Injected Rage (2)
Damn it. Here again?
I'd just finished managing a Barb for the first time, gotten beaten like a dog by Team Leader Mir, and barely managed to wash up and put myself to bed—only for my mood to sour all over again for no good reason.
In the pure white space of the dream stood a woman I knew all too well, and whom I never, under any circumstances, wanted to face again: Carmen.
"Haah... you're here again."
"It's not like I wanted to come!"
Carmen let out a sigh.
She looked exhausted. The Carmen I knew was a half-mad woman who barged in uninvited, stirred up chaos, and left—but this...
"What happened?"
"I got threatened."
"What...?"
"By Danaksuseon...-nim..."
Ah. If it was that bastard, it made sense.
"Honestly, after meeting... that person, I thought I'd have a little time to spare... but then they suddenly burst into the light where I was and told me to hurry it up... So here I am."
Carmen shrugged.
A trial? Or some other kind of notice?
"What a ~~wonderful~~ boss you've got."
I said it that way, but a thousand thoughts were already racing through my head. Still—I could never pass up a chance to needle Carmen.
"Haah... I should never have come to you back then... But I suppose I still have to do what I have to do."
Her expression settled into something quieter.
"This is the first trial."
"Already? It's only been a day."
"Yeah. What can you do? If they say dig, you dig."
Carmen looked at me.
Those eyes that saw through everything—was that the kind of gaze she used when she stared at people and said things that dug under their skin? As a card-carrying member of the Carmen Victims' Association, it put me in a foul mood.
"The Blood-Scarred Mercenary."
"That child has lost her dream."
Carmen spoke.
"All that's left is rage, and a hollow revenge."
"So find them for her."
"A new dream. A new reason. And a new life."
Easy to say. But was it even possible?
She was a subspecies born from injected original memories—carrying recollections she believed were her own life, and a fury she believed was her own emotion.
Telling someone like that to find a life beyond revenge... wasn't that asking too much?
"Is that even doable?"
"I don't know."
Carmen smiled.
"That's why it's a trial."
"And if I fail?"
"Don't ask me that."
She let out a small sigh.
"I only came because I got threatened too."
"Anyway."
Carmen took a step back.
"You already know, don't you? Where that child's memories came from."
"But she doesn't. She doesn't even know whether the rage she's holding onto is truly hers."
Carmen's voice grew a little more distant.
"So be careful. Breaking that child is easy. But putting her back together will be hard."
With those words, the pure white space collapsed.
I opened my eyes to the ceiling of the dormitory. Morning.
"....."
Shit. I had to go to work, and the mental fatigue from last night hadn't eased at all.
It was a dream—so why did it only leave me feeling heavier?
A few days passed after that.
My daily routine didn't change much.
Clock in. Work. Train. Clock out. Then clock in again—the cycle just kept repeating.
The silver lining, if you could call it that, was that Carmen hadn't shown up in my dreams since, so at least I'd been sleeping properly.
The downside was that this godforsaken company called Lobotomy didn't give a damn about anyone's mental state.
If you were alive, you came to work.
If your arms and legs were still attached, you did your assignments.
Even if you looked a little unhinged, you were fit for duty.
Typical of this damn place.
And one other thing had changed.
"You're here?"
The Mercenary had started speaking first.
The containment unit was always the same lighting, the same smell, the same feeling—and the Mercenary leaning against the wall was almost always in the same spot.
She was sharpening her axe on a whetstone again today.
That scraping sound had become familiar enough that it barely registered anymore.
"Insight work this time."
"I know."
"Did you check the terminal?"
"Don't need to."
The Mercenary smirked.
"I can more or less tell just from the look on your face when you walk in."
"That obvious, huh."
"You manager types are surprisingly easy to read."
"That actually hurts."
"It's true, though."
Couldn't argue with that.
I sat down in the chair across from her.
At first, even sitting in this chair had made me tense. Now I just settled into it naturally.
