Chapter 7. The Little Prince in The Ossuary (7)
# lntermission, Description of the Loading Screen
When the player uses the Time Acceleration function, or when a quest requires a time skip, a loading screen may appear during the time needed for a scenario computation. The loading screen provides a variety of information, such as pieces of advice from the Control AI, descriptions of several in-game functions, hints to help one understand the situation, and s for DLCs and add-ons. This information is referred to as the ‘Intermission’ in Days After Apocalypse.
# lntermission, The Journal, Time Acceleration, and the Virtual Personality
The journal is a system that helps the player keep track of in-game events. Any past events, including those that have been skipped with the Time Acceleration function, can be accessed through the journal and can be reproduced and reexperienced through the 「Sensory Synchronization」 function. The quality of the journal may differ depending on the skills the player has access to.
Time Acceleration allows the player to skip the waiting time before the beginning of certain quests, or transportation time, etc. If activated, the system will create a virtual personality to stand in for the player during the accelerated time. All the events occurred during that time will be recorded in the journal. If the result is unsatisfactory, the player has the option to rewind the accelerated time once and personally go through the corresponding event. Once rewound, the Time Acceleration function will be disabled for a certain duration.
The virtual personality responsible for recording the journal learns from the behavioral patterns of the player by studying the data collected in previous runs and throughout the game. Therefore, the virtual personality’s resemblance to the player will improve the more they play.
# Journal, Page 29, Camp Roberts
The first procurement mission ended in half success. We did manage to secure food, fuel, and winter supplies, but we suffered too many casualties. And worst of all is that, after the mission, the U.S. military lost trust in the refugees.
There were several events that led to this result. One of them was the internal conflict between the participants. From what I heard, a bloody fight broke between the participants that were deployed to the church. If it wasn’t obvious enough already, the problem occurred when everyone got together to distribute the supplies they’d found. When the one who had taken the lead in killing the mutants tried to take a bigger portion of the supplies, the others stabbed him in the back of his head and disguised the murder as the mutants’ doing. The tragedy came to light when the soldiers heard the perpetrators quarreling in front of the corpse and examined the wounds.
There were also some refugees who tried to smuggle guns into the camp after returning from the mission. The U.S. military would have to worry about an armed protest if they let the refugees carry guns, so the soldiers conducted a thorough body search before returning to the camp. And as expected, some of them had tried to hide small pistols under their garments. Once caught, they begged the soldiers with the excuse of needing something to protect themselves with. Whether their pleas were true or not, they tried to hide a gun from the soldiers, so the soldiers’ distrust grew even bigger.
And what contributed the most to the soldiers’ distrust was the collapse of the flour factory. Although nobody was to blame for the sudden appearance of the train and its derailment, the problem was that most of the participants had fled without fighting the mutants when there were people under the debris that needed rescue. Fortunately, the soldiers who got caught in this accident got away with just some injuries that required, at most, four weeks of medical treatment. However, that was still enough to generate hatred towards the refugees.
Because of all these incidents, the soldiers refused to carry out a new procurement mission, as they couldn’t trust the refugees anymore. At least, they would need a new plan, and the camp’s higher-ups seemed to have agreed on that.
Not long after, I was called to Lieutenant Capstone’s office. He said that some of the soldiers had advised him to be wary of me, but he also said that I didn’t have to worry because Master Sergeant Pearce stuck up for me.
“Don’t listen to those cowards, commander. What’s important is that this little guy stayed and fought until the end, and I insist that we can trust him.”
And then, I was offered to become a volunteer soldier. He listed all the benefits I’d have, including quarters, uniforms, equipment, and so on. Although I wouldn’t be allowed to carry a gun, it was still a tempting offer.
Right after leaving the office, one of the soldiers approached me, telling me that Corporal Elliot wanted to see me.
“The headquarters are agonizing over the staffing problem right now. There’s a possibility that they’ll pick out some relatively reliable refugees and enlist them in the army, and I think that your volunteer position is a step towards that. If that happens, you’re gonna be called Private Gyo…ul, did I get it right? Haha.”
“That’s all well and good, but do you really think that’s gonna happen? I’m not even a U.S. citizen.”
“Oh, I’m dead sure about that. You know, there’s no country other than the U.S. that takes this many immigrants for their national army. I mean, look at Guilherme, he also joined the army for the U.S. citizenship. Right now, the U.S. government is in a state of emergency, and they have issued a mobilization order. Many corporals, including myself, are being asked to take a field promotion. And if that happens, they’ll need more soldiers. Where do you think they’ll recruit soldiers from, in this isolated camp? Besides, I think you’d make a great soldier.’
