Chapter 77
Having arrived at the black market once again─, the sight of Black Square remained as chaotic and complicated as ever.
With a little exaggeration, the buildings had been expanded so extensively that it was almost impossible to see the sky, and looking at them naturally made me realize the need for the person who had guided me through the black market….
What was it again.
Right.
I truly came to appreciate the need for a ‘Sherpa.’
And there was only one Sherpa I knew personally.
For the record, this insane runaway ninja had apparently never set foot in Black Square before.
What on earth had he been planning to do if I hadn’t come along?
Sheesh.
I let out a small sigh and asked Cat in a gruff tone,
“So what really happened? While I was asleep.”
“……”
But Cat still kept his mouth firmly shut.
His face, twisted by scars, was covered by a black mask, so I couldn’t see his expression, but I could sense his embarrassment through it.
Whether he was allowed to say this with his own mouth.
He looked as though he were struggling with precisely that dilemma.
Considering the loyalty Cat had shown me until now, the fact that he was hesitating over his answer felt rather strange.
“Did someone beat you up?”
“……”
“If you don’t answer, I’m really going to assume that.”
“……”
“Tsk, fine. If you don’t want to talk, then don’t.”
“…Please understand this humble one’s circumstances.”
Next time, I could simply ask Nova to show me the data from the turret camera stored in its system.
Apparently not wanting to discuss the subject at length, Cat quickly changed the topic.
“By the way, Boss, you seem to know your way around Black Square rather well.”
“I’m just making my way there without really knowing it either.”
“……”
What a pointless comment.
I snickered and added,
“I’m kidding. This is where I stole the contents of that truck, after all. I came here once back then.”
“Hmm, I see. As expected of our Boss.”
“…And stop calling me Boss.”
Hot Dog Man, Abel Anderson, crazy bastard, and so on.
I had been called by all sorts of names and nicknames, but ‘Boss’ was the most awkward of them all.
It wasn’t as though we were some bandit gang.
‘…Is it kind of similar?’
No, even so, Boss was a bit much.
“Then….”
“Just call me Hot Dog Man like everyone else.”
“Hmm, understood.”
Actually, I didn’t like Hot Dog Man much either, but even if I told people to stop calling me that, it already felt as though it had settled in as a proper noun.
I firmly resolved that if I ever got the chance, I would grab the collar of the homeless man who had first called me Hot Dog Man and shake him around.
Anyway.
As I recalled my hazy memories and made my way out of the complicated alleys, I began to see a canal plunging beneath the main road like a gigantic waterfall.
The shantytown in Black Square where I had come last time.
It was where Gio, the little Sherpa who had guided me, lived.
‘That tent, I think.’
I nodded while looking at the utterly miserable shack.
It was a temporary shelter built right up against a perfectly sound building so its occupants could get as close as possible to the heat flowing from the exhaust vent.
Naturally, it was hardly a healthy structure, but it was still better than freezing to death.
The weather had grown even colder lately, too.
Cat muttered in a displeased tone,
“…Quite a crude hideout.”
“It’s not a world where everyone can live happily.”
Just as Zone 49 had separate streets for the new town and the old town.
Wherever there was light, darkness was bound to form.
No matter how much Black Square belonged to the new-town district, the existence of a slum like this could only be called a necessary evil.
The disparity was especially stark in Risk City, steeped as it was in an extreme capitalist ideology.
I lightly tapped the wooden plank of the flimsy tent with the back of my hand.
Tap, tap.
Gio had been staying in this tent house with children around his age.
Since I had visited before, there ought to be at least one kid who remembered my face.
But….
“……Who are you?”
An unfamiliar face suddenly emerged from inside.
A man with an extremely fierce face.
He looked so filthy, with his beard not even properly trimmed, that he seemed capable of putting up a decent fight against the homeless people living nearby.
“…That’s what I should be asking. Who are you, knocking on someone’s house out of nowhere and making a damn racket?”
In any case, I was used to the menacing appearances of homeless people by now.
Slowly curling my hand into a fist, I asked,
“Isn’t this the house where Gio used to live?”
The destination of my fist would be decided according to the content of the man’s answer.
At my question, he deeply furrowed his brow.
It didn’t seem as though he was doing it deliberately to intimidate us; rather, he appeared to be searching his memory because he couldn’t quite remember.
“Gio? If you mean Gio…. Ah, that gang leader? No wonder the place was so spacious. So this was his place, huh. Heh.”
