EP.1 The Butterfly's Dream (8)
"Why won't you say anything?"
Akina had kept her mouth firmly shut since the moment they'd come up here. She simply hung her head, idly scribbling meaningless lines on the innocent floor beneath her.
"Hard to answer? Then I shall change the question."
But the new question meant exactly the same thing.
"Why did you hide it?"
"···."
A long stretch of time passed before Akina's lips finally fluttered with hesitation.
"..Because I thought you'd object."
"Object to what?"
"Ruins exploration."
"Quite right. I very likely would have."
After a brief pause, Ash continued.
"And now I've learned of it. The Echo Effect. So tell me—how do you suppose I will act from this point on?"
At those words, Akina flinched and lifted her head. Her blue eyes wavered this way and that.
"..You're going to forbid it, aren't you?"
Ash did not look away from that gaze.
"Do you know how long it's been since you woke? Two days."
"..Wh-what? I slept that long···?"
"Slept?"
Ash let out a low sigh.
"No. You woke at intervals. And each time, you screamed—spitting out words no one could understand, with golden light blazing in your eyes!"
For the first time, raw emotion bled into his electronic voice.
"Can you even imagine what it took for me and Sannojang to calm you down each and every time?"
"···."
"Right. That's a hard one to answer. Then let me ask something else. If you were in my position, could you honestly say you'd suggest going back into that hell together?"
The true weight of his words struck her, and Akina's head snapped up.
"Old man—!"
"Enough. No more ruins exploration. That is my conclusion."
At his declaration, spoken like a proclamation, Akina shouted back.
"No! I won't!"
"This isn't a matter of what you want! You nearly lost yourself!"
"I already knew it was that dangerous!"
"I didn't!"
Ash's roar split the midnight rooftop in two.
"I didn't know! I had no idea that connecting to cyberspace—that Deep Diving—carried a danger so lethal!"
Akina had nothing to say in the face of that outburst. As far as she knew, this was the first time Ash had ever spewed his emotions out so violently. And somehow, that unfamiliarity frightened her.
Heavy silence settled over the rooftop once more. Only the cold night wind passed between the two of them.
A long while later, Ash lifted his steel arm and stroked his own head—the gesture uncannily like a human running a hand through his hair in weary exasperation.
At last, his electronic voice came again, and where the fierce emotion had been, there was only bone-deep exhaustion.
"..This female warrior once told me that Sanctum has a line of work called 'Fixers.'"
Akina didn't answer. So Ash went on.
"They take on commissions—finding people, settling disputes, that sort of thing. The pay may be meager, but they work within Sanctum itself, so it would be far safer than being a Pathfinder. And there'd be no threat like the Echo Effect, either."
He reached out and rested one hand on Akina's shoulder.
"Let's quit the Pathfinder business and become Fixers. As it happens, this female warrior knows a Fixer quite well—she could make the introduction···."
Akina raised her head. She was smiling. The only problem was that the smile was closer to a sneer.
"Fixers? What exactly am I supposed to do with that pocket change?"
"It is not pocket change. It would be more than enough to cover your living expenses and keep you breathing."
"And what about my revenge?"
The smile at the corner of her mouth warped into something grotesque, and what rose across Akina's face was pure, unadulterated hatred.
"Old man. You said you'd help me."
"..I will. With everything I have. Which is precisely why I'm saying this—becoming a Fixer doesn't mean giving up your revenge, does it?"
"It's the same thing to me. To me, it is."
Her stance was unyielding. Watching her, Ash's optical sensors glinted with a cold light.
"..You're truly determined to keep being a Pathfinder?"
"Yes. It's the only road there is."
"Akina!"
"I—!"
Akina shouted. Then she met Ash's eyes as he stared her down, biting her lip, her face flushed as though she might burst into tears at any moment.
"..Do you know who my enemy is, old man?"
Ash did not know. She had never told him.
Akina continued, and the words carried a hatred so deep it was hard to believe it belonged to a young girl.
"Omni-Cell Biotech."
"···."
"You know, right? The data card I gave you—I didn't leave that information out."
She was right. Ash knew.
Omni-Cell Biotech.
One of Sanctum's megacorps, the corporation standing at the very apex of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. A benevolent savior beloved with absolute devotion by the citizens, through its cures for every disease imaginable and its life-extension technologies. And at the same time, a corporation shrouded in mystery—no one knew the true source of those technologies.
That was Omni-Cell Biotech.
But that was only the textbook version. There was something far more important when it came to Omni-Cell—something no data card could fully explain. An open secret that every citizen of Sanctum knew, yet none dared to speak aloud.
Omni-Cell Biotech was, in practice, the ruler of Sanctum.
Among the countless corporations scattered across the megacity, three stood out above all the rest:
Stroud Group.
Foundation Systems.
And Omni-Cell Biotech.
The three pillars holding up humanity. At some point, the citizens of Sanctum had come to call them the Trinity.
One of those three had just come out of Akina's mouth. The greatest and most powerful corporation in Sanctum—the one everyone acknowledged as such—was her target for revenge.
