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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
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While walking along the sewer path, I heard a voice calling me.
“Hey, kids!”
Since the village was close, I willingly lifted my head and looked in that direction. If the village hadn’t been close, I would have just let it go in one ear and out the other.
In the direction where the voice had come from, a vagrant with a familiar face was standing.
What kind of past he had, and how he had lived.
He was a man in rough and shabby clothes, to the extent that you could roughly guess just by looking at his appearance.
A metal frame covered in chrome (not really chrome material) showed off its presence inside his torn artificial skin.
He had a shabby blanket draped over one shoulder.
Instead of an arm, ‘something’ made of sharp metal was visible under the frayed edge of the blanket.
I didn’t know its exact identity, but it was clearly for use in combat.
In this place where you earn a day’s living to eat for a day.
Just by the fact that he was still wearing a decent cyberware, you could sense the man’s rough way of life.
I didn’t know his nickname.
He was a village vagrant whose face I had seen a few times while coming and going.
“What is it?”
The golden child was wary of the vagrant. She was one step ahead of me.
Her hand was in her pocket. She was not hiding her hostile posture.
As if he found that sight rather cute, the vagrant laughed softly and waved his hand.
“Haha, even I’m not so shameless as to steal the belongings of kids like you.”
Shameless.
It wasn’t a word you’d expect to hear in a sewer area where contaminated water was flowing.
Rather, because of those words, my and the golden child’s wariness grew even greater.
…Teddy from earlier, too.
Normally, we would have just seen each other’s faces and passed by, but I didn’t know why so many people were talking to me today.
As if he had read our mood, the vagrant took out some electronic device from under his blanket and made an excuse.
“Now, now. Look at this. I called you because of this.”
“……”
No, even if you say it’s because of this, how are we supposed to know what that is?
I frowned and looked at the electronic device in the vagrant’s hand.
It was shaped like a smartphone from the original world.
As the vagrant pressed a button on the nameless electronic device, a bright voice, unfitting for the atmosphere here, echoed loudly from the turned-off screen.
【Pete Mac! Pete Mac! Pete Mac! Who’s that? It’s the friend of children! Run to the nearest Ko-ozaka ‘Pete Mac Burger’ right now! If you purchase the new product, ‘The Burger That Was Almost Made With Real Pork,’ we’ll give you a gift through a special lottery! The lottery probability is 1/100000, and even if you win, it may not be possible to receive the prize due to a system error.】
The last part was strangely fast, so I couldn’t hear it properly.
““……””
But anyway, the golden child and I blankly listened to the voice that came out of the electronic device the vagrant was holding.
…Is that an advertisement? I really don’t get the sensibilities of this world.
The vagrant, after the advertisement was completely over, held out the electronic device toward us and continued to speak.
“It’s because it’s such a cheap product that you have to watch the advertisement. Anyway, you over there, kid, Weakling, was it?”
The vagrant said, looking at me.
“Isn’t this the kind of thing you were looking for? An electronic device that can watch videos connected to net space. If it’s now, for a special price of three days’ worth of food—.”
“I’ll buy it.”
I did not hesitate.
The golden child next to me looked at me with an expression of looking at a crazy person.
No. How can you resist a machine that can watch YouTu○.
It was a very good deal.
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【Pete Mac! Pete Mac! Pete M—.】
I covered the screen with my hand in irritation.
“Agh.”
Since my body hadn’t fully grown yet, I couldn’t cover the entire screen with just my palm, but that alone was enough to feel a sense of peace of mind and body.
This damn advertisement.
I wish I could do something about it.
Since an advertisement would pop up every few seconds even just to watch one video, I understood why the original owner had thrown this thing away.
Perhaps because it was an advertisement from the capitalism-soaked cyberpunk world, I couldn’t even lower the volume.
…Is it over?
I didn’t know who the hell Pete Mac was.
But I did want to set his shop on fire.
I felt my patience growing and looked down at the screen again.
I had to find the video I wanted enough before the battery ran out. Even this time was very precious.
To charge an electronic device in a sewer like this, you have to use the food you’ve collected through bartering.
There was no end to the importance of a single meal. That’s why the golden child had even given me a hard time, asking why I was wasting food on such a thing.
But this was a necessary expenditure for me.
If I were to live ‘properly’ in this world in the future, it was a choice close to essential.
I entered a search term again.
The keyword was ‘magic.’
Excluding the trashy videos for the purpose of attracting views with a ‘pyoong-pashoong’ sound, I scrolled down and looked for a video with a low view count.
I didn’t know the reason, but the lower the view count, the more helpful the video often was to me.
I muttered while watching one video.
“…This is the real deal.”
From now on, I will call you my master in my heart, Master.
Since I didn’t have an account, I couldn’t leave a comment.
I expressed my sincere gratitude in my heart.
And so, how much time had passed since I had been watching videos that were useful to me.
The melted candle wax dripped onto the floor.
The flame flickered in the weakened fire.
And accordingly, the flickering shadow faintly illuminated the inside of the sewer.
Since I didn’t have a clock, I didn’t know for sure, but the sun had probably set.
Considering how hungry I was now, it seemed that about that much time had passed.
I got up from my personal bed, where I had laid out various cardboard boxes.
The area where the golden child and I lived together.
It was so narrow that you couldn’t stand up straight, but because of that, it didn’t attract people’s attention and was safe.