The man pulled a strange device resembling an asthma inhaler from inside his clothes and naturally put it in his mouth.
“But why are you looking for that fucking brat all of a sudden? They all look too old to sell to an organ farm─.”
Shing.
The inhaler in his mouth was sliced in half.
Cat’s voice followed.
“How dare you…….”
Most tobacco products in Risk City could be classified as narcotics.
Except for the ones made by the proprietor─, Christine, who blended the herbs herself.
When I quietly raised a hand, Cat slowly calmed his anger and returned the katana—no one knew when he had drawn it—to its sheath.
“Uh. Uh….”
The man couldn’t even bring himself to inspect the inhaler that had been cut in half.
He stared at us with a vacant expression.
It must have looked as though something had simply flashed─.
I smiled brightly and stomped on the inhaler lying on the floor with the sole of my shoe.
Crunch.
“So, your answer?”
“Th-that is….”
* * *
According to the explanation from a helpful resident,
Gio had left the shantytown on the outskirts and moved all the way inside Black Square.
Well, before we parted ways last time, I had handed him every bill I had in my pocket.
‘About a hundred thousand dollars, I think?’
It wasn’t enough for me to even buy a new android, but for someone else, it was more than enough to change their life.
The hostility the man in the shack had shown toward Gio seemed to stem from precisely that fact.
Honestly, at least the new place didn’t have an exhaust vent inside.
It was a truly remarkable improvement.
Clunk, clunk.
When I knocked a little harder than before, the sound rang noisily through the building’s corridor from the solid metal door.
After a little while.
[…Who is it.]
This time, a familiar voice seeped out.
Suppressing a snicker, I answered leisurely,
“It’s me.”
[Wh-who did you say?]
“I said it’s me.”
With a little mischief in my voice.
But perhaps because of the cheap intercom’s sound quality, Gio didn’t seem to recognize me.
[Ah, we don’t accept sex-toy escort services!!]
“What….”
He seemed to have gotten the wrong idea, so I decided to stop fooling around and correct him quickly.
“No, it really is me. The handsome older guy you parted from above the canal back then. You told me not to forget and to come visit sometime.”
[I don’t remember you being that handsome.]
This bastard.
[…Lower your head so I can see your face.]
Looking closely, I saw that the intercom on the door had been installed at exactly a child’s eye level.
So that was why he couldn’t see my face.
Only after bending deeply at the waist could I look directly into the intercom’s lens.
“Is that better?”
Clunk.
Instead of an answer, the front door swung wide open.
Gio cautiously poked his face outside.
“…Hyung?”
“Good to see you.”
Just as he was about to show that he was happy to see me as well, he spotted the suspicious ninja standing right behind me and flinched in surprise.
“Th-that person over there….”
“Ah.”
Since I seemed to know him, Cat bowed his head with an extremely polite air.
There was no need for him to be quite that courteous.
“Good to meet you. This humble one is called Cat.”
“??”
Perhaps it was his first time seeing a lunatic introduce himself as Cat, because Gio’s expression grew increasingly awkward.
I ought to explain a little.
“He’s my subordinate…. Well, he is my subordinate, so don’t worry about him too much. Actually, I only came to Black Square because this guy suddenly said he wanted to come, so I followed him.”
“…Come inside quickly for now.”
For some reason, Gio seemed extremely wary of the corridor outside.
It wasn’t an unusual thing to see in Risk City, so I followed Gio inside.
At the same time, the familiar faces of the children poked their heads out from the room farther inside.
“Huh?! It’s that older brother who came last time!”
“Damn…. If I’d known, I would’ve saved some of that canned silkworm pupa he liked so much last time.”
“Too bad, but I guess all we can give him is a protein block like last time…?”
Please, anything but that.
And when a ninja dressed entirely in black appeared once again, the atmosphere around us quickly sank as though someone had poured ice water over it.
Oh no.
“Let me say it again: he’s my subordinate. His name is Cat. He’s a frail guy who gets beaten up by someone at night and goes around sobbing, so you don’t have to be that afraid of him.”
“…This humble one has never gone around sobbing.”
At my confident introduction, one of the kids cautiously raised a hand.
“…Um.”
“What is it?”
“Is your real name actually Cat?”
I knew they’d ask that.
“Yeah. It really is.”
“How can someone’s name be Cat….”
I agreed with that one hundred percent.
I told him to change it, after all.
The children began whispering among themselves and voicing their curiosity about Cat.
