March

───Scroll scroll scroll!

"Ugh, looks like the reserves are still holding the first floor."

"Well, the really tough ones are down below doing the backstroke in ice water."

"Heh. Fair enough."

The building's interior was surreal. The first floor still offered plenty of cover and concealment, and though it was scarred by countless explosions and gunfire, the fighting was nowhere near as fierce as it had been before.

An entire company of PMC personnel and high-end equipment had been deployed to take down just two operators. But the EMP had half-fried their machines, and just as they were recovering from the aftershock, someone had thoughtfully applied a cold-water compress directly to their circuit boards.

And so the company sent into the basement boarded a one-way express train straight to the Dragon King's palace.

Before everything fully submerged, the two of them had scrambled up on ascenders, climbed back to the B5 lobby where they'd first infiltrated, then bypassed the flooded zones and boarded a staff elevator to the surface. From there, they put lead rounds through the backs of the remaining forces still thrashing about in chaos. Enemy losses skyrocketed past any recoverable threshold — while the two of them walked out more or less intact.

And so, when it was all over, the two of them dragged their bodies — caked in stone dust, dirt, and water stains — out into a silence-filled exterior.

It had been barely an hour of combat, but both of them were thoroughly spent. More than enough time to experience every joy and sorrow life had to offer, along with every hardship and ordeal imaginable.

In stark contrast to the massive plumes of breath scattering from their lips, the outside world had turned brilliantly sunny. Clouds parted, and pillars of light pushed through the gaps to illuminate what had been a gloomy exterior.

As the two of them staggered out into that light, ISO's voice reached their ears.

"Being with you is genuinely bad for my heart, you know that?"

"I didn't think it would escalate this far either. But all's well that ends well. We won't have to go through the same thing again."

"Even if you asked me to do it one more time, I'd pass."

In a way, it really had been a cinematic story. Joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure all woven together, delivering a ridiculous visual spectacle — not all that different from a film, when you thought about it.

The two of them mechanically checked their gear and turned their faces to the sky. From far off, the sound of rotors was already approaching, growing louder by the second — from a faint vibration to a heavy, air-shaking thrum.

Eugene exhaled a waterfall of white breath and spoke.

"We've still got a lot of missions ahead. Let's keep going."

Harmony didn't have much to say to that. She'd expected those words from the start, and by now she knew Eugene well enough. If she hadn't, she never would have teamed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up with her in the first place. So she watched the black speck in the distance gradually resolve into the shape of a helicopter, and said:

"Go a little easier from now on. At this rate I won't live to see old age."

"Haha. I'll try."

"Even just saying it is appreciated."

A compact MD500 — its small frame almost at odds with the heavy sound it produced — touched down carefully on the concrete, and the pilot waved them aboard.

Bootprints carved into snow that no one else had walked on.

With only two passengers, there was no need to ride the skids like a death wish. The helicopter doors sealed shut, and the pilot spoke.

Haa.

As if she could finally let herself relax, Harmony gazed out the window and carefully opened her mouth.

"Look, Eugene… the sunlight is incredible."

"Ah…"

The sky was truly clear.

It was the moment the first button was fastened in the right place.

Busy. So busy.

Unfortunately, these days finishing a stream no longer meant you got to rest. If anything, the moment the broadcast ended was when the real work began — sifting through contact requests that could never be shown on stream.

That was why I'd recently set up a new mailbox specifically for official inquiries and anything involving money or contracts.

In short: the stream was the stream, and everything that couldn't be made public got handled before and after.

I followed the link the newly hired editor had sent over Engram, and there it was — my YourSpace account, its subscriber count already rocketing past fifty thousand somehow.

The video section still only had two uploads. One was a raw, unedited dump of nearly a month's worth of stream recordings. The other was a Shorts clip just over a minute long that the editor had uploaded a few hours ago.

And the view count on that one was already past a hundred thousand and charging toward two hundred.

Good lord.

As for the editor's work… I was a complete illiterate when it came to editing, so I didn't feel qualified to nitpick. Fundamentally, I valued how smooth and natural something looked to the eye over flashy ornamentation. Decorative flair and dazzling cut distributions weren't really necessary.

By that measure, the quality was more than sufficient. No meme spam plastered over everything — just the essential moments highlighted, with natural humor drawn out from them.

Being a former FanSpace editor probably helped with that. As a fan, she'd have a better sense of the edit points and what made things funny.

But there was one thing I was curious about.

…Don't most people dislike reptiles? Was this because of me too?

Maybe I should get a snake later. If the public image of reptiles improved because of me, that wasn't a bad thing. Unexpected side benefit, more than anything.

After that, the conversation was mostly a rehash of previous discussions — turnaround times, upcoming content, salary, and so on. There was actually a ridiculous amount to cover, once you started listing it all.

Time was already racing toward eleven at night. The editor signed off to go edit today's stream, and since I didn't have much else to offer, I sent her an energy drink gift voucher as a token of appreciation.

I scrolled through and checked the official contact mail.

Of course, "official" was just a label — it was still a public address. Which meant every personal email had already been filtered out. No need to dig through those. All of them were pure garbage of every conceivable variety.

I checked what remained for any quality professional correspondence.

"…Well. I've never made an official announcement, so."

Strictly speaking, even SSM didn't have a full long-term contract with me. To maximize my operational freedom — which of course meant the pay scaled down proportionally — we'd arranged a free-form contract.

No need to dance around it: virtually every existing organization had sent me a recruitment offer.

Unfortunately, for the time being — or ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠possibly forever — I had no intention of going pro. If I ever did, it'd probably be as a free agent.

I checked the other category.

Various unofficial requests — guest appearances on private broadcast rooms. Plenty of other things too. Collab requests from people other than Harmony, including some well-established streamers with significant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠followings.

Going through each one seriously would take far too long. That was a job for a dedicated day.

I was flipping through them one by one when a single email, marked in a strangely eye-catching pale black, caught my attention. It was from Icarus International.

The full text read as follows.

But the content didn't end there.

I carefully scrolled further down and found — a single sentence.

An unexpected fragment of the past.

I didn't even need to wonder what "device" meant. The unit on my wrist emitted a strange sound and flared with light.

A familiar vibration.

The bottom of the message flickered, and with a series of clicking sounds, text began to form.

A ceremonial formality.

The words that appeared next were brief.

"…Hah."

Apparently, the past still hadn't forgotten me.

The first real lead I'd found since crossing over into this world.