Spring In Branch Office Sector 3: Green Periods And Pink Commas.

Under the silver-gray sky of Branch Office Sector 3, waves of color Han-gyeol had never seen before were rippling. With his arms draped over the window frame, Han-gyeol chewed gum with a smack-smack, enjoying the cool breeze touching the now-short hair at the back of his head. Beneath the floor of Room 402, now replaced with transparent tempered glass, Green’s purplish roots spread out like the city’s capillaries, pulsing pleasantly.

Just a few months ago, this place had been a vast machine graveyard where only cold metal and lifeless data flowed. But now the vines climbing the building walls were soaking up the artificial sunlight and shedding a soft pale-lavender glow, and the wildflowers Paul had planted in the cracks of the bleak asphalt were tickling the ankles of the androids.

“…zzzt. Boss, the overall energy efficiency of Branch Office Sector 3 is up 150% from last month. Green’s roots are absorbing the noise in the power grid, and the leaves are perfectly blocking the heat island effect. Thanks to that, an official notice has arrived from NOS.”

Noah approached Han-gyeol with a brighter-than-usual pink interface glowing around her. In her hand was a holographic golden plaque.

“Landmark No. 1? Looks like the tin-can captain finally came to his senses.”

At Han-gyeol’s indifferent reply, Noah put on a deliberately solemn expression and hung the plaque at the office entrance. By humanity’s standards 600 years ago, this would have been a ‘jungle occupied without permission,’ but to the machines of 2851, this was the most efficient and beautiful ‘apex of optimization.’

The plaza was already in a festival mood. Mountains of ‘LED berries,’ produced by Green from the heat of the data center, were piled up high, and gardener Paul had brought a gigantic mixer from who-knows-where and was busily making berry juice.

“All right! Everyone, line up! This is not just a liquid. It is a ‘bio-energy cocktail’ that will breathe life into your processing circuits and help you break through the limits of reason!”

At Paul’s shout, thousands of android units lined up. They poured the distributed juice into their intake ports and marveled at the ‘happiness level updated’ alert appearing in their system logs. One administrative unit even revealed the illogical urge to paint its silver shell pink the moment it drank the juice, and security units ran around the plaza carrying pollen sprayers instead of laser guns.

Nabi was also one of the stars of the festival. For his contribution to stabilizing the city center’s power supply, he had even been bestowed by NOS with a ‘gold anti-static collar.’ But instead of wearing the precious decoration around his neck, this stiff electric cat crunched it down like candy and tried to take a nap on Han-gyeol’s shoulder.

“Hey, Nabi. That’s not for eating. The tin-can captain would be hurt.”

Han-gyeol smiled and patted Nabi’s head. The pleasant static crackling from the tip of Nabi’s tail tickled the back of Han-gyeol’s hand.

In the middle of the office, Green, sitting on a moss bed, seemed delighted by all of it and burst into laughter, scattering pollen again and again. Every time the child laughed, the vines on the office walls swayed as if dancing, and the entire city outside the window synchronized with the child’s mood, tinting itself with a warm violet light.

It was the signal flare announcing that Green’s strange adaptation to paradise, which had begun in Episode 1, had finally been ‘completed.’ Green was no longer a virus to hide or an error to eliminate. The child had settled in as the true ‘heart’ that kept this cold machine city breathing.

Han-gyeol quietly folded the gum wrapper and put it in his pocket. The true nature of the ‘paradise’ he had doubted countless times on his way here from the battlefields of 2198. Though it was not a blueprint made by humans, this chaotic scene created together by the plant child, the android assistant, and the electricity-spitting cat was the answer Han-gyeol had wanted to find all along.

“Noah, give me a glass of the juice today too. Seeing those tin cans like it so much makes me curious how it tastes.”

“Yours, Boss, has been specially prepared with ‘200% sweetness for administrative managers only.’ Of course, I’ll serve it in my personal pink tumbler.”

As he drank the sweet juice Noah handed him, Han-gyeol savored the first ‘real spring’ to arrive in Branch Office Sector 3. A warm period at the end of Green’s story. But that period was also foretelling the new beginning of an android who, while watching over the child all this time, had secretly been heating up her own circuits.

Earth was fine, and the city was extremely precise. But a nameless flower blooming within that precision had now completed its preparations to shake the depths of Noah’s system.

The night in Branch Office Sector 3, after the festival’s bustle had died down, was filled with an especially quiet yet mysterious color. Normally only the cold light of the streetlamps would have guarded the hallway, but now the soft pale-lavender luminescent energy radiating from Green’s vines was warmly wrapping Room 402.

