Prologue - Awareness
#Prologue - Awareness
Outskirts of Gyeonggi-do.
The research complex, carved into the foothills, was brightly lit even in the middle of the night.
Six research buildings and the roads connecting them.
Streetlights lined up in neat rows and parked vehicles.
On one side, special-purpose cargo trucks of unknown use stood in a line.
From a distance, it would have looked like an ordinary corporate research institute in the middle of the night shift.
Except...
One side of the main gate had been torn off, caved in like a human footprint, and lay strewn across the ground.
Three of the six research buildings had collapsed.
Another was engulfed in crimson flames.
And people lay fallen all along the roads.
There were around thirty people down.
Most were dressed in suits or security uniforms.
Up close, they were fully conscious.
But not one of them could get up properly.
Jaws clenched.
Eyes bulging until the veins stood out.
They seemed to be straining as if resisting some unknown force,
but their bodies were trembling without pause, as though they had been electrocuted.
Further inside, toward the main research building,
countless drones of every shape lay smashed beyond function, covering the ground.
Like mayflies fallen beneath a streetlight on a summer night.
Beyond that wreckage,
in the plaza in front of the research building—
—BOOM!
Explosions erupted without pause.
The asphalt caved in, and debris scattered into the air.
A blindingly intense laser cut across the plaza.
Shockwaves that tore through the air burst out one after another.
Within that chaos,
between the flashing arcs of electricity, several figures flickered past.
To an ordinary person's eyes,
three.
No, five?
That was about all they would have been able to make out.
They were so fast and so tangled together that, far from counting how many there were, one could barely register that something was moving at all.
But.
There was one thing anyone could tell.
That you must not go in there.
...
The only problem was that I was inside it.
'...There's someone in here!!!'
The scream I let out inside my head was, of course, heard by no one.
— zzzt
Instead, as if answering my scream, a blade wreathed in electricity drove toward my throat.
I bent my body back just before the tip of the blade touched my skin.
I dodged the blade, but the current spreading around it scraped over my skin with a stinging tingle.
— BAAANG
As if it had been waiting, a massive axe blade glowing red-hot came crashing after me with a deafening roar.
I had just dodged the sword, and my stance was broken.
It was already too late to dodge, but I couldn't afford to take the hit either.
The instant I registered the attack,
I 'moved' my entire body.
'Yikes.'
The axe blade, having missed its target, slammed into the ground.
—CRAAASH!
The asphalt split, and the axe blade drove deep into the dirt beneath.
—RUUUUMBLE...
Dust spread out from the shockwave, and the ground shook as if an earthquake had struck.
'If only this were the end of it—'
I stopped the thought and twisted my body.
—THWUM!
Something grazed past my side and blew apart the concrete wall behind me.
It was a combat drone concealed by optical camouflage.
—THWUM! THWUM!
—Hummm... ZAP!
The high-output laser arrived almost simultaneously with the sound of its firing.
Behind it followed a shockwave invisible to the eye.
One burned the flesh.
The other was an attack that rattled even the bones.
'Give what you can afford to give.'
I dodged only the most lethal blade and axe blade, and accepted the grazing lasers. I twisted my body so that even the shockwaves only clipped me, avoiding their center.
— tssss.
—THUMP!
The grazed skin felt hot past the point of heat and then cold, and the shockwave that clipped me rang all the way to the bone.
'If I took a hit, I should pay it back.'
The one who had brought the axe down had left just as big an opening.
I drove straight into my opponent's guard and stepped on the axe blade buried in the ground.
—CRACK!
I kicked the haft and broke it.
After striking the wrist to make them drop the weapon,
I shoved their shoulder and chest and sent them flying.
But this wasn't enough.
If I only neutralized them, they would get back up.
'I should collect that too.'
At the same moment as the attack, I recovered even what remained of 'that' within my opponent.
My opponent, now drained of strength, rolled limply across the ground—so limp it was hard to believe they had been swinging a massive axe just moments before.
"...Hoo."
A rough breath burst out, and the tip of my nose stung and grew hot.
When I wiped it with the back of my hand, blood came away.
My vision spun as if I were drunk.
Inside my temples, a heavy pain throbbed in time with my pulse.
Overload.
Warnings were already rising from all over my body.
"..."
The opponent holding the lightning sword showed no particular agitation even though their axe-wielding comrade had fallen.
They didn't lower the sword, but they didn't come at me again either.
They simply stared at me in silence.
—THWUM! THWUM!
—Hummm... ZAP!
"Hup!"
Of course—
the drones weren't going to wait for me.