“But wouldn’t my age be a problem?”
“We’re on the brink of extinction, my friend.”
It was a composed but grave answer.
After telling him that I’d consider the offer, I walked out of the aid station.
When I came back to my tent, it was in a complete mess. It looked like someone had ransacked the tent. They must have been after my ration stamps.
The people who went to San Miguel all received extra ration stamps as promised. Although they didn’t divulge how many stamps we each got, they must be thinking that I got more than the other participants.
A lot of them were jealous of me. They claimed that they should be all equally rewarded for taking the risk, regardless of contribution.
I’ve been carrying my stamps in my pocket. Still, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep at night.
For the sake of safety, it might be better to take the offer.
「AI Advice (Lvl 6 Insight): You have been offered a volunteering position for the outstanding performance on your procurement mission. If you accept, your freedom of action will be reduced as you will be forced to join any future mission. Also, the factions will more frequently attempt to recruit you. If you reject, the chance of encountering hostile random events will increase, and you may be assassinated if you do not meet the level requirement for skills such as 「Survival Instinct」.」
「Player’s Choice: Accept the offer.」
I made up my mind and went to see Lieutenant Robert Capstone straight away. It wasn’t safe to leave my safety to someone else. Lieutenant welcomed my decision and summoned Master Sergeant Pearce to have him appoint me a room.
The next morning, the battalion commander gathered the refugees and made me stand on a platform next to him. He praised my brave actions during the mission and announced my enlistment in the U.S. military.
I could see his intentions for making it into a big deal.
# Journal, Page 30, Camp Roberts
I kept waking up in the middle of the night. Subconsciously, I might have felt uncomfortable sharing quarters with strangers. According to the fellow soldiers sharing the room with me, the facilities in Camp Roberts were quite old compared to other military bases because it used to be a boot camp used for training recruits. In the newer barracks, each person only gets one—or at most 2 roommates, and each room has a separate bathroom and shower.
After becoming an unofficial volunteer soldier, all the ration stamps I’ve received up till now have become useless, since I now have access to the cafeteria, which the soldiers call DFAC or Chow Hall.
The meal they served me at the cafeteria was completely different from the rations they fed refugees in both quantity and quality. Even though this wasn’t good enough to satisfy the U.S. soldiers, I enjoyed it. Only, the dishes were a bit too salty and greasy for me, probably because of the cheese that was used in most of today’s dishes. They must’ve brought a lot of cheese from San Miguel.
I was assigned two tasks as a volunteer soldier. One was, obviously, the daily military training, and the other one was patrolling Korean refugee zones.
Originally, the U.S. military, in cooperation with the San Francisco police officers, was in charge of maintaining security. But apparently, the inability to understand the language posed a problem for them. So, I’m guessing that’s probably the reason they want me, someone who speaks the same language, to keep tabs on the Korean refugee camps. Not just that, they also asked me to find some trustworthy people to recruit as soldiers. I guess what Elliot said was true.
After receiving my uniform from the quartermaster, Lieutenant Capstone came to see me and told me to always wear the bulletproof vest. He was worried that other refugees might see me as an eyesore and try to harm me. He said that although bulletproof clothing was not as efficient as a stab vest in defending against stabs, it would still be enough to block a shiv or any sharp object available to the refugees. When I thanked him for his concern, he patted me on my shoulder. He was indeed a good person.
Of course, not everyone in the military was as good as Lieutenant Capstone. There was an officer, Captain Magath, who asked me my affiliation when he saw me wearing the uniform. When I told him that I had been commissioned as a volunteer soldier by the orders of the commander, he creased his brows.
“Ha! You think you can just fit in here by wearing that uniform, banana?”
His words were unexpectedly sharp.
Racial discrimination was supposed to be a strong taboo amongst the soldiers, but it looks like the current situation has made a lot of them overlook this kind of verbal violence. The epidemic not only kills what’s alive but also revives what’s dead. Many dead things.
What I can’t understand is what good will it do for him. It’s not like there aren’t many non-white soldiers here. If he keeps acting like that, he’ll have to worry about getting shot one day.
When I went to the refugee camp, I noticed the people whom I used to think as friends had changed their attitude towards me. I could at least understand if they tried to flatter me or act awkward around me, but I had no idea why they would avoid me all of a sudden. I went up to them and asked them why, but what I got was straight-up anger. They called me a traitor.
