Chapter 80

Hiromi took care of giving Richard the car back, I hadn’t wanted to talk to the gonk after everything, and in the end I drove her home. Both of us were pretty quiet on the way, but to my surprise Hiromi didn’t just get out when I reached her home.

“Come up with me. There’s something I still need to do.” She demanded, and I looked surprised at her sudden aggressiveness.

 

“Hiromi, I’m-”

“I know. You have to go talk to Jun and deal with Fujimura-whatever. But come up first.” She demanded and I sighed and ended up following her up to her high end apartment.

 

To my surprise, unlike before it seemed empty now. I guess her parents would be back at work with the gang war over. But she dragged me into her room, and pushed me into a chair before heading into the bathroom.

 

Coming out with a medkit.

 

I almost snorted, but Hiromi was looking so serious, I kept my amusement hidden as she sat beside me and started fussing over me.

 

“You don’t have to do that.” I told her, but she just shook her head, her hair flying around at the harshness of the motion.

 

“I do. So just… Sit there and let me make up for my screwup.” She ordered and who was I to argue with Hiromi being this serious?

 

I didn’t need much really, I was mostly bruised on my cheek, and probably on my stomach, but Hiromi sprayed some sort of gunk on my cheek anyways.

 

It did numb my skin so that was nice, but not really needed. I didn’t even notice the pain.

 

“I messed up, got hot headed, thought it was like it always had been, that I could just mouth off to the stupid Claw gonks and get on with it… I didn’t even think that you wouldn’t want to start killing them. So I mouthed off.”

 

“They were being idiots. Trying to intimidate two girls that were there for business. It was dumb.” I added my own frustration with the whole scenario coming out.

“They were just acting like people act. I wouldn’t be happy if someone came up to me and started demanding you give back the netrunning gear or something.” She said, playing devils advocate.

 

“Hey! I looted that clear.”

 

“I know you gonk.” Hiromi said, shaking her head as she worked on putting a bandage on my cheek.

 

Silly Hiromi, I didn’t need a bandage for a bruise, but she was fussing so I allowed it.

 

“But I mean, I walked in not thinking, and then got frustrated… I guess I expected them to treat me like they always did. Just another TC hanger on, but I’m not dressed like that anymore. I came in looking like an enemy.”

“They shouldn’t have done that anyways. You don’t conduct business by messing with people like that.” I argued, shaking my head. “We’ll just make sure we have more muscle or something next time.”

 

“Yeah.” Hiromi offered nodding and then she reached out and double checked my bruise. “Sorry.”

“It doesn’t even hurt. Besides, it gave me a good excuse to punch them back. Very satisfying.” My joke managed to earn a giggle from Hiromi and it seemed to help her finally calm down.

 

“Want to come over? We could do a sleepover.” I offered, considering her parents weren’t around, Hiromi might not want to be alone at the moment.

 

She hesitated before nodding. “I have some school stuff I have to do first, so give me a few hours and I’ll come over?”

 

“Sounds preem!”

 

—–

 

Of course hanging out with Hiromi had to end eventually. I headed home, expecting to see Jun already there.

 

I had texted him that Akari took care of everything and we were good during the earlier drive, but when I got home it was empty.

 

So I shrugged, sent Jun a text telling him I was home, grabbed something to eat and decided to do some programming while I waited.

 

Reboot Optics was definitely more complicated than Ping, and the time it was taking for me to ‘fix’ it was definitely proving that. The lines of code were filling in pretty quickly in the grand scheme of things. I mean, most modern hacks are probably designed by committee in some corp rather than being free range like what I was doing, but while they could get things done faster.

 

I could do it better.

 

Maybe… Probably.

 

I was still only at level 10, and I was still going under the assumption that level 20 was the max.

 

So I was only half way there.

 

But I was still an amazing programmer. Level 10. The human peak.

 

My fingers blazed across the keyboard. The lines I wrote were clean, and the few errors I made were easily caught and fixed with Debug.

 

I was never stumped. I never hit a point where I had to wonder what the next line of code should look like, it all came to me before I was even ready.

