Chapter 37.1

Accomplice (1)

The next morning, I was running down the office corridor with all my might.

It was probably the first time I ran so hard since I was a student. No, I think I never even ran this seriously in my student days.

While holding the employee ID hanging from my neck with my left hand as it shook violently, my right hand was holding the Director’s phone.

My destination was Masago’s laboratory.

I held out my employee ID to the authentication key in front of the door. After a short electronic beep sounded, the red light on the lock turned to green a moment after.

If someone was inside the lab, the person in the room has to confirm the name of the authenticator before the lock could be removed. This system was designed to protect confidentiality.

The fact that the door has opened meant it was alright for me to go inside.

I took a moment to regulate my breathing, and then held out my employee ID card again to the sensor.

The door slid open without making a sound.

“—Excuse me.”

I called out before entering.

There was no response from inside, but all the researchers in our company were always like this.

I purposely clicked my shoes as I entered, and heard the sound of something moving in the back. One person appeared from behind a partition dividing the desks.

It was a man named Kiyomi, who was working with Masago in this laboratory.

“Welcome, Mr. Secretary.”

“Sorry to bother you. Is Masago here?”

“He’s in the back. He told me to let you through if you come here, so feel free to do so.”

Apparently, Masago knew that I would be coming here.

The laboratory was divided into several more rooms inside. Masago was using one of them as his own.

That’s right, the head of this laboratory is Masago.

I knocked on the door of the room where Masago was. Without waiting for an answer, I turned the knob and went inside.

At the back of the room, I found Masago standing by the window with the morning sun streaming in behind him.

I suppressed the urge of wanting to speak to him right away and closed the door first. After locking the door, I let out a breath and turned around to Masago.

“Can you explain to me what this is all about?”

My voice was louder than I thought it would be. It might have been heard from outside the room. But I couldn’t care less about that now.

I walked up to Masago and held out the Director’s phone in my right hand.

“This app is connected to that Virtual Alpha app, right?”

The screen of the phone that I held out to Masago showed the screen of the Virtual Omega app that I had just installed earlier. It was the profile screen of the AI Omega that had been created for the Director.

At first, I peeked at the screen from next to the Director out of curiosity, but when I realized the truth behind the unusually detailed profile, I felt my blood run cold. I couldn’t even remember exactly what conversation I had with the Director after that.

I snatched the phone from the Director in a panic, said that I’d found a bug, and ran to this room.

I ended up leaving him in the room looking surprised, I wonder if he was okay.

“—This is Sou, right?”

The name of the omega on the screen was “Sou”. The profile written on the screen was also exactly the same as what Kazuki had told me.

Something like this couldn’t be a mere coincidence.

In that case, this could only mean one thing— these two apps were actually connected with each other, and this was the actual profile that Sou has entered.

That was the only thing I could think of.

“—Masago, answer me.”

Masago didn’t say anything in reply.

But, he also didn’t seem to be uncomfortable.

He was still staring at me with the same sleepy eyes as usual.

“—It was necessary.”

I couldn’t immediately understand the words that Masago has muttered.

I waited to see if he was going to continue, but no more words followed.

“What do you mean it’s necessary…?”

“If you use it you’ll understand.”

“There’s no way I’ll use it. This is just like we’re deceiving people, I can’t allow this.”

“We don’t really deceive them. The AI is also properly integrated so that they don’t notice the other was a real person, and it’s designed so that there are no discrepancies in conversation.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

If I couldn’t understand what Masago was talking about, I didn’t think he would understand what I was saying as well.

After all, if it was just connecting two real people, then this app would be nothing more than a dating app. What I wanted wasn’t that kind of app.

Did he say he also integrated AI in there? Even if he explained that it was to make them not notice the other was a real person, I couldn’t just immediately agree to it.

“—Each of the alpha and omega instincts desired for each other. We all can feel it subconsciously. If it was entirely virtual, the results showed that it would be meaningless to the mental health.”

“Results, you say?”

“I’ve done some simple tests during the two months of development.”

I didn’t know that this wasn’t the first time we tested the app— It was the first time I heard of it.

I stared at Masago’s face in disbelief, but he didn’t seem to be lying to me.

“But, I can’t believe it has no meaning at all.”

“It has a little effect. But not to the point of commercialization.”

Then, Masago held out the document in his hand toward me. It was a thick paper document.

The document seemed to contain a detailed description of the two applications.

I looked through it, but it seemed difficult to find the words Masago had mentioned earlier from the huge amount of material that I couldn’t understand by just glancing at it.

As I was troubled at handling the materials and glanced at Masago, he was also looking straight at me.

Those eyes didn’t look like they were lying.

Rather, those eyes were appealing to me to believe him.

“…Is it really necessary?”

“Yeah.”

I’ve known Masago long enough to know that he wouldn’t do something like this for no reason. I also wanted to believe in Masago.

But it was still difficult for me to understand what it was for.

“Miya, trust me.”

“…I want to, but-”

“I’ll take full responsibility if something happens, so please.”

“—I can’t possibly push all the responsibility to you.”

That’s right. If something happened, I have no intention to push all the responsibility to Masago.

However, can I really trust Masago?

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