<Nishino: I thought someone said they didn’t need to use the library to pass the exams.>
Like before, straight to the business.
Ken checked his mini-map. A green dot, not far away from him.
<Ken: Hey, good evening there. If you are nearby, why not just speak to me directly.>
<Nishino: Who wants to speak to you F2F... I heard you had lunch with Monkey King Katsu.> Admittedly, only Carla knew about the special moniker Ken had given the rich heir.
<Ken: How do you even know about that, it was just hours ago. Do you have an information circle around the campus or something? Let me in.>
<Nishino: So it was true. What, are you two getting chummy now, yaks.>
<Ken: Hey, just biz, ok. We are not chooms and please, I’m straight as your nose. If you are not going to say hello, don’t bother me.> With that, Ken cut the call.
Funny, how he always wanted good attention from his surroundings, now he was pushing them away. Admittedly, it was hard to judge if Carla’s attention was a good one.
Carla instinctively opened the virtual mirror. Indeed, her nose was quite straight, she didn’t even tweak her face, no, what was she getting distracted for. She holo-called once again.
<Nishino: So, what brings you here again?>
<Ken: I don’t see any reason why I should tell you. No reason not to not tell you either. Let’s see, how about calling me Senpai again. I might not mind telling you about it.>
<Nishino: Senpai, please tell me.>
<Ken: ...yeah, why am I not surprised.> She would do anything when she wanted to get inside your head.
<Ken: Sigh, good girl. Keep that attitude on. Learning how to make a game.>
<Nishino: Game? Is that a hobby? Didn’t know you could have one.>
<Ken: Something like that. I’m trying to turn a book into a game.>
<Nishino: Can’t you remember most of the things super fast? That’s why after choosing management you stopped frequenting to library.>
<Ken: Yeah, trying to learn something I don’t like. So thought turning it into an addictive game should help.>
<Nishino: Advanced Mathematics?>
<Ken: Yeah.> Not quite. He wasn’t weak at math, not anymore if he remembered it right. Just didn’t like it that much.
<Nishino: Why not use the daemon of the Game Club? I heard they have several that can make a book into a game, the quality is not guaranteed though.>
Daemons, think of them as automated programs. Feed them the right data and they’ll do the boring grunt work for you.
<Ken: Wait. We had a Game Club? And they even had such a daemon?> Ken couldn’t imagine the existence of such a lousy club in a corpo academy.
<Nishino: It’s kind of obscure, but popular. They are not good enough to join the NC competition so they don’t receive any funds either. It’s normal for students to not know about it, especially you.>
‘What do you mean, especially me.’ Ken grumbled. What did she take him for?
<Ken: Ok, thank you. Next time try to talk F2F.> It almost made him feel like they were back to how things were.
<Nishino: Senpai... I heard what happened to your mother. I’m sorry we were not there for you.>
A sigh uncontrollably left him. He almost wanted to babyrage Carla for reminding him about Gloria.
<Ken: It’s alright, I don’t mind. In the first place, it’s not like I’m connected with you guys anymore.>
Carla Nishino was silent for a moment.
<Nishino: Why don’t you come back? Loid didn’t really mean that, and he had been long gone. Padre would be happy to see you too.>
<Ken: Forget it, see ya around the campus.>
The interaction with the Game Club was very smooth. As everyone participated and contributed because of their pure interest in gaming, Ken was welcomed very warmly. A fourth year even showed him how to use the daemons.
“Chen-senpai, can this daemon here make training programs from Arasaka into a game?” Ken pointed at a specific daemon on the screen and asked.
“Ah, that one. It’s been long expired and didn’t work as intended in the first place. Training programs are secured with Arasaka Identification ICE, the senior who made it didn’t know and lost a course worth 20K.”
ICE, basically meant Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics. They are security softwares, a shield, and come in different varieties.
“Uaa, even though we are buying the program they don’t allow us to use it on the computers or edit it?”
“He did try to contact the service center but it was of no use.”
“Thank you, by the way. I will visit again soon.” They did have a few interesting looking games that might give him more ideas.
/ / /
Ken once again sneaked inside the apartment.
By tonight, the lease was dead. If anyone caught him coming in or out after that, the landlord could have NCPD slap him with a trespassing charge.
He gathered everything valuable inside the house, which was just his clothings, Gloria’s EMT Jacket and Arasaka Securebook.
He gave the apartment one over, as if savoring the memories he had here.
“I’m sorry, mom, for running away. For not being strong enough to live here...” even though it was not because of the memories he had with her, he felt he should apologize for not caring about this place.
It was because of himself. Not knowing exactly when he stopped being David, it always haunted him if he remained inside this apartment.
Just then.
The door slid open and Ken noticed the fat stomach of the manager.
‘What? The contract’s not off yet!’ Despite that thought, he quickly hid inside the nearest thing, the wardrobe.
“Haha, respected guest, this is the room you requested to look at.” The manager explained with an eager expression. Despite the lack of lights–due to Ken already severing his utilities account–the manager’s expression didn’t dim.
“So, this is the room Gloria Martinez lived in. Do you know how she died?” A deep voice spoke.
“Yes, yes. According to the death certificate, she had a car accident and died before the meatwagons could fix her.”
