023. Gift (3)
023. Gift (3)
—If that's what you need, I think I could help.
After hearing the whole story of how I'd spent three hours wrestling with the computer in the command center, Rinne said:
She didn't explain specifically how she intended to help.
Instead, she just said this.
"Follow me."
Even after that, she simply started walking, ignoring all my questions.
Having no alternative, I followed where she led.
Soon, we left the main building housing the command center and arrived at the residential block.
The residential block had three floors in total.
The first floor had leisure facilities (or rooms that were supposed to be used as such but were empty and in a state of ruin).
The second floor had the individual biodroid quarters.
And the third floor housed the commander's quarters.
But the place Rinne led me to wasn't on any of those three floors.
Because it wasn't above ground, but below it.
According to the records, there was a basement storage room beneath the residential block.
That was only on paper, anyway.
In reality, however, it seemed to be used as Rinne's personal room.
I only said 'seemed' because I'd never actually been inside.
......I had tried to go in, though.
Not just on the first day, but occasionally after that too, I'd come by the basement storage room.
The goal, simply put, was to try to get a little closer to Rinne.
But Rinne would lock the door from the inside and never open it.
Forget opening the door; she wouldn't even come out herself.
Today was even the first time I had seen Rinne in the flesh.
I had no idea what she'd turned the inside into.
However, the very fact that she was hiding it so thoroughly suggested to me that there had to be something shady going on.
So I was sure the place had to be incredibly gloomy and full of criminal-looking stuff.
Anyone who went in unprepared might lose their sanity on the spot.
That was the wild picture I'd built up in my head.
Then Rinne casually flung open the door to the former basement storage room and said:
"Come in."
......Excuse me?
"I said come in?"
"Yeah. Come in, you idiot."
Was the 'idiot' really necessary?
More importantly, what was this? Had she set a trap that triggered on the second person to enter or something?
I didn't have the energy to question it, so I decided to just go in.
And so, after nearly three months, I finally saw the basement storage room for myself.
In some ways, it was exactly as expected, and in other ways, it was completely unexpected.
What matched my expectations was how unbelievably gloomy the place was.
Yes. Gloomy.
To elaborate, it was dark and damp.
The fact that it was located underground was a huge factor, but there were also other elements that made the atmosphere gloomy.
For instance, the periodically flickering light. Or the snack wrappers strewn messily about the interior.
Or the strange, powerful smell hanging in the air.
"......Ugh."
What was this smell?
It wasn't outright terrible. It was a little sour, just as sweet, and intensely pungent.
To put it into words, maybe it was like the smell of peaches when they just begin to rot.
Those strange smells had built up in layers, pressing against me as heavily as steam in a sauna.
Then, a moment later, I realized.
"......Is this, by any chance, your smell?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
No, it was definitely her smell.
I could tell because the scent emanating from Rinne's body carried the same notes as the smell pervading the room.
But how should I put it. If Rinne's body odor was a fragrant peach scent,
then the smell wafting from the room felt like that body odor had been condensed, compressed, and accumulated over a long time, evolving into something incredibly potent......
"S-Seriously, what the hell have you been going on about? Just die. You perverted bastard."
I was merely pointing out an objective fact.
And the fact that she stopped arguing and just turned bright red seemed to prove me right.
That overpowering smell was Rinne's body odor, aged in the room for an absurdly long time.
......Somehow the topic had veered in a weird direction.
Back to the point, if I compared the real basement with the one I'd imagined:
The foul smell and the gloomy atmosphere roughly matched the mental image I'd had of the basement storage room.
But what differed completely from my expectations were the things filling the room.
As I said, I'd imagined the place packed with seriously illegal-looking stuff——torture devices, suspicious experimental equipment, things like that.
However, once I actually entered, the basement storage room held no such dangerous apparatus.
Instead, what filled the basement was—
"......Comic books?"
That was right. They were comic books.
A bookshelf covering one entire wall was packed, absolutely packed, with comic books.
"Why are there so many comic books?"
"Huh? There are hardly any comic books. They're all novels."
Rinne objected immediately.
I objected to her objection.
"No, they're comic books. Just looking at the covers and titles, they're clearly comic books."
"I said they're not. Look closely before you speak."
With that, Rinne pulled out a few books and thrust them toward me.
Seeing her reaction, I wondered what the big deal was. Was this really something she needed to prove with evidence? It had only been an offhand remark.
But apparently, to the person concerned, it was a matter of considerable gravity.
She showed no sign of backing down until I examined several of them and acknowledged they weren't comic books.
So I at least had to go through the motions of looking.
And as a result of that examination.
"......Ah, they're light novels?"
I had glanced at them and thought they were comic books, but they were light novels.
Well, because the two look somewhat similar.
And honestly, weren't they basically the same thing?
