Chapter 593 Put Him Out of My Misery


    Fortunately—or depending on who you asked, UNfortunately—Lee Joon-ho’s life sharply veered back on course when he became a Three Percenter a few years ago. His mother had promptly enrolled him in the empire’s Hero Academy program the instant it’d opened for signups, and he recalled her practically sighing in relief that his newfound addiction to the internet and all the wonders contained within had saved him from ending up in The Hole. In her eyes, the internet was a gateway to crime, so she had bundled him off with almost no hassle.


    That said, even before the Hero Academy program had begun, he’d already received his “basic training”, as mandated by imperial law. As an awakener with the power to manipulate gravity, he fell into the law category of blessings. That meant he had to attend boarding school in a private instance of the simulation while using a pod at his local cube, instead of being able to use his personal equipment from the comfort of his own home.


    At the time, he had absolutely loathed being pulled away from his computer. He had even come within millimeters of losing control of his blessing, and was only saved when he saw the tears in his mother’s eyes. When he saw that, it felt like a leash had jerked him up short by the neck and his incipient tantrum stopped on a dime. He was still incredibly unwilling to spend the requisite two months—virtually an entire season of anime—away from his computer and out of the comfort of his own personal space, but he did it anyway.


    And it was a good thing he had, too. If North Korea had ever been interested in their citizens’ mental health, they would have diagnosed him as being on the high end of the autism spectrum. But once he was in the pod at the cube on the outskirts of Pyongyang, unbeknownst to him, he was quickly diagnosed and equally as quickly cured via subtle corrections and tweaks to his thought processes. The physical changes to his brain, or at least the negative ones, that were hallmarks of autism had already been corrected during his first visit to a medical pod. But that still left the behavioral issues that couldn’t be corrected as easily as running a simple regeneration procedure and genetic cleanup.


    It wasn’t a perfect fix, by any means, but Lee Joon-ho had come far closer to neurotypical than he’d ever been in his life. And he had no idea that anything at all had even been done to him.


    Once he had passed his basic training course, and with his blessing license in hand, he’d thought he was headed for a life of leisure. Perhaps even a bit of harem building, given that he was one of the strongest human beings ever to have lived, and surely that meant a life of wealth and luxury would soon follow.


    But his mother’s decision had thrown another monkey wrench in his life plan. And somehow, during the subjective years he spent in the Hero Academy, his life goal changed once again. From a borderline hikikomori and definite NEET, he had become driven and determined to work hard. In his mind, it made sense; the harder he worked NOW, the earlier he could retire and enjoy the fruits of his labor.


    So he had performed well in all of his practical courses at the academy, though his performance reviews were always lacking due to “personality issues”. It wouldn’t do to have him too obviously reprogrammed, after all, so there was only so much the low-level AI watching over him could do to correct his issues. Thus, he was still a deeply flawed individual, with many problems, even though he was measurably “better” than he had ever been.


    She sat on her bed and pointed to the window seat opposite. “Please sit. Would you like some tea?” she offered, though she was internally praying that he would turn down the offer and leave sooner.


    “Yes!” he squeaked again, his voice breaking as he alternated between a furious tomato-red blush and the pale face of mortification. The joy he felt at a beauty offering him tea was offset by the embarrassment of his still-cracking voice; the extension of the human lifespan had, sadly, included extending the duration of puberty in both young men and women alike.


    Ayaka gracefully rose to her feet and reached into the cabinet above the small sink in her quarters. She pulled out her tea set and quickly brewed a pot of oolong tea, then offered her “guest” a cup of it. “Have you read the information on Alpha Centauri b that I sent you yet? You must have, if you found the time to watch anime.”


    He could only nod like a chicken pecking at feed. The deadline she had given him to familiarize himself with what was known about their target planet was still a month away, and he was quite proud of finishing the entire knowledgebase and digesting it so early. And fast, too.


    “So why didn’t you report your completion of the assignment then?” she gently asked, though she was internally debating the merits of throttling the lazy sack of flab in front of her.


    Joon-ho looked down and interlocked his fingers, then twiddled his thumbs. He mumbled something that Ayaka couldn’t quite understand.


    “What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”


    “There’s-still-a-month-left-to-the-deadline-and-I-was-afraid-you’d-give-me-more-work,” he said in a rush.


    Ayaka’s eyes glazed over and she stared at a spot above his head. ‘Please, kami-sama. Let something happen to the window, something that’ll put him out of my misery.’