They disparaged me, saying that I’m cunning and despicable. That I buttered up to those dirty soldiers’ asses, trying to eat the crumbs off of their table, and that now, I was acting like one of them. They said I deserved these insults since I didn’t join the Korean faction to help the other Koreans. I stood speechless when they told me to go cry and tell the officers about this.
I feel like I’ve suddenly become an outsider who doesn’t belong anywhere.
# Past (2), The night before the deal, Go Ahyoung
Hyesung Group’s Chairman, Go Guncheol tapped on an empty glass with his fingertips. He was badly craving for a drink. Since the betrayal of the woman he loved, he had been having a hard time falling asleep without the help of alcohol.
He had been feeling tired lately, the reason being the medical staff’s orders for him to stay away from alcohol before the deal.
Suddenly, a knock came from the door, but the chairman ignored it.
“Father, it’s me.”
It was the voice of his one and only daughter. A surge of anger rushed over him. He didn’t want to see her face, so he exclaimed indifferently, “I know. Fuck off.”
“….”
His daughter, Go Ahyoung, didn’t listen to him. Seeing the door open, the chairman threw the glass that he had been fiddling with.
Seeing the flying glass coming at her, Ahyoung flinched. The glass passed right by her ear with a whizz and shattered behind her.
The sound of shattering glass filled the empty corridor. Upon hearing this, some employees showed up with cleaning tools. They began to clean up the floor without giving her a single glance. It was nothing new anyway.
The chairman said in a low voice, “Didn’t I tell you to cover that disgusting face when you’re in front of me?”
“…I’m sorry.”
Ahyoung dropped her head as she bit her lip. Her long and beautiful hair fell upon her face and covered half of it. But her hair couldn’t obscure her natural beauty.
The chairman clenched his teeth. ‘Dirty vixen,’ he thought. The woman he once loved also had an appearance that didn’t match her age.
He didn’t like the look of his daughter’s face because she reminded him too much of her mother. But he tried to keep his anger under control. Out of five kids whom the fucking whore gave birth to, she was the only one who actually carried his blood.
“What do you want?”
“I have something to ask of you.”
“What is it?”
Ahyoung hesitated for a moment, but she didn’t keep her father waiting for long.
“Could you please cancel the deal?”
“Why?”
“…”
“For god’s sake, why!” The chairman fumed at his daughter.
“You ungrateful cunt! Your father is trying to start a new life with a new body, and you dare try to stop that? Oh, I get it. It’s because you can take over my business only when I’m lying in my coffin! That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“No! That’s not what I’m saying!”
“Then speak with your goddamn mouth!”
“I’m saying, you don’t have to take away someone else’s body! There are other choices, like producing a clone and use that as your body! Why do you have to take another person’s body and ruin their life, not to mention breaking the law?”
The chairman stared at his daughter for a moment, then continued with a mocking voice.
“Ha! I was a fool to think I could trust you with the management… Why? Did you, all of a sudden, feel pity for that little boy?”
“…”
Ahyoung couldn’t deny it. She did feel a lot of sympathy.
It was her father who had ordered her to monitor the product management process. She had to watch the boy’s every single movement. But in the process, Ahyoung couldn’t help but start feeling sorry for the boy. He was willing to sacrifice himself so that his family could live a comfortable life.
The chairman shouted at his daughter.
“And what did you say? Use a clone? That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? Cloning is not a well-tested technology. That body has to get pickled in a growth accelerator for a whole year until it becomes appropriate for transplant. And you don’t even know what kind of problem might arise in the future”
“But what you’re doing is against the law. It’s wrong, father!”
“You think I’m wrong? What’s wrong is the law! It’s contaminated with those communists’ ideas! South Korea is a free nation. Whatever one does should be entirely up to themselves. The boy agreed to this deal, and so did his parents. We’re not even causing any harm to anyone, what’s all the fuss about? Besides, you think that that lazy family will thank us for canceling the deal? Ha, wake up!”
The chairman laughed at his daughter and caught his breath before speaking again.
“I’m not a philanthropist. If the deal is broken, I’m going to get back what they took from me by any means possible.”
Ahyoung dropped her head even lower. Canceling the deal would put the family in a difficult situation. The boy’s parents, whose love for their children was shallow, just like her father’s, had already spent much of the money they received as a down payment, purchasing useless stuff like two pricey foreign cars. Even the houses they currently reside in had been given to them in accordance with the contract.
