[Lobotomy] Why am I an Abnormality?

Fa?ir - 26

Click

Click

In the quiet control room, the only sound was the frantic clicking of the manager's mouse. Unable to answer all the calls flooding in from various departments, he opted to issue commands swiftly instead.

Attending to each one individually risked another incident. Abnormality escape alarms kept blaring from the Sephirah, as if they were making uncharacteristic mistakes. Radio chatter announced the deaths of employees.

Initially, he thought it was just his own error, but by now, even the manager realized something.

"It feels off. Some—something's wrong."

"What is it?"

Angela responded nonchalantly, despite seeing the manager's trembling eyes.

Faced with Angela's indifferent reaction, the manager decided to find the answer himself. Something was definitely strange today. Something was wrong. He had to give orders to the employees even knowing this.

At this moment, he wished he could split himself in two.

"Manager, how about a cup of coffee?"

"..."

The manager silently accepted the cup of coffee Angela offered. Between suppression orders, evacuation orders for administrative staff, and work orders, his mind was overloaded, having to juggle everything in such a short time.

Perhaps that was why the manager stared blankly at the coffee he received, at his reflection in the coffee. Or was it someone else's reflection?

'Manager, have you ever felt the helplessness of being unable to control anything?'

Looking at the brown liquid, he recalled yesterday's conversation with Malkuth. The helplessness of being unable to control, that was... what the manager was feeling now.

"...Don't tell me,"

The manager switched the CCTV to the Command Team. There, a strangely shaped robot was moving in a bizarre manner. Although its appearance could be mistaken for something else, he immediately realized it was Malkuth.

If Malkuth, the Sephirah leading the Command Team, was in this state, it was highly likely the team wasn't functioning properly. The reason for the continuous work failures was either the orders not being relayed through the Command Team or...

'Malkuth herself is changing the orders?'

"Angela, Malkuth's condition was indeed... not good, was it?"

"Is that so?"

"Can you revert her back to normal?"

As he spoke, about to initiate the TT2 Protocol to return Malkuth to her original state, Angela spoke.

"I wouldn't recommend it. Even if you rewind time, it will happen again. Manager, are you going to keep repeating today? This is just one problem you have to solve."



She spoke with a smile, but the information the manager sought was always missing.

"You never tell me how to solve things."

"As a secretary, I can't interfere that much, can I? Ah, I thought it was unusually late this time; that must have been why."

After that soliloquy, Angela approached the manager's computer, plugged a headset into the main unit, and handed it to him.

"Please listen to her voice. Now, let's continue work as usual today."

The manager reached out with obviously tense hands and received the headset from her. Was it right to use this? To better understand the situation, it was best to...

"Try it, I suppose..."

[Safety Team employee Gemini is dead... His life, which he managed to cling to, ends today.]

Sometimes, employees die mysteriously due to the manager's mistakes. Such employees are usually low-level or new hires. But this time... a team leader of a department, a valuable asset to the company, a level 5 employee, was dead.

He quickly checked the records. He needed to know what work he had assigned to that employee. He wasn't among those given suppression orders, so he must have died while working.

As he scrolled up, he stopped.

"O-01-25, work was the last task. Work result: Bad, Repression work—..."

The manager had definitely ordered Tea Party work. But according to the records, it was relayed as Repression work.

He finally realized why the whole day had been strange. With the big mystery solved, the manager sighed in relief, unaware of the bigger incident that awaited.

He switched the screen to the CCTV inside the O-01-25 containment unit. The usual princess-like atmosphere was gone, replaced by a terrifying scene with the floor covered in blood.

Inside, there was the corpse of employee Gemini and a monster in the form of a girl. The manager regretted. Abnormalities were, after all, abnormalities. Monsters in human form.

O-01-25 inside looked at the CCTV with unfocused eyes, then smiled and headed out of the containment unit. He hastily closed the containment door, but—of course, it was useless.

One punch and the containment door flies off.

Damn it, this was the second time the containment door looked like a wafer cookie.