As if it didn't matter whether I caught my breath or not, they poured attacks on me without giving me a moment's opening.
'The drones themselves aren't much to begin with.'
The drones' movements were slow enough that even an ordinary person could follow them with their eyes. The dangerous part was only the attacks after they fired. Earlier I'd left them alone because I was dealing with two opponents at once, but now it was different.
I just had to destroy them before they fired.
—BANG!
The last remaining drone exploded, scattering debris.
Now the only ones left in the plaza were me and the opponent holding the lightning sword.
And yet the bastard still didn't come at me.
They just kept staring at me.
'...Because the real one hasn't come out yet.'
I turned my gaze beyond them.
Beyond the wrecked plaza.
At the entrance of the main research building, through the hazy dust, a single person stood.
As if whatever happened around them was of no concern.
Without moving a single step.
Quietly.
They were looking at me.
"Your resolve is certainly clear."
A calm, beautiful voice, out of place with the situation, reached me.
"...But we, too, are doing this for a greater cause."
After a brief pause, the voice continued.
"It is a decision for humanity."
"..."
I roughly shook the blood from the back of my hand, pressed down on my spinning head, and answered.
"Ugh... I'm dying here, seriously."
My whole body was already screaming,
but it still moved.
'Then that's enough.'
"But hey."
I slowly straightened my stance and asked.
"Now that you've gone this far, don't you think you're a long way from doing this for humanity?"
The silhouette opened its mouth.
"It can't be hel—"
"Unavoidable sacrifice? The sacrifice of a few for the greater cause?"
I'd heard those words far too many times.
I shook my bloodied hand once.
"Fine."
I drew one foot back.
Strength pressed down onto the cracked asphalt.
"Then this time."
The silhouette minutely lowered its stance.
I kicked off the ground too.
—BOOM!
The asphalt beneath my feet sank, and before the dust could even scatter—
I arrived in front of the silhouette.
"Let's see if you can call it sacrifice when it happens to you!"
The instant I thrust my fist forward,
everything slowed to an uncanny degree.
The concrete fragments floating in the air.
The wind brushing past my ears.
The silhouette's head turning back toward me.
Slowly.
Very slowly, they moved.
Now there was barely a step left between me and the silhouette's face.
The time until my fist landed was even shorter than that.
But.
That instant felt strangely long.
I suddenly thought.
Where on earth did it all start going like this?
Fighting like something out of a comic, saying lines like something out of a comic,
when just a little while ago there hadn't been a single reason to do any of this,
back when all I thought about was going to work, doing my job, and coming home to rest.
It hadn't even been that long.
Yet now it felt impossibly distant.
An ordinary morning came to mind.
It was a morning meeting no different from usual.
A shared screen was up on the monitor at the front of the meeting room, and the team members took turns going over their work progress and schedules for the week.
"I'll share the design in Figma as soon as the draft comes out."
"For the data analysis side, I'll have it organized by this morning—"
"FE has one technical issue, so I'll fix that first."
The turn went around and came to me.
"I'll finish up in the morning and have it deployed to the dev version so it can be tested by the afternoon."
When I finished speaking, Yu-ra's eyes widened slightly.
"Oh. We can finally test it, then?"
Yu-ra smiled brightly, as if pleased, turned off the shared screen, and got up from her seat.
Then, as if she had been waiting, she added.
"I thought it might be ready around today, so I've already received one task for you to handle while the test runs."
"...Excuse me?"
"It's a cooperation request from the Benefits Team. It's really simple, so please take care of it while the test is running."
"No, I still have other work left..."
Before my protest could even finish, Yu-ra smiled and continued.
"Hehe. It's really simple. I'll explain right away."
My grumbling was cut off in a single stroke.
Yu-ra picked up a marker and headed to the whiteboard.
Yu-ra, a Product Team planner, had a good reputation at the company thanks to her calm and meticulous personality.
She had long, slightly wavy black hair and a gentle appearance, but her figure was noticeably curvier than that impression suggested.
Today especially, perhaps because she was wearing a short knit top and fitted charcoal-gray slacks, her silhouette was clearer than usual.
"When this value comes over here, on this side—"
Yu-ra began writing something on the whiteboard.
Even as I listened to the explanation, I swallowed a sigh inwardly.
'No, come to think of it, I still have to handle the test feedback in the afternoon too.'
Deploy.
Run the test.
Receive feedback.
Fix it.
And on top of that, the Benefits Team work.
'She's piling work on me without a single break.'
My gaze suddenly drifted to the lower part of the whiteboard.
Maybe from sitting for a long time, Yu-ra's gray slacks were slightly shiny only around the seat.