That was why she identified with the boy. She wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to sacrifice himself for his parents. And that his life should be his own. But in the end, she couldn’t do anything for him.
“Let me tell you something because I don’t want my daughter to go anywhere jabbering about nonsense and make me look like a fool.” The chairman then continued, “This was decades ago. Some prostitutes and people from women’s organizations protested to legalize prostitution. Liberalism, that’s what they shouted. They claimed that prostitution had to be protected by the law, for it too should be considered as exercising their right of self-determination. That’s right and I agree. They weren’t wrong, it’s not like having sex with someone would trouble others. They also had some practical reasons for it. One of them was a livelihood problem. For those women who had to rely on prostitution to make a living due to their lack of ability, they would end up in the gutter if they couldn’t sell their bodies.”
The chairman showed barely any sign of uneasiness when talking about prostitution in front of his daughter. She knew it was to insult her because his hatred towards her had often been expressed in this kind of way. So Ahyoung only listened to her father without saying anything.
“On the other hand, the women’s organizations of this country of the same era vehemently opposed the legislation of prostitution because they believed it violated women’s rights and impaired their dignity. Do not sexually objectify women, was what they said. Well, okay, I admit it was for a good cause. But the question is; what about their jobs? Did they offer any alternatives to prostitutes who would lose their jobs by prohibiting prostitution? Well, they did get to take an occupational training course, but as always, it was only a rough-and-ready measure. But that was enough for women’s groups. They didn’t care about the results. Why? Because the reason why they stepped up for this matter was not for the prostitutes, but themselves all along! Because they couldn’t stand the fact that there are women who were working as sex workers living in the same country! They didn’t care if they ended up starving to death!”
Ahyoung understood what her father was trying to say. She could even guess what he would say next. And she could refute it too.
Prostitutes losing their job after the prohibition was not an obvious but an inevitable result. And if it was inevitable, then what would have been right was to plan for long-term improvement, not to neglect them. Her father himself said it was for a good cause.
However, Ahyoung didn’t try to refute her father. Her father was the kind of man that thought of his life as the one and only correct path in life. Anything she said now, whether it was true or not, would only make him even more furious.
And sure enough, the chairman’s next remark was just as what she had expected.
“And this is what those empty-headed bitches probably had in their mind. ‘Dear prostitutes, we don’t care what you do for a living, but selling sex hurts our pride, so could you please stop? Oh, you have nothing you can do? I’m sorry but that’s none of our business. You’ll die if you can’t do this job? Oh please do! I don’t even understand why you’d want to live after debasing all women’s dignity’.”
The chairman sprang up from his seat and made an unsightly imitation of a female voice. It was amazing considering that he was in his seventies. Because of this personality, even the senior members of the group were reluctant to speak with the chairman. If they ruffled his feathers even just a little bit, he would often become completely vicious.
“Only a fool makes such a demand without offering any realistic alternative. Did you feel sorry for that boy? But If you cancel this deal, if you satiate what petty conscience you have, will he be thankful to you? Will he console himself with the fact that he at least saved his body when he will then have to live from hand to mouth? Is that what you think? Haha!”
“…Please stop.”
“Stop? Don’t you remember that it was you who started all this?” The chairman shouted as he slammed his hands on the table.
“My youth! Half of my life that bitch stole from me! Now, I am just a step away from getting it back, but her daughter is here to take that away from me once again! Oh, what am I going to do!”
“I’m sorry, father. So please, stop.”
And that was how their conversation ended. It had always been like that and it wouldn’t change until the day he dies. All parents who raise their children without love deserve to be cursed.
Ahyoung tried to erase it from her mind. It was the last effort she could make to avoid hurting herself.
“Hmph.”
The chairman plumped down in his seat and rested his chin on his hand.
“Pathetic. I don’t know who you took after to grow up to be this pathetic. I’m starting to doubt if you are really my daughter.”
“…”
“Get out. We’ll talk about your performance after I see the final product.”
“…Have a good night.”
“I will, all thanks to you.”
The chairman shooed her away as if he was fanning a fly away. Feeling her mind filled with a sense of defeat, self-depreciation, and humiliation, Ahyoung left her father’s room. She felt so exhausted when seeing the corridor. It was long, dark, and empty. The mansion was too huge for just the two of them to live in.
Ahyoung walked through the corridor with faltering steps.