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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
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The performance ended very successfully.
NCB24 News praised it as a magnificent performance, and the audience members who had witnessed it also couldn’t stop their admiration, saying it was a magical production.
(It really was magic.)
In particular, the song of the last singer on the program, Andrea, received a lot of cheers from the audience.
A minor problem occurred where the lighting manager, stage director, and other managers grabbed my ankle as I was trying to go home, asking me to help them next time as well.
But thanks to the unfortunate incident where the ‘stage director’s’ spit splattered on my face again, thankfully, we were able to escape from their clutches without any problems.
I let out a short sigh, recalling the memory of that time.
“Whew.”
‘I should go home and wash my face first.’
‘I don’t know why that gentleman’s spit flies so much when he talks.’
And I thought.
To be honest, it was true that I had gone through a lot of hardship, working as a manager for 24 hours (cafe exploration, zoo sightseeing, stage production).
But still, seeing that the performance had ended safely, a strange sense of satisfaction also arose in a corner of my heart.
“……”
No matter how you look at it, I have been going out way too much lately.
I muttered, holding the steering wheel.
“I’ve decided.”
“What.”
Catherine, who had been fiddling with Andrea’s panda doll while sitting in the back seat, reacted to my muttered words.
I met Catherine’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
I opened my mouth to express my will.
“I think I’ve been going out too much lately.”
“……?”
Catherine looked at me with an expression of ‘what kind of nonsense is this.’
It was a statement that Catherine, an ‘E,’ an extrovert by birth, could never understand.
From my experience as a long-time childhood friend, she was probably still thinking something like, ‘what on earth is the problem with going out a lot?’
In any case, ‘I’ and ‘E’ were in a relationship that ran on eternal parallel lines. This was a rational conclusion according to the ‘MBTI’ written on the Goguryeo watermelon painting.
For the next three days, no, a week, no matter what happened, even if the sky were to fall, I would not go out of the house.
I vowed with all my heart.
“Huh?”
Andrea, who had been rolling around hugging the panda doll, got up from the back seat.
“I got a message from Maya.”
When Maya’s chrome psycho symptoms were severe, it seemed that the time I had gone to find her with Andrea had become a connection. The two of them were closer than I thought.
‘I didn’t know they were exchanging messages privately.’
I asked with a light curiosity.
“What did it say?”
“…Hmm, just a moment.”
A blush slightly appeared on Andrea’s cheeks as our eyes met for a moment.
Her gaze also felt sweeter than usual.
…….
‘It must be just my imagination.’
Andrea, who had let out a soft breath, touched her visual interface.
“She says there’s a surprise when we get home.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“It doesn’t say.”
I felt a slight suspicion, but I soon erased it with a sigh.
Even if she said ‘a surprise,’ what could it be?
As long as it wasn’t so serious that the house had collapsed, there would be no problem with resting at home.
And we would be arriving home soon anyway.
“…What could the surprise be?”
I muttered shallowly and focused on driving again.
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Going out.
People defined the act of leaving a house or some kind of facility as going out.
If so, then what was the range of ‘leaving’ that was being referred to here?
I pondered it simply.
Some people might call just stepping out the front door going out, and some people might say you have to leave the entrance of the building to be going out.
For the record, I was the former.
And the other people said the latter.
“I said I’m really not going out.”
“No, it’s not leaving the house. It’s just going to another floor. How is this going out.”
“……”
‘There’s no logical way to answer this.’
At Catherine’s answer, I held my temples.
To be honest, it was a completely unexpected thing.
Recently, to be precise, yesterday.
I had met and talked with ‘Dr. Terra’ in the elevator.
At that time, Dr. Terra had said.
That she was in charge of managing the construction of this place I was living in, the ‘Gold Smile Condominium.’
A wine bar, spa facilities, a movie theater, etc.
Dr. Terra had mentioned various facilities.
To be honest, I hadn’t paid much attention to her words.
Even if the facilities were to be completed, it was a clear truth that it would take quite some time.
And there had been no construction noise at all.
I had cautiously guessed that it would take at least a ‘month’ or ‘season’ unit of time.
And that guess of mine, was half right, and half wrong.
“It’s a swimming pool! A swimming pool!”
Catherine was purely delighted.
“Wow…, she says the sauna and bath facilities are also complete….”
Maya, a Japanese-Asian who loved baths, was practically delighted.
“Besides the bath, she said a pool party is also possible. The Chairman was very particular about the soundproofing.”
Andrea cleared her throat.
“I was wondering why the Chairman of Monolith was talking about swimsuits, and I guess it was because of this.”
Natasha was calm.
“……”
Julia was looking at me cautiously with an expression as if she were secretly anticipating something.
For the record, the Chairman was waving at us from a sunbed on one side of the spa facility.
As for Eve, well, she was standing next to me in a demure posture as always.
This was currently the first basement floor of the Gold Smile Condominium. In the past, it was a place where rooms for people to live in would have existed.
But now it was just full of spa facilities.
