Chapter 228: The New Life

Ishiki didn’t answer her and simply walked out of the bathroom. Behind him, Nina puffed her cheeks and followed behind.

“You’re doing it again,” she said. Her voice followed him into the hallway. “Every single time. Anything about Players and you just walk away.”

He simply went to the kitchen without paying her words any attention.

He got the bread out, put two slices in the toaster and pressed down the lever. Then he retrieved two cups from the cabinet — one regular and one small with the chipped handle.

After pouring milk in both of them, he took the toasts and spread some butter on them. Milk and butter were a clear delicacy in the world right now, only available to rich.

It was not a problem for him though. Being a government agent, a high ranking one at that has its own perks.

Nina appeared in the doorway.

She leaned against the frame with her arms crossed and her golden hair still a disaster and the two small horns poking through it.

“You know,” she said, “most dads talk to their kids.”

“I’m talking to you right now. Am I not? Little Kiddo.” Ishiki raised and eyebrow and looked at her.

“You’re not talking about what I want to talk about.”

He could feel her watching him with those purple eyes, but he was not going to be outmaneuvered by a three-year-old in the morning.

He walked to the table and set both the plates, then sat down.

Nina also sat down, across from him.

The breakfast table was silent for a long time as they silently ate their respective toasts.

“I’m just asking,” Nina said, in the voice she used when she was being very reasonable, “why you won’t tell me anything.”

Ishiki stood up went to the kitchen and brought two boiled eggs. He peeled them and put one in Nina’s plate.

“You’re a Player,” she refuted. “I know that… and you work at the Association, I know that too. I’m not asking for secrets. I’m asking what it is. What does a Player actually do. Why does everyone treat them like—”

“Eat first.”

“I am eating.” She pulled her plate and stabbed the egg in anger. “I can eat and talk.”

“That’s not a good thing, you know that right.” Ishiki simply replied.

“Is it dangerous?” she asked.

Ishiki drank his milk.

“Dad.”

“Yes it is.”

“Like what dangers?”

“Like parts that are dangerous.” he shrugged.

She stared at him for a second. “That is the least useful sentence you have ever said.”

“Being a Player,” he said, while eating his egg. “isn’t something you want. It’s not a job you apply for or a rank you earn. Its the most fucked up thing that can happen to anyone and stop acting like a whiny kid.”

’Uh? What the hell am I saying. Screw this.’ His corruption was acting up again!

The kitchen was quiet for a long while. He lowered his head and looked at the half egg in his plate.

’Wonderful,’ he thought. ’Really excellent. That was extremely well controlled.’

Nina was looking at him across the table with her purple eyes and she wasn’t arguing anymore.

She picked up her milk, drank it fast. Ate the rest of her toast in silence, then pushed her chair back and jumped off from it.

“I hate you,” she said.

Then went down the hallway and her bedroom door closed behind her.

’Good morning,’ he thought. ’Off to a great start.’

He had been a Player for almost five years now.

He had not chosen it, the system was the one who had chosen him. He was not been given a form to fill out.

He sighed. The system was still the same and there was no clear gauge of whom it would choose at what moment.

And he would never wish that something like that would happen to his Nina. She was just three year old, well theoretically… her growth was much faster than normal humans and she already looked like a 10 year old.

He was saved from further self-evaluation by the doorbell.

Ishiki walked to the main door and opened it to find Mr. Takeda from the next house, he was sixty-seven years old, wore the same brown cardigan every time Ishiki had seen him, and had the quality of someone who had survived every difficult thing in his life.

“Ryou-kun,” Mr. Takeda said, using the name Ishiki had been going by for last three years. “Is the wash closed today? I wanted to have my car -”

“No, I’m sorry.” Ishiki pulled the door open wider and found his jacket from the hook behind it. “I overslept. Give me five minutes and it’ll be running.”

Mr. Takeda nodded.

Ishiki crossed the narrow gap between his house and the adjacent building… the building was technically a double garage that he had brought and it sat flush against his house’s side wall.

He pressed his thumb to the scanner. The heavy metal door rolled up and revealed the car wash behind.

The wash bay was compact but properly fitted. It had two tracks, automatic foam arms, the recirculating water system. He had spent more on the dryer mechanism than on everything else combined and had no regrets about this.

He ran through the startup sequence and had the system live in four minutes.

“Ready,” he called out.

Mr. Takeda drove his black sedan in at the pace of a man who had never had a collision in his life and intended to maintain the record.

Ishiki watched the brushes engage and walked back to his home.

He had spent a fortune in setting this thing up, it was fully automatic. You pay and get the car washed… Ishiki doesn’t even have to look for them. He just gets the money straight to his account and its all well.

Twelve minutes.

That was how long it took him to get ready.

He wore his usual, dark trousers. Grey button-up. The jacket that had the ID slot built into the left breast pocket.

He got the card and looked at it for the half second and then put it on the pocket.

Kashima Ryou. Player Association, Ward 9.

When he came back from the Scenario, it had been easy for him to get an ID with fake name as his original self was not registered here.

It has been years since anyone called his real name… and three years of a lie lived continuously became, at some point, less a lie than a second skin.

He wanted to stay out of anything big as long as he could and then there was Nina, he wanted to keep her out of any danger. well as long as he could… she was not a human after all.

But he didn’t want to keep her hidden and deprive her of all the fun of life… he could never witness as a child. At least she could.

He checked his watch and walked out.

Nina was in the hallway in her school uniform and bag on her back.

He reached back into the hallway closet and took out the white cap from the second shelf and then put it on Nina’s head. “Do not pull it off… no matter what happens.”

They walked out and Ishiki locked the house behind him. He brought out the car from his underground garage.

Nina sat up in the passenger seat and watched as the Ward 9 scrolled past. Market stalls, game shops, vegetable shops and especially a bakery at the the last corner to her school.

It was her favorite bakery… but she didn’t ask to stop there today.

The car pulled up at the school gate and the door automatically opened. Nina stepped out and joined the cluster of students walking inside.

He drove through the morning traffic of Ward 9 and saw a Xenon cleanup team from last night’s Dusk Event still working. He didn’t wait or enquire and instead drove past it.

He soon reached his destination, parked in the lower staff bay. Scanned the vehicle tag and walked up.

The Ward 9 Player Association headquarters occupied the full block of Sogo Street between the third and fourth intersections.

The whole structure was matte black. The windows, if they were windows, gave nothing to the street.

Five hundred and some days of walking into this building and it still produced in him the specific feeling of stepping from one world into another — from Ward 9, which was ordinary and comprehensible, into a place that had been built around the specific fact that the world was not ordinary.

The ID scanner caught his card and blinked Green.

He pushed through the doors.

The lobby was everything the exterior was not, with white surfaces and clean light, the Association emblem on the far wall in quiet gold.

He nodded to Haruka at the field operations desk, who had been here before sunrise every morning for as long as Ishiki had been coming through this lobby.

He passed the briefing corridor, turned left toward the main staff floor, past the field roster board where his name — Kashima Ryou, Player, Title rank – Epic — sat in the mid-tier column.

’There are twenty-three Epic ranked Players in Ward 8 and 9,’ he thought, as he did occasionally when he walked past the board. ’I am perfectly fine and out of the center piece.’

A Mythical ranked Player would have an entirely different column. A different office and different level of institutional attention that he had no interest in being the subject of.

And he had stopped even thinking that he had a Mythical Title, even thinking about that thing was a curse.

He turned the last corner toward the front desk.

Miura-san looked up and greeted him.

“Good morning, Kashima-san. There is someone waiting for you in your office.”

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