The Incomprehensible (5)
The Incomprehensible (5)
The Lower Layer, the inside of a cheap dive bar.
Cold drafts seeped through walls riddled with holes here and there.
A cheap LED light dangling from the ceiling swayed haphazardly with the wind.
It was a place where vagrants who lived hand-to-mouth gathered to wet their lips and lay their bodies down, so the air inside was bleak and subdued.
I scratched my head sheepishly.
When I stole a glance at Catherine, her expression also looked like she had swallowed something foul.
"How did you even find a place like this?"
"...I didn't come here to drink, you know?"
Catherine shrugged her shoulders and continued.
"Got introduced through No Answer. They said there's a decent character here."
"...Here?"
I looked around at Catherine's words.
A few people passed out drunk with their heads slammed onto old wooden tables.
A few people in a corner giggling among themselves, chatting and guzzling smuggled synthetic liquor.
Maybe one or two people with dead expressions, swallowing down balls of hard alcohol without any snack.
Wow, what an atmosphere.
I thought that if you gathered only the people scraping the very bottom of the Lower Layer, this was exactly the picture you'd get.
It didn't feel like the kind of place where a 'decent character' would be found.
I knew Catherine's in-game colleagues.
One was a dwarf who was a cyberware expert.
The other one was─.
That was when the sound of singing flowed from the stage of the small bar that I hadn't even realized was there.
A very calm and clear female voice.
Even the drunken vagrants turned their gazes to the stage one by one.
I remembered.
The other one was a singer.
A mercenary and singer elf, Andrea.
"...Uh, that's the one they told me about?"
Just then, Catherine gestured toward her with her chin.
"Then we wait until the song's over."
"Yeah."
Having found our target, we settled our bodies into empty seats.
The old, worn-out iron chairs creaked loudly.
The inside of the bar wasn't even that crowded, so there were plenty of seats.
"Don't know about her shooting skills, but she sings pretty damn well."
Even Catherine, who was stingy with praise, was impressed enough to let out a small exclamation.
We waited like that for her song to end.
"Hey, you fuck! If you're gonna sing some soul-draining shit like that, just quit!"
A drunkard guzzling a bottle of liquor shouted at her.
And then the sight of him snickering along with the people around him was more than just a little obnoxious.
It was like this everywhere you went in the Lower Layer.
There were just a lot of lunatics.
Fights breaking out in the Lower Layer were nothing special either.
But the problem was that this particular trouble was picking a fight with a potential new colleague.
Catherine, sitting beside me, seemed to be thinking the same thing as me.
We were about to get up from our seats, pondering how to deal with those drunken bastards, when a chair flew through the air.
- Crash!
Out of nowhere, Andrea stopped singing and hurled the chair she had been sitting on at the drunkards.
The chair, precisely pinpointing the drunkard's chin, slammed into the ceiling without losing any of its rotational force.
A situation no one had predicted.
The blood and white chunks that burst from the vagrant's mouth proved the situation was all too real.
The drunkard's companions, who had been laughing and enjoying the show around him, also couldn't hide their bewilderment.
"What the fuck!!"
Because of that, the drunkards belatedly shouted at Andrea.
With the sudden shift in atmosphere, Catherine and I suddenly felt like having popcorn.
If Andrea was going to handle the trouble herself, there was no need for us to step in.
Her red hair caught the light.
Her long locks fluttered, flaunting their silken quality.
"─FUCK."
Was it thanks to her excellent singing skills?
Her unnecessarily well-pronounced curse echoed through the microphone throughout the entire bar.
Then came her middle finger, raised stiffly.
"If you don't want to listen, then come up on stage, you moron bastards!"
And that.
That was our first encounter with her.
Regarding this part, I want to make the excuse that it wasn't that her personality was nasty, but that there just happen to be a lot of mercenaries with nasty personalities.
Anyway, that was it.
3. An Incomprehensible Thing (5)
"Hey!! What the hell was that!"
"Ah, it was a joke, I said, a joke! Can't I even make a joke?"
Catherine, yelling and charging at her, and Andrea, smoothly fending her off nonchalantly.
This place was a private waiting room with Andrea's name on the door. For the record, it was incredibly flashy.
Maybe it also served as a dressing room.
Sitting in front of a large mirror, Andrea didn't stop laughing.
She was also a longtime colleague of ours, if not as close as Catherine.
We had carried out many requests together, a relationship where we had literally entrusted each other with our lives a few times over.
At a glance, you might mistake it for a real fight, but in reality, it wasn't that serious of a situation.
Those two had been like that for more than just a day or two.
"...You really wanna die? You."
"Want to go for a round, for old times' sake?"
...It really wasn't serious, right?
I sat down in a chair set out for guests and carefully watched the scene.
No way they'd actually fight.
For the record, I resolved that if they did start fighting for real, I'd run away without looking back.
