Garbage Dump (1)
Garbage Dump (1)
The garbage that came up to my ankles was a nuisance. It felt like wading through a sea of trash.
'Hey, where are you going! Where the hell are you going!!'
I shouted at her, but
the blonde girl just kept walking silently ahead.
She didn't answer my question.
Ugh, what a rude little brat.
I grumbled to myself.
Of course, since I'd been turned into a child too,
I suppose that was only natural.
I thought back briefly.
It had been over an hour already since I'd started chasing the blonde girl who'd looked at me and said, 'What are you staring at? You wanna die?'
Or it certainly felt that way.
The trash underfoot was a hindrance to walking.
Maybe because I'd been turned into a child and was much shorter, my walking speed was incredibly slow.
Then, whenever I fell behind,
the girl would stop and look back at me.
Seeing that, it seemed like she was signaling for me to follow.
I opened my mouth again.
I tensed my stomach, ready to shout.
'Where the hell are you─'
The girl had already come up to me and clamped her small hand over my mouth.
'Shh, dumbass. Be quiet.'
With the same momentum, she pushed both of us into a pile of garbage.
The foul smell and the food waste dripping onto my head made me dizzy, but
at the sound that came next,
I held my breath.
Wheeeeing—a propeller spun.
A giant drone shone a red light here and there. It looked like it was checking the garbage piles.
Then, from inside the garbage pile,
a huge rat jumped out.
I was so startled I almost screamed.
Not because the rat boasted a size of over 60 centimeters,
nor because it raised its blade-like claws to slash the drone.
[Organic matter detected.]
A harpoon fired from the drone impaled the giant rat right through.
Red blood dripped down.
Soon the drone carried the giant rat away, dangling it as it flew off.
The blonde girl carefully removed the hand covering my mouth.
And then she said,
'If you don't want to die, get your head on straight. There's not a single person here who's going to protect you.'
We stood back up.
'This place... it's where all the trash from Neon City ends up. Nobody cares.'
Beyond where she pointed,
I saw a massive concrete wall.
And the girl started walking again with small steps.
......Neon City.
It was a name from a cyberpunk game.
I clamped my mouth shut.
But I didn't stop following her.
...But.
Hadn't she just done something to protect me?
I decided to let that little detail slide without nitpicking.
13. Garbage Landfill (1)
I felt like I'd had an old dream.
"Hey, hey. Wake up."
['Si-un,' snap out of it.]
I heard familiar voices.
The first voice was Catherine's; the latter, Eve's.
It seemed like this was the first time Eve had called me by just my given name, without my surname.
I opened my eyes.
And I almost fell over in surprise.
I saw a mask with a strange hologram floating on it.
What the hell.
When I pressed a button on the mask, the hologram vanished. Catherine's face appeared beyond it.
...What a shock.
I held my dizzy head and got up.
What had definitely been the floor I was standing on earlier was now the ceiling.
.......
And it went without saying that scattered belongings littered the place.
It was a complete mess.
I also saw plenty of people with their limbs bent at unnatural angles, bleeding.
From the crash.
It was a relief I'd cast protective magic on myself, Catherine, and the Vice Chairman.
Of course, I hadn't had enough time to cast it properly.
So it seemed it hadn't absorbed all the impact.
Catherine asked me with a worried look.
"Are you hurt anywhere?"
"No, you?"
"Me neither."
Other than dust smudged here and there, I didn't seem to be injured anywhere.
Since I'd confirmed Catherine was fine first,
it was time to check on the Vice Chairman, William Koozaka.
If I were thinking like a pro, I should have checked the Vice Chairman first, but
you always favor your own.
Of course, I was worried about Catherine first.
I walked over to where the Vice Chairman was.
Beyond the translucent protective barrier,
I saw William Koozaka, sprawled out like a limp doll.
......Seeing him like this, he didn't look at all like the Vice Chairman of Koozaka.
I checked William Koozaka's condition. His limbs were intact, and there was no bleeding.
[He's only lost consciousness; his vital signs are normal.]
Eve supplemented my assessment.
Indeed, there didn't seem to be any broken bones.
His breathing was even, and it looked like he'd only fainted briefly.
I judged there was no particular problem.
I looked at him and thought for a moment.
Hmm.
Back in Korea where I used to live, there was a saying.
'Even if you go sideways, as long as you get to Seoul.'
