novelraw Chapter 171
Chapter 171
Chapter 171
“What do you mean by that?”
“Search results on ‘Miyu’: 0 entries. No information could be found on the subject.”
“Is that even possible?”
Benedict’s secret laboratory.
Practically a place of exile or a prison, Benedict furrowed his brows upon hearing the report from his android assistant.
It had been weeks since he ordered an investigation on Miyu.
The results weren’t just disappointing—they were downright baffling.
“You’re saying there’s really nothing about that girl?”
“That’s correct. Other than the name ‘Miyu’, there is no information whatsoever—no birth records, no family ties, no history of upbringing. It also appears highly likely that ‘Miyu’ is an alias.”
“…Was it my brother?”
Naturally, his first suspicion fell on his eldest brother, Aaron Stingray. He was the one who brought that girl in the first place, and he was always shielding and protecting her.
Back when Benedict was the Director of Modular Research in the Technology Division, Aaron had constantly brushed off both official and unofficial requests with, “Let me see that Miyu girl,” dismissing them with a scoff.
But the android assistant denied Benedict’s assumption.
“No, sir. There aren’t even any traces of deletion. It doesn’t appear the records were erased recently, but rather that they never existed in the first place.”
“That can’t be. My brother said he brought that girl from somewhere in Sector E. Have you looked into that?”
“Of course. We’ve confirmed that she had some connection with a gang called the Blood Wolves, which was annihilated earlier this year in February due to the rampage of one of our Military-Grade Drones.”
“Military prototype drone?”
“Yes. It seems a prototype developed by the Stingray Technology Division somehow ended up in their hands. Due to improper handling, the drone went berserk, and as a result, all gang members were killed. Records of the incident remain.”
“Tell me more about the Blood Wolves.”
“It appears that the girl known as ‘Miyu’ was either coerced or commissioned by them to cooperate. She likely supplied the Blood Wolves with various improvised weapons and combat modules. Based on a trace of logistics and financial flow within the Black Market, we confirmed that a significant amount of goods was being funneled into a specific area.”
“Pull up the map.”
“Yes, sir.”
The android assistant’s eyes gleamed, and a 3D holographic map appeared in the air.
The layout of the well-known Black Market in Sector E displayed on the map.
Red lines indicating the flow of resources wove through alleys, appearing, vanishing, and reforming—until they converged at a single point.
A location just a few hundred meters from the Black Market began to glow red.
“Here it is.”
“This is the girl’s workshop?”
“That’s the assumption. We couldn’t verify it directly, but energy consumption in that area is noticeably higher than surrounding regions.”
“By any chance, is there a Talking Vending Machine there?”
“Yes.”
“Ahh, so that’s it.”
A talking vending machine.
Benedict remembered his brother randomly mentioning something like that. Nodding in understanding, he accepted the connection, and the android assistant confirmed it.
“Yes. We’ve already verified the existence of a secret underground workshop behind the vending machine. However, due to a restricted access order from Chairman Aaron Stingray, we couldn’t proceed any further inside.”
“Keep trying, but make sure you don’t get caught. Also…”
Benedict turned his gaze back to the map.
He spotted a peculiar marker a bit away from Miyu’s secret workshop.
“What’s this?”
“That’s where the Blood Wolves’ hideout used to be.”
“The gang that girl supposedly cooperated with?”
“Yes. Roughly six months ago, they obtained one of the Stingray Group’s prototype military drones, but were wiped out due to the drone’s rampage.”
“Hm…”
Something didn’t add up.
Six months ago? A military drone?
The timing overlapped strangely well with when Aaron brought Miyu to the Academy. It also lined up with his miraculous recovery…
Staring at the map with his chin resting on his hand, Benedict reached a conclusion in an instant.
“This was my brother’s doing.”
It wasn’t a drone’s rampage—Aaron Stingray himself had orchestrated it. Benedict had seen the Intelligence Department struggle because of that man’s murderous tendencies more than once.
This time likely wasn’t any different.
With that first assumption, puzzle pieces rapidly fell into place in Benedict’s mind.
“My brother slaughtered those bastards to take Miyu from the Blood Wolves. Then he used the girl’s technology to cure his Genetic Overcast and brought her to the Academy… Ah!”
Benedict let out a gasp of realization.
“You said Miyu made combat modules for the gang, right? That would mean they were Adaptees… then Miyu knows how to make Nanomachines.”
It all started making sense.
Terminal illness, Genetic Overcast.
Aaron’s weakened state right after being cured. Other scattered clues.
Ahh…
Benedict groaned in frustration.
Why hadn’t he realized this sooner? Had he figured it out before ending up like this, he wouldn’t have become such a disgrace.
“The nanomachines in my brother’s body aren’t ours—neither from our ‘Adam’, nor those Militech bastards. That girl made them…!”
Benedict was stunned.
Just who was that girl?
But at the same time, more questions arose.
“Miyu left no records. If my brother didn’t erase them on purpose… then did she erase them herself?”
