Chapter 7
This is a deserted island.
Squawk, squawk.
Flowers bloom, and birds sing.
A peaceful, beautiful forest of animals.
A happy land where strange, bipedal animal villagers look after the newcomers.
“Let’s go fishing today!”
“No, you promised to go shopping with me!”
Dogs and cats.
Two differently shaped animals grab my arms from either side and pull.
Animals living in the wild possess physical strength several times greater than that of ordinary humans.
My body was tugged back and forth by the animals’ strength.
Oh, dear.
“Haha.”
Looking at my animal friends pulling sad faces, I calmly sorted out the situation.
“We can do both. What does it matter?”
It’s not like I have anything but time anyway.
Since enjoying a peaceful daily life was the main attraction of an animal forest, I mediated between the animals fighting over me.
But tears dripped down the animal villagers’ faces, following the fur.
“But….”
“Today’s the last day, you know?”
With those sad voices, dark storm clouds gathered in the sky.
Even though there hadn’t been a single cloud until just now.
Soon, fierce raindrops began to fall.
“…??”
I had an ominous feeling.
Never mind the crying animal villagers.
Because I could see someone walking through the storm in the distance.
Rumble, crash!!
Fierce thunder roared noisily.
Beyond the horizon, a Black man wearing sunglasses slowly walked toward me, his rain-soaked coat flapping in the wind.
The moment I saw his face, I instantly realized this world’s hidden identity.
“Oh, fuck….”
I shook off the animal villagers clinging to my arms, turned around, and ran toward the opposite side of the island.
Had I ever run this fast in my life?
It was a speed that looked to be about eleven seconds per hundred meters.
But an island’s size has its limits.
Amid the crashing waves, I saw the glittering towers of skyscrapers.
Neon sign lights.
The undulating manifestations of environmental pollution.
I had no desire to swim through the storm and into that place.
Is this where I meet my end….
An angry man’s voice came from behind.
“…Abel Anderson, wake up! I said wake up from your happy, peaceful animal forest!!”
“My name is Cheon Su-ho….”
“This isn’t reality! Your friends and family aren’t real either! That place you call home, where you can rest comfortably, isn’t real either! Wake up, Abel Anderson! Wake up and spend the rest of your life in Risk City, full of violence and deception, eating nothing but candle-wax-like nutrient tubes! Wake up!!”
“Oh, come on.”
Eventually, a brief silence.
The world abruptly turned black.
I counted a few seconds inwardly, then
slowly opened my eyes.
Then I saw the muzzle of a huge turret looking down at me from the ceiling.
A dark muzzle.
I met the turret’s gleaming red lens.
Whirr, clack.
Along with the sound of moving machinery came a monotonous warning beep.
[Dyu?]
When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you. by Nietzsche.
“…Good morning.”
[…Dyu!]
It was a morning I really didn’t want to wake up to.
* * *
But I couldn’t lie around forever.
Since I’d developed the habit of getting up early while preparing for employment, my eyelids didn’t even feel heavy.
After all, an unemployed person who doesn’t make money and eats homemade meals has to get up early and at least do the dishes if they don’t want to get yelled at.
“Yaaawn.”
I couldn’t help the habitual yawn, though.
Anyway.
While watching TV dramas, I found myself missing my mother’s nagging as she muttered, ‘Good grief, if that guy’s going to wash dishes, he should just get a job at a restaurant….’
I flipped over the sign hanging on the entrance.
From 『Preparing to Open』 to 『Open』.
The sky over the city was still murky.
Was it still closer to dawn than morning?
The air was a little chilly.
“The ant goes plump-plump, today too, plump-plump, working hard, plump-plump.”
I hummed the lyrics to myself out of loneliness for a moment, but when I saw the haggard homeless people sleeping in the alley, I quickly fled back inside the store.
Do those people not even have homes?
Then again, even in twenty-first-century South Korea, finding a home where one could stretch out one’s legs was like plucking a star from the sky.
In this city, where there weren’t even stars in the sky, it must have been even more difficult.
Still, my situation was much better than that of the homeless people living outside.
If not for Christine—the boss who helped me—I’d probably be huddled among them by now, embracing one another to share body heat.
‘Ugh.’
What a relief.
Just as I was thinking such foolish thoughts.
[Dyu.]
I heard someone calling me.
In the grocery store where I currently stayed, there were at least five turrets that I’d seen, all of the same shape and installed in the ceiling.
‘There aren’t more of them, are there?’
The turrets weren’t always visible, and only revealed themselves when they occasionally emitted the warning beep [Dyu].
They didn’t seem to have different AIs.
Even now, one turret was moving as if calling me, waving its muzzle up and down, so I couldn’t imagine there being several turrets with that kind of unusual movement in the world.
“Why.”
[Dyu-oo.]
The sound emitted by the turret was monotonous, like a machine’s warning beep.
The game’s Korean patch was so well done that an era of globalization had opened in which everyone in the city spoke Korean (King Sejong would have been astonished, and Kim Gu deeply moved), but that didn’t mean I could understand the sounds made by machines.
All I could figure out, by checking the direction of the turret’s muzzle as it moved this way and that, was that some problem had arisen in the back of the grocery store, in the storage warehouse connected to the rear door.
“Yes, yes, the back, right.”
[Dyu!]
When I moved to the storage warehouse, I saw logistics boxes stacked like a mountain.
“…?”
Strange.
I was sure I’d organized them all to one side yesterday.
Checking the stickers attached to the boxes, I saw that their dates differed by about a day from those on the boxes that had arrived yesterday.
