going back through the gazes of the homeless around me would be a little embarrassing.
I let out a small sigh.
“Are you worried about something?”
“A nude video…, no.”
A worried voice came from behind me.
I asked the ninja, whose appearance had changed considerably since the last time I saw him,
“It’s because of you. Did you get hit in the head somewhere? Your clothes are completely covered in blood, and the way you talk is really weird.”
He had spoken informally with me before, but now he was using the sort of archaic polite speech one would hear only in a historical drama.
The guy who had introduced himself with the fairly cute name Cat slowly shook his head.
“It is not strange. I have now chosen to reveal myself to the world as a single cat, so you may consider this my attempt to observe a minimum of courtesy.”
“I really want to smack you.”
“If that is your wish, I shall gladly oblige.”
“Now I want to hit you twice.”
“……”
Though we spoke in a lighthearted atmosphere, I had not lowered my guard.
After all, he was a ninja affiliated with Hakuna Matata or whatever it was called, and he had fought me a few days ago.
However.
He was currently missing ‘both arms.’
His legs seemed to be broken as well, since they were tightly wrapped and splinted with the strange cloth I had seen last time.
The missing or broken limbs were cybernetic prostheses, so blood was not streaming out, but black electrolyte fluid kept dripping down one drop at a time.
‘If you’re so physically weak, you should at least be careful.’
He looked as though he had been beaten up somewhere.
I could not simply ignore and leave behind an injured man who had even greeted me politely with an aisatsu.
I took the injured Cat—the ninja who called himself that—to a tent set up in one corner of the vacant lot.
Inside the tent, loud snoring rang out.
‘They say old people don’t sleep much, so why is this old man…’
Contrary to my impudent thoughts, the hand I used to knock on the tent pole was extremely careful.
When people speak of the Land of Eastern Courtesy, they mean a nation of gentlemen with a tradition stretching back through the ages.
As someone who always carried the Confucian principle of respecting elders and maintaining order by age in one corner of my heart, I was more accustomed to honoring the elderly than attacking them.
“Are you in there?”
“Grrrr…, khrrk, hrrr….”
“……Excuse me, Grandpa Walter?”
He really sounded like he was about to breathe his last.
At that rate, he seemed like he needed to have his nose cleaned at an ear, nose, and throat clinic.
“Mm….”
Fortunately, Walter appeared just before I could bring down the tent under the pretext of knocking.
His pitch-black dark circles made him look extremely exhausted.
“I clearly said yesterday that I wouldn’t start maintenance until late lunch─. Oh, who is this? I was just thinking of getting up anyway. Thanks.”
A lightning-fast change of attitude.
As expected of an old man from a cyberpunk world.
Walter, who was staying in the vacant lot because of his connection to Anna, whom he had rescued, seemed to be continuing to live in the shabby tent without caring about his age.
“…Don’t you get cold sleeping here?”
“Well, it’s more livable than you’d think. In any case, I’m only staying here temporarily. I’m nearly finished preparing to move, too.”
Perhaps he had a heater running inside, because warm air drifted through the gaps in the open tent.
Walter tapped the mechanical eyeball operating separately from the rest of him, adjusting its focus, then noticed the ninja standing blankly behind me and nodded.
“I suppose you came because of that fellow.”
“Yes, well…. I don’t know where he got beaten up, but he’s not in very good shape.”
“…Hmm.”
After examining the ninja’s condition from head to toe with a hum, Walter opened the tent wide and ushered us inside.
“For now, don’t stay outside. Come inside.”
“Technically, this is outside too….”
“You always have to get one more word in.”
“Isn’t that all thanks to my sociable personality?”
Since he did not sound offended, we both chuckled and exchanged a light greeting.
The inside of the tent was crammed with complicated prostheses and various tools.
At the very center stood a dental chair─a unit chair large enough for a person to lie down in, apparently salvaged from somewhere.
“Sit here first. I need to examine your condition properly.”
“Thank you.”
“From the way you talk, it sounds like your translation module has been infected by a virus. You must have bought some strange secondhand junk from a hole-in-the-wall store and installed it.”
I gave a small cough from beside him.
“Apparently, that’s just the way he normally talks.”
“Where do you even find and pick up such bizarre people one after another……”
“I can hear you perfectly well.”
“I meant for you to hear me.”
He tore away the rag stiff with dried blood, and a blade as thin as a scalpel pointed upward.
Cat slowly stopped Walter’s hand.
“My face is fine.”
“Is there some reason to hide it?”
“It’s not that…. It is simply an appearance you may find rather unpleasant.”
“Well, as long as there are no injuries.”
After meeting all kinds of homeless people, Walter had gradually become accustomed to dealing with unusual individuals.
Once the rags were torn away, countless scars and wounds appeared from beneath them.
“…The bleeding’s more under control than I expected. It looks like something hard was used to seal the wounds.”
“They are called nano cells. I understand they are a corporate prototype that has not yet been released for sale.”
Walter carefully examined the cybernetic prostheses installed in the ninja’s body and the state of his injuries.
“The serial numbers have all been erased, too. And the finish on the prostheses is far too clean for them to have been modified by an individual.”
There seemed to be many suspicious points, because Walter’s expression gradually grew more serious.
