Honkai: Man(Sludge) From Future

Sakiko Toyokawa waited until the Academy City vehicle arrived.

Her silence seemed to stir a maternal feeling in the researcher.

"It's alright," the woman said, comforting her. "You won't need a father anymore."

The police officer was left speechless. He never expected to hear such a bizarre form of "comfort." The researcher didn't seem to know the first thing about tact.

He changed the subject, asking, "How is he? Is his mental state normal?"

"He's a relatively normal psychiatric patient, suffering from a fairly common mental disorder. He requires constant alcohol and drug use to alleviate his mental anguish. This type of illness is a classic case of modern industrial psychosis. It's nothing, just a minor issue."

It was only then that Sakiko Toyokawa snapped back to reality. She had always thought her father had simply been crushed by his setbacks and lost all motivation.

So my father really is mentally ill? a thought popped into the girl's mind.

But then she had another thought, and it didn't seem right. If her father was mentally ill, what about that Teruyuki Kagawa guy? He hadn't looked mentally ill at all.

Were they… really talking about mental illness?

The girl had just come to her senses after the world-shattering "betrayal" of her father, and she was feeling a bit wary of the strange entity that was Academy City.

Perhaps it was the sight of a Far East police officer, a man who likely took bribes as part of his job, that gave Sakiko Toyokawa a small taste of how the normal world was supposed to be.

The officer took the girl's wages back from her father and pressed them into her hands.

Now that was a gesture of true comfort. It allowed Sakiko Toyokawa to feel a sliver of the human warmth she was supposed to have.

The officer observed the state of the room and, thinking about the girl's living situation, pieced together a rough idea of this family's "relationship."

"Does Academy City even take in scumbags like this?"

The woman opened the aluminum alloy briefcase she was carrying and said, "You see, I'm just a worker bee who doesn't have access to quantum technology. The people at the very top can use quantum tech and have no need for such heavy, cumbersome storage tools."

The officer glanced inside the briefcase, and his eyes were immediately glued to its contents.

The things inside looked like small, motile spiders, except their legs were like some sort of tubes.

"Wh-what are those things?"

They were terrifying, looking nothing like any normal living creature.

"Stigma. A modified product of a living Stigma, to be precise. It doesn't possess the other abilities of a Stigma; even its compensatory absorption ability has been nerfed by us. Right now, it's just a small, external living organism that can link to the human mind."

"Hold him down. I need to see the extent of his psychosis."

The officer had no choice but to obey, pinning Sakiko Toyokawa's father down.

Sakiko had expected to see something like a tranquilizer injection. She never, ever imagined she would see a bizarre, flesh-like living creature.

The woman pressed the organism in her hand against her father's back. With a sound like a needle piercing the spinal cord, the man instantly lost all ability to move.

A long moment passed, and the man became as still as if he were in a deep sleep, showing no reaction at all.

"Just as I thought. He immediately became lost in his own fantasy world. I thought he'd at least struggle a bit like those students, or show some defiance. It seems I thought too highly of him. His mental fortitude is even weaker than those 'shrine maidens'."

The woman wasn't surprised. In her research, she'd found that the mental state of many adults was not necessarily superior to that of adolescents. Adults could persevere not because their minds were exceptional or hardened by society, but simply because their bodies were more mature, giving them more physical stamina to endure.

While a person's ability to experience mental anguish wasn't absolutely tied to their physical strength, physical strength certainly had a deep influence on the mind.

To Sakiko Toyokawa, the researcher from Academy City looked like a dark cultist wielding a sinister creature.

But this woman was, in truth, just an ordinary worker bee sent out to capture psychiatric patients.

"Alright, it looks like he's completely stabilized. The next step is to link him to the Stigma Space network for in-depth analysis of his psyche. We need subjects not just from industrialized urban societies, but also from rural ones. When necessary, we'll also need to go deep into primitive African tribes to capture a few normal people, or buy some from African warlords to use."

"Officer, you're actually quite lucky to have run into 'normal people' like us. If you'd met some of the more... unhinged... researchers, you probably would have been terrified."

The officer tugged at his collar. He glanced at the girl huddled in the corner and sighed. "Actually, you've already scared me. Is this the result of Academy City opening up? I heard a lot of athletes went to get human augmentation from you. I never thought your augmentation technology would be this... convenient."

The woman shook her head. "This isn't convenient. Due to the fundamental nature of Stigma, we haven't yet been able to reduce it to a microbial level, like a virus or bacteria. It still requires a certain amount of the original host's genetic information to be activated. This is still too narrow for our purposes... oh, apologies. I've said too much. You probably don't understand the specifics."

The officer definitely did not understand what she meant by "narrow."

"No, you don't need to tell me these things. But... taking this man away will be good for this girl, right?"

The woman looked at Sakiko Toyokawa and nodded in agreement. "That's right. An alcoholic, mentally unstable person is far more likely to abuse his family. For this girl, taking him away is indeed a good thing. Besides, you saw the envelope he was holding had the girl's name on it. It means she's the one supporting the family."

Hearing the two of them discussing her, Sakiko felt a layer of goosebumps rise on her skin.

The girl suppressed the strange feeling in her heart and stepped forward to ask, "Um, can I ask something? It's... my father... what will happen to him now?"

The woman smiled. "Don't worry, little girl. He's going to a place where there's no suffering, a place where he will get everything he's ever wanted."

This sounds like some kind of weird religion...

The officer even began to suspect that Academy City was running some sort of special church under the banner of scientific research. Weren't there things like techno-religions in a lot of cyberpunk stories?

Sakiko took a frightened step back. Then, she could only watch as they hoisted her father up and carried him away.

As for whether he was truly going to a place without pain, that was something she could never find out.