Ash's optical sensors narrowed to a thin glow. At the same time, he weighed the name she had spoken.
'Omni-Cell, of all things···.'
That was his first thought.
'..Is it even possible?'
For a girl this small, the enemy was simply too vast. Even to Ash, who was still learning about this world piece by piece, it seemed impossible.
'It truly is throwing an egg against a rock.'
There could be no more fitting expression for it.
By now, despite his agitation, Ash found himself seized by a single curiosity. Namely: what did revenge on Omni-Cell have to do with being a Pathfinder?
So he asked.
"..Do you have a plan, at least?"
Depending on how one heard it, the question sounded like a mocking sneer: 'What could you possibly do against an opponent that powerful?'
But Akina didn't shrink from it. If anything, she'd been waiting for the chance, and she laid out her plan. The only problem was that the plan was absurdly farfetched.
"I'm going to start a company."
Yes. Founding a company.
"..Found a company? You mean build a business?"
"Yes. And then grow it—big enough to stand against Omni-Cell."
"..I don't understand. How does running a business count as revenge?"
"It IS revenge."
Akina's blue eyes blazed like never before.
"Because between corporations, you can declare a merger and acquisition."
Mergers and acquisitions. Two or more companies combining into one, or one company acquiring another's stock or assets to seize control of its management. That was the dictionary definition.
But that was a story from peaceful times only. In Sanctum, the words "merger and acquisition" carried a far more violent meaning—a meaning closer to war.
"That's why I have to go to the ruins. To found my company. To extract ancient knowledge that no one has ever found before!"
Only then could Ash understand everything. Every puzzle piece clicking into place.
Why, despite her young age, Akina had undergone the neural grafting everyone called so dangerous. Why she had picked through a garbage dump to wake him. Why she had yearned so desperately to become a Pathfinder.
Every question connected back to one answer.
Revenge. The foundation for that revenge. A company built upon ancient knowledge.
It was an outrageous plan. And yet—strangely—it seemed to be the only answer there was.
Ash wanted to suggest that perhaps she should give up on her revenge altogether. But he couldn't bring himself to push the words past his voice module.
'..Because I was no different.'
He, too, had thrown himself again and again into a torturous road of life and death, driven by a single obsessive fixation called vengeance. And back then, he had listened to no one's advice.
For him, of all people, to now tell her to give up?
It would be a lie, and it would be arrogance. A deception that betrayed the man he used to be, and the arrogance of believing that a few hollow words of advice could change her mind.
How could he force the road of "giving up"—a road he himself had failed to walk—onto this small girl? He, of all people, who knew better than anyone what it was to have hatred burning a hole through his chest?
"···."
A long time passed.
Even Akina, who normally chattered away without pause, kept her mouth closed for once. And so the two of them gazed out at Sanctum's nightscape, wordless and still.
But surely they were thinking of the same thing.
The hellfire called revenge.
At some point, Ash rose to his feet.
"I've always loved high places."
He murmured it almost like a recitation, stepping one pace closer to the nightscape.
"..I suppose it's because that's where I lived. Snow, pure white, filled the whole world from horizon to horizon, and sometimes the clouds would drift down right up to my bedside. I loved it. It felt like being an immortal, walking among the heavens."
Ash fell silent for a moment. Then he continued.
"And all of it burned away. By one man's will, one organization's hand, my home was set alight and turned to ash. The height remained, though. And the clouds that sometimes hung low, too. But I never went back after that."
Akina rose from her seat as well. She stepped close beside Ash and inclined her ear toward him.
"They spoke to me. The burned-down halls spoke, and the snow spoke. Even the clouds that used to settle so low spoke. Hurry and take your revenge, they said. Fulfill the duty of the one who survived. Never forget, not for a single moment."
His words were nothing but electronic tones, yet they were steeped in some unfathomable, aching depth of feeling.
"So that is what I did. I gave everything I had, and in the end, I took my revenge."
Ash turned his head. He looked at the girl standing beside him.
"But at the end of it, nothing remained. Nothing but a savage emptiness, and silence."
Akina turned her head too, and met his gaze.
"..Is that supposed to make me give up? Because nothing will be left?"
"It's so you'll know. That nothing will be left."
The girl shook her head.
"That's wrong."
Then she wrapped her arms around Ash's.
"Because I have you."
"..That much, I admit, is different."
The girl and the humanoid turned their heads at the same time, and together they gazed out at the city glittering in every color.
"Don't break."
"I know."
"You must not let yourself be hollowed out, either."
"I'll remember."
"..And above all—do not lose yourself."
Ash slipped his arm free of her grasp and wrapped it around her shoulders instead.
"I'll be right here beside you."
And so the girl and the humanoid stood side by side for a long while, looking out over the nightscape of Sanctum.
"Hey, you know what?"
At some point, Akina spoke up.
"Do you climb up to the rooftop every day just because you like high places? Heehee. You're just like a cat."
"Ah, Akina."
"Yes?"
"In moments like these, one should simply stay quiet."
"Ahh. Got it."
The girl stiffened her face again and turned back to the city. The city's lights washed over the two of them, dyeing them in a dozen different colors.