Side Story 1: Part 2

Ig’s Spring Break

Part 2

“Ig! It’s lunch time!”

Ig woke up to a delicious smell and Sago’s voice. Out on the floor of Amanoiwato, Sago was making fruit juice with a blender while eating pasta. When finished, Sago served the undiluted pineapple, strawberry, and banana smoothie base to Ig in a small dish. Ig licked it up greedily. Sago took the left-overs for himself and added milk and yogurt to it. He drank it down in one gulp. While Ig was licking the dish clean, her ears picked up the sound of someone coming down the stairs that led to Amanoiwato. Igu raises her face, twitches her ears, jumps over to Sago’s shoulder, and alerts him.

As she expected, the person visiting Amanoiwato and giving off an intense “bad guy” smell turned out to be none other than Kaburagi Shiori. She’s holding a small box that has a store name and logo on it. Her attire today is a high-waisted black skirt with a corset in it and a white blouse. It’s a neat and clean appearance. In addition, Kaburagi’s attire mentally killed more than a dozen virgins in the short walk to Amanoiwato from where she parked her car. And even Sago, upon seeing Kaburagi in clothes that were so different from her usual attire, suffered a fatal injury. Ig uses healing on Sago to calm his distressed heart, then bared her teeth at Kaburagi, who seemed to be the culprit of this mysterious attack.

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“Thank you for your hard work. Today, I brought a cake.”

“Thanks. The clothes you’re wearing today look great on you; simple outfits really suit you. Would you like some juice?”

“Yes please. Is that lassi1?”
“Lassi? I don’t know if that’s what ‘high-class’ people call it, but it’s just mixed fruit that’s been combined with milk and yogurt.”

“That’s lassi, you know. A fruit-based one.”

Kaburagi, who ended up sitting right next to Sago, opened the box together with him and then started pecking at the cake. Ig didn’t like it and became upset. This “bad guy” was tricking everyone in the group and acting like she owned the place! Ig wanted to get rid of her, but it would be difficult, since Sago, who was the leader, seemed to like her. And since Sago liked her, it meant that Ig couldn’t do anything too awful to her. Therefore, Ig is harassing her like a mother-in-law that bullies her daughter-in-law. She grabbed a fork that was in the sink a twirled Kaburagi-san’s long wavy hair around it like it was spaghetti. It was her cheeky way of messing up Kaburagi-san’s carefully coiffed hair. Ig laughed at the ridiculous sight of Kaburagi-san’s hair being entangled by the fork.

“ChiChiChiChiChi – JiJiJiJiJiJi!?”

In the next moment, Ig was hanging by her tail from the end of the string hanging from the ceiling ventilation fan. The screaming Ig is rescued by Sago, who sighs and lightly scolds her. Ig is depressed and in low spirits; she profoundly reflects on her actions and comes to the conclusion that next time, she would be more skillful in her harassment.

The two people finish their short break, then have a short business meeting while Ig licks and heals her tail.

“It’s great that we can prepare such a large quantity of samples using Kaneyama Tech. Also, it seems they have begun utilizing Sago-san’s high-voltage black box2.”

“Oh, really? No wonder I felt that the utilization rate had increased lately. But, you know, it really is just a black box.”

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The black box installed at Kaneyama Tech’s lab has a touchscreen on it; when they input the pressure and time, it will contact Sago’s smartphone. When Sago receives it, he uses his psychokinesis to locate the black box and create a super high voltage that cannot possibly be replicated by modern science. This “technology” is simply referred to as the black box. At first, the researchers at Kaneyama Tech were eager to figure out how the box Kaburagi had given to them worked. But no matter how much they studied the touchscreen and attached transmitters, they could only determine that it was an iron box.

This made them a little bit afraid of it, so they stopped meddling with it and decided to view it simply as a convenient tool they could put to good use. Fox example, it allowed them to make an artificial diamond of unprecedented size. Kaburagi and Sago, who have little knowledge of the subject, didn’t realize that it wasn’t as simple as compressing graphite. It could be said that this result was a joint effort made possible by Kaneyama Tech knowledge and engineering.

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“Is it not time-consuming? What about the wind power generation facilities? You know, if it’s too much, I can adjust the schedule for you.”

“Ah, you’re right. Turning the blades at the wind power facilities is quite boring. If Kaneyama Tech is doing well, we should consider scaling back on the wind power facilities. But if I quit suddenly it’ll cause trouble, so I should slowly reduce the amount of work I do… actually, I changed my mind. I like the employees over there; they’re rather interesting. They’ve started to build a turbine shrine.”

“That is…”

“Shrines are nice, you know? By the way, I think we’re fine in terms of counterintelligence. It’s already been a week, and there’s no sign of anything about us being broadcasted on the news. For some reason, they don’t seem to be going to any great lengths to look into it.”

“It’s good to have the basic news channels thoroughly covered though. We were recorded by surveillance cameras. There were eye-witnesses. They have no real evidence, but that doesn’t mean they won’t talk about it or post something online. We should’ve tried erasing all traces of us from the warehouse district with a heavy rain. It seems that because there was no human or material damage or criminal activity, only the media is moving; it looks like recently, they’ve been focusing their investigation on the Tokyo suburbs. There are even plans to have an oceanographic survey done by an academic society. But at any rate, the amount of people moved by human-wave tactics is limited. Gathering information via the net is also useless, because people will spread rumors for the purpose of stock price manipulation. You said you’ve been checking twice a day every day? Then there’s no need to worry about it.”

“I know that in my head, but I still think it’s unnecessary. Whatever. How about using this as an opportunity to get into government media policing?”

“I’m making preparations for that. Please leave it to me. However, I need to be cautious, since I’m doing it by myself… ah, that doesn’t mean that you’re useless, ok? It’s just a matter of suitability.”

“I know. I don’t mind it; I made you my assistant, so I entrust those sorts of things to you.”

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After their conversation finishes, Sago ducks under the counter and takes two boxes wrapped with ribbons from the shelf. He then adapts a sour expression and begins to polish a glass. Kaburagi starts reading a short Western novel. After a while, Takahashi Shouta, who’s wearing a red t-shirt and charcoal shorts that have a silver accessory hanging from them, and Hasumi Touka, who’s outfit includes a cardigan and t-shirt in warm colors and a pair of jeans, make their entrance.

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