To Live Again, For the First Time!

Elijah sat in silence for an unknown amount of time.

His eyes were shut, but the contemplative look didn't leave his face.

Not a moment after his sharp eyes opened, his hand reached for a call button underneath the surface layer of his armrest.

A few keys were dialed and a voice was directly transmitted to Elijah's Bluetooth earphone.

One that couldn't be seen if you weren't close enough or paying enough attention while using a magnifying glass with 20/20 vision.

These were the kinds that could escape all kinds of detection devices.

The first to speak was Elijah, who didn't want to hear any pleasantries at the moment.

"Put on hold project X20Xn3 until further notice and be ready for termination at all times. Be sure to contact all the relevant departments of this matter. I'll give you the rest of the day"

"Got it, Boss!"

The other side did not question anything at all.

He didn't have the time for that nonsense!

His brain had instantly scanned through the currently ongoing projects that he had supervision over as well as their codes, locating the one his Boss was talking about.

That is until he realized that that wasn't even necessary.

This was the large-scale project under his supervision that was always on his mind, even when it wasn't.

The one whose code he had memorized backward and forwards in his sleep.

More accurately, in his nightmares.

It was a true nightmare the number of angry people he had to deal with for this mission. 

People telling him that he was trash for not even being able to distinguish the true difficulty of this project and of course, people asking for compensation for their losses.

In the end, they weren't wrong, but it also wasn't wrong that he wanted to live and that his Boss didn't want to compensate for their unending mental trauma, the same people that seemed to have forgotten that they had gotten an F in acting class, F as in Fake as $hit.

He didn't even want to think about the number of contracts he had to write up for this mission alone.

In other words, tons of people to contact, not all of them being incredibly reasonable!

Even though he wanted to know why this long-term project that had gone on for years was nearing termination so quickly, he only had the rest of the day to contact all the internal employees working on this and all the people they had contracted from the outside.

Not only was the number of people ridiculous, but a lot of the people whom they contracted from the outside also had certain working hours and habits... such as being out of range for a week or two.

He didn't even want to think about the number of complaints either, much less talk about how long he would take to placate every single one of them.

He had no time to waste here!

Not only that, but he didn't dare ask Boss for more time.

That was a great taboo.

If he had given this amount of time, then it meant that it was possible in this amount of time.

If he couldn't do it, then it meant his skills weren't up to par.

The only issue in this logic was that the Boss would use his own skills as a standard. Wuuwuu TT_TT

When was his skill ever going to be up to par?

If only he worked somewhere more normal, maybe then all he would have to worry about would be remembering the emails of everyone he wanted to contact.

Butttttt nooooooo!

Damn it.

He could only hope not to lag too much.

He could just see his foreboding future of mental training if he couldn't even do this!

Elijah hummed and dropped the call, looking very serious.

Inwardly he was actually thinking of something completely different than what his outward appearance might imply.

'See, even he can remember which project X20Xn3 is, I knew it wasn't a problem about the naming style, it must have just been that old man's dementia acting up. I've clearly told him about this mission before.'

'It seems like there is no need to change the mission names…'

Elijah's poor subordinate didn't know that he had just missed a golden opportunity to finally get rid of these crappy names, in exchange for something, anything (!), more memorable.

It could even be called mission rabbit, or mission frog for all these people cared, as long as they didn't have to spend another second memorizing and differentiating between RSu0lo and RrsUi0, etc.

It was fine for these underlings to memorize 1-3 missions, the ones they were part of.

But for the higher-ups who had to memorize up to 30 different random strings of combinations of uppercase, lowercase, and numbers, now that was torturous.

Especially when these missions were being cleared and more were being assigned every day. 

Elijah put that thought aside for a moment.

He was thinking about his next plans.

Master Giovanni had thought that the information about TWO was the most valuable to Elijah, but that wasn't completely true.

Of course, his curiosity led him to want to know just how many people TWO was composed of as well as who this other person who Master Giovanni, along with a whole other group of Masters and even hackers a step into the Grandmaster level wasn't able to defeat.

But that wasn't his ultimate goal.

Though he had originally set the plan as getting information on M, that was no longer an efficient route.

Not unless he somehow managed to get the Grandmaster hacker of the Association to do him a favor with only an estimated 20% chance of success, 75% of a deadlock (tie), and a 15% chance of a loss. According to the information they had up until now.

Those weren't statistics he was willing to bet on because he would be alarming the other side with loud sirens if he did so.

Not only that, but the Grandmaster of the association wouldn't take into account whether he succeeded or not in the mission when it came time to pay up, only on the skill level of the opponent.

If he ended up losing, that wasn't a price Elijah was willing to gamble with.

Of course, there was the option of asking TWO about M directly, but that had an even lower chance of success, a chance hovering around 0.001% seeing as he had only just accepted Master Giovanni as his Master, while TWO's loyalty towards M was well known.

In fact, TWO nearly never interacted with any jobs that weren't related to M, at least not that they knew of.

Elijah would only be scaring this good prey away, an amateur move he would never do.

After all, though a connection to TWO wasn't particularly useful to him right now, that wouldn't be the same in the future.

As for what was really the most valuable piece of information he had obtained in this talk with Master Giovanni... it was in fact something that Master Giovanni had said in the very beginning.

Before they even started recording with the sheet of paper to even out the debt.

Of course, Elijah still crossed something out for the old man, he was an old customer after all.

And that was the fact that TWO was looking into information about Master Giovanni's niece.

Not only that, but he had also said that he was backing off since there was nothing wrong with it.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with the information about Margo Lenin, but there sure was something wrong with the fact that TWO, someone well known for only looking into information and hacking people for M, to look into this personage, only to be doing what seemed to be a simple background check.

It was clear that he did not have any serious grudges against Margo nor real ill intent.

Otherwise, there was no way someone of TWO's caliber would randomly get Margo's uncle to be his mentor with a real title as well as some level of authority over himself.

There was no need to corner himself like that.

Everything else was quite straightforward from there.

Elijah could see all the possible paths this could take in the future, and he didn't mind any of them.

It could be that it was just TWO looking into this person for personal reasons.

That would lead him to believe that TWO had some connections to Margo Lenin, and if he approached this issue from this angle, it wouldn't be too bad to have another 'fated connection' with this hacker who was oh, so close, to the person he was looking for.

And even better yet would be if M himself (gender unknown) asked TWO to do this task.

That would be the breaking point for his investigation in his pursuit of this mysterious character.

Real, significant, documentable progress.

Worst-case scenario, TWO had only looked into this person on a whim.

Even then, Elijah could put all his efforts into investigating who Margo Lenin had been in contact with for the past 3-6 months, both online and in the real world.

In other words, some more hacking and a some-more tricking information out of Master Giovanni.

Something along the lines of: "Blah, blah, blah. Oh right, about the situation last time, has everything been dealt with? Oh you already asked your niece? How did that go?"

And honestly, with Master Giovanni's rather easily instigated nature in a chaotic state of mind, instantly making him many levels more talkative, it wouldn't be weird if he started rambling on his own.

Once his need to talk about it with someone was poked at, Elijah could cut him a deal that would be beneficial to both sides.