Chapter 36

Translated by boilpoil Edited by boilpoil

“By increasing daily interactions with caressing and touching. Making the patient numb to it and increasingly used to touches of familiarity. It’s a primitive method of treatment.”

At Hopkin’s nitpicking, Bright answers, “whatever the colour of the cat, if it can catch mice then it’s a good cat.”

“Another of your Outsider cultures?” Hopkin mocks a bit, then says, unconvinced, “ even pets can do that. ”

“I think you’ve tried that already, and the results have disappointed.”

Hopkin is surprised speechless for a bit. As Bright says, he has tried to do so with all sorts of pets. Big, small, animal, humanoid, sentient, non-sentient… After the initial fresh feeling, he will lose his interest in the end. Not just touch, he wouldn’t even want to give them a glance. They have all been eliminated.

On the surface, he gives a ferocious stare to Bright, an expression of falling into anger when someone reveals your secret. Then he restrains it and turns it back into his usual indifferent expression. As expected, this behaviour has encouraged Bright to continue trying to persuade him.

Persuasion by action instead of words.

Hopkin can feel the hand holding his neck lightly caressing, giving rise to a fuzzy, ticklish feeling that travels up and down his spine. The hand is giving him a strong sensation as if all his consciousness and sensitivity has been concentrated there. As if his sensory organs have been fine-tuned to their limits.

He tries to withstand the pleasurable feeling, making his voice sound calm, “the key is control.”

“Mm?” The man makes an inquisitive voice.

On a piece of skin only as large as a coin, there is already 25 metres of nerve tissues and over a thousand nerve endings that transmit the sense of touch and allows one to experience life; it builds a sense of security. Finding touch revolting can be said to be suggestive of severely lacking a sense of security, because you have been deprived of this need for too long. So long, in fact, that it gives rise to abnormal behaviour and physiological impairment, like how a person who has been hungry for too long will become disgusted by food. Increasing a person’s control over their environment and conditions is an important method that lets them relax and reduce their sense of insecurity.

Hopkin explains the principle behind it, then sniggers coldly, “anyone is more controllable than you, Bright.” He makes it sound like he despises how Bright is not a condition of the environment that is easy to control, but implies that he does not reject the man from physically approaching him. He has essentially agreed to him helping him in the process of this treatment.

The brown pair of eyes shine momentarily, then the man says, “if I obey your will and allow you to pursue absolute control, it will be disadvantageous for your condition. Even if you were God, you cannot control everything every single time. There are always accidents.”

Such as you. Hopkin thinks in his mind.

“I’m the accident,” Bright says what was on Hopkin’s mind, with the latter feeling his left chest shuddering for some unknown reason. His body shifts from nervousness. Due to their postures, he cannot escape, so he can only continue listening.

“Pretend that I am the only variable in your perfectly controllable life. I’ll try to challenge the baseline of what is acceptable to you. I’ll let you face change and try to accept it, to adapt to it, to defeat it, to dominate it.”

Hopkin replaces ‘it’ with ‘him’ in his mind.

To dominate him; to dominate all that makes up the man before him.

Hopkin is not someone easily captivated. Yet he has to say that he has been captivated by what Bright said.

“Will you cooperate in fulfilling all that I demand?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Then,” the gorgeous man lifts his chin slightly, and says arrogantly, “kneel.”

“…” Servant play?

Bright examines the expression on Hopkin. He looks like he might be joking, but he might not be.

He hesitates for two seconds, then does what he says——I’m just giving you an early salutation to the new year.

With his gaze fixed on the black pupils, Bright slowly kneels on one knee. In the form of a knight pledging his allegiance to his King, his kneecap is positioned on the thick carpet. The soft feeling of it makes him regain his composure from the black eyes that, to him, appear as if shining.

Those pair of eyes are normally cold and black. Bright discovers that when the other person is looking at him, they’re always sparkling, as brilliant as the stars, as if the whole universe is contained in them. He doesn’t know whether he is the same towards him, but he can tell his eyes are beautiful. He wants there to be more light in it, to be in there longer.

Bright speculates that Hopkin has a psychological disorder. He makes him kneel, probably testing his sincerity on the one hand, and he may actually be into his on the other.

Even so, this prideful and clever man who nonetheless often suffers in pain is still making Bright feel sympathetic for him in his mind.

Yes, pain. In this world overloaded with desires and impulse, everyone is indulging in their fantasies and enjoying themselves, and yet here he is, unable to accept physical interactions from his same species, never able to be satisfied. Can a weirdo like him who can never fit in with the mainstream public really ever be happy?

Bright has managed to see Hopkin’s inner pain through his calm, cold exterior. He probably hasn’t realised that himself.

He cannot explain where his sympathies come from. It’s probably that in his view, Hopkin is also a victim——whoever the prosecutor is, there is no way to reprimand them in this world. If we bring the standards for psychological evaluation from where he came from over, there’s probably not a single mentally healthy person here. He is highly intelligent, he has outstanding talent. He has even risen up in the ranks of society and is respected. Yet he is still a victim.

