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“Tin Can! You idiot!! I told you to stay home, what are you doing in a place like that?! Don’t tell me you ran into the Five Eyes? You’re not broken again, are you?!”

I lash out the moment the connection goes through.

The middle of a back alley. A shady place where you wouldn’t normally go unless you were a local or had special business like a mercenary.

My head is throbbing thanks to Tin Can’s signal receiver, which is inexplicably showing him in such a place.

What’s more, Rosalyn even asserted that a combat Droid was tailing us, so he clearly didn’t just go for a walk out of boredom.

…No, the more I think about it, the funnier it gets. What kind of trouble did he really get into?

The road home was more difficult than expected, and I got a little lost. I apologize. –

…Whaaat?! –

An incomprehensible excuse.

I couldn’t put my finger on why, but a sinister hypothesis suddenly occurred to me: rather than getting caught up in something, he might have walked right into it himself. …Nah, no way.

Anyway! You’re safe, right? It’s not a serious situation…? –

…I am safe, with only a few scratches. If you give the order, I will abandon the confrontation and leave the battlefield. –

Haaa… Don’t provoke them unnecessarily, I’ll figure something out, so just wait a little bit. Got it? –

I breathed a sigh of relief at the news that no major accident had occurred.

I’m relieved that he’s okay, and even more relieved that there’s a way to salvage the situation somehow.

Then what I need to do right now is clear.

It’s none other than clearing up Rosalyn’s misunderstanding, as she has become our only channel of communication with the Five Eyes.

If you have any excuses, let’s hear them! If you’re not the enemy, there’s no reason for you to interfere with us at every turn!

……Well. Um…. Credits that the company provides…?

You?! With skills like yours, and you’re only after…!!

All sorts of curses flew at me when I gave her an extremely realistic answer through a private channel, as if to show off.

She called me a miser, saying I was so materialistic. At the same time, she said my skills were annoyingly outstanding, calling me a Nightmare.

She called me a bat for trying to figure out which side to take. She said my working methods were atrocious, calling me a joke virus (a type of virus that harasses the user, not the hardware).

“…Was that a bit much?”

I smacked my lips as I skimmed through her rapidly rising chat logs.

It was a half-joking excuse, but I didn’t think it was a completely absurd answer.

Didn’t the owner of the food truck in front of the police station tell me?

There are plenty of people who hate corporations, but no one hates corporate money.

It’s no use talking about grand causes or great undertakings to poor commoners who are suffering from poverty up to their chins.

Among the many anti-corporate forces, the Five Eyes is an organization that knows this well, so I believe Rosalyn understood what I was trying to say.

So… the idea that I’m a villain in league with some corporation is a ridiculous exaggeration.

I, as an individual, am neutral… no, I aim to be neutral.

A gray person who doesn’t want to be tied to any one place in Metropolis, where so many forces and groups coexist that it’s hard to distinguish between good and evil.

…Instead, I just want the protagonist to go the corporate route and reach that ending, and I’m subtly willing to help. That way, I can hang around and make that goddamn Dimensional Rift Interferer.

Therefore, if you’re going to call me names, you might as well call me a coward.

My hands are already full of unattainable dreams and relationships I have to take responsibility for, so I don’t want to get caught up in more complicated problems.

That’s an excuse for fleeting people who are suffering from corporate exploitation, not a reason for capable people like us who should enlighten the ignorant citizens! Miss Anastasia, do you have no convictions?!

…Ignorant? People like us? Convictions…?

I wrote down the words with a chilling nuance as I saw them. Rosalyn, on the other side, answered really innocently as I reconfirmed that I had read it correctly.

With great power comes great responsibility. An old-fashioned hero’s saying!

…This is really a headache.

I thought of the original game and superimposed the image of a blindly good terrorist or reactionary… I never thought I would discover the driving force behind her passionate anti-corporate activities in this way.

…In the form of a terrible sense of elitism.

Considering the status of a successful Network Hacker in the 22nd century, her arrogance wasn’t entirely wrong, but if she truly believed that it was for the sake of others, it seemed like she needed some correction.

