[Interlude: The Galaxy’s Strongest Idol and the Warm Hands of a Man]
It’s said that “there’s no shortage of good fortune” on this planet.
Every song released won the Galaxy Central Broadcasting Special Grand Prize, every outfit worn sold out, every planet visited overflowed with people, and such attention gathered at the concerts that planetary-scale servers would burn out. Everything was going smoothly, ranking in the top 100 of historical celebrities, feeling like everything from the past could be rewritten… That moment, time stopped for the galaxy’s greatest idol, Yuri-Valak-Yuri.
Yes, the princess was undoubtedly kidnapped during that climax.
“This additional file? Isn’t it a bit heavy?”
“It contains access rights to the production company’s server and a week’s worth of stage equipment programs.”
It was the day before the long-distance cruise concert using a planet-class cruiser spanning six star systems, which could be considered the culmination of Yuri-Valak-Yuri’s activities.
Our fourth manager brought in a newcomer from the event production company directly, with a budget that was cheap for the scale and a suspiciously heavy patch file. Looking back now, it was full of suspicious elements, and I wonder how careless we were.
But at that time, the princess genuinely believed that she was allowed special treatment in everything. So, without much suspicion, she loaded the patch file… and the next thing she knew, she was on an operating table being dissected.
“…”
The princess, who fell silent, watched from the corner of the room as the men with bald heads overlapped with triskelions… tattoos of the Red Guild meticulously packed her body into preservation bags.
Even though she tried to access somewhere, she couldn’t connect anywhere. It seems that she has been reduced to just a brain shell. The reason she can think now is probably because the emergency bioprotective unit, which was installed at great expense, is generating power for her.
As the princess tried to gather as much information as possible by looking around the room, the door opened with a hiss, and a blond man in a suit entered the operating room.
“Is it done?”
“…Yeah, that’s it.”
One of the bald-headed men pointed toward the princess. They entered a semi-self-closing mode and turned off the power to the eye unit. With this, they shouldn’t be able to tell if she’s awake from the outside.
“Wow, even a beauty is like this once you peel back the layers.”
“Aren’t you securing the brain?”
“No need, no need. This woman is just a leftover, and if we auction off her brain, there’s a chance of revival. We’ll pickle her for a few years and dump her in some slum. By then, her insides will be burned, and the poor folks can kill her while scavenging for parts.”
“But, wouldn’t it be better to make sure she’s dead…”
” Souls refined to this extent might leave residual thoughts on the side of the one they killed… Even if they are beautiful, being killed by lingering resentment is not pleasant at all.”
The pressure sensor on her crown sensed the pressure, and that was the last sensation she felt.
From there on, there was nothing visible, and the only sound audible was the faint hum of the bio-protection unit generating power. Without the guarantee that someone would wake her using the service tool once she entered the mode, it was no different from suicide. The princess found herself drifting endlessly between eternal darkness and consciousness, solely to survive.
The anger she kept burning to protect her mind dwindled within a year. Unable to go mad thanks to the powerful biological maintenance functions of her high-end prosthetic body, she gave up introspection, which she had started out of boredom, as it led to memories that did not exist from the beginning to the end of her life. By then, even her attempts to move emotions were futile. Except for the brief moments of sleep every few dozen hours, during which she could barely fall into a light slumber, she made an effort to think of nothing… All she could do was glare into the darkness, avoiding her dwindling sense of self.
The temptation to enter self-closing mode appeared before the princess time and time again. She thought many times that if she were to die anyway, it would be better to end it quickly. However, she was the galaxy’s top idol. She was Yuri-Valak-Yuri. She couldn’t stand the thought of being laughed at by her previous self in the next life for giving in.
It was only her pride that kept her alive. The last audience was herself. The princess danced alone, unable to move from her spot, staring into the darkness.
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The end of such darkness and loneliness came suddenly. Suddenly thrust into a space filled with light, she felt the pressure sensor and tilt sensor begin to move violently. Realizing she was being rolled around, she looked around and met the black eyes of a boy.
“Whoa!!”
The person she made eye contact with screamed and recoiled, tumbling to the floor.
“What? You’re disturbing the neighbors.”
“Y-your eyes!”
The room looked primitive and poor, and the man seemed ignorant of the value of things. Perhaps she would be killed by having her shell cracked open to extract the metal used in her brainshell.
“I-It still have eyes, you know. This is a brainshell.”
“A brainshell!?”
“That’s right. It’s what contains a person’s brain. It’s a prosthetic part of someone who’s undergone cyberization. My grandpa’s got one, too. I used to go to the dealer with him.”
“T-that…! Is that…! Who…?”
“You won’t know just by looking. But… I can tell this unit is dangerous.”