I was starting to want to go home.
Was there no one to stop those two?
I murmured quietly, so only Eve could hear.
"...Hey, Eve, isn't there a good way to resolve this situation somewhere?"
[I am informing you that it is scheduled to occur in about 5 seconds.]
"Huh?"
It was an answer I hadn't expected at all.
[Currently, a bio-signal is approaching the entrance of the waiting room. I recommend you check the direction of the door, I inform you once again.]
As soon as Eve's words finished, the waiting room door burst open powerfully.
"Hey there!"
It was a man whose appearance anyone would say looked like a celebrity living in the Upper Layer.
The sight of golden skin, starting from his chin and covering his entire body, looked peculiar.
Who was he?
...He seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite remember.
Ah, right.
It was the person who had been singing on stage earlier.
Celebrities in Neon City all had that kind of vibe, honestly. Except for Andrea, of course.
They had a look overflowing with individuality, though in a different sense than the Lower Layer.
"Andrea!"
"Ah... this crazy bastard came again."
"Still so rough-tongued, my thorny rose."
Seeing the man's face, Andrea let out a sigh. A look of genuine disgust.
Witnessing Andrea's expression, Catherine burst out laughing.
Catherine, who had been laughing for a while, placed a hand on Andrea's shoulder.
"Ah, this is way too funny. You crazy bitch, you two match so well. Hey."
"......I'm serious, knock it off."
I could hear the grinding of teeth.
There was just one problem: the man's attention wasn't only on Andrea.
Turning his head, the man's face now directed itself toward Catherine.
"Oh, you are beautiful as well."
"What the fuck?"
"Hohoho, I hope you watched my performance earlier. I am the leader of Rain Earth, Vince Barbo."
This time, it was Andrea's turn to burst out laughing.
Just like Catherine earlier, Andrea couldn't hold back her explosive laughter.
Was he an extreme narcissist?
The man didn't seem to care much about the two's reactions.
"I was just about to have a meal. Would you care to join me for dinner? Lady."
Hearing that, Andrea kept laughing as she spoke to Catherine.
"Hey, hey. You match well with him. You two go eat together. I'll go eat with Si-un."
"......Shun? Who is that?"
Vince Barbo's eyes sharpened in an instant.
Because I didn't want to catch any stray sparks, I kept my mouth shut and stayed quietly in my seat.
I downed a cup of tea that had been set out for guests.
It tasted good.
But it was all for nothing.
Unfortunately, we were the only people in this room.
Even if I wanted to hide, I couldn't.
It was only natural that Vince Barbo's gaze then turned toward me.
"...Hmm, so it's that fellow, I see."
The fellow let out a scoff.
"Wouldn't I be better than some Asian person like that? Seeing that he's wearing a mask, he looks like he's in poor health, too."
......Hmm.
It wasn't like this was just a day or two of racial discrimination.
At this point, it didn't even make me angry.
But ignoring a provocation thrown at you in Neon City was a stupid thing to do.
Couldn't be helped.
I tried to get up from my seat to return his provocation.
I would have stood up, if Catherine and Andrea hadn't simultaneously decked that guy.
- Kwang!
Was it because his whole body was plated in gold?
The sound of him hitting the wall rang out especially loud.
Vince Barbo, knocked unconscious, slumped upside down.
......I wasn't planning to take it that far though.
Catherine and Andrea faced each other.
And then, without a word, they nodded.
"...Is it okay for you guys to do this? He seemed like a fairly famous person. Take it a bit easy."
But neither of them seemed to care much.
On the contrary, both had relieved looks on their faces.
"Hey, hey, I finished all my songs, so let's all just go eat together now."
"Shall we?"
...My worry over 'Is this okay?' was brief.
Well, the concert had ended pretty late.
Because of that, it was also true that I was really hungry.
I decided to eat first and think about it later.
[.......]
I don't know either.
It'll work out somehow.
* * *
And the very next day.
《This is an NCB24 breaking news report. The leader of the famous male group, 'Vince Barbo,' has been urgently arrested on seven charges, including tax delinquency.》
On the news program, the face of the man we'd seen yesterday was showing.
"Oh."
What timing.
Tax delinquency, huh.
Tax avoidance was essential in Neon City, but of course, tax evasion meant arrest if you were caught.
In a city of capitalism, not paying your taxes was the same as being told to get the hell out of the city.
I remember the sentences being incredibly harsh, too.
Guess I won't have to worry about him for a while.
《The NCPD stated they investigated based on evidence someone sent through the Net─.》
"Hm."
Someone?
Just then, Eve suddenly spoke on her own.
[I am thinking that I really don't know who could have sent the evidence, I add. I further add that it would have certainly been impossible if not for a high-performance AI.]
Was it you?
I pestered her several times to tell me, but Eve never told me the truth until the very end.