Page 29 of Pandion

A soundless wall clock seemed as if stuck. The tendrils inside Harumine’s head felt like a parasite slowly feeding on him. He knew it sucked its energy from him. It made him just a little more hungry and a little more tired than the average person unless he took good care of himself. It was what it had done for almost seven years now. But only now did it feel abnormal.

The door opened, and a woman walked in.

“Pardon me, Harumine-san. The head supervisor is unavailable today. My name is Kaneda Yuki.” She offered himher hand to shake but seemed too preoccupied to actually shake it properly. “I need you to fill these forms for me.”

Were they really going to torture him to death by making him fill out forms?

“There’s a plugin. They mentioned a plugin,” Harumine tried to steer her to the topic.

“Yes. We had a data gathering plugin installed on your port as part of—” She pursed her lips and thrust a tablet into his hands. “Please sign here first.”

Harumine scrambled the seal out of his pocket again and hurried to sign what seemed like a non disclosure agreement. Did they even need that when they already held Harumine’s future in their hands? But she seemed satisfied.

“We had that plugin installed as part of our investigation into Kagesawa Tsuyoshi. We cannot reveal the details to you at this time, but rest assured you are at no risk—health, career or otherwise—during this investigation.”

Not at risk?! That plugin must have been what had caused all the issues with the link! The trash codes. The insane feedback loop. If that thing hadn’t amplified the feedback like crazy, maybe he and Kagesawa wouldn’t have done half the things they’d done—!

“What is it for? What did he do?” The least they could do was explain what all of this had been for.

“We cannot disclose that information to you at this time. We have removed the plugin and apologise for any inconvenience. We will contact you for a reinstall—”

The hell you will! Harumine shot up to stand but held his tongue. She looked at him, surprised. Technically the EA could do whatever the hell they wanted unless he wanted to switch careers entirely. “When?” he asked.

“Because this plugin failed, we will have to troubleshoot the issue, and some modifications will have to be made. That couldtake a while. But don’t worry. We will give you full compensation for your troubles as well as amend your record once this is done.” When Harumine said nothing, the woman lifted her brow and added, “Really, there is no hurry. You can resume your life as normal for the time being. He is not classed as a safety risk to you.”

The hell he isn’t. Harumine clenched his teeth. Yeah, if this was about Kagesawa’s hobby, Harumine wasn’t particularly concerned, but what about the emotional damage?

“You must understand that due to the nature of the link, we could not risk informing you in advance. Our aim was to conduct this investigation wholly without having to concern you with it,” she said as if it were only natural they needed no consent or prior notice and as if Harumine couldn’t have kept something from Kagesawa if required. He was an SEU graduate for heaven’s sake. He wasn’t sure which was worse: the violation of his basic human rights or the lack of trust in his abilities.

But more importantly:

“Did you manage to extract something before the plugin failed?” If that thing had somehow recorded a recognisable signature of the things he and Kagesawa had been up to lately…

The woman paused to flick through the forms on the desk. Once done, she handed him the stack and a pen. A stack of paper! Not a tablet or a link. An actual stack of paper forms and a ballpoint pen! Not only was she going to drown him in this paperwork, she’d held off answering the question. This whole review was bullshit! It took Harumine all his self-restraint not to chew her head off.

If they found out about his recent indecent conduct, how would that affect his career? Would it be something they marked on his record? That he’d sexually harassed his drunken colleague—?

“No,” she said finally. “Unfortunately, the plugin failed before it could send anything to us, and we just confirmed that the data saved on it was corrupt. But at least it seems your link is more stable than any of the previous ones. We should be able to wrap this up fairly quickly with a new plugin.”

Please take all the time you need. In fact, please take an indefinite amount of time. Harumine didn’t want any more experimental plugins in his head, complicating things further. The first one had already done enough damage.

What the hell was he supposed to do now anyway? What was he going to tell Kagesawa? Nothing? He’d said they were in this together, but how much of all that was due to some random malfunctioning plugin messing with his head?

And after this crap circus of an investigation, how in the world was he supposed to trust EA ever again?

When he was finally done filling out the mountain of forms sometime after nine o’clock, Harumine rushed out of the EA’s offices. They’d removed the block in his port and instructed him to dampen while the local anaesthetic wore off and he got readjusted to the connection, so he was still dampening as he walked home. It gave him an opportunity to sort his thoughts, and he dragged his feet to ensure he had ample time.

In the end, the reviewer had been almost excessively apologetic about any inconveniences they had caused, but Harumine’s response to her attempts of smoothing it over was nothing more than a tepid ‘meh’.

Whatever the reason for this investigation, the days being linked to Kagesawa were now finite. At the end of this, Harumine would be free and able to restart his career. That should have made him overjoyed, but he’d already invested so much into this, nor was he too happy about how the EA hadhandled everything… At least, he assumed that was why he was feeling so conflicted.

Preoccupied by his worries, it took Harumine a fair while to notice something wasn’t right when he got back to the apartment. He stopped dampening, but there was no sign of Kagesawa anywhere nearby. The link stayed silent.

Was there still something wrong with the connection? The tendrils seemed to be functioning normally, but maybe he hadn’t readjusted properly yet.

“Kagesawa?” Perhaps next door, having a beer? It was getting late, but Harumine decided to still ring the doorbell.

“Yes?” It didn’t take Takazaki long to respond, so at least he hadn’t been sleeping yet.

---