28 The Reason of Life 2

Author: Bishamon Mine
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n0664js/31/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Orkan’s voice comes from above Inori’s bowed head.
When Inori lifts her face, a huge back is there. Muscle so packed it is stretching the military uniform.

At the captain’s sudden appearance, Inori looks up, eyes wide.

“O-Orkan-taicho……?”

A person who should not be in this place. Inori never met Orkan in middle school.
So Inori thinks. (Why is Orkan-taicho here?) There is no reason for the hacker to place Orkan here. If the hacker’s goal is to keep her from waking, he would never let her meet someone who would tell her “wake up.”
Then did Orkan himself hack her?
But Orkan is a man who does not understand programs, let alone hacking. So Orkan cannot appear in this place.

“Why are you here……”
“Fighting spirit.”

Apparently he came on fighting spirit.
Orkan stands in front of Takamori Koya, created by the hacker, and turns his face to Inori behind him.

“What’s wrong, Second Lieutenant Inori. This isn’t like you. Get back already. I thought you’d brush off something like a hack and come back easy.”

After Orkan-taicho looks into Inori’s eyes, he narrows his own.

“What, something happen?”

Orkan sees through it sharply: (the hacker did something, didn’t he?).
Inori, facing that huge back, ends up spilling it.

“Taicho…… I don’t understand anymore.”
“Don’t understand? What.”
“……Taicho! Am I alive!? The law and ethics say Datanoids are alive too——but am I really alive!?”

To Inori’s voice, like an apostle begging a god for salvation, Orkan sighs.
Then he shrugs, good grief.

“What, you didn’t wake up because you were lost over something that boring.”

Told it is a “boring thing,” Inori is bewildered.

“B-boring!?”

To Inori’s anguished voice, Orkan turns his whole body toward her, folds his arms, and answers.

“Am I really alive, you say?——That kind of thing, a guy who’s seriously living is obviously going to say he’s really alive.”

Inori cannot help peering into Orkan’s eyes, answered so easily, so calmly.
Beyond that fearless smile, something like unshakable confidence is visible.

“So…… a guy who’s seriously living is really alive……?”

Orkan’s smile, as if saying “I have no enemies,” deepens further.

“That’s right. If you’ve got time to worry over boring crap, try living seriously. When you’re sad——”

Orkan jabs a thumb into his own chest plate.

“——you feel pain right here——and when you’re happy, this place gets all excited, right.”
“———But that’s a hallucination of electrical signals!”
“Does it matter what your feelings are made of? You’ve got feelings. That’s the only thing that matters, right. You’re feeling pain, feeling happy. What more does your life need.”
“Th-then, Taicho! ……What is living seriously!? How do I live seriously!! I don’t know that! I don’t!!”

Then it happens. Iris inside the dream, who had been watching in silence, opens her mouth.

“Enjoy with all your strength, cry with all your strength, go get what you want with all your strength. I think that’s probably what living seriously is, Inori-chan.”
“I-Iris……?”

Inori’s eyes go wide at the words of the Iris inside the dream.
She is surprised that Iris, who should be under the hacker’s control in this dream, has started taking her side.
But—that’s right. Even if this is an Iris made from her own memories, there is no way Iris would lose to some hacker.
Inori accepts this strange phenomenon.
And she nods.

“……Laugh and cry with all my strength, go get what I want…… that’s what living seriously means……————yes!——If it were Iris she’d definitely say that. The hacker’s an idiot too. No matter how much he confuses me, if he places Iris, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Orkan chuckles.

“Your trust in this woman you call Iris is something else.”
“Yes. Because Iris is my best friend.”

There Orkan cannot hold it.

“Kuhahaha! Looks like your trust in Iris is so strong the hacker couldn’t make this woman inside you into your enemy no matter what he did! Interesting!”

It is probably just as Orkan says. Inori looks at her best friend inside herself as if dazzled.

“Iris, I love you.”
“——Say that to the real me.”
“Yeah.”

Then Inori looks into Club Captain Takamori’s eyes and says,

“Takamori-senpai—no——hacker. Even if Narita Inori’s survival is confirmed right now, it doesn’t matter.”

Iris is watching Inori as if she can rely on her.
Inori looks into Takamori’s eyes and tells him.