‘Then they were delivered today.’
In other words, a huge quantity of goods had just been delivered to a grocery store that wasn’t even doing any business.
Good heavens.
I wanted to call the number the boss had left right away and demand an explanation for this unprecedented situation, but unfortunately, I didn’t have a device with which to make calls.
“It would’ve been a disaster if I hadn’t been here.”
When I muttered that,
[Dyu.]
the turret’s muzzle pointed at some kind of device.
A machine with a propeller on top.
“Oh, a drone.”
Well, of course there had to be a way. Naturally.
Anyway, I was the grocery store’s only employee right now, and I was also the only person responsible for organizing the goods.
Boss Christine….
This place isn’t a profitable business, like you thought, boss….
I tried with all my might to send a telepathic message, but the chances that my words had gotten through were slim.
‘…Could it be.’
When I removed the tarp covering one side, many boxes I hadn’t found yesterday appeared.
For now, let’s check the date on the box at the very bottom.
“Hmm.”
It’s already right on the edge of its expiration date.
I quickly checked the stacked goods.
This one still has plenty of time left….
…Cat food? Why is this here?
Wow, this isn’t even canned, but it has a six-year shelf life. Is the stuff inside made of preservatives?
I had only been sorting the goods one after another for a short while when
[Dyu, Dyu.]
“What now?”
After interpreting the turret’s voice,
I came back out of the storage area and went to the counter, only to find
the little kid who had looked at my face yesterday and quickly run away.
“Oh.”
So it was that kid from yesterday.
The kid didn’t run away even after seeing the turret descend from the ceiling, but glared at me with a steady gaze.
Beyond the shaggy hair hiding her face, a pair of round eyes peeked out cautiously.
Just as I was about to greet her happily,
Thump.
Suddenly, the kid dropped to her knees.
“??”
What’s this?
Then she opened her mouth in a mournful voice.
“Please let me join your organization.”
“Huh?”
Naturally, a stupid sound escaped my lips.
What organization all of a sudden?
The only organization I knew was a drinking club for people who wore black clothes and drove old cars.
“My family is starving. If you help us, I’ll risk my life to repay your kindness….”
“Wait.”
I cut her off mid-sentence.
Her voice was frailer than expected; I’d thought she was a boy, but apparently she was a girl.
‘An organization.’
I carefully sorted through my thoughts.
I looked at the girl and asked a question.
“…Did you see me yesterday? I mean, not here. Out on the street.”
My organization-member cosplay.
Upon hearing me, the girl nodded very cautiously.
Wow, she saw that too.
I rubbed my face dryly.
“…It’s certainly easy enough to misunderstand, but that was all an act, actually.”
Whether or not the girl believed me, disappointment showed even through her shaggy hair.
“…I see.”
Seeing a child only half my size looking so sad made my chest ache a little.
Does this cyberpunk world not have child protection laws either?
Grrr.
I even heard the tiny, yet unmistakable sound of hungry intestines crying from the girl’s stomach.
My hearing had improved enough to hear a clock ticking, so there was no way I’d imagined it.
“Stay here for a moment.”
“…?”
“It’ll really only be a moment, so don’t go anywhere.”
Without even waiting for the girl’s answer, I ran straight to the storage warehouse.
[Dyu…?]
“Shh.”
Then I grabbed a whole armful of food whose expiration dates were dangerously close or had passed only a few hours ago from the warehouse.
Frozen chicken, frozen hot dogs, corn salad, and so on.
Though the place was labeled 【Grocery Store】, most of the goods coming in were instant products.
I also secretly took one chocolate with plenty of time left before its expiration date.
‘I’ll check the goods separately later.’
And so.
Having returned to the counter, I dumped a wide variety of food in front of the girl.
“…Um, excuse me.”
“It’s fine.”
I hadn’t lost enough humanity to demand thanks from a starving child.
Later, the boss might scold me over this, or I might even get fired from the grocery store, but
I had no regrets.
The only way giving expired food to other people causes trouble is if that person reports you.
Would this cute, pitiful-looking girl suddenly turn completely cold and report me?
Well, then there’d be nothing I could do.
“Next time, don’t come through the front door. Sneak in through the back door over there, and I’ll pack you some more.”
“…What? Even so, this is too much.”
“You said your family is starving, right?”
“……”
I naturally reached out and patted the kid’s head.
“They’re products that are close to expiration anyway. …But you won’t report me, okay?”
“…Of course not!”
The girl’s voice suddenly grew louder, and she froze, seemingly startled.
“……Of course I won’t.”
“Right, right.”
I wasn’t sure the police would come all the way here, but anyway.
I tilted my head as I looked at the girl hugging a huge bundle of goods.
“Come to think of it, will it be dangerous if you go outside like that? Wait, there was a spare box over there….”
“N-no! I’m really grateful just for all this!”
Perhaps in a hurry, she bent at the waist to a ninety-degree angle and headed outside the grocery store.
She was so small I thought the goods would fall to the floor, but somehow she moved well.
‘She said her family was starving.’
Then the most urgent matter was probably not her own hungry stomach, but
“Phew, I did a good deed.”
her family waiting at home.
[Dyu.]
…Chilly.
I could feel a dagger stabbing into my back.
I knew what that gaze was without having to confirm it.
“……Will you keep this a secret?”
[Dyu.]
I couldn’t understand the meaning of the answer, but regardless, this was already out of my hands.
…Of course, it was a little funny to be asking a surveillance turret for a favor.