“What I’m about to tell you — whatever you do, don’t be afraid.”
Saito stared intently at the Administrator’s face.
As the relationship between the two of them had gradually grown more familiar, even through the mask, he could now make out at least a little of her expression.
“Relax — I’m the Administrator.
I won’t be afraid.”
The Administrator gave a very serious nod, leaning her body slightly forward, preparing to listen in earnest to whatever Saito had to say next.
Seeing the girl’s reaction, Saito drew a deep breath and then slowly began to speak.
“The truth is…
I’m not from this world.”
“And then?”
The girl gave a nod to show that she understood — and now it was Saito’s turn to be a little dumbfounded.
“I’m not joking — I really am not from this world!”
“I know.
So — and then?”
The Administrator gave another nod, but Saito still couldn’t detect the slightest trace of surprise or doubt on her face.
This time, he really couldn’t sit still anymore.
In the novels, it definitely doesn’t go like this!
I confess my identity to you, and you’re supposed to first freeze up and then voice your doubts, and then I argue my case point by point while you remain unmoved, and finally, in the face of your disbelieving stare, I produce the key piece of evidence to prove it to you — that’s how it’s supposed to go!
The novels are absolutely nothing like this!
Although Saito’s inner monologue was raging this fiercely, in the end all that actually came out of his mouth was a single question:
“You…
don’t have any doubts at all?”
The Administrator gave another shake of her head.
Having only just awakened and then immediately found herself dropped into these Frozen Plains, it was entirely natural for Saito to be entertaining thoughts like these.
Even she herself, in this very moment, could still feel a faint sense of unreality.
Before she closed her eyes, she had still been up on Talos II, fighting against those angels.
When she opened her eyes again, she’d returned alone to Terra, and on top of that she’d lost the majority of her memories.
Just as Saito had said — perhaps she, too, was no longer someone who properly belonged to this world.
Saito opened his mouth and closed it again, a faint trace of frustration on his face.
He had thoroughly steeled himself before choosing to come clean, and a response this airy and weightless somehow left him with a hollow, deflated feeling. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
And our considerate Miss Administrator seemed to pick up on Saito’s ‘disappointment’ as well.
She scratched her head, and after a brief moment of thought, suddenly threw her upper body backward and gaped her mouth wide open into an exaggerated, super-‘shocked’ expression.
“…Thank you, but please don’t ever pull that one again.”
Saito put a hand to his forehead.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just been humored like a small child.
“Ahem, ahem — let’s get back to the main topic.”
With two light coughs, Saito somewhat stiffly steered the conversation back on track.
The reason he had chosen this particular moment to come clean to the Administrator about his origins was, in fact, to lay the groundwork for what came next — the Integrated Industries System.
Over the past several days of living together, Miss Administrator’s affection level toward him had clearly already climbed to the point where she could unlock special CGs.
Although reason told him that golden-finger cheats were the kind of thing best kept solely to himself, the other half of his brain had thrown a fatal question right at him.
‘How exactly am I supposed to burn through massive quantities of Originium to slam down a Protocol Core via Orbital Airdrop without her noticing…’
It wasn’t that there were absolutely no workarounds — but Saito’s conscience wouldn’t let him.
At the very least, not when it came to the Administrator: he simply couldn’t bring himself to pull a stunt like that on her.
Since he couldn’t keep it hidden anyway, he might as well just come clean.
And besides — a system this focused on infrastructure-building wasn’t necessarily something he could pull off solo.
Judging by the kind of knowledge the Administrator had shown off over these past few days, telling her about it might actually unlock more of this golden-finger cheat’s true potential.
And so, after several days of serious deliberation, Saito had ultimately settled on this very choice.
“You…
aren’t you afraid I might do something that could hurt you?”
Apparently, even the developer of the Integrated Industries System herself hadn’t anticipated that Saito would actually come out and tell her everything this candidly.
The Administrator had been fully prepared to play the role of the oblivious little shrimp from start to finish.
And in answer to the girl’s challenge, Saito set aside all of the tangled thoughts in his head, until in the end only a four-character answer remained.
“I trust you.”
The Administrator’s upper body tilted backward by another small degree.
She instinctively turned her head aside, not wanting Saito to see the expression she was wearing right now — but even so, he sharply caught the faint flush of red that had surfaced across the girl’s cheeks.
“Is the heater turned up too high?”
“…”
Right — now the temperature really had cooled back down.
The Administrator opened her mouth as if to speak, but in the end she chose to steer the conversation back to the Integrated Industries System itself.
Saito let out a breath as though a weight had been lifted from him.
Saito’s complete candor had clearly spared the Administrator a great deal of trouble.
Since he had chosen to entrust this heavy weight of trust to her, then she, too, would have to repay him in equal measure.
“Let’s start with where you’re planning to deploy the Protocol Core.”
“Oh — right, sure.”
The Administrator slipped into work mode far too quickly for Saito to fully keep up.
As expected of the woman who’d forgotten even her own name yet still remembered her job title — she was practically a born, divinely-chosen workaholic.
Saito pulled over the hand-drawn map he’d made some time ago from a nearby desk.
The map was extremely crude — after all, he wasn’t exactly a professional — and the fact that one could even just barely make out the terrain and a handful of key locations on it was already an accomplishment in itself.
He drew two circles on the map, and began to walk the Administrator through each one in turn.
“After surveying for these past few days, I’ve come up with two options.”
The first was a stretch of plain near the mine they were currently in.
The advantages were that the terrain was flat and spacious, and that it was very close to their current dwelling, making round trips highly convenient.
But the downsides were obvious too.
“This mine we’re currently in is pretty small in scale, and the Originium ore beneath it has basically been mined out already.”
This would clearly have no small impact on the pace of their future development.
“The other location is the place where I found you.
The Originium ore reserves over there are abundant, and there are likely quite a few other usable resources in the surrounding area as well.”
Most of the buildings over there were also in fairly intact condition — Saito and the Administrator would only need to prepare the essential supplies and they could simply pack up their bags and move right in.
Conditions there would be, at the very least, considerably better than the ‘condemned building’ they were currently living in.
Stacked up side by side like this, there didn’t seem to be any reason not to pick the latter.
“But if we’re going to choose the latter, there’s one problem.”
Just how, exactly, had those people in the mine died?
As the gruesome state of those miners surfaced once again in his memory, Saito’s expression gradually turned grim.
Even though he and the Administrator had stayed inside that mine for some time back then, that didn’t mean the danger had been completely cleared.
“Administrator — what do you think?”
The deployment location for this Protocol Core was of the utmost importance, so they absolutely had to consider it carefully.
If they couldn’t rule out the dangers within the mine, then Saito would not, under any circumstances, consider slamming the Protocol Core down over there.
Saito’s concerns weren’t without merit.
The Administrator, pinching her chin between her fingers, sank into thought as well.
“It looks like we’re going to need to head back out to that mine for another on-site survey.”