“I just have to live as myself.”
“……”

The silent Takamori wavers like heat haze and takes the form of the hacker boy.
But Inori still keeps looking at his eyes.

“You asked me, ‘What are you?’”
“——I asked.”
“I am me.”

The boy glares at Iris.

“——Tch, what is this woman called Iris.”

To Inori, who has begun waking in reality, Iris waves.

“——Inori-chan, I’ll be waiting for you to tell me you love me.”
“Yeah, wait for me.”

When Inori wakes in reality, Orkan is there, still destroying Vector tanks by himself.
He is smashing tanks with fists wrapped in lightning.

“Second Lieutenant Inori, you awake?”
“Yes, I’m awake.”
“Then we wipe these guys——if we don’t beat them we don’t survive.”
“Yes.”
“We go all-out!!”
“Yes!!”

Around them many soldiers are still asleep. As Datanoids, they are probably fighting a hack right now.
To keep them from being killed, and for the many digitized lives sleeping behind them, they cannot run. And they have no intention of dying. If they die here, they will not even be able to revive as Datanoids this time.
Then they cannot make the world the real Takamori Koya wanted.

“From now on I cling to life with all my strength!”

Inori snatches a rocket launcher from the back of a nearby sleeping soldier, hoists it on her shoulder, leaps, and fires at the nearest tank.
The missile punches into the Vector tank’s head.
The Vector tank blows fire from every gap in its body and falls silent.
Orkan, punching tanks to scrap with his bare hands, tells Inori.

“These tanks seem to be controlled by that brat from earlier. If we take him down we can drive these things off——the brat is in the white tank in the center. Second Lieutenant Inori, do it!”
“Understood! 〖Perskinesis〗——〖Psychokinesis〗”

Inori uses her psychic skills and 〖Perskinesis〗es the tank. When she finds the boy, she seizes his neck with 〖Psychokinesis〗.
Inori puts power into the psychokinesis. The boy’s neck creaks.

“U-uguaaa.——Te, 〖Teleport〗!”

The boy transfers and escapes Inori’s 〖Psychokinesis〗.
The boy who appears on top of a tank glares at Inori.

“Tch, the bond between you and that woman called Iris, that’s cheating! No matter how much I rewrite the parameters it just throws errors.”
“No matter how much you hack me it’s useless. As long as Iris is inside me.”
“But can you and that big guy there hold this number with just the two of you? The other soldiers won’t wake anymore.”

Inori looks at the soldiers behind her——indeed, there is no sign they will wake.

“Second Lieutenant Inori.”
“Yes, Orkan-taicho.”
“His goal is not destroying the database.”
“Eh.”
“His goal is probably hacking the database.”
“Hacking!!”

The boy’s eyes go wide in shock.

“!?——W-why did you know……”
“A support-type hacker coming this far to the front line, that’s about the only reason.”

But the boy whose plan has been seen through laughs.

“But the virus is already embedded in the database. Half the data is useless——still, maybe it’s time.”
“You’re running!?——I won’t let you!”

Inori raises an assault rifle, but.

“How do you catch someone with teleport——〖Teleport〗.”

“Narita Inori, I gave you a virus as a present. A very weak one——right, if I compare it, something like a cold. That cold will gradually steal your memories and emotions. But in your memories there’s a cheat called Iris, so I couldn’t infect you with a strong virus. So the virus is too weak, and your immune program can hold it down plenty. But if you do something like an all-out fight, that’s different. What happens when you can’t spare processing for immunity?”

Kukuku.

“Right, just like running a marathon when you have a cold.——If living seriously is the proof you’re really alive, try running your life all the way seriously. You’ll lose your emotions, though——and once you lose your emotions, then what? Can you say you’re alive?——If you lose a person’s memories, can you still be called a person. Ahaha.”

Ahahahahahahaha!

The boy cuts the comm, leaving a cheerful laugh.

“Lieutenant, from now on you stick to rear support. You don’t need to fight.”

Orkan, who apparently heard that comm, orders Inori.

“T-Taicho……”

Just as Inori is surprised by Orkan’s words, a comm comes from allies.

“Vector is trying to make a star near Planet Leens self-destruct! If we lose the star, Leens’s production will drop sharply! With supplies short as they are, we cannot afford to lose Planet Leens’s production!”
“———Understood, we hurry. Let’s go, Second Lieutenant Inori.”
“Y-yes!”