"M–me? R–run? What's that?! Run?! Never!!"

Northern looked at her with a half-lidded expression, then gestured towards the ground.

She folded her arms in defiance and frowned at him.

"Listen! I don't need you policing me, okay? For fuck's sake, can't you all just let me be?"

Northern shrugged. "Let you be… how in particular? Anike dumped you on me. Why would I let you be? You're my responsibility now."

Judgment looked at him with a gobsmacked expression. She sighed and leaped down from the rim of the ship, her shoulders already slumping.

Her expression was sullen. Wounded, almost.

'Was dumped too much of a word to use…?' Northern worried.

He had not really known about managing people like this—especially their emotional aspects. Now that he thought about it, he really was and still remained a nerd. The kind who could calculate trajectories and dismantle enemies but fumbled the moment feelings got involved.

'How am I going to work my way around Silver when she starts growing like this?'

He shook his head.

He wanted to be the best big brother ever. Maybe Judgment wasn't a bad start.

'No. She is.'

She was a very cunning young Seraphae who most likely had lived more years than he had in his current life. She was also very sassy, her attitude soared beyond the sky, and she had a very bad mouth—curses never ceased when it came to her.

She was indeed a very, very bad start. A heinous one in fact.

But that was probably going to make it all worth it. Northern pitied himself, but at the same time, if he could pull this off, wouldn't that mean he'd be able to tackle literally anything when it came to Silver?

Inside his mind, he was chuckling.

Welcoming the idea didn't seem so bad now that he was considering it. He was going to take the girl as his own sister and tutor her in all facets of life.

He was grinning really hard at this sudden idea of his.

'Silver is going to be so happy with her very good-natured and kind and peaceful older sister Judgment.'

Northern was manifesting into her life, because that was exactly what he was going to turn her into.

This was a new project.

Project Judgment.

"Hey…"

Northern called out to the girl as she walked back inside the ship, her shoulders fallen. She stopped in her tracks and looked at him with an expression unaccommodating—sad at the same time as angry.

"Look…" he said, walking closer to her gently, "Anike meant the best for you. I might not have used her exact words, but she wanted you to learn. And grow."

"Because she thinks I'm immature and need growth, unfit for leadership and quite nonsensical to be around. I'm short-tempered and my mouth is full of curses."

'Took the words right out of my mouth!'

She was looking at Northern with a rather bored expression, like he had failed to entertain her.

"Tell me something new."

Northern, for a moment, couldn't find something new. Something that was going to take the girl's attention away from all of this and comfort her.

For a moment he couldn't…

Then he beamed, raising a finger.

"At least you're self-aware! That's a good trait to have!"

Judgment froze… and frowned.

Then she raised a middle finger at Northern.

"Fuck you!"

Immediately she stomped away and straight into the deck of the airship.

He was left standing alone… wondering.

'What did I say wrong?'

He thought about it for a moment and couldn't find any answer. It was a good thing that Judgment had been self-aware—he considered that to be an amazing quality that even he lacked for a long time.

'Genuinely. That was a compliment. How did she take offense to that?'

Northern entered the deck too, made his way to his room, and took his bath. He had all the time to think about what went wrong with Judgment but couldn't figure it out.

He considered many scenarios, but there was one that stood out.

'She's shy!' Northern thought as he stepped out of the shower.

He was convinced…

'No, though—it has to be. Did you see her face? She looked like she didn't want me to know she was shy. Right, Aoi?'

[...]

[Please. Do not bring me into this. It is beyond my pay grade]

Northern paused for a moment and tilted his head at what his system just said.

'I feel like… you're different per time. I can't put my finger on it, but there's something. Are you sure you aren't human?'

[Do you want me to process task?]

[Processing Task...]

[Task cannot be processed]

'Weird. I didn't ask you though.'

[Rhetorical]

'Oh really now…'

[...]

After that, Aoi went silent. Northern cleaned his hair and kept wondering about its strange behavior.

'Pfft. How did I even expect her to understand? She's a system.'

Northern turned his focus to the newly hung clothes in his wardrobe.

Although it was still in Thunderhead Dreadnought, he could safely say now that he had his own room. His own wardrobe.

Standing before the large black wood was kind of exciting, granted that it was pretty much empty. Of course, Northern could iterate and use Recursive Generation to create endless variants of the cloth he wore before.

But he wanted to act more… human.

Because it was fun. In his past life, he never got to experience much shopping—his girlfriend, and consequently his wife at the time, was always taking all his money for shopping, and he never really minded.

Now that he had the opportunity to taste those things, now that he had resources and was building wealth slowly through Hao, he wanted to enjoy such nitty-gritty details of being human instead of just skipping them and enjoying the same convenience through the creativity of his abilities.

So he thought of going shopping sometime.

'Look at me thinking of shopping when others are thinking of war.'

Northern smiled a little. Still, it was going to be a spectacular experience… shopping during war.

'There should be discount sales for impromptu loss of life… should I just make this thing escalate worldwide so it can affect the market and I can make profit off people?'

Northern paused for a moment.

That thought pattern. He recognized the result somewhere.

'...Earth.'

He might not have been an avid follower of politics, but wasn't that the entire point of it?

And weren't they all regarded as bad people?

At that moment, it dawned on him.

He was probably a couple of decisions away from becoming like the people he and people his age despised back in the day—criticized their methods of management and execution, called them heartless and corrupt.

'And here I am, casually contemplating war profiteering while trying to pick an outfit.'

The realization sat heavy.

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