After he fainted and not knowing what had just happened to his actual body, Hiro finally regained his senses bit by bit.
His whole body ached, especially in his stomach. He groaned as he tried to move his hands to press on the abdominal area that hurt like hell. It felt like he had been hit very hard by a metal board or something.
Hiro managed to open both his eyes, but his gaze couldn’t fully focus. It was still blurry, and from what his eyes caught, he was in a warehouse-like room with minimal lighting.
He coughed, so much dust was inhaled through his respiratory tract.
“He has come to his senses.”
Hiro heard the voice of a man he didn’t recognize. He turned his neck to look for the source of the voice and found a man walking towards him.
The man hid his face in a black mask.
“Uhuk… Who are you?” Hiro’s throat felt parched as he tried to speak to the man.
Hence, he didn’t get the answer he wanted.
Instead, the man pulled his hair roughly until he could see the dusty ceiling. Hiro felt her neck was twisted, and suddenly the man turned on a flashlight and the light went straight to Hiro’s eyeballs. The man was checking on his condition.
Hiro grimaced. His eyes felt like they were burning by the light.
Cough! Cough!
The man released his hand from Hiro’s head and let him cough with his body still tied on a wooden chair. Hiro couldn’t move an inch.
“What do you want from me?” he asked with a hoarse voice.
Hiro couldn’t hold the urge to vomit and spit out what was in his stomach which only contained digested liquid.
Blaargh!
“Disgusting.”
Hiro’s body felt weaker after vomiting like that. He leaned his head in a position facing the ceiling of the strange room while opening his mouth wide.
“What should we do next?”
“Will he be okay if we left him like that?”
“Boss will contact us soon. Looks like there are other things to take care of. For now, we just have to wait.”
Hiro heard their conversation, and he figured out that those men were just underlings. From the difference in the voices he heard, there were more or less three unknown men around him. They were planning something that Hiro didn’t know what it was.
“Let me go. You caught the wrong person.” Hiro tried to defend himself with a weak voice.
“What if he dies before the boss contacts us?” a man commented in an anxious voice, totally ignoring him.
He seemed to be the most amateur of the two.
“He’ll be fine.”
Even though he was very curious about what had happened to him, Hiro didn’t have the energy to ask more. Even just straightening his neck was hard enough.
He decided to stay still and not move an inch to save as well as gather back his energy.
‘Just what the hell is going on right now?’
The room was eerily silent. No one else spoke.
What Hiro could hear was the sound of dripping water that seemed to be coming from a leaking pipe.
Time passed until a ringing sound echoed throughout the room, making Hiro who almost fell asleep, startled.
After waiting in silence for a long time. Finally, the boss they mentioned earlier contacted them.
Hiro heard their conversation. Even so, he did not recognize the voice of the man whom the three of them referred to as boss.
“Let me talk to him.”
Upon hearing that, the three unknown men came closer to Hiro. One of them roughly positioned Hiro’s head to face a transparent screen that appeared above the android bracelet belonging to the man who got a call from his boss.
“Hello, Young Yamaguchi.”
A man was seen sitting in an office that had a lot of monitors in the room. The man raised his legs on the table while leaning against the back of a luxurious office chair.
Hiro couldn’t see his face because he was wearing a Vendetta mask. A mask that had become symbolic for cybercrime activists.
“Who are you?” Hiro knitted his brows together.
“I didn’t receive any questions. I don’t have much time. I am an old friend of your brother.”
Hiro swallowed his saliva with some difficulty. His nerve system was still not functioning normally.
“You may be wondering why I caught you. So, let me tell you something. All of this was his plan.”
“Yuujin’s death wish.”
Hiro could feel the hairs all over his body stiffen at the last sentence spoken by the unknown man.
However, after meeting his brother in the game some time ago, Hiro’s assumptions about his brother’s death grew stronger. He was 99% sure that his brother wasn’t really dead and only faked his death so far. Even so, he still didn’t know what his brother’s plan was. He didn’t know for now, but he had been determined to find out about it.
“He is still alive!” Hiro hissed in annoyance. His head was throbbing violently as he did that.
“Ha ha ha ha.”
The masked man laughed hard. The sound of his laughter managed to make Hiro feel nauseous and wanted to vomit again.
“Did you just say that he’s still alive? You think the FBI has lied to the world?”
“What a pity!”
“What if you come here and see your brother’s corpse with your own eyes?”
Hiro’s eyes widened at the offer made by the unknown man.
What did it mean?
Was he the one who had access to see Yuujin’s corpse?
A Flood of doubt hit him again. Hearing an offer that sounded like a challenge to his ears made him wonder again about Yuujin’s true status.
Was he really dead?
It is impossible, right? How could the dead communicate through an online game like he had just done with his brother a while ago?
Using his brain to think too hard gave him unbearable pain. Hiro grimaced in pain. He knitted his brows several times, hoping it could reduce the intense throbbing inside his head.
“So what do you say? I have prepared a special trip for you.”
“Argghhh.”
Hiro couldn’t answer. The pain in his head was getting worse. He wanted to scream, but his mouth seemed to feel sore and his tongue wouldn’t move according to his orders.
“Just kidding. I don’t need your agreement.”
“Enjoy your trip to America!”
Beep!
The call was suddenly cut off and the transparent screen disappeared from Hiro’s sight.
Before Hiro said anything, a very hard fist hit his face.
And that was the last scene Hiro could remember before everything turned dark again.
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