It meant that no matter the process,
as long as you achieve the goal, that's all that matters.
Even though there were some problems along the way,
if we could secretly take William Koozaka from here, it would still be a perfect kidnapping plan.
I tried to help William Koozaka up.
But before I could move, Catherine had already lifted him up in one swift motion.
Catherine looked at me and said,
"Let's get out first. If we drag this out any longer, Koozaka or other sniffing bastards will come swarming."
"Yeah, we should."
I nodded.
We headed outside the airship together.
As we walked, we saw no one else alive inside the airship.
We took a brief moment of silence and kept moving.
The farther we walked,
the more I felt a stench wafting from somewhere.
As we emerged from the airship,
the landscape of the garbage landfill, which I was seeing up close for the first time in years, revealed itself.
......I wondered how I used to live in a place like this.
Back when I lived here, I hadn't really noticed.
But I'd been gone a long time,
and already the stench stinging my nostrils felt unbearably strong.
We first got far away from the crashed airship.
Judging by the rising flames and smoke, it could blow at any moment.
Also, we wanted to get out of the jamming signal inside the airship.
Once we were far from the airship, Natasha's urgent voice came through the radio.
《─Are you okay? I said, are you okay!》
I pressed the radio button and answered.
"Yes, I'm fine."
《...Phew, I thought something went wrong when the airship suddenly crashed.》
...Well, something did go wrong.
But I thought as long as the outcome was good, it'd be fine.
"We have secured the target. Our current location is......"
I looked around.
Catherine added an explanation over her radio.
"It looks like we're near Sector E. So it'll be hard to get to the safehouse we designated in Sector B."
That was something I had partly expected when the airship crashed.
Because the original plan was to land it, not crash.
《So is there a place nearby to hide? Even if Tech Master and Red Horn head out now, it'll take a while. Koozaka's corporate drones are also up, so other support will be difficult.》
I collected my thoughts for a moment.
Catherine also looked like she was sorting her thoughts.
Sector E, huh....
Then the location is......
Hmm.
There was one suitable place.
I spoke into the radio again.
"Yes, there is. Only the location has changed; we'll proceed with the plan as is for now."
When I said 'plan,' there wasn't much to it.
In the end, all we had to do was find out if William Koozaka was in the Smile Zone or not from a safe location.
I gave a short goodbye and ended the call.
I lightly looked around.
It was a place I was coming to after a very long time,
but since I had lived here for a long time,
my sense of direction began to return little by little.
─Garbage Landfill.
Even this place where garbage was piled up like mountains,
even though it looked irregular, actually had its own rules.
The floor lines faintly drawn among the trash,
the distance to the outer wall, the name of the current sector.
Once you started observing those rules one by one,
figuring out our current location was a piece of cake.
"Haa."
I let out a small sigh.
[I ask why you're doing that.]
Eve answered my quiet voice.
"Because I never thought I'd have to crawl back into this place."
[......?]
Even if I said that, Eve wouldn't know.
Because I met Eve after I left the garbage landfill, and not much information about it was known.
A feeling both nostalgic and somehow uneasy.
Catherine seemed to feel the same way.
Her expression was not at all bright.
Ah, maybe her expression was because of the stench of garbage.
Anyway, just as Catherine and I had once lived here,
the number of people living in the garbage landfill was surprisingly high.
Above ground, corporate murder drones roamed,
and if you got caught up in the mountains of garbage moved by heavy machinery, you'd die on the spot.
There were also many scavengers rummaging through the trash, so you couldn't say it wasn't dangerous,
but still, it was a place where people lived.
It felt a bit different from the underground slums of the city.
Catherine, carrying William Koozaka over one shoulder, scraped away the trash with her foot.
Underneath the cleared trash,
a manhole cover, sealed tight by time and food waste so that no gap was visible, appeared.
......If we started from here,
we'd have to go through the sewers a bit before reaching a residential area.
People here lived underground.
On a small village scale, at that.
They were sometimes called 'moles' as a derogatory term.
* * *
"Wow, wow! How long has it been! Hah, it feels like just yesterday when you little runts were all grown up and left. What brings you here again? Come to think of it, an airship went down up there—don't tell me you two had something to do with it—anyway, who's the gentleman slung over your shoulder? He looks awfully expensive."
"He's the Vice Chairman of Koozaka."
"Hahahaha!!! You're joking!"
Not a joke, though.