Chapter 82
If you look up at the sky over Risk City, you can tell just how sick this city is.
Beneath pitch-black clouds sullied by all kinds of pollution, gray snowflakes silently drifted down.
It was the first snow of the year.
Personally, I wasn’t particularly fond of snow.
(That’s usually how it is if you serve in the military in Cheorwon.)
As I watched the filthy city, reeking of foul odors and exhaust fumes, slowly turn gray, the transparent mist escaping from my lips felt rather novel.
“Take that!!”
“Hey! Putting a rock inside it is cheating!”
“Bleh-bleh-bleh.”
Thanks to the children who had moved here with Rivera, quite a bit of liveliness had settled over the grocery store street.
Genetically modified life forms secretly created by some megacorp.
‘Known as nymphs…, no, imps.’
Contrary to the name ‘little demons,’ the kids were having a cheerful snowball fight.
“W-Wait. I think something hit me in the bone……”
“Did you think you could defeat me by relying on brute force…? How foolish.”
It was a little strange to call it a snowball fight, though.
Anyway.
I was worried to see them casually gathering snow acidic enough to easily strip away humanity’s precious dignity (hair) with their bare hands.
If it had really been dangerous, Rivera, who was standing beside me, would have stopped the kids before I did, so I simply watched in silence.
For a moment, I wore a pleased expression at the fact that the street’s security had stabilized enough for the children to run around outside safely.
I took a sip of warm milk.
Everything that had happened yesterday felt almost like a dream.
It would have been nice if it really had been a dream.
Rivera’s worried voice brought me back to reality from my reverie.
“Um….”
“Hm?”
Her golden eyes, visible between her shaggy locks, trembled anxiously.
Even she didn’t seem to understand the situation in front of the grocery store.
Rivera swallowed once.
Looking at the ‘countless boxes’ placed at the entrance of the grocery store, in front of the children having their snowball fight, she cautiously added,
“…What is all this?”
“……”
I didn’t answer Rivera’s question.
No, I couldn’t answer it.
I calmly took another sip of milk.
Slurp.
It was an incredibly complicated situation to explain.
Who would believe the truth—that I had happened to meet the boss of a mafia family in Black Square, and that she had suddenly bought up every item put up for auction and given them all to me as gifts?
All I could do was let myself be carried along by the flow─.
“Don’t tell me that mafia boss…!!”
“?”
…How did she know?
It was truly baffling.
* * *
A bright smile spread across Walter’s lips.
It was after he checked the packages placed in front of the grocery store.
“Whoa! Wow, this is…. Whaaaa!”
Watching Walter repeatedly mutter noises that no human being should make aloud reminded me of a character from some movie who had possessed the One Ring for far too long.
It was so bizarre that even Anna, who had come along with him, stiffened.
“…Dad.”
“Wow, this product is……. Hm?”
Walter belatedly came to his senses after noticing the dubious reactions around him.
“…Ahem, I suppose I’ve shown you something quite ugly.”
“Can’t deny that.”
Since he was a skilled technician faced with cybernetic bodies developed by various megacorps, it was somewhat understandable that he had lost his composure like this.
Walter roughly brushed the piles of snow off the boxes with his hands and said,
“I never expected to see such high-end products here, either. They’re megacorp-made, and every one of them is a real beauty. Ha-ha….”
I think that was the first time I had ever seen Walter laugh.
Of course, Anna’s gaze as she watched him had already grown as barren as it could possibly be.
Walter deliberately avoided his daughter’s gaze.
“Anyway, even if one had the money, these sorts of items would have been difficult to obtain. Just what method did you use? I heard you went to Black Square, but….”
The method was very simple.
“More money….”
“What did you say?”
“…No, nothing.”
Everyone had a limit.
If Walter heard how much money had gone into buying these items, he might lose consciousness like the humans living in the world of Cthulhu.
One, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, million….
“Urgh…!”
…How many hot dogs could I buy with that money!
When I reacted with considerable confusion, Walter wore a slightly awkward expression.
“What suddenly….”
“In any case, none of the items have any problems, so you don’t need to worry about how I got them.”
“…Hmm, I see.”
Walter adeptly put the homeless people to work, transporting all the boxes into the building with the sign 【Anna’s Recycling Shop】.