Even though I knew I should look away immediately, I stared blankly for a moment.
And then, without any particular meaning, I thought.
'If I gave that shiny butt a good smack, would she go easier on my schedule?'
It was, of course, an idle thought I had no intention of saying out loud.
I pointlessly averted my gaze and ran one hand over my bare forearm.
— swish.
And then.
"...Huh?"
My hand stopped.
Something was strange.
What was under my palm was definitely my arm, and at my fingertips I could feel the familiar texture of my own skin.
But an entirely different sensation came through on top of it.
Soft fabric and thin cloth pressed close against skin. A subtle pressure as the fabric stretched taut along the curves of a body.
'What?'
I reflexively pulled my hand away.
At that moment.
Yu-ra, who had been writing on the whiteboard, flinched.
The marker paused for a second.
"...?"
Yu-ra turned around.
Startled, I dropped my gaze to my laptop screen.
Fortunately, the other team members were just alternating their attention between the whiteboard and their own laptops.
"Yu-ra, what's wrong?"
When someone asked, Yu-ra glanced around for a moment.
"...No."
She tilted her head.
"I just felt something strange."
Yu-ra turned back toward the whiteboard,
and I slowly looked down at my arm.
'What was that just now?'
'Was I imagining it?'
Maybe I was so tired that my nerves were acting up.
I was just about to think that.
Yu-ra took a step to the side of the whiteboard.
—Rustle.
My arm tickled.
More precisely, it wasn't my arm itself brushing against anything.
The feeling of cloth sliding over skin,
of a body moving and the fabric being pulled slightly taut and then loosening.
It was too vivid.
"...What the."
I muttered under my breath without realizing it and raised my head.
When Yu-ra moved, the sensation of fabric brushing and pulling moved with her, and when she stopped, it vanished as if it had never been there.
'No way.'
An absurd thought flickered through my mind, and just like before, I glanced at my forearm and at Yu-ra's rear.
Then I pressed down very lightly with the tip of my index finger.
— press.
"...Nngh."
The marker in Yu-ra's hand slipped, and a long black line streaked across the whiteboard.
The meeting room went quiet for a moment.
"Yu-ra?"
"Ah, no, it's nothing."
Yu-ra turned around with a flustered face.
One hand unconsciously moved toward the back of her waist, then quickly dropped, as if she had noticed people's eyes on her.
"...I suddenly felt like something touched me."
A chill ran down my spine, and any thought that the meeting was boring had already vanished.
'Really?'
When I slowly relaxed the force of the finger resting on my arm,
Yu-ra's stiff expression relaxed too, as if reassured.
'...It could just be a coincidence.'
'Just one more time.'
I put a little more force into the fingertip resting on my arm.
— squiiish
"Eeeek!"
—Clack! Rattle-rattle.
The marker fell from Yu-ra's hand and rolled across the floor.
Having dropped the marker, she flinched reflexively, her face turning bright red.
"Yu-ra!"
"Are you okay?"
Several team members jumped up from their seats.
"Are you hurt?"
"Your face is really red."
"Ah, no, that's..."
Yu-ra, flustered, couldn't finish her sentence and braced one hand against the whiteboard, not knowing what to do.
But the one who was actually more flustered was me.
'Shit.'
My hand was shaking.
'Shit, shit, is this real?'
The instant I had put force into my finger, the sensation of soft flesh and smooth fabric had clearly overlapped with the feel of my own arm.
It was a texture I could never feel from my own bare arm.
'...It was real.'
It wasn't a coincidence or my imagination.
When I did something, something utterly inexplicable had formed between my body and Yu-ra's body.
I reflexively pulled my hand off my arm.
'...Stop for now.'
The moment I thought that,
Click.
As if a connected cable had been pulled out, the overlapping sensation that had been coming through vanished in an instant.
All that remained was the air-conditioner breeze against my bare skin.
I wanted to check right away whether it would happen the same way if I did it again.
Then another question suddenly occurred to me.
'Does it work on people other than Yu-ra?'
...No matter how curious I was, I couldn't exactly grab my coworkers and test it on them one by one.
First, I had to get through the meeting.
After the brief commotion, the meeting wrapped up in a disorderly fashion, but even after returning to my desk, I couldn't focus on work.
Even while looking at my monitor, my eyes kept drifting to my right arm.
'...What is this?'
The sensation I had felt was too vivid to dismiss as my imagination.
The urge to check for myself what on earth had happened, and whether it would happen the same way again, only grew.
In the end, I couldn't hold out and took a half-day off for the afternoon.