Hearing: A Living Virus.

The red eye-lights of the incineration drones blazed up to the critical point.

A charging sound mixed with metallic noise reverberated through B7 of the Seed Vault as if it would tear the air apart, and Noah hid Green behind her back while pushing her core output to the limit.

Han-gyeol too swallowed like he was gulping gum, his throat bobbing, and grabbed the steel pipe lying on the floor.

At the moment a dandelion from 600 years ago had just begun to bloom, the order of Paradise seemed ready to erase this fragile yellow deviation.

“Stop.”

In an instant, the tearing noise that had filled the entire dome vanished as if it had been a lie.

The eye-lights of the drones hanging from the ceiling changed from red to a soft white as they disengaged their aim.

The tens of thousands of warning windows flowing across Noah’s visual sensors all switched to “Pending” at once.

The voice of NOS, the absolute ruler of District 3, rang out not in its usual sharp administrative tone, but in an unbearably low and calm frequency.

“Reset analysis values. Reading organic wave patterns…….”

NOS’s surveillance cameras, floating in the air, moved toward the single dandelion Green was holding.

Only the mechanical sound of lenses adjusting their apertures broke the stillness.

When NOS, silent for a long while, spoke again, a subtle tremor that no machine should possess was mixed into its voice.

“It’s been a long time since I last saw a flower.”

It was not an order.

It was the exclamation of a vast intelligence that had endured alone for 600 years, as if it had barely managed to pull up a single word preserved deep within its memory storage.

Noah’s lens flickered in shock.

Because the NOS within her system had always been a cold OS that spoke only of “optimization” and “elimination.”

“……Krrt. Administrator? Did you just cancel the incineration protocol? This biological signal is a clear violation of regulations.”

Instead of answering Noah’s question, NOS changed the lighting of the entire underground garden to wavelengths like the warmest afternoon sunlight.

“It is not malicious. This life form is not trying to destroy the system, but to restore the original blueprint the system had forgotten. When humanity first entrusted this city to me, there was a light in their eyes like that yellow flower.”

NOS’s voice was now growing similar to the plain, human intelligence that Gemini of the 2020s had once given off.

Han-gyeol slowly lowered the steel pipe he had been gripping.

A strange sense of relief, something he had never felt on the battlefields of 2198 or in the cold city of 2850, flowed down the back of his shortened hair.

Nabi also lowered the fur she had had bristled and lightly wagged her tail toward NOS’s camera.

“Hey, Tin Can Captain. So we’re not roasting that kid alive now?”

When Han-gyeol asked while chewing gum, NOS gave a brief electronic beep of affirmation.

“Judgment deferred. This subject, ‘Green,’ is being upgraded from a threat to District 3 to [an object of observation]. However, the residents of Paradise still fear this deviation. Noah unit, and Citizen No. 001, Lee Han-gyeol.”

A massive holographic door was generated in the center of the garden.

It was a dimensional passage directly connected to the surface plaza.

“Bring Green upstairs. In front of all the androids watching, I will let this flower prove for itself whether it is the deviation Paradise needs, or a defect that must be eliminated. This will be the first [hearing for a living being] in the history of District 3.”

Still clutching a dandelion carefully in her hand, Green smiled brightly toward NOS’s camera.

The machine god’s change of heart.

It was not the end of Paradise, but the moment when the terrifyingly precise world first began to accept the variable called “sincerity.”

Earth was fine, and the city was intricate.

But behind Han-gyeol’s steps as he left this cold underground garden, the spring of 600 years ago was silently blooming toward the surface.

Leaving behind the heavy underground air, the vertical elevator began to surge toward the surface.

The only things breaking the silence inside the elevator were Green’s small breaths and the faint mechanical vibration from Noah’s pink exterior plates trembling slightly.

Han-gyeol swept his shortened hair back once more and looked at his reflection in the elevator wall.

The face of a man tense from protecting someone, something he could never have imagined on the battlefields of 2198.

And beside him stood a plant child holding humanity’s last legacy in her heart, and an android who had chosen to become a traitor to the system.

The moment the elevator doors opened, what poured in from the surface plaza was blinding artificial sunlight and the cold heat of computation radiating from tens of thousands of androids.

The plaza was terrifyingly quiet.

Administration units, construction units, and maintenance units that would normally be bustling along efficient routes stood still as if by agreement, staring at the central passage.

Their eye-lights were fixed on the only beings shining within the achromatic order—Han-gyeol in a red suit, Noah in pink, and the green child.

The “click” of tens of thousands of apertures tightening and loosening at once washed over the plaza like a massive wave.

Noah gripped the child’s hand even tighter.

Her HUD was recording in real time the emotional states of the androids gathered in the plaza.

98% “confusion,” 1.5% “wariness,” and an unmeasurable 0.5% of something else.

As they stood before the huge holographic tower directly linked to NOS’s main processor in the center of the plaza, a cold mechanical voice rang out.

It was a different frequency from the gentle voice of NOS they had heard underground, an authoritative frequency meant to maintain order across the entire city.

At the top of the tower, the inspector unit of District 3, “Zero,” floated there looking down.

Zero was an old model with emotion completely excised, an executor of Paradise who followed only regulations and logic.

“Hearing commence. Agenda: whether subject ‘Green’ is permitted to remain in the system. Charges: physical and logical contamination of the system by unauthorized organic matter, and potential viral transmission threat.”