“Still, we won’t be able to use them right away. They’re items bought on the black market, so we don’t know what programs might be installed inside. We’ll run a thorough inspection, adjust the specs, and…….”
“Please discuss the details with Cat.”
I wouldn’t understand even if I listened.
Besides, these were items I had no use for.
“They’re not for me to use.”
Mechanical eyes of different sizes stared intently at me.
“I suppose you are a purist. I understand.”
When Walter nodded, Anna approached and naturally linked her arm through mine.
“Then perhaps I could….”
“Anna!”
Walter frowned at Anna’s behavior.
But as an older brother with a cheeky younger sister, this was still something I could simply find cute.
“Well, if you can get your father’s permission. It’s not as though we’re going to sell them anywhere.”
“Yay!”
I gently stroked Anna’s hair.
Pat.
At that moment, someone grabbed the hem of my clothes.
When I looked down, Rivera, standing right behind me, was looking up at me with silent determination.
“……”
“……”
Just how many little kids were there around here….
The fact that not a single one of them was actually a child in terms of age felt strangely frightening.
In any case, when I patted Rivera’s head, she responded with clear satisfaction.
Walter let out a small sigh and continued speaking.
“You’re too soft on the children. …Well, not that it’s a bad thing.”
“This is enough for me.”
Walter, unaware of the megacorp truck hijacking incident, stiffened when he saw the pistol I had taken out.
“That is……”
Was this the first time I had shown it to him?
Walter’s voice trailed off.
“That doesn’t look like a mass-produced pistol.”
“Right.”
It was made by Veltech….
An electronic biometric smart-whatever pistol.
I couldn’t remember its proper name, so I simply gave him a rough answer.
“Just an expensive pistol.”
“…Judging from the logo engraved on the barrel, it looks like something made by Veltech.”
Walter’s expression grew quite serious.
He looked around at the boxes containing megacorp-made items and continued speaking.
“The same goes for the other items, but honestly, they aren’t the sort of things you can take outside and carry around. As you know, Veltech’s AVs have been searching Zone 49 recently.”
Walter, unaware that the reason they had come to Zone 49 was our grocery store─more precisely, me─spoke in a worried tone.
“The frequency has decreased these days, but corporate AVs are still flying through the sky.”
“Uh, the thing is….”
“Suppose those vicious corporate bastards saw the pistol you’re carrying.”
Walter’s voice took on a significant tone.
“You’d be lucky if they merely took it away…; you’d probably be more likely to get shot.”
I listened to him until that point.
Reflexively, I recalled the situations in which I had used the ‘megacorp-made pistol.’
When I went to the club to catch Bansho Takemaru.
It should probably be fine this time.
Because I had blown up the entire server data.
The problem was what came next.
‘I already showed the pistol when threatening the corporate security team….’
I slowly looked down at the pistol in my hand.
“Well, of course you didn’t steal the megacorp’s property. But using something purchased on the black market can cause trouble too, so…….”
Walter’s voice grew quieter and quieter.
All my nerves turned toward the pistol.
At the time, I had simply pulled the pistol from inside my clothes without a thought or concern.
Thinking about it now, I had effectively announced that I was suspicious in front of the megacorp personnel.
As my expression grew increasingly rigid, Walter sensed something strange and asked me,
“…What’s wrong with you?”
“Ah.”
It seemed I was already screwed.
A heavy answer lingered in my mouth.
* * *
After I took a deep breath, my confused mind returned to normal.
It was a good thing I had selected the 【Iron Mind】 trait.
‘…In any case, it doesn’t look like there’ll be a problem right away.’
If the fact that I was the culprit had already been exposed, the megacorp security team would have appeared by smashing through the grocery store’s ceiling before I had time to react.
After thinking that far, I quietly looked up at the grocery store ceiling.
[…Dyu?]
Phew.
Fortunately, no enormous turret came crashing down in pieces.
‘Then, let’s figure out who saw it.’
First, the megacorp security team members wearing helmets.
And….
Jingle-jingle.
The bell hanging at the entrance rang.
“Excuse me.”
A man with his neatly combed hair slicked back opened the glass door and entered the grocery store.