“…Maybe there was no one to give him a name, unlike us?”
“I know. When you think of it that way, it’s kind of sad.”
“That man, his parents….”
Then one of the children toddled over to Cat and grabbed the hem of his ninja outfit.
Cat’s shoulders twitched for a moment, but fortunately, he didn’t draw the katana from inside his clothes like a soldier having a PTSD episode.
“Mister.”
“…What is it?”
“Why do you talk like that?”
“This is to display this humble one’s loyalty─.”
“And why are you dressed like that? That older brother is strange too, but you’re even stranger. Your name, too. Hehe. You’re so weird.”
Whatever the children found funny, they began giggling softly, and Cat, surrounded by them, looked at me in bewilderment as he asked for help.
I had no idea either.
“If you don’t like your name, should we give you a new one?”
“Yeah!”
But Cat firmly shook his head at that suggestion.
“It’s fine.”
His gaze turned toward me, then lowered back toward the children.
“This humble one is perfectly satisfied with this name.”
“Aww, boring.”
“Yeah. He’s too serious….”
When the atmosphere began to grow rather awkward, Gio pushed the children aside and waved his hands.
“All right! The adults have something to discuss, so all of you go back inside!”
“We’re only a few years apart….”
“Now, now, shh.”
“Tch.”
Still, he certainly had the children under control.
I patted Cat’s shoulder in consolation; he looked even more exhausted than when he had been blocking the entrance to the Hakugakumi Club.
The boisterous atmosphere subsided somewhat.
Gio lowered his voice slightly.
“…But it hasn’t been very long since then. Is it really okay for you to come here already? And there’s the issue with the bounty, too.”
“So what? It’s fine as long as we don’t get caught.”
The one who stole the megacorp’s truck was the Smile Mask whose face was covered in black.
For the record, that mask was still being carefully stored in the grocery store’s warehouse….
I had kept it because throwing it away for no reason might have turned it into a clue.
I smiled lightly and roughly ruffled his hair.
“Anyway, things got a little tangled after that…. But they worked out fairly well. There won’t be any more trouble over the contents of the truck, either.”
The bounty on that mask had been substantial, so Gio must have been sorely tempted, but he had upheld his loyalty despite his young age.
Of course, he might simply have avoided me because he didn’t want to get caught up in the mess as well.
“…That’s good.”
“It is.”
Gio wore an embarrassed expression and tried to push away the hand stroking his head, but my past experience ignoring my little sister when she said, ‘Ah, go away!!’ and continuing to pet her came in handy.
Not a chance.
In the end, Gio gave up and let me have his head, then looked up at Cat with an uneasy expression.
“…So you came back here this time because of that weird man?”
“Yep. I told you earlier, didn’t I? He got beaten up by someone at night and sobbed about it. So apparently he’s planning to strengthen his body with implant prosthetics.”
Gio’s gaze toward Cat grew considerably gentler.
It seemed Cat had been downgraded from a suspiciously dressed man to someone who got beaten up because he was weak.
“Then you came here to have me guide you like last time?”
“Yep. I’ll pay you a little for your trouble this time, too.”
“No need.”
Gio waved his hand at my words.
“I have a conscience. I made a hundred thousand dollars without doing anything last time. I’ll do it for free.”
Then he scratched his head before looking back at me.
“…You did bring enough money, right? Don’t go again like last time and then tell me you’re short.”
“Hmm.”
My gaze naturally shifted toward Cat.
This time, I wasn’t buying something for myself.
Surely he hadn’t intended to steal it….
“Do not worry about the funds.”
Cat opened his mouth in a firm tone.
“I came prepared to invest every last bit of the wealth this humble one has saved for this undertaking.”
“…You really didn’t cry, did you?”
“……I truly did not.”
What on earth had happened to him that night….
Anyway, Cat’s resolve was extremely firm.
Firm enough to make the joke sound like it had been meant seriously.
* * *
At the very center of Black Square─.
Inside a gigantic room filled with monitors displaying footage from countless surveillance cameras.
A peculiar glint appeared in the eyes of the Black Star Society’s Mountain Lord.
“Hoho.”
It was because he had noticed the visit of someone who had driven the Hakugakumi organization to complete ruin.
Unlike the first time, this was the return of a person who could now confidently be called the leader of a faction.
It was the perfect opportunity to uncover the truth behind the strange rumors surrounding him.
Naturally.
There was no way he could fail to be interested.