“It really is the Administrator…”
Perlica murmured under her breath.
In an instant, more than half of the gloom that had built up in her chest these past few days was lifted away, and it felt as though strength had come surging back into her body.
She tried right away to sit up from the hospital bed and go bring the Administrator back herself.
But the Feline girl beside her was quick on the draw — one hand pressed her firmly back down onto the bed.
“Cersi already told me all about it — your workload this month has gone seriously over the line.
Quite a few of the operators have come to me expressing their concern.”
“m3…”
Perlica’s expression grew a little agitated, but she knew that what m3 was saying was the truth.
Going by her understanding of m3, there was now a hundred-percent chance the woman was not going to let her go back to her post.
“I know you’re worried about the Administrator’s safety — but I haven’t even gotten to the bad news yet.”
m3 looked down at the girl on the bed, her eyes carrying a trace of tender ache.
This child reminded her of someone from her past — both of them had taken on heavy responsibilities while they were still so young.
‘We really are some lousy excuses for grown-ups, aren’t we.’
Drawing in a deep breath, m3 continued:
“The very first thing we did was reverse-trace the source of that message — but we came up with nothing.
That message appeared inside our systems out of thin air, like some kind of ghost.”
In other words — beyond confirming that the Administrator was still alive, that message served no other purpose.
“All we can do now is wait patiently.”
Wait for the next contact attempt that might — or might not — come.
“Understood.”
Perlica nodded, then turned her gaze once more toward the unfathomably deep starry sky outside the window, sinking into her own thoughts.
Time flies like an arrow — in the snap of a finger, it had already shot off into the distance.
By this point, ten days had passed since Saito had picked the Administrator up out of the mine.
Over the course of those ten days of living together, the two of them had gradually grown used to each other’s presence, and their day-to-day life had slowly settled into a proper rhythm.
During the day, if the weather was good, Saito would head out exploring.
With the system map to help him, it didn’t take him long to scout out the lay of the land all around this small mining site — and the Administrator, meanwhile, stayed back at the mine helping him refine Originium. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
When the weather was poor, the two of them would stay holed up inside the mine chatting about all manner of bizarre topics, refining Originium on the side.
With the girl there to keep him company, even a life this monotonous had taken on a few extra notes of cheer, and from the Administrator’s mouth he’d also picked up no small amount of common-sense knowledge about this world.
Things like Originium, like Catastrophes — and like the very nation lying beneath their feet.
And as their conversations deepened, Saito felt more and more strongly that this Administrator of his was anything but ordinary.
Perhaps the secrets hidden inside her ran even deeper, and were even more numerous, than his own.
After all — what normal person walks around wearing a mask every single day, refusing to take it off even when they sleep?
But even so, he felt that the time had come.
…
…
That night, the two of them sat together around the makeshift fireplace Saito had thrown together, chatting on and off about this and that.
“Actually, I’ve been curious about this for a while now — is that mask on your face something you can’t take off?”
Saito looked at the Administrator’s face, as though he were trying to see her true features straight through the mask itself.
“Do you want to see it?
My face.”
The Administrator didn’t answer his question head-on, instead lobbing one of her own right back at him.
Saito hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
The next thing he knew — beneath his startled gaze, the Administrator reached up and pulled off the mask that had been covering most of her face.
The leaping firelight reflected that exquisite countenance in Saito’s pupils.
A soft, oval face, still carrying a faintly youthful quality; skin smooth and fair as polished jade; the corners of her mouth lifted in a faint, gentle smile.
But what drew the eye most of all were those eyes of hers.
Long lashes trembling ever so slightly — and within those grey-blue pupils, Saito could faintly make out his own reflection, but even more than that, what shone through was a profound sincerity of trust and goodwill.
“Very pretty.”
“But of course~”
The Administrator’s tone tilted upward just a touch — she was clearly well aware of how cute she was.
Saito tilted his head slightly to the side, dodging the girl’s eyes — and precisely because of that, he failed to see the way her cheeks had now flushed pink.
When Saito looked back her way, the girl had already put the mask back on.
But just then he suddenly noticed that a series of pale-yellow markings, almost like cracks, had at some point crept their way up along the girl’s slender white neck.
“What…
what is that?”
The Administrator waved her hand to signal that Saito didn’t need to be too concerned, and then immediately pointed at the mask on her face.
“This mask is a suppressor.
It’s used to keep certain things inside my body under control — as long as I don’t take it off, nothing’s going to go wrong.”
Then why did you take it off just now?
Those words rose up to the tip of Saito’s tongue, but he swallowed them back down again.
He wasn’t an idiot — the girl in front of him had probably picked up on the reservations in his heart, which was exactly why she’d chosen this particular way of extending a gesture of goodwill.
‘Saito, oh Saito — you really deserve to die!’
‘…Why is he staring at me with that kind of look?
Is there something on my face?’
Watching the apologetic look filling Saito’s eyes, a huge question mark bloomed above the Administrator’s head.
Clearly she hadn’t been overthinking it just now in the slightest — Saito wanted to see, so she’d let him see, and that was that!
Right now, her head was completely stuffed full of thoughts about how to push up the refining efficiency on the Originium, so she could get Saito to slap that Protocol Core down already.
Only once that thing had been deployed could the two of them start pushing on to the next phase.
After these past few days of experimenting at Saito’s side, the Administrator had been able to confirm one thing: that Protocol Originium was still capable of producing its original effects even atop Terra.
It was just that, due to certain reasons, the Hyperdomain had no way of exerting any influence on Terra’s physical universe.
But that did nothing to stop her from drawing on Hyperdomain energy to run some of the functions tucked away inside the Protocol Originium.
Take, for instance, Hyperdomain Teleportation.
As long as Saito could stockpile a bit more Originium, she’d be able to find some way to make contact with the Dijiang, and then swipe a couple of Protocol Cores from over on the Dijiang’s end.
Pooey, pooey, pooey — how could you possibly call that stealing!
The Dijiang belonged to Endfield Industries, and she happened to be the head of Endfield itself.
Could you really call it stealing when she was just taking a few things from her own household?
Obviously not!
It was only that, the moment her thoughts turned to the Dijiang and to Talos II, a thin trace of worry surfaced across the Administrator’s face.
But she quickly shoved all of those emotions to the back of her mind, and turned her gaze once more upon the Saito sitting in front of her.
‘You…
will you be the future of Terra and Talos II?’