The timing was remarkably contrived.
It had caught me so off guard that I couldn’t even greet him.
‘…Was his name Paul Lucas?’
I had already been thinking about him, but I hadn’t expected him to appear so suddenly.
First, I checked Paul Lucas’s hands.
‘Doesn’t look like he has a weapon….’
No, wait. He had fired bullets from those fingers.
In practice, it was no different from him showing up with a submachine gun in each hand.
Still, I couldn’t sense any other presence.
Unlike last time, he didn’t seem to have brought any subordinates and really did appear to have come alone.
‘…What?’
Paul Lucas confidently walked toward me and─.
Naturally turned to the side.
“Brr, it’s cold.”
Toward the display shelf with the snacks he had bought last time.
Paul Lucas randomly stuffed drinks, potato chips, chocolates, and other foods into the plastic basket at the entrance, then.
Thump.
Set the basket down on the counter.
“Check, please. Oh, and do you happen to have Aqua Blast here?”
“Aqua, huh?”
“Cigarettes. Cigarettes.”
Unfortunately, our store was a grocery store, not a convenience store.
When I shook my head, Paul Lucas let out a deep sigh.
“Ah, darn. The industrial complex is right next door, so the exhaust is awful as it is….”
Wasn’t exhaust more or less the same thing as smoking?
As I scanned the items’ barcodes and observed him, Paul Lucas noticed my wary gaze and chuckled.
“Did you perhaps think I wouldn’t come again?”
“Well…, for the time being.”
He casually shrugged.
“Marcus Vogel was KIA’d due to an ‘incident’ beyond his control…. But I still have to find what he took.”
I nearly stiffened unconsciously.
I prepared to block any attack as naturally as possible while continuing to ring up his purchases.
“You don’t even have a proper clue, so how exactly am I supposed to find it…. This is why most corporations get cursed out.”
“You said you work for a corporation. Is it all right for you to say that?”
His attitude was even more glib than when I had seen him before.
“Well, I mean Zone 49. And you don’t seem like the sort of store owner who’d report me anywhere.”
Every word Paul Lucas spoke felt like a trap.
With his narrow eyes and perpetually grinning face, he looked like a villain in a different way from me.
“For that matter…. You’re not an ordinary person either, are you, Boss?”
I quietly put strength into my foot.
If anything went wrong, I intended to kick the counter away in one blow.
“What makes you think that…?”
“Hahaha….”
A brief silence.
His narrow eyes formed long arcs.
“Hot Dog Man.”
Ah.
“I hear that’s what they call you around here? And when I looked into it, apparently you’ve got the homeless gangs completely under your thumb….”
That was slightly different from what I had expected him to say.
“I did think the way you acted that day was highly unusual.”
“Ah, yes….”
“Well, anyway, because of that, I’ll probably be staying at this grocery store for a while. I need to at least make it look like I’m doing something for my superiors.”
He held out his hand to me.
I couldn’t see any hidden intention in it.
In any case, he had come as a customer, so I couldn’t throw him out for no reason.
‘…Can’t be helped.’
I would simply have to be more careful from now on.
I slowly took the hand he extended.
·
·
·
“I was asking you to give back the card I gave you….”
“……I’m sorry.”
I finished checking him out first.
* * *
Paul Lucas couldn’t even think to wipe away the cold sweat running down the back of his neck.
All he could do was pretend to remain calm and quietly leave the grocery store.
“Wow….”
A gasp of admiration escaped him of its own accord.
An indescribable sense of ominousness had been vibrating from inside the grocery store.
It felt as though he were standing in the middle of enemy territory.
‘…Hot Dog Man, huh.’
Considering that there had been nothing around him but ordinary little kids, Paul Lucas judged that this was a warning sent purely by Hot Dog Man.
The most intense moment came when he took the hand extended by Hot Dog Man.
At that moment.
Paul Lucas felt as though dozens of people were watching him.
His impression was not mistaken.
The children having a snowball fight outside the building, Rivera, Nova, Cat, and a homeless man pretending to be asleep were secretly watching him.
Since they were all experts at hiding themselves, Paul Lucas failed to notice any of it.
‘…I’d better be a little more careful.’
It was a frightening place in many ways.