#100
Popo’s body, after rolling once, appeared undamaged to the naked eye. Seeing it roll across the floor in a staggering manner, Yoo Seong-woo urgently shouted.
“Run away!”
Almost simultaneously, Popo staggered away. Judging by its clumsy rolling motion, it wasn’t in perfect condition, but it didn’t seem beyond repair.
There was no time for relief. Once again, all his senses stood on edge. Looking to the side, he saw the Minister pointing a gun at him.
Seong-woo froze. But he commanded himself. Stay calm. Popo had escaped safely, so the primary objective was achieved.
Disguised as a construction robot, Popo had been moving slowly, recording the conversation between the Minister and Seong-woo. At the same time, the footage was being transmitted to Kim Ji-heon’s tablet.
This meant that the Minister’s admission of the massacre and his nonsensical justifications for it were being transmitted as well.
Not only that, but far away, in a spot difficult to see with the naked eye from here, there was another ally. It was Old Man Chang’s granddaughter android.
Seong-woo had been monitoring a small light flickering in the distance. The faintly blinking light meant that the android named Yeseon, his fellow kind, was safely in position.
As the granddaughter was an android that processed visual information, she could see from a far distance. She would be drawing this scene by hand right now. Unlike humans, visual information remained in her database, which could later be presented as evidence.
Additionally, cameras were operating throughout the construction site. Some of the construction robots were models with recording functions.
Seong-woo slowly raised his hands while facing the Minister. Then he removed his mask.
The Minister’s eyes widened. Seong-woo smiled as he faced him.
“Can’t shoot me?”
The Minister knew there were many eyes watching. It wouldn’t be difficult to cover up the death of a single android. But if it wore “Yoo-hyun’s” face, that changed everything.
That’s why Seong-woo wasn’t particularly surprised when dozens of presences appeared surrounding the construction site. He had somewhat anticipated that the Minister would bring troops. Using soldiers for personal purposes would constitute rebellion, but if he had feared that, he wouldn’t have committed massacre in the first place.
Click, click. Among the monotonous noises of the construction site, unfamiliar sounds rang out almost simultaneously several times. It was the sound of guns being loaded. But this too must be a bluff.
“If you kill me, things will really become troublesome for you. No, troublesome doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
Many citizens had already seen the face of “Yoo-hyun” alongside Yeon Tae-soo. That alone had already bound the Minister.
I won’t die here. He can’t kill me. He repeated this to himself numerous times. Otherwise, he felt he would be consumed by fear. He was a performance android—why should he feel such emotions? Why should he fear death? Why had he come to love life so much?
The Minister slowly lowered his gun. The muzzle no longer targeted him but the ground. The gesture clearly signified surrender. Yet all of Seong-woo’s senses were still screaming danger.
‘Why?’
This sense that humans call intuition. The technique of a performance android reading the sounds and temperature of a space, along with people’s expressions and movements in detail, had rarely been wrong.
Sure enough, the Minister raised his gun again. Seeing him smile, Seong-woo belatedly realized. This man simply harbored a profound hatred for androids.
Some hatred grows without reason or context, consuming itself. Neither reason nor logical judgment can intervene.
“An android moving without an owner is a useless object.”
Seong-woo looked at the gun pointed at him. He saw the Minister’s finger touch the trigger.
After wanting so desperately to live, is this the end? Even in this situation, he disliked how he thought of that person.
Though he wasn’t human, and miracles only happened to humans, just once perhaps.
Bang, bang.
As the gunshots rang out, he closed his eyes involuntarily. It must be due to the fear mechanism that functions exactly like a human’s.
But there was no pain that should have followed. Is extremely severe pain sometimes perceived a beat late?
As expected, a familiar smell brushed his nose. The acrid smell of blood. Slowly opening his eyes, he immediately discovered the source of the blood smell. The Minister’s hand, standing opposite him, was stained red.
The Minister’s face clearly showed his anger. His injured hand trembled, whether from anger or pain was unclear.
Watching the Minister grip the pistol again with his shaking hand, Seong-woo inhaled. He needed to assess the situation, to determine where those gunshots had come from, but before his mind could infer anything, something was already sensing it. Something hot was rising from a place that shouldn’t exist in him, an android.
“That’s payback for your hand.”
And the next moment, he heard a familiar voice.
“Ha… shit, where do you think you’re pointing that gun?”
The somewhat vulgar tone and voice dripping with anger. Seong-woo couldn’t bring himself to turn toward the sound. There was no need. He immediately felt Yeon Tae-soo’s body temperature as he approached from behind.
Tae-soo, who had been embracing him from behind, immediately moved in front of him. Seeing the large back blocking his view, he felt like crying.
Having rushed here in such a hurry, Tae-soo was breathing heavily. Despite the freezing weather, his nape was soaked in sweat.
“…Sir.”
“Stay back.”
Instead of literally following his words, Seong-woo looked around. Through the construction robots and materials, he caught glimpses of people in black clothes. The plainclothes soldiers who had been there were now gone.
