novelraw Chapter 243
Chapter 243
Chapter 243
“Haah. What am I supposed to do with this…….”
Lexus Bane let out a deep sigh as he looked at the deposit amount stamped into his account.
The number was a staggering ‘1,000,000’ Credit. Thanks to that, his bankbook bore a seven-digit figure for the first time in a very long while—yet he could not feel even the slightest bit of joy.
The reason was simple: the one who had sent the massive sum of 1 million Credit was none other than his own disciple, Irie Elisbell.
“She actually sent it in the end, that damn mutt…….”
If this money had been something like ‘a token of gratitude for my respected master,’ I would have gone skipping off to boost the sales of my regular bar and strip club.
But even if I had lived a rather washed-up life, I was still a man with common sense and morals.
I was not trash enough to recklessly spend a huge sum of money practically squeezed out of a mere twenty-one-year-old female student, half by deception.
“Ugh…… for fuck’s sake…….”
“Mr. Bane. Instead of just sighing, how about you actually do some work? If you come into the office and act like that every day, don’t you realize it drains everyone else too?”
The female employee seated next to Lexus nagged at him again today, just like always.
Yes, today again. It seemed she found Lexus utterly displeasing, as she nagged him almost every other day on a variety of topics.
Yesterday, I was sure she criticized my hairstyle. The day before that, she picked at my clothes.
I couldn’t remember clearly, but maybe the day before that it was about my beard, and about a week ago she said she didn’t like the expressions I made. On top of that, she nagged about paperwork, about my behavior—about practically everything she could see.
But Lexus let it slide. He thought she had her reasons.
Even within the Stingray Foundation, the Academy branch was a place where only elites gathered.
Strictly speaking, the Foundation Headquarters—where the Chairman’s office had originally been—was the true top. However, after Aaron moved his office to the Academy side, a subtle sense of rivalry arose between the two branches.
In any case, the employees of the Stingray Foundation Academy Branch held their heads high with pride, simply because they served the Foundation’s highest authority.
And then an outsider like Lexus Bane had been parachuted in by the Chairman.
Of course they were bound to look at him with displeasure.
On top of that, in Lexus’s case, he only lightly trained students during vacation periods and did practically nothing during the semester besides stamping his face at the office and collecting a hefty monthly salary without fail.
He was practically a model example of a salary thief, so it was inevitable he would receive envious—or jealous—glances from his fellow employees.
Lexus himself was well aware of that fact, so he usually dealt with his female coworker’s machine-gun-like nagging by letting it go in one ear and out the other.
But today, it was hard to endure.
I was already unsettled, and with her chattering beside me like a sparrow and unleashing a barrage of nagging bombardment, even the pride of Lexus—hardened like steel after passing sixty—was beginning to take scratches.
“Mr. Lexus. Are you even listening!?”
“Yes, yes, sorry~”
No, endure it. Endure.
She wasn’t even half my age. What would I gain by getting prideful with someone young enough to be my daughter? She was acting like this simply because she didn’t know.
She didn’t know that I had once been an elite police officer, nor that afterward I had been a team leader in the Security Division at Stingray Headquarters.
So I could just ignore her as if she were a tiny puppy yapping away. Yes, that was what I had to do……
—Mr. Lexus! Clean up your desk!
—Mr. Lexus! Stop picking your nose!
—Mr. Lexus!
“Good grief…….”
At this rate, I won’t get anything done.
No matter how light it may be, if you keep getting drenched in drizzle-like nagging, your heart is bound to become soaked. In other words, even things I would normally laugh off could start to sting.
“Haah…….”
It couldn’t be helped.
Lexus’s goal was simple: work less and earn more. As a Private Training Instructor, he only needed to work hard during vacations to train Stingray-affiliated students.
And work had a way of increasing the better you did it, so even if he was treated like a useless man during the semester, as long as he could maintain his life as a salary thief, he thought that was more than enough.
But now I had reached my limit.
It was time to show a little ‘sincerity.’
“Ah, yes. Ms. Cassia. So what exactly is this ‘document’ you said I need to handle?”
“What exactly have you been listening to!? I sent it through the internal messenger, so check it, fill it out, and send it back to me!”
“Once I finish that, can I leave work?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“If I complete just this, you won’t say anything about me leaving, right?”
“Try it if you think you can!”
The coworker sharply turned her head away.
Lexus let out a scoff and checked the document.
It was educational material for students who would be entering Stingray Headquarters as new employees after graduating this year. Based on that, he needed to draft paperwork in advance to send to Stingray’s Human Resources Department.
‘Tch, this is nothing.’
Back when he had worked in the Stingray Security Division, he had seen documents like these countless times. Though he had been field personnel, he had also held a managerial role, so with just a quick glance at the document, a version tailored perfectly to Stingray Headquarters’ standards formed in his mind.
The planning was done; now came the drafting.
He linked his personal PC with his nanomachines and immediately launched a document-editing program, turning the outline in his head into a file.
It took barely ten minutes.
Having completed the formatted document in an instant, Lexus immediately sent the file to the female employee and shrugged.
“I’ve finished it and sent it over, so go ahead and review it.”
“Are you messing with me right now? It’s only been ten minutes—!”
“Ah, come on. Just take a look before you say anything.”
The female employee frowned deeply, but I responded with a confident expression. In the end, she lost the staring contest and began reviewing the document I had created with a doubtful gaze.