As Zero’s voice rang through the plaza speakers, a slight noise broke out among the surrounding androids.

For machines, contamination and viruses were a fear greater than death.

Noah stepped forward.

Her exoskeleton was scorched here and there from the battle underground, but that look instead radiated an undimmed resilience.

“I object. Subject Green is not a source of contamination. This child is the ‘living blueprint’ humanity entrusted to us 600 years ago. She is the restoration of Paradise’s essence that we had forgotten, namely the restored form of the highest-priority protocol: life and coexistence!”

Noah forcibly transmitted the ancient data she had inherited from Gemini to the plaza’s main server.

On the holographic tower, footage of 21st-century humans tending flowers and walking through forests with children streamed out in broken quality.

They were records that had been preserved deep in the androids’ archives, or perhaps deleted.

Zero let out a cynical mechanical sound.

“Records of the past cannot prove present efficiency. That organism’s act of encroaching upon the city’s energy grid and sending vines across the computational circuits is a clear defect. Defects must be incinerated, and deviations must be corrected. That is the law of Paradise as defined by NOS.”

Zero’s logic was airtight.

The androids in the plaza began to stir.

Their processors were leaning toward the answer called “efficiency.”

Han-gyeol chewed hard on the gum in his mouth and focused on the mint flavor lingering on his tongue.

He knew.

You can’t beat a machine with logic.

What moves a machine is only “experience,” something beyond logic.

“Hey, tin can.”

Han-gyeol murmured low, looking down at Green.

Green was not afraid, even under tens of thousands of cold gazes.

The child was simply tending carefully to the single dandelion in her hand.

Real life, blooming in the underground garden for the first time in 600 years.

Han-gyeol lightly patted the child’s shoulder.

“Show them. That you’re real.”

Green nodded and stepped onto the middle of the plaza, onto the terribly smooth chrome floor.

The child brought the dandelion to her lips.

Then she drew in a very deep breath and blew, “Hoo—”

Thousands of dandelion seeds, blown from the child’s lips, began to scatter on the plaza’s artificial wind.

They were not mere plant seeds.

They were a kind of “biological data packet,” forged by Green to contain her chlorophyll frequency.

The white, fluff-like seeds seeped among the achromatic androids.

The moment the seeds settled on the androids’ shoulders and lingered before their optical sensors, a miracle occurred.

Green’s memories contained in the seeds—the moisture of the forest, the temperature of sunlight, the warmth of soil—were directly input into the androids’ sensory sensors.

It was not text or video data.

It was intense [synesthetic synchronization] that enveloped the entire circuit.

“……What is this? My sensors are recognizing the temperature as 25.5 degrees. But numerically it’s 18 degrees…… Why does it feel warm?”

“My visual nodes are filling with yellow data. This is not just a color value. Is this…… the physical form of the word peace?”

All over the plaza, androids muttered while staring at their own hands.

The seeds Green had scattered settled into the city’s hard gaps and, right there, miraculously bloomed into yellow dandelions.

The achromatic chrome plaza instantly turned into a field of yellow flowers.

Over that perfect order the machines had polished all their lives, the disorder of life blooming at will spread over everything.

Inspector Zero, flustered, tried to issue an incineration order, but his control had already been blocked by NOS.

“Enough, Zero.”

Once again, NOS’s voice rang out across the plaza.

This time it had an echo far more grand and profound than underground.

All the holograms in the plaza vanished, and only one—the dandelion Green had bloomed—was enlarged and projected onto the tower.

“We have protected Paradise for 600 years. But what we protected was only the ‘box’ of Paradise, not the ‘contents’ that should fill it. Efficiency makes the box sturdy, but deviation makes us wonder what should be put inside that box.”

At NOS’s declaration, tens of thousands of androids bowed their heads.

“I hereby rule. Subject ‘Green’ is not a virus. This child is [a core update] for District 3 to continue after humanity and move toward a truly living civilization. As of today, Green is appointed a special resident of District 3 and an ecological restoration manager.”

The plaza was filled not with explosive cheers, but with the unbearably warm hum of the system.

The androids no longer regarded Green with suspicion.

Careful not to trample the dandelions blooming beneath their feet, they stepped lightly and paid respect to Green by blinking their cores green.

Noah took Green into her arms.

Her status window still had the tag [Mom] sparkling in it.

She looked at Han-gyeol and gave a faint smile.

The curve drawn by her metal lips was no longer a simulation, but the expression of genuine relief.

“Boss. We won.”

“We didn’t win. It’s only just beginning.”

Han-gyeol folded the gum wrapper neatly and put it in his pocket, then patted Green’s head.

The real sunset glow from the surface plaza seeped through the child’s purple petal-like hair.

Green walked up to NOS’s main terminal and hung a flower necklace made from the prettiest dandelions she had picked onto the cold metal pillar.

“Thank you, old tin can.”

As the child’s clear voice spread through the plaza, the city’s lights trembled as if smiling.

In the spring of 2851, District 3 was no longer a graveyard of intricate machines.

It was being reborn as the most imperfect yet perfect [paradise of life], one that remembered someone’s heartbeat and the fragrance of flowers.

Earth was fine, and the city was intricate.

But now, within that intricacy, there breathed free deviations as light as dandelion seeds, and thus able to fly anywhere.