Bright is no holy saint, and does not dream of giving the world salvation. He just wants to repay Hopkin with what small amount of kindness he has while using him. Other than that, there is nothing he can repay him with.

This pure kindness and tenderness are unheard of in the City. He virtually has a monopoly on it.

Hopkin can feel it. It makes him confused, enraged, frightened; and makes him desirous, peaceful, melancholic.

He has been dumbfounded by his own feelings.

This night, Hopkin could have tried to use the chance to seduce or toy with him. In the end, he just makes the man kneel on the ground and say something laughable and dumb to him. Then he tries to go to sleep by placing his head on his thighs.

Hopkin sinks into the sofa, his hand caressing Bright’s hair, and goes through their previous conversation.

“This is boring,” Hopkin says. It feels strange to just be accompanied without doing anything. It is unsettling.

“The treatment takes time.”

“It sounds like lip service.”

The man sounds as if holding back laughter. This makes Hopkin angry, but not completely, because his expression is soft.

Hopkin is picturing with malice how the man will look after he learns the truth as retaliation for his disrespect just now. He feels comfortable when he recovers his familiar coldness.

In the end, the man is already murmuring, as if half-asleep.

“We need a safe word… I think Latiao will do…”

What is ‘latiao’?

What a weird Outsider.

Bright returns to the apocalyptic zombie game world. He is not actually asleep, instead, he controlled his heartbeat and brain activity to make his body fall into a state of sleep. As his level increased, his control over his body has become stronger and stronger. He can already enter and exit the game world while maintaining consciousness. In other words, what is limiting his entry to the game is only the condition of being past midnight.

Back to his second floor, where there are many notes on the wall by the table. There are many records of who he met and things he saw marked with different coloured pens and markings, and all the information he has obtained to date. Including his top mortal enemy the Shithead, previous teammates of his like Old Veteran, his agent Ococo, his ally the Wolves and their members, the animal protection group, etc. And of course, there’s Hopkin.

Bright has a question mark next to Hopkin’s identity. His first assessment may have been wrong, and he is not only a free man. Hopkin’s privileges in the show is too great.

He hesitates, and changes the green marking next to Hopkin’s name to yellow.

He identifies the level of danger and the faction of things with the colour of the marking. The Shithead is in black. The show and the military and in red. Grizzlybear Andy and number 56 Piers is orange. Ococo is yellow. Most of the contestants are either orange or yellow. Currently, only the werewolves are green, representing allies or harmless people.

“Latiao, the wall is almost out of space,” Bright says to the big Blackback next to him.

He takes down the note saying ‘Beast,’ and reads over his information on that guy again. This is the first person he has ever killed. Strangely, he has no reactions of disgust, dizziness or throwing up. His body may have been used to the killing by now.

Or it may be the high-pressure environment he has always been facing that has made his mind busy without rest. There was no time for him to think about other things. Then when he finally has time, the event has occurred too long ago, and is way past the limit of events that would trigger an involuntary reaction. It’ll be melodramatic if he reacts even so.

In the end, he just puts the record of the ‘Beast’ into his drawer for storage.

The show orders Ococo to attend a meeting. Ococo finds this kind of ritualistic time-wasting highly repugnant.

Meetings, meetings. Sounding like she has a right to express her opinion. Isn’t it just her listening to the higher-ups drone on and on, and the lower rungs like herself agree in the end, being the ones to break their legs and complete their orders?

In the meeting room packed full of people, she touches the needle in her pocket, and feels a bit more secure. If she can’t handle it anymore then she’ll just give herself another shot. As she wanted to go see Bright after this, and this star of hers who’s the most popular one she has under her clearly disapproves of her addiction——She can feel it even though Bright never did say it out loud——She hesitated for a moment before coming and did not take a shot beforehand.

What surprised Ococo is that the Director is here for the meeting as well. To be precise, it’s his voice that is here.

When she is speculating on what big event has transpired, she gets called by name. Apparently one of the topics of discussion today related, surprisingly, to herself.

“The actions of the animal protection group has caused irrevocable damages to the show already… Grizzlybear is still commercially valuable, immediately dismissing him would cause a loss… Number 199 has garnered goodwill from the animal protection groups due to the video; most of the audience sees him as a model for becoming one with nature… To move the conflict away, I propose we make a new topic out of the old discussions. We’ll make Grizzlybear and number 199 into mortal enemies. Make a love-hate relationship out of that.”

What?! They’re pairing Bright and Grizzlybear together?

Give her a moment; she needs a shot in the bathroom first…

Ococo suspects that she has taken a shot already. It’s just that the drugs have messed with her memory and made her hallucinate.

She might have had a joke meeting instead.

Read only at Travis Translations