 

And so spent a few hours creeping closer to a finished program.

 

The door opening made me glance up, my voice already about to greet Jun, but it wasn’t Jun.

 

“Hey Hiromi.” I called out instead realizing that it was getting late, and Jun hadn’t come by.

 

Weird.

 

“Motoko!” Hiromi greeted with a smile, seemingly much recovered from the scare. “Whatcha doin?”

 

“Programming. I’m working on streamlining a quick hack.” I explained showing her the laptop screen which was just displaying line after line of code.

 

“That’s preem… I have no idea what I’m looking at though.”

 

“It’s fine, I should take a break anyways, I’ve been pretty good about hyper focusing on my coding. Want to put on some terrible TV?”

“Yep! I brought snacks!” She chirped, showing a bag full of all sorts of random stuff.

 

And so thanks to horrible TV and snackfood, everything was good.

 

—–

 

Hiromi was passed out snoring on my shoulder on the couch. I had muted the TV but left it running for the extra light. The ability to skip sleeping was still one of those super useful side features of the Gamer system.

 

I had pulled up my programming laptop to work with after Hiromi fell asleep.

 

I hadn’t been in the mood to sleep myself, so I worked instead.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

 

It was to this scene that Jun suddenly walked into. I blinked. It was nearly three in the morning. I expected Jun to have slept wherever he was, like he tended to do when he didn’t come home.

 

We both looked at eachother, Jun looked like he wanted to say something but after noticing HIromi he just nodded and didn’t speak.

 

Instead he walked over quiet as a mouse thanks to his Lynx Paws, and knelt down gently patting my head as he looked me over.

 

I could see the anxiety on his face, that look of anger and frustration. But I wasn’t going to let Jun just walk away.

 

So I called him. Literally. My eyes went gold as I could hear the ringing in my head.

 

*I’m okay Jun. So is Hiromi. Thanks for helping us out. I didn’t really want to murder a bunch of TC guys. It would have caused trouble.*

 

*You should have killed them. All of them. They shouldn’t have touched you.* He responded back without hesitation, his face angry.

 

I shook my head, reaching out and patting him on the head in return just like he had just done for me.

 

*There were better reasons not to jump to murder. What’s his face? Was a jerk, but it’s fine. I hope Fujimura didn’t cause you too many problems?*

 

*I was sent to Sensei to cool off… Fujimura wasn’t happy that I wanted to go and rescue you.* He said and I snorted quietly.

 

What Fujimura wasn’t happy with was Jun definitely planning to murder all the TC guys that ran that base.

 

*I punched him pretty hard after. So we’re square.* I inform him with a quiet thumbs up. And Jun finally rolled his eyes, a bit of amusement shining through his expression.

 

Good.

 

*Next time someone threatens you, just flatline them. If they are TC I’ll take care of smoothing everything out.* He tells me and I smirk a bit.

*I’ll be careful. Next time I have to speak to a gang, I’ll either go in better armed so I’m more of a threat, or I’ll bring more muscle for the same reason.*

 

Jun just shakes his head.

 

*I’d prefer if you didn’t go into a gang base at all. But Motoko will Motoko. You always do.*

 

*You love me.* I told him smirking as he scoffed and ruffled my hair but stood up. Heading to his room. *But I love you more.*

 

It wasn’t until he was fully in his room that the call finally ended but of course he still sent it.

*Love you too.*

 

—–

 

Hiromi was kind of clingy in her sleep.

 

At some point she had grabbed onto me instead of just drooling on my shoulder, and I had to fight off the grasping hands of my best choom.

 

Thankfully programming was quiet, and I didn’t wake her while I worked slowly adding more and more to my Reboot Optics hack.

 

Oh man. If Yoko thought my Ping was cool. This was going to blow her processor!

 

Hacker humor!

 

Since I was a hacker I needed to practice it!

 

But eventually the sun rose up and it started getting bright enough that Hiromi was grumbling and shifting in her sleep.

 

Slowly she started waking up, lazily shifting and contorting as her body tried to wake up but she fought it.