While I was dismissing the distinction as trivial, Rinne asked:
"Ah, you know? Light novels? You know what light novels are?"
How should I put it?
Her face was absolutely brimming with delight.
No, really. Like a person meeting a compatriot in a faraway foreign land, she was purely delighted, without a trace of malice.
It was only for a very brief moment, though.
Just a few seconds later, as if the expression she'd just shown was nothing but a phantom in the darkness, Rinne returned to her usual irritable face and began snapping.
"Hey, I'm asking you a question. Do you know light novels or not? You ignoring me?"
She had the air of someone about to kick me in the shin if I ignored her any further.
So, cutting the digression short and answering her:
"Yeah, I know what they are."
Light novels.
A genre of fiction that was once popular among youths but is now completely obsolete.
The reason for the loss in popularity, in a word, was that it became outdated.
For one thing, they were far too long and slow-paced compared with the short-form content popular nowadays.
On top of that, plots about protagonists struggling to save beautiful girls held little appeal for modern readers. Beautiful girls were, after all, commodities you could buy with money. The prevailing view was that risking your life to save one was stupid.
Also, as warfare became outsourced to biodroids and society behind the frontlines stabilized, public demand for salvation narratives must have decreased significantly.
......Ah, the reason I know so much about light novels isn't because I'm an otaku or anything.
It was simply because there was one person among my academy classmates who was absolutely obsessed with light novels.
That person insisted that light novels were the perfect biodroid-training manuals and kept recommending them to me and our other classmates.
I'd been forced to read a few volumes, found them completely uninteresting, and quit...... but at least I'd learned what the genre was and what kinds of novels counted as light novels.
They were usually a little smaller than standard hardcovers, with cute girls on the covers and long, rambling titles...... things like that.
"......Ah, you do know your stuff."
Since she seemed so desperate to hear it, I went overboard showing how much I knew, and Rinne let out a sigh of relief.
That delighted look returned.
She even gave me a small, bashful smile, as if proving that the expression she'd shown when light novels first came up had never been an illusion.
At that point, I had no choice but to ask.
"You must really like light novels."
"H-Haaaaah——?!"
What the. Why was she screaming?
"Wh-Who, who, whowhowhowho said I like something like light novels?"
"I mean...... if you've stacked your room full of them, that means you like them."
"No! Wrong! This is just, these are just things I bought because I casually enjoy them, not because I like them......!"
What was the difference.
Rinne went, "Hmph! Hmph-hmph!" and snorted, then changed the subject.
"Anyway! That's not why I brought you here, to show you my room! Why are you paying attention to useless things! Get back to the point!"
......That's what I wanted to say.
Anyway, if she was now willing to return to the main topic, that was enough.
I'd been waiting for that opening, so I asked:
"I've been wondering for a while now, but what exactly did you mean? That you think you can help me?"
Rinne's answer was concise.
"The files you said you couldn't access because of their security classification. I can open them."
I couldn't believe it.
"Seriously? How?"
"Because I pulled copies of the Krädel-related files and stored them here."
What the.
Leaving me standing there baffled, Rinne opened an old laptop in the very corner of the room.
Soon, the laptop screen lit up, and on it.......
"It's just full of Japanese games?"
"Ar-Are you going to keep focusing on pointless things? Should I just not help you?"
Rinne snapped at me again.
I was just trying to make conversation to build some rapport.
But since she didn't like it, I decided to stop.
And besides, the most important thing right now was to confirm whether Rinne's claim was true or not.
I gave Rinne a look that said, 'Hurry up and show me.'
Rinne grumbled like a disgruntled cat, but started typing away at the laptop.
Soon, the same file appeared on the screen.
[Unit Counseling Logs and Personal Records (Seo Se-rin)]
Counseling Records and Personal Evaluation Data - Laika
She really had copied them out.
"How did you do this?"
"Because I know how to hack a little."
A casual reply, as if it were nothing special.
But it was a big deal.
The documents were military Level 2 classified material. That wasn't a level someone who knew only 'a little' hacking could crack.
More than anything.
"There's no record of you having received any training in things like hacking?"
"Obviously not. I taught myself coding here."
What.
"So the reason you've been holed up in here all this time was to study coding?"
"That wasn't the main reason. More like, while I was at it."
"Really? Then what was the main thing you were doing? Why did you learn coding in the first place?"
"......You sure talk a lot."
Rinne complained.
I felt sorry for interrogating her so thoroughly, but I couldn't just let this slide.
"This is a security incident. At the very least, I need to know what you were trying to accomplish by doing this."
Unlike before, I spoke in a serious tone.
Maybe the sudden shift caught her off guard. Rinne flinched in a way that suited her pint-sized appearance.