Just the fact that there was no contaminated water flowing right in front was enough to make it an A-class accommodation.
“Golden child, are you sulking?”
I moved to the spot where the golden child usually stayed.
Even if it was my share of the food, as if she was dissatisfied with her close friend spending food on a strange thing.
‘I’m going to sleep, so you do you.’
She had lain down because of that.
Is she still sleeping?
“……”
But, the figure of the golden child, who had been there until a while ago, was now gone.
Golden child….
Where did you go again?
“Phew.”
Did she run away because the advertisement was too loud?
If she were a grown-up, I would have just not cared. But since she was still a kid, I couldn’t help but worry, even if I tried not to.
I crawled out of the shelter, being careful of any presence.
At this time of day anyway, there weren’t many places the golden child could go.
Since the outside was very dark, entrusting one’s life to the moonlight was no different from a suicide act.
The inside of the sewer was the same. The later it got, the worse the security became.
Based on that rational reasoning, I limited the golden child’s possible movements to a few.
At most, Four-eyes’s clinic.
Or—.
I decided on one destination and moved my steps.
If I heard the sound of a person or another living thing, I hid my body in the shadows. My life was precious.
I crossed the contaminated water.
I avoided the steam smoke.
I ducked under the pipes.
Finally, I grabbed a rusty iron ladder and climbed up.
“There you were.”
I was able to find the figure of the golden child, who was sitting on the floor and looking out beyond the iron bars.
Even if it was a sewer area, it wasn’t unconditionally located underground.
There were places like this, where you could see the outside scenery even from inside the sewer.
Even though she must have heard my voice, the golden child was still looking out beyond the iron bars.
I slowly approached the golden child’s side.
I sat down on the floor with a thud and turned my head in the direction the golden child was looking.
Beyond the iron bars, beyond the mountain of garbage, beyond the huge scrap metal collection machine.
I admired the city, Neon City, from which a brilliant light was spewing out over the solid wall.
Perhaps because you could look at the city without being threatened by the corporation’s killer drones outside.
The golden child really liked this place.
In the kid’s golden eyes, an emotion that could be described as ‘hope’ or ‘dream’ was contained.
The golden child broke the silence and opened her mouth.
“Did I tell you before? That I’m helping you because you resemble a kid I used to be close with.”
Hmm, to be honest, I didn’t remember well. But I decided to just agree with her.
I played along and nodded my head.
“I heard it a long time ago, you said he was a nice boy like me, right?”
“It was a girl I took care of like a little sister. I haven’t seen her once since she was taken by a drone.”
“……”
I wanted to turn back time and take back my words.
I continued a short silence and then asked again.
“…But, if she was a girl, why did you say she resembled m—.”
“That kid’s dream was this, to one day go into the city and try a proper hamburger.”
The golden child, who had lightly ignored my question, continued her story.
It seemed that seeing the advertisement video I had been watching, the promotional phrase for ‘Pete Mac Burger,’ had reminded her of the past.
…Hmm.
As an ‘I’ and a ‘T,’ I asked based on the facts.
“You can find proper hamburgers commonly just by digging through the trash anyway.”
In fact, it was the most common food you could see in this place where the concept of recycling did not exist.
For the record, I ate one yesterday too.
Zap, the golden child’s sharp gaze turned to me.
No, it’s a fact.
I subtly avoided the golden child’s gaze.
The golden child turned her gaze back beyond the iron bars.
Is she going through puberty these days?
It was a golden child who had become more emotional than usual.
I let out a light sigh and read the mood. I should stop joking around now.
“…I told you I’d help you later, right?”
“You’re weak, how are you going to help?”
“I told you, I have a great talent, despite my appearance.”
It was a line I said to the golden child whenever I was bored.
The golden child looked at me with an expression as if she were looking at a pathetic person.
“…That, what was it? Magic?”
“Right.”
I nodded my head confidently.
A talent for ‘magic.’
A talent created through character creation.
I had even learned it by watching a video today.
Sending one kid to the city wouldn’t be a difficult thing.
The me of tomorrow could class change from a ‘vagrant boy’ to a ‘Mage.’
“…So great, be sure to help me later.”
As if my words sounded like a joke, the golden child laughed softly and nodded her head without any emotion.
Good, she laughed.
I didn’t miss the timing and held out my hand to the golden child, saying.
“We have to get up early tomorrow too, so we should go to bed now, and it won’t be too late to go to that city when it’s bigger.”
The golden child, who had been looking down at my hand, got up from her seat on her own.
So embarrassing.
“Right, let’s go to bed.”
And so, I returned to our shelter with the golden child.
And, when I woke up from my sleep, a piece of paper was left instead of the golden child.
As if she had roughly learned to write from Four-eyes.
The state of the writing was flying all over the place. Did she really write this with her feet?
I slowly deciphered the letters written on the paper.
“’I’m just going to go look around the city, so don’t go anywhere and just wait,’ huh. ……Hmm.”
…….
A sigh just came out.
She really doesn’t listen to a word I say.
I got up from my seat and ran out to find the golden child’s whereabouts.
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“She really didn’t listen to a single word, it’s not for nothing that I gave her the nickname golden child. Back then, and even now—.”
“……Even now?”
“She listens very well now.”
The grown-up golden child, Catherine, who had a proud expression at my answer, nodded her head.
Revealing the truth was this dangerous.
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