“You’re so reckless too. Are you crazy for death?”
Hearing the voice from in front, Seong-woo couldn’t help but smile bitterly. How could he explain this feeling—that just having him here brought such relief and even made him smile?
“I wasn’t trying to die. I still want to live with you, sir.”
“You always say such pretty things. Think I’ll let you off because of that?”
Even while speaking, Tae-soo readjusted his grip on the gun. Though his attitude seemed relaxed, the gun barrel was unfailingly aimed at the Minister.
Seong-woo’s lips moved, but he couldn’t speak. As if there was an error, his language function wasn’t working properly.
The Minister, watching the two, narrowed his eyes and turned up the corners of his mouth. Not knowing why he was smiling in this situation made Seong-woo even more anxious. From his crooked, twisted mouth came a cracked voice.
“Looking at you, it seems you don’t know exactly what happened in Jirisan.”
“You’d be better off keeping quiet.”
Tae-soo immediately responded to the Minister’s words.
“…It’s true I don’t know, but I can guess.”
The Minister slightly tilted his head. The back of Tae-soo, who stood partially blocking him, was visibly stiff.
“Can you stand there even knowing?”
The Minister was asking. How can you be so unmoved when your owner harmed so many of your kind? His view was blocked again. Tae-soo’s back, which obstructed his sight, was trembling.
“Seong-woo, you don’t need to answer. I’ll explain everything…”
“I may not be an android with superior inference functions, but I can guess that Mr. Yeon had his reasons.”
Seong-woo cut off his words.
“For instance, if he was blackmailed by you.”
He had suspected this all along. That Tae-soo had been forcibly mobilized for that massacre. That Tae-soo had kept quiet all this time because he feared Seong-woo would be shocked.
Though Tae-soo’s back in front of him was as solid as usual and no longer trembling, for some reason he felt the urge to embrace that large back.
“And this person is not my owner. He’s my lover.”
At the subsequent words, that huge back exhaled softly. Then straightened his posture.
“Seong-woo, step back.”
“…Sir.”
“Step back even ten steps. Please.”
Looking to the side, he saw Nikita gesturing with her chin for him to come closer. He wanted to shout that he didn’t want to, that he didn’t want to flee alone leaving him behind.
Seong-woo stepped back several paces. In that state, he tightly closed his eyes. Having tried it once, he should be able to do it. Interfering with his own mind, no, his system.
‘I have to do it in a few seconds.’
He had practiced several times before coming here. Tae-soo wouldn’t have known because he was busy, but he had practiced examining his own system while sitting in the room.
A performance android can’t move as quickly as military androids or other androids that use their bodies. Even his dynamic vision was similar to a human’s level.
But what if he could push his ability to read atmospheres to the extreme?
It was a function that automatically read the flow of a place by taking in even the smallest pieces of information. The information Seong-woo interpreted was the result of being filtered once to prevent strain on his system, which wasn’t designed for combat.
But what if he could read all those small bits of information?
The universe unfolded within his closed eyes. Counting each star embedded in all directions, he reached out before a large light.
The moment he grasped the light, a similar light seemed to flare up somewhere inside his body. At the same time, he felt pain. It was as if something was stretching like growing pains, but rather than his limbs, it was something inside his body being forcibly stretched.
Seong-woo opened his eyes again. What came into view was still Tae-soo’s back, confronting the Minister. Fortunately, it seemed only a few seconds had passed.
“Why don’t you back off now? Before I pay back your eyes too.”
Tae-soo spoke, and the Minister was still glaring at him with his injured hand lowered.
Unlike before, even the slightest movements of the Minister’s facial muscles were visible to him. The trembling of his eyelids, the movement of his Adam’s apple, and even the pattern of sweat flowing.
“You think I would back down after coming this far?”
“If you stop now, at least you could face trial.”
Even as the two conversed, information continued to flow in. Though his head felt like it would split, Seong-woo concentrated. It was overwhelming to take in not only each of the Minister’s movements but also those of the people surrounding them at a distance, and even the construction robots that continued to move in front of them as if nothing was happening.
“Do you really think so?”
The Minister laughed. Seong-woo could read Tae-soo’s tension. Listening more closely, he could even faintly hear his heartbeat.
“You know nothing about the world I live in. Do you think I would pay for my crimes the same way as humans like you?”
Tae-soo, who had been quietly swallowing with his muscles tensed, chuckled.
“You’re so confident. You has-been. Then why don’t you properly go to hell.”
And Seong-woo felt Tae-soo’s shoulder muscles expanding beneath his coat. His arm moved forward with a single purpose.
Simultaneously, he sensed the Minister tensing all his muscles. The two moved almost simultaneously.
Seong-woo pushed Tae-soo with all his might and rushed forward. There was one thing he had overlooked. Though his seeing and feeling capabilities had been multiplied several times, his physical performance remained the same.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