“Dorio, take a look and see if you can find anything.”
“Gloria’s not one to leave important things alone. *sigh* Alright, I’ll take a look.”
Ken’s heart hammered against his chest. If they search through the house, they would definitely go through the wardrobe. With a backpack and duffle bag, it was impossible for him to hide.
The yellow dot swept through every room one by one. Finally, it stood before the wardrobe. Dorio pulled on the door. It opened silently as Ken had left a crack to avoid any noise.
Dorio looked through the wardrobe filled with female clothes, raised her hand and shook the clothes, feeling nothing she gave up, “Maine, nothing here. All the utilities are cut off, either they didn’t pay or cut off the line. The house’s mostly clean aside from Gloria’s clothes, the boy probably moved for a cheaper option, do you want to go after him?”
“If needed ...but let’s try that later. Have Kiwi look at the accident and see if we can find anything from there.”
“Sounds like a plan, but isn’t it better to get in touch with the kid sooner?”
“It’s the last–” The door closed with a thud, but Ken dared not relax. He listened with a bated breath and remained there, unmoving.
Ken let the silent, slow sigh of relief leave him.
It was only after almost an hour passed that Ken slowly came out of the wardrobe. His eyes glanced at the mini-map every few seconds. Now, light without any load to carry, Ken checked for any suspicious people before jumping out of the vent.
He forgo the elevator and took the stairs all the way down. It helped that he had parkour experience with the other streetkids. The shortcuts came handy, but the lack of exercise for two years had put on a strain on his stamina.
Ken relaxed his nerves and headed for NCART. This was the closest he had come to get done for.
Just before the woman named Dorio opened the door, a notification popped up in front of Ken.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
You have leveled up!
You have leveled up for the first time.
You have integrated with the Local Framework!
Skill acquisition from Local Framework becomes possible.
Receiving missions becomes possible.
Backpack becomes available.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
GAMING SUPREMACY
DOMINANCE ASSERTED
SYSTEM INVENTORY BECOMES ACCESSIBLE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
You have gained the skill: Presence Concealment Lv. 1
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
At that time, Ken didn’t, or couldn’t care about anything else, he literally shouted in his mind. ‘Backpack or inventory, whatever, just put these two bags in!’ and as soon as he felt the loads lighten from his shoulder, he slid in the small compartment at the corner to hide guns.
As for how to activate the skill, he had no idea so he just kept muttering ‘presence concealment, presence concealment,’ in his mind.
Even thinking of that moment gave him another cold sweat.
‘The people who checked the house definitely sounded like they knew about mom and me. Most likely an edgerunner team with more than 2 or 3 members. If they came to search the house, were they searching the Sandy? Did mom already find a buyer?’
Based on the timeline, Ken could only deduce they wanted the Sandevistan. The possibility was slim but not impossible if Gloria truly sold cyberwares from dead gonks. She would have the contacts and most likely want to rid herself of the hot piece of cake that everybody wanted to get their hands on as soon as possible.
And they definitely didn’t seem like Gloria’s friend either. They did talk about going after him!
Originally, he had planned to move to another Megabuilding L7 two blocks away from the current apartment. It had cubicles the size of Ken’s previous room. It came with a bed, bath and storage. No kitchen, TV, or anything else.
But looking at the situation he was not sure if even living in the neighborhood was a good idea anymore.
Ken was still staring at the advertisements flashing past the NCART window when his holo vibrated.
He only connected the audio.
<Gin: Up for another round today?>
<D: If it pays? Always.>
<Gin: Two gigs.>
<D: You’re already making me feel richer.>
<Gin: That’s a good enthusiasm. Continue that, and you can graduate from grunt work soon. For today, one delivery. One pickup. Both tonight. Different districts.>
<D: Anything to be careful about?>
<Gin: Just as usual. None worth mentioning.>
D frowned.
<Gin: Since you’re still breathing after yesterday, I’ll assume you’re competent enough to carry two jobs.>
<D: Competent? Almost gotten myself fried.> Yes, he was still pissed about Ginger. He would very much like to understand the connection between Ginger Gin.
<Gin: Aren’t you looking chill and alive. You went through two districts and five gang territories, I haven’t heard of any disturbances from my man. That’s competency by my standards.>
D couldn’t argue with that. A complete newbie on this line of work, he didn’t raise an alarm. Mini-map was looking like a cheat in this part of the job now.
<Gin: Scared?>
<D: Send them.>
Two locations appeared on his holo.
<First Gig: Rancho Coronado → Little China
Second Gig: Northside Residence → To be confirmed.>
Ken grimaced. He had guessed right when he thought Gin operated around Watson. That meant you had to always be on the lookout for Melstorm and Tyger Claws. The safety there was only better than Pacifica, but that did not mean he could afford to relax his guard even for a moment.
Ken changed to another train, he had to take the other way for Rancho Coronado.
“Guess I’m homeless for a night.”
Somehow... saying it out loud reminded him of Gloria.
{Alternative Titles: I Level Up in the Closet!; The Last Night at H4; Presence Concealment; Goodbye, Sweet Home; Apartment Raid; The First Level Up!; First Skill;}