BECOMING MID(NIGHT)-Chapter 62: Phase 49 - The Big One Was Still Watching

The screen was divided into two panels. On the left, an animated sprite of Aku No Kuma was suggestively running her hands down a pole, a completely inappropriate looping GIF. I forced my eyes to the right panel. The raw text from that dude in a suit, FullMetal:

[NEXT, WHAT IS F-PP? NO, THIS ISN’T AN ACRONYM FOR ANYTHING INAPPROPRIATE. IT STANDS FOR "F-NEURO PERFORMANCE POINTS." THIS IS YOUR METRIC—A WAY TO MEASURE BONUSES AND... YES, MONEY. COLD, HARD, DIGITAL MONEY. AND ONCE AGAIN, FOR CLARITY: MONEY.]

"F-Neuro Performance Points," I muttered.

The terminal flickered, the UBI section pulsing in a steady, hypnotic rhythm that matched the jitter in my own hands. I stared at the numbers.

"Well, they couldn’t just call blood a currency. They had to corporate-brand it."

"I mean, it’s a carrot," Kyouya said, his eyes scanning the UBI section.

"Universal Basic Income. Basically, they just give us just enough to feel like we’re employees instead of lab rats. It keeps the ’property’ from self-destructing too early, you know."

Kyouya said, his voice flat and devoid of any ’Velvet’ melody. He was leaning against the desk now, the blue light catching the sharp, exhausted lines of his face.

I let out a dry, hacking laugh that turned into a cough.

"Think about the way those CEOs keeping their engines running without ever getting heated by feeding those staffs some bribery so to sustain their own sense of living."

"I see. So yeah, it’s just... efficient,"

I admitted, my inner programmer begrudgingly respecting the logic.

"You can’t run a high-stakes, lethal virtual experience without a functional economy. But look at the bottom. That’s the real payload."

I hit the down arrow on the keyboard. The screen shifted from the F-PP economy to the core mechanics. A new document opened, tagged with a red warning banner.

[RULES & SAFETY PROCEDURES PROTOCOL] "One card. One bond. One chance to save—or own—a soul."

I stared at the definitions. V-Card. V-Link. Share-Lock. And then, the system tag that made my brain skip a beat.

[PROPERTY STATUS: SEX SLAVE OF CARNAL DESIRE - SCD]

"SCD," Kyouya whispered, the word hanging in the air like a virus.

"They’re literally coding people into objects. Non-agents."

"Not even sugarcoating the human trafficking part either."

"It’s a root access wipe, Kyouya" I said, my hands trembling as I scrolled through the V-Card System mechanics.

"If you hit zero sanity, or you fail the morality checks, the system deletes your agency. You become ’Property.’ You can be rented. Tasked. Sold."

"And the only way out is a physical fusion,"

Kyouya said, his voice turning into shards of ice.

"Redefining ownership through a biometric handshake. That’s what we just did, Mayo. We weren’t just clearing a room. We were executing a redemption script."

I looked at the red countdown timer pulsing in the corner of the screen.

[01:54:32]

"We have two hours to confirm," I said.

"If we don’t, we get that penalty. Could be random trauma flashbacks or just memory corruption. Either way, not good for any of us."

I looked at Kyouya. The teasing from before was gone. The "femboy" jokes were buried under the weight of the Super-Ego metric staring back at us.

"If we click ’Yes,’ we’re bonded," I said.

"Locked. Share-Locked. It’s a permanent data-link in their system. The F-NET crowd gets exactly what they want—a ’high-spec pairing’ they can bet on."

Kyouya stared at the ’Yes/No’ prompt. He looked like he wanted to punch the monitor, but his hand was steady when he reached for the mouse.

"Any alternative is just pointless, Mayo," he said, his voice devoid of any VelvetVice melody. "I’m not letting them inject trauma into my head because we were too ’proud’ to sign the system’s contract.

We’re already in the cage. Might as well secure the lock ourselves."

"Fine," I whispered, leaning my weight against the desk. "Execute the command. Claim the ’property’ before the timer hits zero. I’m too tired to fight the admin today."

Kyouya clicked ’YES.’

The screen flashed a blinding, triumphant green.

[V-LINK ESTABLISHED. SHARE-LOCK SECURED. PROPERTY STATUS OVERRIDDEN.]

The chime that followed was sickly sweet, a mockery of the choice we’d just made.

Kyouya stood back, rubbing his face with his hands. He looked at me, then at the bathroom door. The "Starlet" persona tried to claw its way back to the surface, but it was weak.

"I’m taking that shower now," he said, his voice flat.

"Don’t... don’t look at the F-PP logs while I’m gone. It’ll just depress you."

I looked down at my hands, still shaking, the skin pruned and pale from the damp fabric. Every time the [V-LINK ESTABLISHED] banner flickered, it felt like a silent pulse of electricity through my nervous system. We were a "high-spec pairing" now.

"I see. So, where is that ’Wanna join me, darling~?’ earlier, love?"

I mimicked, my voice cracking with a mixture of exhaustion and a dry, hacking bitterness. I wanted to see if that mask could still hold its shape under this much pressure.

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smirk.

He just looked at me with a gaze that felt like a system crash

—pure, unadulterated fatigue.

"No, thanks... love." he said, turning toward the shower.

"Just don’t let that horny bear catch you crying over the UI, okay?"

The bathroom door clicked shut.

I stood alone in the blue light, the wet denim still burning my skin, listening to the sound of the water turning on. The pipes in the walls groaned—a low, metallic shudder that felt like the building itself was digesting us.

We had survived. We were bonded to survive, too.

But as the Akuma sprite continued to dance on the screen, her digital eyes seemingly tracking my every breath, I realized we hadn’t saved anything.

The "Yes" we had clicked wasn’t a choice; it was a forced update.

We were now just two files being moved into a shared folder, encrypted with a "Share-Lock" we didn’t hold the keys to. And that’s it.

A couple to ship for. And to idealize with, of course.

I whispered to the empty room, my voice swallowed by the hiss of the shower. I wasn’t crying. My tear ducts were as dry as a crashed hard drive. I was just staring at the UI, waiting for the next "Optional Fun Game" to tear the room apart.

The Big one was still watching, obviously.