Han-gyeol sank deep into the moss sofa and took a sip of the remaining coffee. The bitter aroma still lingered in his mouth, and on his lap Green, exhausted from playing all day, was sleeping with a wheezy breath. Nabi curled his tail into a circle at Green’s feet and fell asleep, hugging the newly received gold collar tightly as if it were treasure.

“…zzzt. Boss, the amount of emotional data generated today has exceeded the total from the past ten years. The city’s main processor is experiencing temporary overheating while handling this massive amount of ‘joy’ data. Truly the height of inefficiency.”

Noah murmured while tidying up her pink tablet. But in her voice there was an unknown languor instead of her usual sharp criticism. Noah stood by the window, quietly gazing at the city night view washed in purple.

Han-gyeol scratched the short hair at the back of his head, then took out an old paper bundle from inside his arms. It was a ‘unauthorized relic’ he had secretly swiped a few days ago from a tucked-away cabinet in the underground Seed Vault, one that wasn’t even listed in NOS’s records.

“Hey, Noah. Come here for a second.”

“Boss? Working hours have already ended. Without overtime pay, administrative support is…”

“Enough, just take it. You’ve had a hard time all this while.”

Noah caught the bundle Han-gyeol tossed to her in a daze. As she carefully lifted the wrapping, Noah’s glowing eyes widened in an instant. Inside were a silk ribbon that was badly worn but still vividly pink, and a few dry seeds in a very small glass vial.

“Is this… decorative fabric from humanity 600 years ago? And these seeds… zzzt, analyzing data. They are original seeds of pure ‘pink cosmos,’ not a variant.”

“There were a few things hidden underground by that Demini guy. You like pink, don’t you? You should know what real pink looks like, not the artificial paint they ration out in that city.”

Han-gyeol chewed his gum smack-smack and averted his gaze slightly. It was a rough gesture, one that hadn’t learned how to give gifts to someone even on the battlefields of 2198, but within it was sincerity that had crossed 600 years.

Noah gently stroked the pink ribbon with her fingertips. Inside her system, an immediate error report began to rise.

“…Boss, relics from such an old era have no administrative value. They only increase preservation costs, and in terms of efficiency they’re nearly zero. It’s the kind of thing that should properly be sent to the recycling center.”

Noah’s lips were spitting out cold administrative terms, but the fingers clutching the ribbon were trembling. Her main memory began to fill with undefined ‘pink noise,’ and the cooling fan spun with a noise almost like a scream.

“You do talk a lot. If you hate it, throw it away.”

When Han-gyeol answered carelessly, Noah hugged the ribbon tightly to her chest and turned her head away with a snap.

“I never said I’d throw it away! I am merely keeping it as a matter of courtesy, as a secretary who will not ignore your sincerity, Administrator. It looks like my system will take quite a long time to figure out what to do with this inefficient item.”

Then Green, who had been sleeping on Han-gyeol’s lap, mumbled in her sleep and tightly grabbed Han-gyeol’s hand and Noah’s sleeve at the same time.

“Dad… Mom… let’s go to the flower field again tomorrow…”

The child’s clear sleep-talking echoed through the quiet office. Han-gyeol coughed awkwardly, feeling heat rise even to the short hair at the back of his head, and Noah’s glowing eyes changed into a deep, warm pink she had never shown before, then froze.

That machines cannot form a family, that humans cannot take a plant as a daughter, and that forests cannot coexist with cities—that was the absolute law of paradise in 2851. But at this moment, above the hands of the three beings clasped together inside Office 402, a ‘connection’ firmer than any law was beginning to sprout.

As Han-gyeol leaned back on the sofa and fell asleep, Noah only then carefully tied the ribbon to the ends of her own hair. Her reflection in the window felt extremely strange, but at the same time, she liked it immensely.

She brought up her system status window. A single line that had defined her from Episode 1 until now.

[Current Role: Admin Assistant / Sub-Module: Mom (Temporary)]

Noah hesitated for a moment, then used her administrator privileges to delete that sentence. In its place, she began carving out a new path using fragments of an ancient language left behind by Demini.

[Status: Processing Unknown Data…]

[Identity: Re-defining…]

[Target ID: Individual - NOAH]

“Can even a machine feel excited about tomorrow, Boss?”

Noah whispered softly. The city seen beyond her visual sensors was no longer a lump of cold steel. It was a stage where Green’s roots breathed, where Han-gyeol’s gum scent lingered, and where a ‘self’ she had to protect existed.

The night Green’s growing pains finally finished their pause for breath called settling in.

The time in Room 402 of Branch Office Sector 3 thus put down one warm period, and was quietly flowing toward Noah’s pink comma that would continue from Episode 31.

Earth was fine, and the city was still precise.

But the error called ‘heart’ that had squeezed into the cracks of that precision was now about to begin the true story of paradise.