The Popte with bright-colored fur, who seemed to be the elder of the two, was wary of her. It was only natural; she might not know how she ended up here, but a high-end brainshell with an unknown occupant was nothing but trouble.
The princess almost resigned herself, listening to Popte explaining the specs of the brainshell to the Wedsonian man.
“But hey, if there’s someone inside, isn’t it dangerous to just leave it like that? Can’t you connect it to something?”
“Hmm, but it seems like it drifted from pirates, right? Ah… here, we call it the Trojan Horse, right? That’s also a possibility.”
It’s widely known as the cheapest way to send in infiltrators, to send only the brainshell and perform physical generation locally. So no matter how lenient the younger one might be, Popte, the elder, would never allow it… or so she thought.
“Sure, that sounds dangerous, but… can’t we just try talking to it?”
“The brainshell is all about performance and maintaining life, so it doesn’t have any unnecessary interfaces. Ah, but I have something for that…”
But the younger one persisted, and the elder relented easily. And he wrapped the princess in force field electric fibers, attempting communication! Her frozen emotions quickly regained heat, and the princess sent a scream-like brain wave through the force field. She didn’t want to go back to that darkness! She didn’t want to die either! Please, help her!
“What is she saying?”
“Help, don’t send her back there,” he said.
With nothing else to offer besides parts of the brainshell, the princess had no chance. They hadn’t just acquired her for free. There was no reason for them to help her, but she couldn’t help screaming. The despair that began to dominate her was thicker than when she was in that darkness, and the pressure sensors reacted. It seemed that she had been stroked on the head by the younger one’s hand.
“It’s okay, we won’t send you back. It’s okay.”
At the gentle sound of his voice, the nerves that had been tense relaxed all at once. To the baseless comfort that the previous princess would not have found a shred of meaning in, the heart that had almost fallen apart desperately clung. If she had a body, she would surely have cried like a young child.
In the end, after being interrogated a few times, she was left at home without being dismantled according to his comfort. Moreover, although not immediately, the younger one said that he would prepare a body for her.
By this point, their existence seemed like a convenient illusion created by the princess’s brain. But the function check that was run just in case was completely normal. It seemed that the princess was indeed in reality.
“Hey, even if it might take a while to get the body, I’ll leave the TV on so you won’t get bored, okay?”
And the princess was allowed to watch TV. Recently it was something to come out, not something to watch TV. It was such a television, on the outskirts, that had never been seen or heard of before. But to the princess, who had been confined in darkness for years, it was the greatest entertainment imaginable.
She learned culture, industry levels, common sense, ethnicity, race, humor, and various things from the television. And she accessed a primitive network with no security from a gaming console owned by a person named Tonbo, apparently, a member of the Wedson tribe. While observing the men living in the same room and examining the small puddle of the network called the sea of the network, the princess had finished creating simple thought wave amplification circuits inside computers around the world……
“Tonbo, here, me”
The princess called out using the TV speaker to negotiate for her body’s return, and Tonbo’s surprised face at that moment was a masterpiece. He panicked and recognized the identity of the voice as the princess, relieved. Even so, he knew that he wouldn’t imprison the princess in darkness again, even if he was angry, even if he didn’t recognize the princess, or if he didn’t recognize the princess.
Tonbo’s character, which the previous princess might have described as lacking in urgency or dullness, brought tremendous reassurance and mental stability to the powerless princess with only her brain shell left. Every time he spoke kindly to her, every time he stroked the surface of her brain shell, it felt as if something warm was being poured into the cracked princess’s heart.
And Tonbo said he wanted the princess to stay here forever, and he safely returned the princess’s body using an emergency code with his family without abandoning the princess to the end.
“Tonbo, wake up”
“Eh……? Huh!? Who!?”
While lightly dealing with Tonbo’s suspicious behavior as he looked at the reconstructed princess, the princess was inwardly amused. She had adjusted her appearance to suit his preferences, conscious that she would be in trouble if he didn’t pay attention.
And the princess naturally helped their business and took over the cooking at home. At night, she couldn’t sleep without Tonbo holding her hand, but even that would be a strength against humans with a reserved personality like Tonbo’s.
He belonged to her. In this life, and perhaps even the next, such a man might not be obtained. She had no intention of letting go of these hands that she had connected.
He was not a fan of Yuri-Varak-Yuri, nor did he bow to the Parrot royal family’s glory. He was a man that the princess, who was no one, obtained, a man whom she could rely on more than any extraordinary person.
He belonged to her. A man with this soft and warm soul would surely attract women like monsters from all over the galaxy in the future. But to Valak’s sisters, to her rivals as idols, the princess would never give in.
This warm-handed man belonged only to the princess.
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