The Angel's Verdict
"A Megacorp-grade idol? What kind of bullshit is that? Get her in front of me. Now."
"That's...! I'm afraid that is absolutely impossible, sir...!"
"Do you want to die? I said do what you always do."
I glared at my secretary, who for some reason was refusing to listen to me today. I'd told her to bring me the idol currently singing on that stage, so why was she being so impossible about it? And what was a "Megacorp-grade idol" supposed to mean, anyway? I was the eldest grandchild of the owner of the number-two ranked Megacorp. Who in this city would dare defy me?
Outside the window, hologram airships plastered wall-to-wall with corporate advertising drifted past. That one belonged to our company — and so did the mana engines powering the hovercars streaming along beneath it. In this city, it would've been harder to find something my family's money hadn't touched.
"The more I look at her, the prettier she gets. Bring her here, or I'll have your head."
Having delivered my final ultimatum to the secretary, I let my gaze drop back to the stage. There she was — the angel girl Sky, wings swaying gently as she poured herself into the song. Hair and eyes the blue of a boundless sky, just like her name, and a bright smile I couldn't tear my eyes away from.
I'd booked this after catching the video my secretary had been watching, and God, was I glad I came. So glad, in fact, that I was already thinking she might just deserve the seat beside me as my lawful wife.
A little while later, once Sky had finished every song on the setlist plus an encore and disappeared backstage, the secretary — apparently having come to her senses — finally left the room.
"Now all that's left is to wait."
Smirking to myself, I took a sip of the chilled champagne. The girl who'd been shining so brilliantly up on that stage would soon be singing in a voice meant for me and me alone. How could that not be thrilling?
Then it happened.
Barely minutes after the secretary's departure, there came a soft knock at the door. Giddy with anticipation, I swung it open.
And what greeted me was not the heaven-sent angel girl Sky, but a squad of corporate agents with cold steel clubs in hand — bearing, no less, the seal of the Order, emblem of the Rank 1 Megacorp my family had never managed to bring to heel.
A low mechanical hum resonated beneath their black bulletproof vestments. Their clubs were etched edge to edge with circuitry that looked for all the world like holy scripture. Those weren't tools for subduing civilians. Those were for smashing combat-grade prosthetics to scrap.
"What the hell. Why are you people here?"
"By order of our Chairman. We are instructed to pass judgment upon the wicked fool who dared lay hands on Lady Sky without knowing his place."
"What?! If you lay a finger on me, it's war between Megacorps! You understand that?!"
"The Chairman is prepared to accept that as well. So please, remain where you are."
"Damn it...!"
I pushed mana through the magitech implants embedded throughout my body and tried to bolt from the room on the spot. The auxiliary core in my spine ran hot, and an escape route traced itself across the corner of my vision.
But before my foot left the floor, the route flashed crimson.
Those sons of bitches had even swallowed the building's management network. Whatever I had as a corporate young master was nowhere near enough to slip the grip of these corporate dogs, trained to perfection.
"Gah—!"
"Please die quietly."
"FUUUUCK!! Guards!! GUARDS!!"
"They have already been dealt with."
The moment they read every escape route I'd planned and slammed me face-down into the floor, the Order's dogs set about beating me without pause. And I could tell in an instant that this was no disciplinary thrashing — this was the kind of beating meant to draw the pain out for a long, long time before it killed you.
'I'm going to die like this...? That's insane...! Do you have any idea who I am...!'
But no amount of inner screaming changed anything. The only sounds coming out of my mouth were shrieks and begging for my life.
The pain-blocking function had died ages ago. And I'd sunk a fortune into it. Implants whose maintenance alone cost as much as a car every single month were now doing nothing but flooding my skull with failure warnings.
'Huh...?'
As I lay there being pounded into the floor, consciousness fraying at the edges, a pair of clean, simple sandals suddenly appeared among the cold leather shoes. And the moment those sandals began pushing through the wall of boots, the beating stopped.
I knew exactly whose sandals those were. They were the very ones the person I'd longed for so desperately had been wearing on stage not five minutes ago.
"What do you think you're doing! This person is dying!"
"...By order of the Chairman."
"Step aside. Now!"
The men who'd shown me not a shred of mercy fell back at that one sentence. One of them even hurriedly hid his club behind his back.
Then the voice of the very person I'd wanted so badly to sing for me drifted into my ear. Closer. Closer still. Until at last it was sounding right beside my face.
"Can you hear me? Are you still with me? If you are, please nod."
Through a haze of blood and a dulled mind, I looked up at Sky with eyes that could barely focus. Everything was so blurred I could make out only her silhouette — but she looked for all the world like an apostle of God descended from the heavens themselves. So much so that not a single filthy thought could survive in my head anymore.
How could I feel that way about the person who'd just pulled me back from death? Especially when I'd been having such garbage thoughts about her not an hour ago.
"I'm going to heal you."
"...You mean it...?"
"I do. But since you had such bad thoughts about me, I'll be handing down two punishments as well. You'll accept them, won't you?"
"Yes..."
"Wonderful! Healing first, then!"
Sky laid my blood-soaked head in her lap, placed a hand on my forehead, and began to hum. At once I felt it — shattered bones drawing back together, wounds sealing themselves, all across my body. It didn't sound like any healing incantation. It was simply the song she'd sung on stage. And yet my breathing eased far faster than it ever had under the finest regenerative treatment money could buy.
