Chapter 70: Phase 56 - If I Had A Magic Pocket
The air in the room didn’t just feel heavy; it felt data-logged. Every ragged breath I took seemed to be monitored by the system, and every micro-expression on my face was being cataloged by the person standing three feet away.
I pressed my right thumb against the primary dial on the side of the watch casing, holding it down in a desperate attempt to force a hard reset.
Come on, you piece of junk. Don’t redline on me now.
The metal dial was hot enough to sting, the heat blooming against my skin like a localized fever, but I kept the pressure steady. I couldn’t afford to let go. If this watch fried, I wasn’t just losing a clock; I was losing my HUD, my telemetry, and my only tether to the logic of this world.
The screen froze for a split second, the cascading hexadecimal code locking into a static wall of white text, before the jittering intensified. A low, whining sound, pitched almost too high for human hearing, began to emit from the tiny speaker grate. It felt like a needle drilling into my ear canal.
"Wait, a laptop?"
Her voice—Velvet’s voice, or rather, the Kyouya who had mastered the art of the Starlet mask—broke my concentration. I heard the sound of footsteps. They were slow and hesitant at first, the rhythmic tap of boots on the floor, then they quickened as curiosity overtook her caution.
Great. Just what I need. An interrogation while I’m holding a potential logic bomb.
"What is it? A magic pocket?"
She stopped just a few feet away. I didn’t need to look up to see her; the Share-Lock did the work for me. I could feel her presence looming over me like a shadow with a scalpel. Through the link, a mixture of profound confusion and rising suspicion broadcasted clearly into my mind, a cold frequency that made the hair on my arms stand up. Her shadow fell across the laptop resting on my knees, darkening the matte casing.
Don’t look up. If you look up, the mask slips.
I kept my eyes fixed on the malfunctioning watch, my thumb white-knuckled against the reset dial, waiting for the screen to finally go black. The watch whined louder, the vibration traveling up my forearm, settling deep into the marrow of my wrist.
I got to be honest, I was as confused as you were.
The appearance of the laptop wasn’t some grand, premeditated strategy. I hadn’t smuggled it in. I hadn’t bypassed a firewall to get it. When I had reached into the bag, I was just looking for a damn canteen. Finding a high-spec, military-grade rig in a spatial void was like finding a cheat code written on the back of a death warrant.
But I couldn’t tell her that.
If she knows I’m just as blind as she is, we’re both dead. She needs a ’Detective.’ She needs the guy who has the keys to the kingdom, even if I’m just picking the locks in the dark.
"You’re awfully quiet, Mayo-san," she purred, her voice dipping into that melodic, teasing register that always felt like a trap. "Is the big, bad hacker actually stumped by his own toy?"
"I’m busy, bastard," I gritted out, my teeth clenched. "Internalizing the system’s garbage code takes focus. Something you wouldn’t understand with your ’starlet’ processing power."
"Hmph. How rude. And here I was, thinking we were having a moment."
I maintained my silence after that. I let the weight of the laptop on my knees speak for itself. It was a tangible asset—a power move in a place where we were meant to be powerless.
The screen of the watch finally stuttered. The bright, chaotic static collapsed inward, shrinking into a single, blinding pinpoint of light before blinking out completely. The high-pitched whine ceased instantly, leaving a ringing silence in its wake. The frantic jittering stopped, leaving my wrist feeling numb and tingling from the residual vibration.
The watch was dead. Hopefully, it was just a cold boot.
I let out a slow, shaky breath, my thumb finally slipping off the heated dial. The skin there was angry and red, but I ignored it. I finally lifted my head to look at her.
She was staring down at the laptop, her eyes narrowed into thin, dangerous slits. The dim light from the window caught the sharp angle of her jaw and the deep, searching intensity in her expression. She wasn’t just surprised; she was calculating.
In a system designed to keep us at a constant deficit, this laptop was a glitch in the economy. An anomaly.
She shifted her gaze from the matte lid of the machine to my face. The ambient connection between us flared—no, it spiked. A wave of cold, hard scrutiny pushed into the back of my mind, sharp and clinical. The teasing Starlet was gone. The Detective was back.
"How did you get this... privilege, Midnight?"
The word privilege hung in the air like a noose.
She’s profiling me. She thinks I’m an outlier. Or worse, an asset of the Admin.
"It’s not a privilege," I said, my voice cold, matching her frequency. "It’s an exploit. There’s a difference."
"Is there?" She stepped closer, her shadow completely enveloping me. "Because in my line of work, people don’t just ’find’ master keys. They’re given them. So tell me, Mayo-san... what did you have to trade for a magic pocket?"
I rested my hands on the cool metal of the laptop, feeling the smooth, unyielding texture. The watch on my wrist remained dark—a silent, heavy band of dead weight. I looked back into her eyes, feeling the precise, uncomfortable pressure of our shared link bridging the gap between us.
I don’t have an answer. I don’t have anything but a black box and a sinking feeling that the Admin isn’t just watching us—they’re playing favorites.
"I didn’t trade anything," I whispered, though I knew the system could hear the lie even if I couldn’t. "But if you want to survive Challenge No. 2, you’d better hope this ’privilege’ actually boots up."
I didn’t have an answer for her. I didn’t even have one for myself. All I had was a broken watch, a heavy machine, and a growing, terrifying suspicion that the rules of our little hell had just been rewritten in a language I couldn’t yet translate.