Maya explained that not all the other facilities were complete, and that only the spa facilities were complete for now.
I asked Maya the thing I was most curious about.
“…Where’s Dr. Terra?”
“Huh? She was here just a moment ago.”
‘…This person, she ran away.’
Having grasped the entire situation, I pondered how I could escape from this place.
To be honest, it wasn’t an impossible matter. After all, the people who wanted to play in the swimming pool could play, and the people who wanted to rest at home could rest.
I calmly expressed the excuses I had thought of, one by one, with sincerity.
“Oh dear, I don’t have a swimsuit. Haha, unfortunately, there are no shops that sell swimsuits right now. So I’ll just have to rest at home today.”
“The Chairman said she prepared everything…!”
It was the first time in a long time I had seen Maya this happy, but right now, she was just my enemy.
“…Actually, I can’t swim.”
“I checked, and there are no deep pools here.”
I was frustrated by Catherine’s subsequent words.
‘When on earth did she check that.’
In the end, what works is ‘sincerity.’
“……Right, I just want to lie down and rest. I’ll be resting at home, so you guys can play here for a bit.”
“You can just lie down on the sunbed over there.”
The last one to answer was Andrea.
As if she had forgotten all about how I had helped her for 24 hours with the manager’s job, it was a sight of her returning a favor with an enmity.
“…No, a sunbed and a bed in a room are differ—.”
“I’m going to go change into a swimsuit.”
I cut off my words in the middle.
It was after hearing Andrea’s words.
……Come to think of it, a swimsuit.
Hmm.
In fact, it didn’t matter much if I lazed around on a sunbed.
Because in the cyberpunk world, you could easily enjoy movies, entertainment programs, or even net space surfing through your visual interface.
‘…Then should I go up a little later?’
It wasn’t necessarily because of the swimsuit. It was because my personality wasn’t so angular as to continue to refuse people’s earnest requests.
Anyway, that was that.
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Thankfully, the changing rooms were separated by gender.
There were also several men’s swimsuits in the shape of trunks, briefs, etc., but in the end, what I chose was a solid-colored rash guard-style swimsuit.
No matter how trashy my physical characteristics were, as if my long life as a mercenary hadn’t been in vain, there were lean muscles all over my body.
Of course, it was also true that I had only been lazing around recently, so a little bit of belly fat was beginning to assert its presence.
The choice of a rash guard was for that reason.
The fact that my skin was as white as if I had some kind of illness was also one of the reasons.
‘…Was it the ‘delicate skin’ characteristic?’
I remembered the content of the characteristic as ‘slashing defense value -2.’ For the record, it was a negative characteristic.
“…Sigh.”
‘This trash-like physical characteristic will be with me for the rest of my life.’
I thought with a light sigh.
Suddenly, my mood became a little depressed.
I trudged and walked out of the changing room.
At the same time, my mood improved again.
I couldn’t help this part.
It was the destiny of the male species.
‘When did they come out and change clothes?’
The sight of several women in swimsuits, playing in the spa facilities they wanted, struck my eyeballs.
‘Why didn’t I install a recording module when I had my mechanical eye implant surgery?’
I even felt a belated regret.
In the very front were Maya and Andrea.
They were relieving their fatigue in a warm pool.
Maya was enjoying the rising bubbles, and Andrea was deeply submerged below her neck.
Behind them, enjoying the wave pool, were Catherine, Natasha, and Julia.
Putting Catherine aside, it seemed Natasha also had good motor skills. She was boasting her speed, swimming skillfully.
For the record, Julia was the only one of the three who wasn’t in a bikini, lying on a tube and repeatedly entrusting her body to the waves.
I shook my head lightly.
Counting prime numbers in my mind, I was careful not to have my gaze stolen by the figures of the five.
‘A sunbed, where is a sunbed?’
I quickly found my destination and took a step.
“…Hmm?”
The Chairman, who had seen me, let out a short groan.
“Why, you’re not swimming.”
“Ah…, I’m a little tired.”
By the sunbeds, the Chairman and Eve were lying down with one seat empty between them.
To add, the Chairman was in a dark purple bikini, and Eve was in a long swimsuit designed like a pure white one-piece dress.
A faint smile appeared on the Chairman’s lips.
She slightly lowered her sunglasses and moved her eyes toward me.
“Well, you must be tired after being tormented by Andrea all day.”
“…Haha, right.”
“Did you have a good time seeing the panda?”
“Yes, the animal was certainly cut—.”
…….
Wait a minute.
‘Chairman?’
“Excuse me, how did you know that I had been to the zoo with Andrea?”
If I had heard it from Eve, who knew all my schedule, there wouldn’t have been enough time to talk.
“Hoho, not as much as the artificial intelligence next to you. But I can know as much as I need to.”
“……”
An AI stalker was a little scary, but a chaebol stalker was an unimaginable existence.
……Come to think of it, the Chairman had mentioned Mr. Bill when I had visited before.
The Chairman’s investigation of the people near me might have been an older thing than I thought.
I thought, wiping away the goosebumps.
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