Meet The Hacker!

Bai Sunni felt his heart raced as he walked carefully through the small alley. Although this was still close to the main road and this was the industrial district which had a lot of people walking around, he was still a bit wary as this was the first time he was here. He also kept glancing around, checking whether someone following him or not.

He could still remember Vega's warning about making sure that he wasn't being followed, and Bai agreed completely with the sentiment.

"Don't let anyone from Golak Mayar's office associate me with your father. As long as they don't know about me, they will think that we are from two different groups, and they have to spread their focus and resources too, which will give us an opening to strike back."

Bai had to admit that he was curious about this Vega. In a normal situation, the boy was calm and his insight was always valuable. However, when the need to take action was there, he would always be the first one to jump into danger no matter how stupid it was. If before, Bai's motivation was to repay the favor, now he wanted to see and get to know better the boy who saved his little sister.

"So, this is it, huh?" After walking around for about fifteen minutes to make sure no one followed him, Bai finally arrived at the small bar that Vega described for him, and it was exactly the same as what Aliyya told him. "Dons Bar… I wonder what is so special about this place…"

After observing the building from outside, Bai finally decided to enter, and as he opened the door, the sound of the bell attached to it ringing could be heard, and the man behind the counter turned his head around and smiled at Bai.

"So, you must be The Hacker, huh? Welcome to my humble abode. Can I get you something to eat or drink?"

-0-

The sky started to turn dark outside, and after such a long day full of action, Ursa finally found himself back in his bar once again, brewing a cup of coffee behind the counter. Even though at first, he was unwilling to manage this bar, he started to find joy in doing all of this, finding this activity as a way to soothe his nerves. Of course, while doing that, he tried his best to ignore the curious eyes watching him from a nearby table.

"I cannot believe you really own this bar…" The only customer he had sighed, striking a conversation. "I thought Aliyya was just confused when she told me about it. After all, what kind of teenager owns a bar? They should be either in university, enjoying their parents' money, or jobless, right? Either too rich or too poor, not in the middle like this!"

Ursa could only chuckle at the assessment given by his customer. He took a glance for a moment to see what kind of person the customer was. To his surprise, the customer – or the hacker, he knew it – was just a teenager like him, with a baggy shirt that looked way bigger in his thin body and thick glasses that embodied the 'nerd' personality hanging on his face.

Getting curious, Ursa decided to ask, "So, in which category are you in, Mister Hacker?"

"Me? Definitely too rich." The boy answered without even a single hesitation in his voice, which surprised Ursa a little bit. It seemed he noticed Ursa's reaction and added, "What? Do you think I will be ashamed to admit that my father is rich? Please, I am not like the typical second-generation son who is either good at wasting my father's money or too afraid to admit that I am rich from the start. As long as I know my father got his money cleanly and I used it for good, I don't have a problem admitting it out loud. I don't want to be a hypocrite who shouted I came from a worker family just so that everyone could relate when in reality, my family is far from being poor."

Just for that rant alone, the hacker's reputation in Ursa's eyes rose astronomically. After all, in the past, he attended the best high school in this city, and he saw a good amount of students coming from a high status who either was too arrogant and liked to flaunt their family's wealth in every breath or too eager to make a name for themselves that they admitted in public their family was ordinary. To hear someone admitting freely that he was rich from his family was a fresh breath in the air.

"Anyway, can I ask you a question?" The hacker suddenly leaned forward.

Ursa raised his eyebrows slightly before raising his hand, signaling the hacker to wait for a second. He finished brewing the coffee first, bringing it to the hacker's table before sitting right in front of him and asking, "What do you want to ask?"

The hacker pondered over something inside his mind for a moment before firing up the question. "How could you hide your identity from the Internet?" When the response he received was confusion, the hacker added, "You know that I am a hacker, right?" Ursa nodded slightly at that. "Well, after recognizing your face for following Vahd Diran earlier, I tried to figure out your identity from your face, and hell, I even pried on the government's server, but nothing matches your characteristics at all! I've tried everything I could, but you've never been on the Internet! It is like you don't exist at all, which is so strange! Do you have any relationship with someone in a secret agent or what?"

Ursa himself was also surprised about that. Not having any idea, he decided to ask about this to the higher entity he knew. 'System, is this your doing?'

[Yes, Host. The system recognizes that in this first mission, you will make a lot of mistakes that would put the Host's life in danger, so the system decides to help conceal the Host's identity so that at least, for this first mission, Host could do anything without too much worry in mind.]

Ursa was touched when he heard the system's answer. Even though he knew it was the system's obligation to help him, it was nice that it took the initiative to help make sure his life was safe. Still, he put up his best poker face immediately, not wanting to show too much emotion in front of the hacker.

"Well, that would be telling." In the end, that was the only answer he uttered.

The hacker huffed but decided not to push it too far. He knew that everyone had their own secret and not everyone was comfortable revealing it to a person who could sneak into the government server and search for his identity there. So, instead of thinking about that for too long, he decided to move into the main topic.

"So, where is the phone that you talked about?"