If she were nearby, I would have liked to give her a knuckle sandwich and spank her to make her come to her senses. But if wrong beliefs could be corrected with that kind of punishment, there wouldn’t be any evildoers or even juvenile delinquents in the world.

What’s so headache-inducing? Have convictions and take the right side now!

…….

Even if future aspirations are a matter of personal choice.

I stared at the words of the immature girl who had chosen that path with the wrong motives, but was full of confidence.

Convictions… Do I have anything so grand, anything worth showing off? I just seem to have been too busy working my ass off every day.

…Ah, there is one thing I resolved as I escaped from the burning laboratory.

Even if I fail to get out of this damn wonderful and alluring world someday, I’ll struggle as much as I can to be myself.

Five Eyes hacker, are you also in the group having a staring contest with our Droid?

Well, of course…?

Having read that far, I left the channel without hesitation.

It was fun to suddenly get back the phone messenger that I had let go of a long time ago, but it was still lacking somewhere to exchange sincere feelings or thoughts.

Maybe I feel that way because I’ve faced so many dramatic situations lately… Maybe I, who was just a gamer in my room, have belatedly realized the importance of face-to-face interaction.

Tin Can. Send me the visual information you’re seeing, as is. –

…Please understand that the image quality is not good enough. –

Even if I connected arbitrarily, it was natural for the owner to use the functions installed in the Care Bot.

He readily agreed in a manner that I should call sensible… or still playful.

Ziiing…!

The realistic video covers the vision that had calmed down after closing the chat room.

No, excuse me. As a live broadcast from a field reporter, it was only natural that it was realistic.

The narrow alley was full of faces I didn’t know at all.

Since their affiliation was their affiliation, there was a possibility that they would undergo plastic surgery and work under different appearances in the future… but it was a guess that wouldn’t help at all to consider now.

First of all, the atmosphere at the scene, which Tin Can euphemistically called ‘confrontation’, was more brutal than I thought.

The gleaming blades and shiny blunt weapons here and there reminded me of the tension just before a brawl, and the cracked floor and long grooves in the walls… I had no idea what anyone had done.

As I listed them, even the shabby building with peeling paint began to look like a prop.

…How do I fix a machine that lies like it’s eating rice? Should I give him a knuckle sandwich too?

Isn’t the idea that everything can be fixed by hitting it too barbaric?

“So here you are….”

But even in such a landscape, there were only two people who matched the profiles I remembered.

Asif, the dark-skinned Arab man with the impressive curly hair, at the very front.

And Rosalyn, the red-haired girl who was left alone with a bewildered expression, busy refreshing the channel.

They were both agents from the Five Eyes headquarters, overflowing with an indescribable force, or rather, overflowing with cuteness instead of force.

Since we have nothing good to say to each other, let’s stop this messy situation and cut off this persistent love call.

“If you turn around right now and quietly return the way you came, I won’t interfere with your little resistance activities any further, or tell the higher-ups about your location. …This is a groundbreaking concession that you would never hear from a real corporate stooge, you know?”

“…Insolent.”

“Are you affiliated with another organization?”

Some of the agents growled as Tin Can broadcasted what I was saying.

But no matter how displeased they were, they would have no choice but to accept and retreat unless they planned to wage an all-out war with their appearances already identified.

“And!! To that hacker girl over there who lacks self-awareness, I’ll just say this. …I’d rather join hands with a villain than work with a hypocrite.”

“?! That’s too insulting!”

I know, so even if you’re shocked, take it as an opportunity to look back on yourself… and let’s just go our separate ways now.

Rosalyn’s eyes welled up with tears as if she didn’t expect to hear the harsh words that she was a hypocrite, but Asif, who was responsible for leading them, was pondering my consideration, which was suspiciously beneficial.

I was about to suggest a handshake of reconciliation to Tin Can, telling him to hold out his hand, as if to tell him to forget about his worries… but his hand, which was reflected in the corner of the screen, was a little awkward.

Wait. What is this? Where did your fingers go? Is this what you call a few scratches? Huh??