WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 29

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On the House

Roman came through the door, bowed deeply, and then spoke.

"Godmother. The first-stage investigation you ordered is complete."

She'd been thinking about that cocky brat right up until a moment ago, so Valeria felt delight and impatience at once. A sensation like thirst, a craving to hear about that brat as soon as possible.

But she couldn't do that. The thing you want most always had to be drunk slowly, with time and care.

"Start with the girl."

"Yes. Her name is Rita. Twenty years old. Resides in Ground Zero. Citizen Grade E."

"Hm. And?"

"That's all."

Valeria raised her face slightly to look at Roman, and he went on.

"Her residence history, facility records, and medical records were all fake. To be precise, everything from before she turned fifteen. The work wasn't very sophisticated. Most likely..."

"Gordon's hands were on it, it seems."

"...Yes. That's what I'm assuming."

"Interesting."

Gordon normally didn't touch filthy paperwork forgery like this. It was his nature to loathe that kind of tedious trickery. Even back when they'd worked together, it had always been Valeria who took care of the paperwork, the identity laundering and record tampering.

But that taciturn, stubborn Gordon had gone out of his way to erase this girl's past himself?

'Which means there was a reason her past absolutely had to be hidden.'

After a moment of thought, Valeria opened her mouth and asked.

"Again. How old did you say that girl was?"

"Twenty."

"Then she came to Ground Zero after fifteen?"

"That's the likeliest answer."

Valeria's eyes narrowed.

If that stubborn old mule had gone so far as to fix her past himself, she was unlikely to be a Ground Zero native. Which meant Valeria had to look higher than that...

Five years ago... five years ago...

Something nagged at her, almost surfacing and never quite arriving, leaving a lukewarm, odd sense of unease.

"Look into the incidents and accidents that happened in the upper-middle tiers five years ago. I have a feeling there's something connected to that girl."

"Yes."

With the report on Rita finished, the time she'd been waiting for had finally come.

To savor Roman's coming report in full, Valeria leaned deep into her chair and closed her eyes.

"All right. Now tell me about that kid."

"Yes. Seol Gye-hyeon. Twenty years old. Born in Ground Zero. Citizen Grade E."

"Is that Gordon's work too?"

"No. All of it is genuine."

At those few words, Valeria's red eyebrows rose slightly. A faint note of bewilderment ran through Roman's voice.

"Both parents are confirmed. They died before the child turned two. The cause of death for both was drug poisoning. The official death certificates from Gaon Mega City and the public incinerator cremation records are perfectly preserved."

Parents who died high on drugs...

"A common story."

"Yes. After that, he was taken into a lower-class protection facility. He was moved between three facilities in total, and was released on turning twenty, as regulations require. Ration pickup records, district entry records, even clinic visits... Records of his life in Ground Zero up to age twenty are all still there."

"...Everything up to age twenty?"

"Yes."

Valeria opened her eyes and looked at Roman.

"Roman."

"Yes."

"Have you ever seen anyone in Ground Zero whose records up to twenty exist in perfect order?"

"...It isn't common."

"Not uncommon. Impossible."

The papers of anyone born and raised in this Ground Zero were bound to have a hole somewhere. Ground Zero's administrative procedures couldn't possibly be perfect. The networks went down as a matter of course, and the officials in charge, steeped in bribes, deleted or overwrote records as a habit.

For a place like that to have no holes at all meant someone had deliberately and flawlessly patched them.

"Both parents dead before he was even two?"

"Yes."

"Relatives?"

"None. Both parents were unclaimed orphans from lower-tier facilities."

Valeria smirked.

There was no one to ask. No parents, no relatives.

The parents' death records were also perfectly preserved.

Nothing remained that could prove where a human being named Seol Gye-hyeon had come from.

"Have you checked directly with the people at those facilities? Are you certain he was really stuffed away in them for twenty years?"

"Yes. Black hair and black eyes, a rare pureblood Eastern appearance, so everyone remembered him clearly. They said he was meek and quiet, and got bullied quite a bit by the other boys."

The moment that last line came out, Valeria couldn't hold it in and burst into roaring laughter at last.

"Pwahaha! Ahahahahaha!"

Clutching her belly and laughing, she soon hardened her gaze into something frosty and glared at Roman.

"Roman! Didn't you notice something strange just now?"

"...What do you mean, Godmother?"

"That kid was weak and meek, so he got bullied? The one who glared straight into the eyes of me, Valeria, practically sitting at the very top of Ground Zero, and yelled back like that?"

It was absurd nonsense.

There's a saying: the awl in the pocket. Someone like that can't hide themselves. From childhood, they can't help but show their point. A kid with those eyes, that nerve, and that level of skill, supposedly raised getting beaten in the corner of an orphanage?

"Roman. The documents you brought, the records, the testimony. All of it is fabricated lies. There's no way that kid lived like that."

It was there that Valeria became certain.

To produce documents this flawlessly, and even manipulate testimony, was beyond the work of some middling megacorp.

"Keep a link to a top-tier megacorp in mind, and investigate again from the very beginning."

"As you command, Godmother."

* * *

The days after Rex, our last customer, left passed quietly.

Quiet meant no customers. It didn't mean nothing to do.