Naturally, Walter turned to look at me.
“He doesn’t seem like an ordinary homeless man….”
“Ah, I forgot to explain that.”
“What is it?”
“He’s a ninja affiliated with Hakuna Matata.”
“…Hakuna what?”
“It wasn’t Hakuna Matata. It was Hakuga-gumi.”
“That’s the same thing.”
A look of disbelief appeared on Walter’s face.
He seemed unable to understand the situation properly.
“No, if it’s Hakuga-gumi…. I don’t know the details, but aren’t they completely hostile to our organization?”
Now even this old man was calling it an organization.
I casually shrugged.
“That’s true. But it’s difficult to hear the details from someone dripping blood, so I brought him here first.”
“Even so, this is a bit much….”
Just as the conversation was about to grow longer.
The ninja lying on the unit chair suddenly burst out laughing.
His laughter was so violent that dark-red fluid seeped from his sutured wounds.
“…Heh, I feel the same way. That was what I expected when I came here in the first place, but I didn’t think you really wouldn’t ask me anything.”
After laughing for quite some time, the ninja raised his upper body and looked straight at me.
“I have quit Hakuga-gumi and come here to place myself in Hot Dog Man’s debt.”
“Who said you could?”
“…Because I am Cat.”
“…??”
A question mark appeared above my head, but he had said it with such confidence that I could not think of anything to say.
The fact that a muscular, bulky male ninja was named Cat was irritating enough.
It did not seem to be a joke.
“Why are you calling yourself Cat instead of Wolf?”
“My arms are prosthetic already, and Sekiro is a great game.”
“Read in the kun’yomi fashion, it would be Ōkami….”
“No, that name would be far too grand for me. I would be satisfied simply being a single cat.”
I really wanted to give him a noogie.
“Even so, Cat is a bit much. Maybe if your sex were completely different.”
“…If Hot Dog Man wishes it, I shall gladly sacrifice this body.”
I opened my mouth with absolute firmness.
“You’re about my size, too. What are you talking about?”
“In any case….”
Cat, the runaway ninja who had left Hakuga-gumi, climbed down from the unit chair and slammed his head hard against the ground.
Bang!
“Please, I beg of you.”
A runaway ninja was always much stronger than an ordinary ninja.
Walter clicked his tongue at the injured man inflicting another injury on himself, but both of them waited for me to speak.
I thought about it for a moment.
‘…I don’t know either.’
I waved my hand indifferently.
“Just do whatever you want.”
“Does that mean….”
“I said do as you please.”
Thinking about it, I had never interviewed new homeless people just because someone new appeared at the grocery store.
People who came, came.
People who wanted to leave, left.
That was the grocery store’s current situation.
“…I am sincerely grateful. This time, I will not betray that trust.”
I smiled faintly at his words.
Apparently, he had been that desperate to eat food past its expiration date.
I gave him a light greeting as a joke.
“Do─mo, Cat=San. I’m Abel Anderson.”
“…Do─mo, Abel Anderson=San. I am Cat.”
Now he finally sounded a little like a ninja.
I nodded in satisfaction as I thought of a certain ninja from the cyberpunk world.
And then.
“…What the fuck is all this?”
Walter, who still did not fully understand the situation, seriously wondered whether the two of us had taken some kind of drug.
* * *
Inside a large club.
With flashing lights and noisy electronic music reverberating through the air.
In a specially prepared luxury room, a massive man smashed the champagne bottle in his hand in one stroke.
Crash!!
The leader of Hakuga-gumi─Black Tiger, dressed in a white suit that did not suit his name at all, focused on the holographic footage by himself.
A vivid expression of anger appeared across his bronze skin.
On the holographic screen.
[The resistance is far stronger than expected.]
[What a dishonorable bastard! Even kneeling down and committing seppuku right now wouldn’t be enough…!!]
[Don’t let your guard down until the very end. The opponent is Shadow. He received special implants.]
Because footage was being transmitted of a single damn dog breaking through the encirclement and fleeing.
The battle that had seemed as though it would end quickly continued for a long time, contrary to everyone’s expectations.
The battle and pursuit that continued for hours seemed to come to an end with Shadow’s defeat after both his arms were severed, but.
For some reason.
Shadow continued to burn with determination until the very last moment.
[We got him─.]
He bit through the neck of a careless member of the organization.
Then, dragging his broken leg, he managed to escape in the direction of the complicated streets of the old city.
“I thought he was just a damn dog….”
He was a wolf pup with fully grown teeth.
The leader of Hakuga-gumi drank an entire intact bottle of champagne.
Beep.
Then he pressed a button and issued an order.
“Search for the escaped dog again, and this time capture him and bring him back.”
After a very long time.
He felt a dull ache in his lower abdomen.
[Understood.]
“Oh, and.”
He stared blankly at the frozen holographic footage, baring his sharp fangs.
“What did you say the name of those homeless people’s boss was?”
* * *
“Fuck.”
I cursed without realizing it.
A sticky chill crawled up my spine.
An ominous feeling I did not even want to imagine.
“What’s wrong?”
“No, I suddenly got a really fucking ominous feeling.”
Anyway.
It was a sensation that was difficult to explain in words…