The night after the shooting by the Spin Bomb group and Chekandino, Happy Prince returned home. A helicopter from the state broadcaster took him there. Inside the aircraft, he saw the cameraman's coffin. He gave a bitter smile. Luckily, he hadn't been the one to return in a mahogany wooden box.

  The metal bird flew over the wall. The digital influencer from the metaverse looked out of the window. He had the feeling that every time he returned to Ilu Nla, he felt more foreign. That's why he sought to travel more and more, to encounter more and more bizarre and unknown things.

  Despite all the glitter, the metropolis hid within it a set of shadows. The edge of the city was a heap of uninhabited buildings. They were only used for real estate speculation by the city's construction companies. Their cylindrical skyscrapers and oval buildings conveyed a sense of monotony.

  The helicopter landed in the prime area of the city, on the helipad above the Happy Prince penthouse. The man got off, the body of his cameraman would be sent to the family for identification. The journalist took the elevator without looking back. He didn't want to be reminded of the existence of finitude.

  He took the stairs and arrived at his luxurious triplex penthouse. It was a succession of labyrinthine rooms that had been used for parties, cocktail parties and other events. The Happy Prince undressed in the closet and put on his robe. He went into the kitchen, kneading his temples with his fingertips.

  He picked up a glass and poured water from the tap. She opened the drawer impatiently. He found an old painkiller for a headache. He took the medicine. He sat down on a high three-legged stool; he hated sitting in places that made him feel low.

  Suddenly, his smartphone vibrated repeatedly. He picked up the device. An app was downloading automatically. He thought he had been hacked. He realized that it wasn't, but he was still annoyed. He opened the application. Without the need to register, the app started a chat on an infinite, dark scrolling screen.

  After ending the conversation, the app deleted the entire conversation and closed itself. Its programming deleted all of the app's records on the smartphone, even from the recycle garbage can. Prince Happy threw the glass at the wall. The shards of glass fell onto the kitchen floor. A robot vacuum came out from under the cupboard.

  It quickly collected the shards of glass and returned under the kitchen cupboard. The journalist smiled. This was the kind of comfort he had fought to achieve. He was at the top. He was at what the mercs called the Apogee. And that's what Apogee was, the passive luxury of a lonely man.

  Happy Prince went into the en suite bathroom. He stopped in front of the sink mirror. He turned on the silver-plated taps. The water ran in a spiral. He washed his face several times with his shell-shaped hands, but the feeling of dirt was still there. The more she tried to wash her face, the dirtier it felt. He smiled, and his reflection revealed a mask of agony.