But three seconds later, as if indignant at the fact that she had been startled, Rinne chewed on her lower lip and spoke.
"First, I learned coding to make a game."
"A game? What kind of game?"
Rinne answered after a long pause.
"......A bishoujo dating sim."
......Huh?
"A bishoujo dating sim? What's that?"
"That's obviously a beautiful girl romance simula— ...Ah, shut up! Anyway! It was for game production purposes!"
Rinne said that and changed the subject.
"And I didn't pull the data out for anything malicious, either. It was just research material."
"Research for what?"
"Writing scenarios. More specifically, reference material for character profiles."
Hmm.
So she'd really studied coding for that, then gone on to crack the military's Level 2 classified data?
It was utterly absurd, but I couldn't dismiss her claim as unbelievable.
"Now that I think about it, you said your model is Kurenai, right?"
"I did. Why?"
Why else? Kurenai models were sometimes used for hacking.
Of course, Kurenai itself wasn't designed as a hacking model.
Kurenai was designed for artistic creation...... especially novel writing.
But structuring natural language for tasks like novel writing had certain similarities to the way hackers built logical structures.
That was why models designed for novel writing were structurally similar to hacking models.
In fact, a sister model called 'Beniiro,' created by slightly modifying the Kurenai, is even used as Kaguya Heavy Industries' main hacker biodroid model.
......Well, that's just to say there are some vaguely similar aspects, and the Kurenai would likely be far less efficient compared to a genuine hacker model.
Even so, if the biodroid herself was motivated and studied hard, it wasn't unreasonable for her to achieve impressive results.
The ridiculous part was that her motivation seemed to come from 'writing game and light-novel scenarios'...... but I decided to let that slide.
Seeing me lost in my own thoughts for a long while, Rinne spoke as if exasperated.
"Anyway, don't make a fuss. In the first place, counseling logs aren't even the kind of data that would cause security issues."
Hmm.
That was certainly true.
Come to think of it, I'd never seen something as innocuous as counseling records classified at all, let alone Level 2.
Nevertheless, since security had been placed on it, I had assumed there must be some issue I wasn't aware of and moved on.......
"No. I can say for certain. There's absolutely no data here that compromises military security. It's just filled with useless personal trivia."
"Then why on earth is it classified as Security Level 2?"
"That's......."
Rinne hesitated for a moment, then said.
"That Seo Se-rin person or whatever—her death-in-service compensation was canceled."
For about five seconds, I couldn't comprehend what she had just said.
Even once I understood the words, they still made no sense.
"What do you mean? The death-in-service compensation payment was cancelled?"
"Exactly what I said. The bereaved family of Seo Se-rin didn't receive the compensation payment for Seo Se-rin's death in service."
"But Seo Se-rin died in service, didn't she?"
"How do you prove it? They couldn't even recover her body. Can you rule out, one hundred percent, the possibility that she deserted instead of dying on the battlefield?"
What the.
"No, that's......."
"You think it's ridiculous? Yeah. Of course it's complete fucking bullshit."
Rinne continued.
There was a mountain of evidence proving Seo Se-rin died during the operation, including Laika's testimony.
Under normal circumstances, paying the 500 million won death-in-service compensation would be the natural course.
But the military didn't want to disburse a large sum to the bereaved of a supplementary commissioned officer with no backing.
So they brought up the possibility of desertion and refused the compensation payment.
Of course, during that process, they classified the related documents so nobody could make a fuss about it later.
That was how these counseling logs came to be classified.
Finishing that explanation, Rinne quietly added.
"So you get it now, right? This isn't a security violation. Well, administratively it might be a security violation...... but anyway, it's not."
"I get what you mean."
The data Rinne had collected wasn't placed under security because it could actually cause problems for the base's security.
It was just 'the military' being 'the military.'
I understood that much perfectly.
But it raised a different question.
"Rinne."
"Huh?"
"Until now, you holed up in here and wouldn't even show your face to me."
"......Huh? Yeah. So?"
Rinne scratched her neck as if asking what my problem was.
It wasn't that I had a problem.
It wasn't, but.
"Then why are you helping me this time, even if it means risking trouble for yourself?"
At my serious question, Rinne gave a sharp "Hmph!"
Then, wearing an absurdly cool expression, she shot back:
"Why else? Because I fucking love plots where you rescue the hell out of a beautiful girl with a dark past and it turns into sweet, lovey-dovey, codependent pure romance."
......Only her expression was cool.
The actual words were completely unhinged.
More than that, what was she talking about? I could only understand up to 'rescuing a beautiful girl with a dark past'......
Well, I could leave the details aside.
Because separate from the content, her sincerity had definitely been conveyed.
There wasn't a speck of malice in why she was helping me.
She was helping simply because she wanted to help.
And so, I answered.
"Show me the documents."