We sat on a bench in a plaza a short distance away.
The girl glowered at me, her expression thick with dissatisfaction. Her cheeks were smudged with grime, and she smelled of machine oil. In her eyes, the look of exasperation far outweighed any gratitude for being rescued.
"…Are you an idiot?" she asked. "You probably think you were being clever with your haggling, but that piece of trash isn't even worth a hundred Credits."
"I know that. I just wanted to settle things without a scene."
I shrugged. To be sure, its market value was practically zero, but considering the time I’d saved and the risk of the Public Security Organization sticking their noses in if a fight broke out, five hundred was a bargain.
"Suspicious… I trust 'pure goodwill' the least of all. What’s your angle? Cheap labor? Or are you looking for organs?"
The girl shuffled along the bench, putting more distance between us. Good grief, what kind of education are they giving kids in this colony?
"Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m looking for a professional partner."
"Work?"
"Yeah. My previous engineer had to leave me due to… certain circumstances. You—what were you planning to do with that circuit board?"
I pointed to the board she was clutching tightly. The girl looked down at the junk in her hands and let out a small, proud snort.
"…This? It’s an old-model power capacitor control board. If you scrub the corrosion off the contact points and bypass the fried circuits, it’s still usable. If you rewrite the firmware, you can even make it compatible with current standards. …But since I don't have the parts to actually swap anything out, I was just going to sell it for scrap."
"Hoh."
I was genuinely impressed. It looked like a useless piece of metal to the untrained eye, but she already had a vision for its repair. This was a perspective backed by genuine knowledge and technical skill—entirely different from my Mysterious Repair Skill. Not that my knowledge wasn't "real," per se, but a captain can’t spend every waking hour on maintenance. At any rate, she was a real find.
"My gut tells me you might be a damn good engineer. Think of the five hundred as a leading investment."
"…Hmph. You’ve at least got a discerning eye."
The girl’s attitude softened, if only by a fraction. Apparently, she wasn't immune to a little praise. Her rat-like ears twitched with a hint of pride.
"What’s your name?"
"…Mina. That’s all."
"I’m Akito. So, Mina, why were you digging through trash like that? With your skills, you could find work at a proper maintenance shop."
When I asked, Mina looked away sharply, her expression souring again.
"You can tell just by looking, can’t you? I’m a 'Rat.' A descendant of the old-era’s disposable labor force—genetically modified to survive in the worst environments imaginable."
Mina reached up and touched one of her ears.
"Filthy, untrustworthy, a criminal-in-waiting. That’s the prejudice. No shop is going to hire a Biomorph. I have to fix junk from the scrap heaps and sell it on the black market just to scrape by."
"I’m familiar with the culture of frontier planets," I said, keeping my tone as casual as possible. "I’m used to people who look like you."
I see. Biomorphs were once created for the express purpose of planetary development, but once the frontiers were tamed, they were discarded. Now, they lived under the weight of systemic discrimination.
Claiming I was "familiar with frontier culture" wasn't exactly a lie. It was just a bit debatable whether my experiences from the game counted as "real." Back then, there had been heavy, lore-rich events focusing on the sorrow and history of these races, but as a player, I had mostly just thought, Animal ears are cute.
Lucia, please stop looking at me with that suspicious expression.
"To me, you’re just a 'candidate for a skilled engineer.' I don't care about anything else."
"…You’re a strange man."
Mina’s eyes went wide, and then she stared intently at my face, as if trying to calculate whether I was telling the truth.
"Mina. Do you want to come work for me?"
"…Work?"
"The pay’s good. We should discuss the specifics once you see the workplace. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge and badly in need of maintenance, but that just means there’s plenty of work for you to sink your teeth into. …And as for food, I’ll feed you something way better than those eight-hundred-Credit hot dogs… eventually."
That wasn't a lie either! The Sperm Whale was a Frankenstein’s monster of parts from various shipbuilders, excavated salvage, and event rewards. To a real mechanic, it probably looked like a nightmare held together by spit and prayer.
"…What are the details of the working environment?"
"General equipment maintenance and upkeep. There’s a wide variety of hardware to play with, big and small. The facilities are dated, but I’ve got a renovation budget. You can tinker with the setup however you like."
"…If I have the authority over the renovations, that might not be a bad deal."
Mina considered it for a moment, then gave a sharp nod. However, her eyes immediately shifted to Lucia, who was standing silently at my side.
"Wait, something doesn't add up," Mina said, looking dubious. "You say your workplace is a wreck, yet you’re traveling with such a high-end servant."
Her gaze lingered on Lucia’s flawless classical maid uniform and her perfectly poised demeanor. It was a fair point—it was contradictory for a man who owned a top-of-the-line android to be running a run-down shop.
"Ah, her? Well… let's just say I like to splurge on specific luxuries. I’m the type to dump my credits into my hobbies."
"…I see. A man of expensive tastes, then."
Mina nodded, apparently satisfied. It seemed she had accepted "eccentric weirdo" as a valid explanation.
"Then it’s a deal. Come on, I’ll show you the way."
"…Fine. Do I need to go back for my toolbox?"
"No need. I’ve got piles of tools waiting at the site."
I stood up. Back in the game, the ship had been cluttered with countless tool-kit objects used for interior detailing. I’d already confirmed that those had manifested in reality as functional, high-quality equipment. They might have been "decorations" in the game code, but here, they were the real deal.
I couldn't wait to see the look on her face when she finally saw my "workplace."