And then—
“Uh…… y-you made this in ten minutes?”
Her reaction was one of clear shock.
She looked at me as if to ask whether a loafer like me had really written this. I would have liked to savor that reaction, but unfortunately, I had something to do.
“No problems, right? Then as promised, this old soldier is heading home~ Adios~”
Putting on a flippant tone and gestures that no one would believe belonged to a man past sixty, I grabbed my coat and left the office. Just before I exited, I poked only my head back in through the door and called out to my coworker.
“Ms. Cassia.”
“Y-Yes……?”
“Don’t be too loyal to the company.”
After tossing out what I wanted to say, I finally left the office.
‘I hope she doesn’t end up betrayed after working that hard, tsk tsk.’
I teased her a little, but I didn’t dislike the female coworker next to me. In a city this rotten, people who could devote themselves to work with such sincerity and purity were rare.
Still, as someone who knew the darkness of this city all too well, I couldn’t help but worry.
She probably didn’t know because she belonged to the Foundation, far removed from life at Headquarters. She lived comfortably in Sector B, and her parents were still working. That must be why she didn’t know.
If you lived near Sector E, overflowing with back-alley Fixers, Mercenary Brokers, Information Dealers, mercenaries and vagrants, all sorts of Gangs and Mafia, you couldn’t help but learn—whether you wanted to or not—about the foul stench rising from the backsides of corporations.
‘Corporations pretend to care about their employees, but in reality, they treat them as nothing more than livestock.’
I had seen far too many people devote themselves to corporations, only to be betrayed.
People who, after retirement, had all the cyberware provided as employee benefits stripped away, leaving them practically half-paralyzed.
People who became scapegoats in internal politics, shot by Security Division special operations units without even knowing why, and buried among plastic trash heaps in the Fallen Sector.
People who worked diligently, only to be labeled as having ‘learned too much’ and reassigned under the name of restructuring to a ‘department one must never enter,’ effectively turned into human guinea pigs.
‘Who knows when that might happen to me.’
Fortunately, I had been lucky.
When I was kicked out of the Stingray Security Team long ago, I had hacked some of the combat module chips and weapons provided by the company so that I could continue using them even after retirement. Based on that, I managed to survive by working as a Fixer.
But I was an exceptional case. Most corporate employees wouldn’t be so fortunate.
Perhaps that female employee would only realize how corporations viewed employees as mere ‘livestock’ when she herself was fired, or when her parents reached retirement.
I could only secretly pray that that time would be delayed as much as possible…… and if possible, never come at all.
‘Peter Jones was probably one of those victims too.’
Although I had said I was heading home, I hadn’t actually left the Academy.
The request I received from Irie was to ‘find out the truth about Peter Jones’s death.’ Peter Jones had been a Stingray Scholarship Student, and if I wanted to learn what happened to him, I obviously had to search within the Academy.
‘Even if I’ve already deduced that PJ is that mutt’s older brother, Peter Jones, figuring out how it all ended for him is a separate matter.’
Personally, I was a little curious as well, so investigating didn’t feel especially troublesome. I’d even been paid, after all.
The problem was that no one knew specifically when or how Peter Jones had met his end. While working at the Academy Branch office, I had tried to look through related materials, but of course, nothing remained.
All I knew was that he had been ruled an ‘accidental death,’ naturally expelled, and afterward cremated by a funeral services company partnered with the Stingray Group.
But something about that was strange.
‘That mutt…… why does the nickname “mutt” roll off my tongue so easily? Anyway, it seemed she didn’t even receive PJ’s urn.’
Even with the cheapest funeral package, it was normal to at least place the bone fragments and ashes into a plastic container and deliver them to the bereaved family. But from what I’d heard, the only thing Irie had received was a broken combat module chip.
And that part was likely the key.
From the looks of it, the Crown Prince of our New Valhalla City seemed to know everything about the PJ incident, and naturally, he would also be connected to PJ’s disappearance.
But Aaron Stingray was not the type to answer just because someone asked. On the contrary, I’d be lucky if I didn’t receive a warning, a threat…… or in the worst case, ‘disposal’ for digging into unnecessary matters.
I had heard that Aaron Stingray had changed as a person since last year, and while I had seen that side of him while working nearby…… a small trace of anxiety still remained.
After all, the reason I had been unjustly fired from the Stingray Group had been Aaron himself. There was no way I wouldn’t have something like PTSD.
More importantly, the PJ incident had occurred before Aaron Stingray reformed, so digging into it might lead me to confront unexpected darkness.
Once again, Lexus Bane was someone who knew the ‘dark side’ of the Stingray Group better than anyone.
‘Now then, where do I start…….’
Trinity Academy was vast.
If it were an ordinary school, rummaging through a few offices would suffice, but this place was practically a massive fortress. Even if I spent days searching in earnest, I might find nothing. So devising the most efficient route was crucial.
‘I’ve already confirmed there’s nothing to be found on the Stingray Corporation office side. Should I head to the Main Building and secretly dig through the Academy’s student records? Or go to the office of their rival, Militech…….’
While pondering the various options, I remembered the very first thing I needed to do. Just as I was about to begin the investigation, I realized I had left all my investigative equipment and module chips in my office chip in Sector E.
“Ah, what a pain…….”
With no other choice, I had to turn my steps toward Sector E.