I tried to thank her, but my mouth wouldn't open. Something beyond the healing was happening. My reassembled bones were shifting, rearranging themselves into some other shape. The warning windows blanketing my vision went dark one by one — not because the errors had been resolved, but because the devices themselves were ceasing to exist.
Wait. Is this what healing is supposed to feel like?
I couldn't speak, so I shot her a questioning look. Sky simply smiled, warm and bright.
"That was your first punishment. Oh — the healing's all done, so here comes your second!"
And with that, Sky rapped me on the forehead. Bonk. On a body packed edge to edge with magitech implants, that should have been utterly painless — yet for some reason, it stung, just a little.
While I lay there blankly failing to comprehend, Sky kindly finished the explanation for me.
"When you wake up, a great many things will have changed. That's your punishment, so please accept it. Oh, and one more thing — when we meet again, I want it to be with everyone getting along wonderfully!"
Unable to answer, I nodded slowly with my slowly-changing body. Sky smiled, satisfied, and gently closed my eyes with her hand.
"What the fuck."
When I opened my eyes again in that hospital room, I was — for reasons beyond my comprehension — a woman. And not only that: every last magitech implant was gone, my body returned to pure, unaugmented human flesh, the kind my grandparents had been born with. No matter how many times I blinked, my personal terminal's display refused to appear. When I touched the face reflected in the bed rail, a complete stranger — a woman — touched her cheek in perfect unison.
Bewildered by this frail girl's body, in which none of the strength I'd always carried remained, I kicked off the bed and ran outside.
The moment I emerged, every eye in the corridor snapped to me. Some of the faces I knew. Others I had never seen in my life.
And then—
Bonk.
"Ow, ow..."
Someone had bumped straight into me as I stood there dazedly taking in my surroundings. The impact knocked my senses back into place, and I looked down to find a little girl sprawled on the floor. Out of pure habit, I opened my mouth to order this thing that had dared collide with me to clear off — then a certain memory surfaced in my head, and I swallowed the words.
Sky had made a point of wanting everyone to get along.
"Hey. Get up."
Perhaps exactly as Sky had wished, I extended a hand to another person for the first time in my life. The girl hesitated, then timidly took my fingers and rose to her feet. And she bowed her head.
"Thank you... pretty big sister..."
Big sister? Me?
Oh. Right. I'm a woman now.
So this was the punishment. Fine — I'd accept it. If I refused, would those clubs come looking for me again? No... no, that wasn't why I was doing this. She saved my life. The least I could do was listen to her.
"Now get lost. Go back to wherever you belong."
Undeterred by my foul mouth, the girl beamed, bowed once more, and scampered off. A heartbeat later, my ever-familiar secretary came rushing over and immediately began patting me down, checking every inch of me for injuries.
With not a single implant left in my body, I supposed I was made of glass now. But I was fine.
"Hey."
"Yes...? Shall I have it handled quietly...?"
"What are you even saying."
That did sound like something the old me would say — but that's not what this was. Everyone gets along. This was fate, wasn't it? Maybe it was time to try getting along with people. And nothing in the world builds a relationship faster than money. That's how it had always worked with my friends, after all.
"That girl just now — what was wrong with her? Why was she sick?"
"One moment, please..."
The secretary consulted a doctor nearby, then returned to stand before me. And with an expression of profound pity, she said:
"They're calling it Congenital Circuit Rupture. It's a condition that can be treated, but the procedure takes serious money — and her parents were in an accident, so the family can't manage either way."
"I see."
Yes. This was it. She had said for everyone to get along, hadn't she? Even I had heard of circuit suture procedures. They probably cost less than the hovercar I'd totaled last week. And this kid was lying in a hospital bed because her family couldn't cover that?
"Treat her."
"I'm sorry?"
"Treat her. With my money. Are you deaf?"
"No, ma'am!"
That counted as getting along, right? ...I didn't know. Probably. Buying people's hearts with money had been a time-honored tradition since the dawn of time, hadn't it?
I'd just given the secretary her orders and was turning to head back to my room when familiar faces closed in around me, boxing me in on either side. So they've finally come, I thought. Every time I blew something up, this was how they came to collect me.
"How long is it this time?"
"You are to be forbidden from leaving the premises for one year."
"A year..."
So this was my punishment for the mess I'd caused. Then I'd follow it. It was Grandfather's order, after all.
Obediently, I followed my grandfather's personal secretaries to the familiar Salazar Confinement Villa. I fully intended to rot there, going absolutely nowhere, for the entire year. Isolation barriers sheathed the villa's windows; surveillance drones circled above the fences. The old me would have started scheming an escape before the front door even shut. Not this time. I had died and come back to life — I'd turned over a new leaf. My plan was to sprawl on the sofa and replay Sky's concert footage until the sentence was up.
But for all that resolve, I walked out of the confinement villa after exactly one month.
The villa's main gate swung open, and black cars stamped with the company crest rolled in, one after another. The secretary who stepped out of the lead vehicle was beaming. Even when she told me my disciplinary confinement had been lifted, I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Grandfather was not a man who let go of a grudge that easily.
Then the secretary helped a girl out of the car — the same girl I'd seen at the hospital. The moment her feet touched the ground, she came sprinting straight at me.
"Pretty big sister! They say I'm S-Grade! It's all thanks to you!"
...What?
What is even happening right now?