Humans are creatures of adaptation.
Whether adapting to this company was a good thing, though—that I wasn't so sure about.
"So... nothing special today?"
".....Do you like flowers?"
Out of nowhere.
"Me?"
"Yeah."
"I mean, they're fine, I guess."
"I used to like them."
The Mercenary muttered as she worked the axe.
"I was a florist's daughter, after all."
That story again. She must have been homesick for it—the moment in her life she missed the most.
She did this sometimes: just talked about herself like this.
"The scent was nice."
"The colors, too."
"There were a lot of pretty ones."
Scrape.
"Hated roses, though."
"Why?"
"They've got thorns."
"Ah...."
"Hurts when they prick you. My mom used to get stuck by them all the time, too..."
I couldn't help laughing at that.
The Mercenary frowned.
"What's so funny."
"Nothing."
"You're more ordinary than I expected."
"I'll kill you."
"Sorry."
She went back to sharpening the axe.
The sound of it seemed strangely quiet.
She was unmistakably an Abnormality—a clear-cut Abnormality born from injected memories, burdened with a life she never asked for. And yet, looking at her manner, her attitude, her reactions, you could still feel something human in her.
Another few days passed.
Instinct work this time.
I walked into the containment unit carrying bread and soup.
The Mercenary looked at what was in my hands and lifted her head.
"Oh..."
"Bread."
"You like it, right?"
"At least you can take a hint."
"Was that a compliment?"
"Who knows."
I handed over the bread and soup.
The Mercenary took them without ceremony.
Tore open the packaging.
One bite.
Another bite.
She ate with real appetite.
"Taste okay? Different kind of bread from last time."
"When you're hungry, you eat."
"Same as the bread you used to eat?"
"Honestly, I don't remember either. It's just... the act of eating bread brings back a kind of longing, so it's good."
"And the soup?"
"Here."
The Mercenary took the soup and had a sip.
Steam rose slowly from the cup.
"Not bad. Same as last time."
"Good to hear."
"The ones before you only ever brought the worst crap. At first they were terrified, but after a few days they started mixing weird stuff into the soup and bringing it in. I killed them on the spot, of course."
"That's terrifying."
"You're my handler, aren't you? Then you should be doing at least that much."
".....But you're joking, right? Who in their right mind would pull that on a Barb-class of all things?"
"Then take good care of me. And as for whether I'm joking—think about what happened last time. Heh heh...."
Strangely, I couldn't argue. If the Intelligence Team really was the pack of incompetent mutts Team Leader claimed they were, maybe they actually had...
And so another few days went by.
I'd manage the Mercenary when I clocked in, and the moment shift ended, Team Leader Mir would drag me off for training.
"Again."
Thud.
"Agh! That hurts!"
"Again."
Thud.
"Team Leader, just a second, a break—break time!"
"Again."
Thud.
Shit, that actually hurt.
Team Leader Mir didn't hold back.
No—technically, she did hold back.
Just enough so I wouldn't die. Which made it even more sadistic.
I saw it clearly: she was smiling a little every time I yelled that it hurt.
Yuri was in the same boat.
"Yuri."
"Yes..."
"Pick up the dual blades."
"My arms won't go up..."
"Pick them up."
"Yes..."
Yuri lifted Requiem with a face that was nearly crying.
At first she'd scream.
Now she just took the hits.
Humans are creatures of adaptation.
The problem was, I still couldn't tell whether this particular adaptation was a good thing or a bad one.
Nova watched from the sidelines. That woman was supposed to be off the clock, but she'd come by specifically to watch us get wrecked.
"Wow."
"That's brutal."
"Aren't you going to stop her, senior?"
"Why?"
"This is fun."
She was genuinely insane.
Still, it was working.
My body moved faster than before—that much was certain.
Repentance felt more natural in my hands than it had at the start, too.
In the beginning it had just been a black longsword. Ordinary. Something that, once you picked it up, gave you a rough sense of how to use it and not much more.