With a procedure that big, cleaning and disinfecting the procedure table alone took half a day. On top of that, the precision tools built into the table needed proper upkeep.

"...What do I do about this, anyway?"

The bin holding the material that had come out of Rex's body. In other words, medical waste full of blood and chunks of flesh.

I was wondering whether to just bag it up like ordinary trash and throw it out.

"I'll call a contractor I know. Leave it alone."

"Oh. There are contractors who handle this kind of thing?"

"Of course. Ground Zero has a surprising amount of everything."

That was somehow a frightening thing to say.

The next day, we went shopping. As an employee perk.

...The truth was that Rita, who'd eaten nothing but jelly for days, said she was about to lose her mind.

"Well, well. Hey. Long time no see."

The man behind the counter greeted me.

"You were gone so long I figured you were dead. This neighborhood's been getting pretty rough lately."

The general store owner's words made me smile despite myself. The talk was gruff, but I could tell he'd honestly been worried about me.

"Been busy. A lot of work."

With that, I walked into the store. Rita followed, ran her eyes once along the shelves, and cleared her throat with a little ahem.

I smiled at the sight and said to her.

"Rita. If there's anything you want, put it in the cart. I'll buy it as an employee perk."

Rita turned to me with a broad grin.

"Really?"

Why did she have to ask like that, so ominously...

But what's said can't be taken back. With the feeling of coughing up blood, I said it anyway.

"Of course, really."

The instant I said it, Rita started moving without a shred of hesitation.

Canned cultured meat, vacuum-packed noodles, assorted sauces, a soda so garishly colored it was a little gross, and so on...

"Rita."

"Yes, boss."

"This isn't your first time at this store, is it?"

"Ahaha, it really is my first time."

Her first visit, and she could track down what she wanted this fast?

'Good thing I hired her. She's going to work out.'

My stomach ached a little each time the cart filled up, but forcing myself to think positive, I loaded the cart with nothing but nutrient jelly.

...Because what Rita was buying was food for the staff perk, not food for the boss to eat.

Besides, if I started eating, what was in that cart would be gone in a day or two.

Unless it was high-calorie food on the level of nutrient tubes or nutrient jelly, my constitution couldn't be satisfied.

When I set the goods on the counter, the shopkeeper looked down at the heaped cart, then slowly moved his gaze to Rita.

"...Heh."

A very blatant smile spread across his face.

"So that's why you've been busy."

"...That's not it. She's our employee."

"Still, good to see. When you lived alone you seemed to get by on whatever high-calorie junk, but look at you, trying to buy something a person can actually eat."

He didn't seem to be listening to a word I said.

"Hello, mister!"

Rita greeted him cheerfully, propping her elbows on the counter.

I couldn't help letting out a long sigh. I'd said I liked it when the place felt lived in, and she'd gone this far.

"Hello! Mister. I'm Rita, the new employee at Titan Garage, in the alley over there! I live with the boss."

"...Rita?"

It wasn't a lie, but it was a very easy thing to misunderstand.

"Ahaha! Right, right. No wonder your face has filled out like this. Make a good life together from here on."

"Of course. I'll work hard at it."

The shopkeeper nodded with great delight, then, midway through ringing up, slipped two cans into the bag.

"This one's on the house. Something so the two of you eat well and live well."

"Thank you!"

'Rita turned out to be a lot more shameless than I'd thought.'

"Anyway... I was wondering what kind of work you did, and you run a garage?"

"Yeah. I don't really do business with ordinary people."

As I said it, I glanced at the shopkeeper's prosthetic eye.

It wasn't one with any special function, just an eye fitted to assist his vision after he'd lost the real one, but now it was completely clouded over and looked to have stopped working.

"Mister. That eye, how long has it been since you could see out of it?"

"Hm? Oh, this."

The shopkeeper tapped around his eye.

"Three years, maybe. It was always blurry, but since about last year it's been all fogged up. Well, the other one's fine, so it doesn't get in the way of living."

"Mind if I take a look?"

"...Hm?"

Without waiting for an answer, I leaned over the counter.

It wasn't a product from a company with megacorp-level technology, just a very cheap auxiliary prosthetic eye. Maybe from long use, a thick oxide film had built up behind the lens.

I drew a mana thread from my fingertip and slipped it into the gap in the lens. One sweep around stripped off the oxide film, and I pushed the slightly warped lens back into place.

"Done. Open your eye, mister."

The shopkeeper blinked in confusion, then suddenly looked absolutely stunned.

"Good god. Was the world always this clear? It can't have been even a minute, and the difference... Amazing. Kid, you're not a kid at all, you're a truly great engineer, aren't you?"

After looking around in wonder for a good while, the shopkeeper thought for a moment, then opened the register and reached in.

"How much do I owe you? I've got some money saved up for a new eye, anyway."

This mister. Is he really from Ground Zero?

I smiled at that and shook my head.

"Forget it. You've thrown plenty of freebies my way all this time. Figured I'd throw one your way for once."

With that, I picked up the bagged goods and headed out, and Rita, following behind me, grinned playfully and said.

"Boss~ you're kind of cool, you know? 'Figured I'd throw one your way for once.'"

"Now now. It's not nice to tease your boss."

"Aw, come on. I'm telling you, it's because you really were cool."

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