Why?
Why did she go so far to erase her traces? And if so, why was she now so openly active again? Because my brother was protecting her?
If that’s the case… was Miyu using Aaron Stingray’s name in return for offering her tech?
Moreover…
“How did my brother even find her? He was practically bedridden at the time—how did he locate that girl so precisely?”
“Perhaps Miyu contacted him first?”
“Hmm… I’m not sure.”
It wasn’t impossible.
But… there were still too many things that didn’t add up.
“There’s something more… something…”
“W-what do you mean by that?”
At my words, Ciel and Serena looked visibly flustered. It seemed my explanation wasn’t enough, so I added more.
“Think about it.”
Miyu’s extremely shy.
She gets embarrassed in front of people, stutters, and sometimes even shows signs of separation anxiety or school refusal. Classic symptoms of severe social anxiety.
So then, what was the cause?
Innate sensitivity and fussiness?
No, it was because of later experiences.
That was what people often said.
If parents exclaimed, “Our child must be a genius!” then the child was not a genius, but if they worried, “Our child is a bit strange…….” then it was highly likely that the child was a genius.
Miyu was the latter.
The things she could understand as naturally as breathing, her peers—and even adults—could not comprehend.
No matter what she said, it was dismissed as ‘strange nonsense,’ and her genius was belittled as the eccentric behavior of a weirdo.
A genius was lonely, for they were not understood.
The trauma born from such childhood experiences drove her deep underground into Sector E, into a kingdom surrounded by machines and metal.
That was as far as the story we knew went.
“Isn’t it a little strange?”
“In what way?”
“Um, is there some kind of problem~?”
Ciel and Serena still tilted their heads. Right, it was wrong of me to expect so much from these two. It couldn’t be helped.
“Go deeper.”
“Deeper?”
“I said Miyu became timid because of her trauma.”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Let’s accept that much. But before that—why was it that until the wounds in that child’s heart remained as scars, no one cared? Were there not people who should have done so?”
“Uh…….”
Ciel still looked as if she didn’t know the answer.
I shook my head and looked toward Serena. She seemed to ponder briefly, as if trying to meet my expectations, then gave an answer.
“……Are you referring to her parents?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Parents.
In other words, mother and father.
“It’s not just about her parents. The truth is, we don’t know anything about Miyu at all. How old she is, what her family name is, which elementary school she supposedly dropped out of.”
“Didn’t it come up in the original story?”
“No, it didn’t. At least, not as far as I know.”
At first, I thought nothing of it.
There must have been some adult circumstances.
Like an episode the author didn’t have time to flesh out, because they were rushing toward the ending.
“But that wasn’t it.”
“Then what?”
“It didn’t exist.”
Yes, it literally didn’t exist.
Since this Academy Festival was supposed to be Miyu’s stage of growth, I tried to look into her past for a more meticulous setup.
But the result was blank.
To borrow Kara’s words, it was as if she was ‘a person who fell straight down from the sky.’
Perhaps it was too bewildering a story, but the two listening to me looked somewhat dazed. Especially Ciel, who had been closer to Miyu, her expression stiffened.
“There are a few hypotheses as to why Miyu’s past can’t be uncovered. One of them is what I call an ‘empty setting.’”
“What does ‘empty setting’ mean?”
“It means literally that the author didn’t set it up at all.”
The reason why Miyu’s past barely appeared in the original story might simply be because the author hadn’t detailed it enough to actually include it.
In most transmigration novels, the settings the author hadn’t thought of would ‘automatically’ fill themselves in plausibly, but perhaps this world wasn’t like that.
“But this hypothesis is a bit absurd.”
Miyu was far too important a main character for the author to leave such gaps.
Even side characters or extras like Ciel and Serena had specific memories, and just looking at the detailed memories in my own head as Aaron Stingray, it was impossible for Miyu’s past to ‘not exist.’
“So then, there are two possible explanations. One: someone else erased all records of Miyu’s past. Two: Miyu herself did it.”
“N-no way…….”
“I’m being serious.”
Ciel smiled awkwardly, as if my words still didn’t feel real. But I cut through that attitude without hesitation.
“And personally, I think the latter is more likely than the former.”
“What’s the specific reason?” Serena asked.
Unlike Ciel, who had an attachment to Miyu, she seemed to take my words more calmly.
Though, judging from her pale complexion, the shock from earlier hadn’t fully subsided.
“It’s hard to find any trace of information having been deleted. Even Stingray’s or Kara’s intel networks couldn’t uncover anything.”
“……”
“That can only mean whoever hid it was outstanding at information concealment. And it wasn’t something done hastily, but rather over a long period of time.”
“Which would mean the person most likely to do it was Miyu herself, right?”
“That’s exactly it.”
I nodded.
To put it more simply, I was suspicious of Miyu.
Not in the sense that she had been lying to me, or plotting betrayal, or anything so one-dimensional.
Perhaps.
Perhaps I had been misinterpreting the character named ‘Miyu’ from the very beginning.