Getting a Technology System in Modern Day

Chapter 593   Put Him Out of My Misery

Fortunately—or depending on who you asked, UNfortunately—Lee Joon-ho’s life sharply veered back on course when he became a Three Percenter a few years ago. His mother had promptly enrolled him in the empire’s Hero Academy program the instant it’d opened for signups, and he recalled her practically sighing in relief that his newfound addiction to the internet and all the wonders contained within had saved him from ending up in The Hole. In her eyes, the internet was a gateway to crime, so she had bundled him off with almost no hassle.

That said, even before the Hero Academy program had begun, he’d already received his “basic training”, as mandated by imperial law. As an awakener with the power to manipulate gravity, he fell into the law category of blessings. That meant he had to attend boarding school in a private instance of the simulation while using a pod at his local cube, instead of being able to use his personal equipment from the comfort of his own home.

At the time, he had absolutely loathed being pulled away from his computer. He had even come within millimeters of losing control of his blessing, and was only saved when he saw the tears in his mother’s eyes. When he saw that, it felt like a leash had jerked him up short by the neck and his incipient tantrum stopped on a dime. He was still incredibly unwilling to spend the requisite two months—virtually an entire season of anime—away from his computer and out of the comfort of his own personal space, but he did it anyway.

And it was a good thing he had, too. If North Korea had ever been interested in their citizens’ mental health, they would have diagnosed him as being on the high end of the autism spectrum. But once he was in the pod at the cube on the outskirts of Pyongyang, unbeknownst to him, he was quickly diagnosed and equally as quickly cured via subtle corrections and tweaks to his thought processes. The physical changes to his brain, or at least the negative ones, that were hallmarks of autism had already been corrected during his first visit to a medical pod. But that still left the behavioral issues that couldn’t be corrected as easily as running a simple regeneration procedure and genetic cleanup.

It wasn’t a perfect fix, by any means, but Lee Joon-ho had come far closer to neurotypical than he’d ever been in his life. And he had no idea that anything at all had even been done to him.

Once he had passed his basic training course, and with his blessing license in hand, he’d thought he was headed for a life of leisure. Perhaps even a bit of harem building, given that he was one of the strongest human beings ever to have lived, and surely that meant a life of wealth and luxury would soon follow.

But his mother’s decision had thrown another monkey wrench in his life plan. And somehow, during the subjective years he spent in the Hero Academy, his life goal changed once again. From a borderline hikikomori and definite NEET, he had become driven and determined to work hard. In his mind, it made sense; the harder he worked NOW, the earlier he could retire and enjoy the fruits of his labor.

So he had performed well in all of his practical courses at the academy, though his performance reviews were always lacking due to “personality issues”. It wouldn’t do to have him too obviously reprogrammed, after all, so there was only so much the low-level AI watching over him could do to correct his issues. Thus, he was still a deeply flawed individual, with many problems, even though he was measurably “better” than he had ever been.

One may wonder, then, just why Joon-ho had been selected for his current mission when there was no shortage of people who shared all of his good qualities and none of his bad. The answer was simple: Aron was the kind of gamer who saved all of his elixirs for the final boss. In practice, what that meant was that he didn't want to send out his empire's creme de la creme on the first, most dangerous mission that humanity was undertaking outside the solar system.

So instead, he sent out those who weren't quite perfect, but had been deemed good enough despite their flaws. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Eight, seven, six...” Joon-ho counted as he waited for Commander Takahashi to come to the door. “Three, two, one—”

Exactly as he finished his countdown (and almost as if Ayaka had been watching him and waiting for it), the door he was pacing in front of slid to the side with a swoosh of hydraulics. Commander Takahashi stood in the open hatch, dressed in sweatpants, a tank top, and a bathrobe cinched tight at the waist. Her appearance completed a circuit in his brain and he suddenly understood why she had made him wait the two extra minutes after logging out. And that particular mental image short circuited his virgin brain and he stood there slack jawed, only capable of blankly staring at the gorgeous Japanese woman in front of him.

“Warrant Officer Lee? What can I do for you?” Ayaka asked. “Is there an emergency? It’s zero two hundred hours, after all.” She was fairly nonplussed by the perverted expression on the teenager’s face as he stared at her in silence, despite being the one who had interrupted her scheduled workout and the relaxation that would follow.

Joon-ho shook himself out of his stupor and his flabby face quivered as he squeaked, “OH... I’m here because I just watched the most incredible thing and I think you’d love to see it because it has a really strong female character that I think you’d enjoy and....”

Ayaka shook her head, wondering how the boy in front of her could talk so long on a single breath even as she tuned him out and politely waited for him to finish.

Finally having had enough, she sighed and stepped aside. “Come in,” she said, then gestured for the unrepentant brat to enter her quarters. To her, the physical space she currently occupied was no sanctum sanctorum. Her true privacy was in her personal VR space, where she would definitely not allow the booya in front of her to tread.

(Ed note: “Booya” here is pronounced as boa-yuh. Certain versions of Romaji (Japanese that’s written phonetically in the English alphabet) uses doubled vowels to indicate the Japanese ā ē ī ō ū sounds. We don’t use the bar vowels simply because doubled vowels are easier to type than alt codes, especially since Agent uses a laptop and I’m fundamentally lazy. So when you see Ayaka using double vowels in future chapters, you’ll know how to pronounce it.)

She sat on her bed and pointed to the window seat opposite. “Please sit. Would you like some tea?” she offered, though she was internally praying that he would turn down the offer and leave sooner.

“Yes!” he squeaked again, his voice breaking as he alternated between a furious tomato-red blush and the pale face of mortification. The joy he felt at a beauty offering him tea was offset by the embarrassment of his still-cracking voice; the extension of the human lifespan had, sadly, included extending the duration of puberty in both young men and women alike.

Ayaka gracefully rose to her feet and reached into the cabinet above the small sink in her quarters. She pulled out her tea set and quickly brewed a pot of oolong tea, then offered her “guest” a cup of it. “Have you read the information on Alpha Centauri b that I sent you yet? You must have, if you found the time to watch anime.”

He could only nod like a chicken pecking at feed. The deadline she had given him to familiarize himself with what was known about their target planet was still a month away, and he was quite proud of finishing the entire knowledgebase and digesting it so early. And fast, too.

“So why didn’t you report your completion of the assignment then?” she gently asked, though she was internally debating the merits of throttling the lazy sack of flab in front of her.

Joon-ho looked down and interlocked his fingers, then twiddled his thumbs. He mumbled something that Ayaka couldn’t quite understand.

“What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

“There’s-still-a-month-left-to-the-deadline-and-I-was-afraid-you’d-give-me-more-work,” he said in a rush.

Ayaka’s eyes glazed over and she stared at a spot above his head. ‘Please, kami-sama. Let something happen to the window, something that’ll put him out of my misery.’