A Utilitarian Until the End

On the other side of the hotel, my solution awaited me. And it involved a boy in distress.

Haga Taisuke couldn’t understand how things ended up this way. He never liked following his father to events. “If you want to take over the bank in the future, you have to start networking early.” He was only eight years old. But he always ended up obeying his father without complaint.

His father wasn’t present. Taisuke was shivering alone, huddled on the bench of the waiting room. Beyond the glass was the hotel facility called the ‘Flying Field’. It was a fake sky, similar to the one in the hotel lobby, but this one was in twilight. With artificial wind and humidity to stimulate the upper atmosphere, this facility was designed for guests to experience flight by wearing magical sandals.

Taisuke didn’t care about this magical chamber or the rest of the hotel; he’d rather stay at his family’s penthouse and play his favorite games.

“There has been a minor, unexpected technical difficulty. Please evacuate the hotel in an orderly fashion. There is no need to panic.” The speakers had repeated this message for a while, and Taisuke considered following their advice. He should search for the exit, but the idea remained just that.

“Hello, Haga Taisuke. I am here to help you.” His heart jumped at the sudden voice, even though it sounded gentle and reassuring. He turned to its source. It was a smiling figure. A beautiful woman. Faint, blurry glows around the eyes. A few pale green strands of luscious hair mingled with the darker strands.

Well, I was describing myself. I was the person who appeared to him.

“Who… who are you?” Taisuke crawled away from me.

I bowed to him. “Dear Guest, I’m an emergency helper, and I need your help to fix the hotel.”

Taisuke squinted at me. “How can I know you’re not lying to me?”

“I’m a projection created by magic, not a real person. Try touching my hand.” I reached out to Taisuke. He stared at my hand for a while, then hesitantly tapped my index finger with his own. His finger passed through mine.

His eyes widened. I took this moment to levitate, to reinforce the idea that I posed no threat to him, that I wasn’t of this world. “Do you believe me now? We are running out of time.” Fifteen minutes left. Maybe even less, depending on how well Pestilence could keep E.T. distracted.

Doubt still lingered in Taisuke’s mind. “But why me? I’m just a kid.”

“It can only be you. Based on the information I have gathered from the guests, you are the only person who knows how to be a hero. You have studied manga, anime, and games much more than those joyless adults.” The idiocy of my words made me want to puke, but the farce left a tingle in Taisuke’s chest.

Oh, right. His parents never let him feel special. His father only ever talked about what he had to do to inherit the bank. His mother only ever cared about his grades. Even the servants only ever kept a respectable distance from him. This was the first time he had ever received this kind of validation from anyone.

He hopped off the bench. A proud grin formed on his face. “I’ll do it. I’ll save the hotel.” The thumping of his heart rose, pumping adrenaline through his veins. The high must have felt so good that it buried any fears he held.

I wasted no time leading him to the security office, careful to choose a route away from where Pestilence was pinned. The corridors looked the same as before, except that the fairy guides had disappeared; knowing that most of the guests and staff members had evacuated made the place feel that much lonelier.

“What are we fighting against?” Taisuke asked.

“Shadow monsters. Don’t worry. You won’t have to face any of them directly. You just have to destroy their shared heart.”

The security office gave the vibe that it had been empty for ages. The puddles had dried; the guards had woken up and left the building. The police were waiting outside, but the hotel refused to let them in, insisting that nothing warranted law enforcement intervention.

The Seireiji Corporation wanted its own security team to deal with the intruders. They didn’t know the servers had been reprogrammed, and that after seven minutes, the slaughter of the rich would begin.

They wouldn’t make it on time. I was the only one who could stop this.

“What should I do now?” Taisuke asked.

I put my thoughts aside for now, presenting a warm smile to him. “Do you see the safe there? Your weapon of choice is in there.” Taisuke followed my gaze to an inconspicuous steel box under the desk.

“I get a weapon? Cool! I hope it’s a katana.” A katana clearly wouldn’t fit in the space.

“The passcode is 5202.”

Taisuke inputted the numbers, and the door unlocked. There was a single eyepatch inside. Before I could explain its powers. Taisuke snatched the magical item and put it on, as if he had been preparing for this his whole life.

His uncovered eye glowed purple, and a beam of laser shot out, carving a scar on the wall. Taisuke screamed. As if listening to his wishes, the laser stopped. His mind took a moment to register what had just happened; he clutched his stomach, laughing. “I am amazing!”

“Now, it is time for you to destroy the shadow heart. This is a serious mission.” I pointed at the entrance to the dark stairway.

“Where are the shadow monsters? I can fight them!” Taisuke raised his fist, feeling as if he were invincible.

“Taisuke. Calm down. Do you want our mission to fail?” My voice turned cold.

The smile faded from Taisuke’s face. “No… I… I just want to…”

“Listen to me. Do you want to be a hero?”

“But…” Taisuke lowered his head.

“Are you too scared to go down the stairs? Do you not have what it takes to be a hero?” I shook my head and shrugged, trying to mimic the usual gestures of his mother.

“I can be a hero!” Taisuke clenched his fist, but his expression wasn’t heroic at all. It was the face of a desperate little kid wishing for love.

You are…

I cut off a thought forming in my head and floated to the dark staircase. “Then come on. I’ll guide you to the heart.” Taisuke stared at the entryway as if he were forced to drink bitter medicine, but he didn’t raise any complaints, following my lead like the obedient kid he was.

As Taisuke took one blind and shaky step at a time downwards, I went over the situation again in my mind. There wasn’t a better way to resolve this. E.T. had Pestilence trapped. The magical engineers needed another half hour before arriving at the hotel. Some of the rich had security teams who could deal with the fairies, but many others would simply perish.

The closer Taisuke got to the server room, the deeper my heart sank. My attention was dragged to the deaths around the world again. Infants who were starving to death in underdeveloped countries. The various children who were succumbing to illness in the slums. Teenagers who were being shot to death in wars started by the elites.

Yes, the magic inside the servers would probably kill Taisuke. But this was necessary, and a single life was nothing compared to the thousands of others who had already died today. Reminders of the present-time deaths kept assaulting me, as if I were responsible for them too. And amidst them, a familiar voice lurked. You are not the savior of anyone; what you are is a cold and heartless monster.

I felt tears rolling down my cheeks. I guess even my spirit could cry. I was so lucky that we were in the dark, so he couldn’t see my mask crack.

“Ghost Lady-san. Are you here? What do I do now?” Taisuke’s shivering voice rang again. He had reached the bottom of the stairs.

I bit my lip before forcing out a soft voice. “Walk forward three steps.” He followed my instructions without suspicion, even though he quivered with each step.

“Turn left and walk five steps.” He did.

“Turn right and walk four steps.” And he got there. The unit of computers that had the kill command stored inside.

“Destroy everything to your left with your laser.” I floated out of the server room right after, to avoid the fallout. As the saying goes, better safe than sorry. My quasi-omniscience detected a tired smirk on Taisuke’s face, and he let his eye beam go wild, even though he couldn’t see the laser within the shadows.

I couldn’t see anything either. Everything that followed was only broadcast to me as knowledge. The processors were sliced into parts. The programming collapsed. The magic burst out of the server and consumed Taisuke’s consciousness. His body turned into a lifeless husk and limped onto the floor.

There was something else that my quasi-omniscience didn’t tell me, but I had already known regardless. I knew I was responsible for the death of this innocent child.