Now it was different.
When I held it, there was a strange feeling that it was following my breathing.
Whether that was good or bad—whether it'd lead to another corrosion like last time—I didn't know. But at least it helped me stay alive.
Then one day, I opened the containment unit door and found the Mercenary with her hood down.
"....Huh?"
"What?"
"Nothing."
I stopped for a moment.
I'd never even seen that in the game...
Looking at the Mercenary's face—the one countless Lobotomy fans had wanted to see—it was more ordinary than I'd expected.
Brown hair, blue eyes, and a face younger than I'd imagined.
The face always hidden under that hood was just a plain girl you could have run into anywhere.
The look in her eyes, of course, was anything but ordinary.
Those were the eyes of someone who would tear a person apart.
"You look more ordinary than I thought."
The Mercenary narrowed her eyes.
"Disappointed?"
"No. I just figured you'd be covered in scars and a bit older."
The axe came flying.
CRASH!
"Shit!"
"It didn't hit you."
"It almost did."
The Mercenary laughed low in her throat.
It had been a while since I'd seen her laugh.
"But... why'd you take it off?"
"Take what off."
"The hood. You've never taken it off."
The Mercenary was quiet for a moment.
Then, taking a bite of bread, she said:
"I don't know..."
"You don't know?"
"Yeah."
She looked down at the soup and gave a short huff of a laugh.
"I just figured it didn't matter if I showed you now. That's all it was—just a feeling."
I couldn't say anything.
Those words landed with a strange weight. I could feel the trial drawing closer, right against my skin.
After that, the Mercenary started leaving her hood down more often.
It wasn't as if her guard had fully dropped.
If I said anything off, the edge of her axe still stopped right in front of my throat, and the long gun was always within arm's reach.
But it was different from the beginning.
At first we'd just been a manager and an Abnormality.
Now we were something a little—
just a little—
closer to two people who could actually talk.
And that was the problem.
Carmen's words kept lingering in my head.
A new dream, a new reason, and a new life.
So I started asking. I'd originally planned to take it slow, ease into it over time—but I got the feeling that if I didn't do it now, I never would.
"Mercenary."
"What."
"Once you kill the Wolf, what are you going to do?"
Scrape.
The axe stopped for a moment.
"Be a Fixer."
"Keep going?"
"Probably."
"Why."
"...."
The Mercenary thought for a bit.
Then she said:
"I don't know."
That answer kept bothering me.
I don't know.
Her face had been completely empty when she said it.
As if that were the full stop at the end of her life.
Even if that was the fate the game—no, this world—had decided for her, I couldn't accept it.
"And after the revenge is done?"
"...I don't know."
"Don't you want to go back to the flower shop?"
"It's gone."
"If it were still there."
"....I don't know."
"Anything you want to do besides being a Fixer."
"....I don't know."
"Then... what do you know?"
"....I don't."
The same answer, over and over.
The Mercenary wanted to kill the Wolf.
She wanted revenge.
That feeling was real.
And beyond it, there was nothing—because that was her fate, the role the world had assigned her.
Truly.
Nothing.
That was when I finally understood why Danaksuseon had set this particular trial.
She had lost her dream.
Only rage remained.
Only revenge remained.
That kid's life ended with revenge.
If she somehow managed to kill the Wolf—
the Mercenary's life would end with it.
Even if she was still breathing.
Because there'd be nothing left to live for.
It felt familiar.
I'd been the same way, after ■■■ died.
I'd lost all sense of direction and just drifted on the open sea, letting the world carry my body wherever it went.
That night.
The hallway.
Senior Nova was crouched in front of the vending machine.
In her hand was some unidentifiable green drink—Enkephalin, most likely.
A color that screamed do not drink.
How did she even put that in her mouth.
"Senior."
"Yeah~?"
"Are you free tomorrow? I've got a job I want to do with you."