"Ms. Himuro."
When Mio turned around, a man was just coming out of the building.
Ritsu Mikoshiba. Kotoba's ace salesman, known around the company as "the Walking Closing Rate." Looks that turned every head, and a manner without a single gap in it. A business school graduate, one of the people with titles. Different department from Mio, different world. She knew his face and his nickname, but they had never once exchanged words.
And that Mikoshiba, for some reason, had one hand in his jacket pocket and was smiling faintly.
"I'm Ritsu Mikoshiba, in sales at Kotoba. I believe this is the first time we've spoken."
He paused a beat, then went on.
"That was quite a parting shot. 'That number will come back if you leave it alone.' Someone who's just been fired, saying that to the president's face. I heard the whole thing from outside the conference room."
"Eavesdropping is an inefficient way to gather information."
"Agreed. But today, at least, I'm glad I listened."
Mikoshiba walked right up to her, and his expression suddenly changed. It was anger. And the chillingly quiet kind.
"Cutting loose a talent like yours that easily... Just listening to it made me angry."
"...You were angry?"
Mio tried to interpret the reaction, and failed. His reason for being angry didn't fit her probability model. She was the one who had been fired, the one who had lost out; this man, in a different department, shouldn't have suffered any disadvantage at all.
Mikoshiba didn't answer. He took a white envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. He held it up lightly—not toward Mio, but toward the top of the building, in the direction of the executive floor.
"My resignation. I just handed it in."
"...You too?"
"I'm the one turning this company down. Two executives came begging me to stay, and I coldly turned them both away."
Mio tried to process the man's behavior as data.
A top salesman. The company's biggest earner. The person who should have had the most to lose had quit the most lightly of anyone. The logic didn't connect. By the model she had on hand, the probability of this behavior was far too low.
—But Mio didn't notice.
That for just an instant, the corner of Mikoshiba's mouth lifted. It was a moment in which an entirely different emotion seeped through from behind the look of anger. "The plan's been moved up"—that was the look on his face. But Mio couldn't see it. All she ever saw was the side of things made of numbers and code.
"Ms. Himuro."
Mikoshiba's voice went soft again. This time it was his sales voice. The very finest.
"Start a company with me."
"...A startup?" Mio frowned. "The return on the capital looks poor. Given the failure rate, finding another job has a higher expected value."
"I'll put up all the capital. You don't need to put in a single yen."
Mikoshiba had gotten ahead of her expected-value calculation and was there to crush it.
"On top of that, you'll hold shares too. A fair percentage, as a founding member. Even if the company goes under, the financial risk you carry is zero. —That should settle the numbers."
Mio couldn't argue right away. It was true: on those terms, the expected value flipped.
But even so, she wasn't moved. Capital and shares were, in the end, a matter of compensation. Her evaluation function had no term for it. If anything, having it all served up so smoothly made her wary. An offer this neatly put together usually had the same structure as hype. In her line of work, Mio knew that better than anyone.
"Not bad terms. But my criteria for joining a company aren't salary, or a title."
"I know."
"...You know?"
"I know why you chose your last job, too. Because it had the biggest data in the country. Am I wrong?"
For a moment, Mio was at a loss for words.
How did this man know that? They had never even spoken before.
Mikoshiba didn't answer that question. Instead, he played his trump card. He had been standing here from the start in order to play it.
"What we'll build is our own social network."
Mikoshiba looked straight at Mio.
"You can build systems as much as you like, with no one getting in your way—I'll give you a lab like that. No one else's logic, no one's permission needed. A board where fresh raw data pours in every day, without end. Yours alone."
"Unreasonable specs, the money-counting that means bowing your head, all the riffraff that comes swarming around you—I'll take care of all of it."
It wasn't that Mikoshiba hadn't heard Mio's silence. He had heard it, and meant to take on all of it.
"All you have to do is write code. Just solve problems. That's all."
Inside Mio, something landed, without a sound.
An endless board. Data of their own. An experimental environment no one could stop.
—That engine that had smoked out the ten-percent lie just now. A place where she could test it further, as much as she liked.
"...So I can solve anything I want there?"
"Yes," Mikoshiba nodded. "Anything. But the first thing I want you to solve is this."
He spoke slowly, as if looking out over the evening city.
"We build a social network without scams. A place where not one of those 'lies' you knocked out ten percent of just now flows in, from the start. —I'll provide a place where your skills are truly used for people."
"I've already picked the name," Mikoshiba said, his eyes still on the darkening city. "'Makoto.' —I want it to be a place lies can't get into."
Mio wasn't particularly moved by the dream. Honestly, the banner of "a social network without scams" was not, in itself, a high-priority problem. But the "endless data and an environment no one would interfere with" that it would take to raise that banner were irresistible.
Her motive was selfish to the point of impurity. That was fine, Mio thought. If self-interest and altruism happened to point in the same direction, that just meant it was efficient.
"...All right. I'll do it."
"Then it's settled."
"On one condition. Let me analyze the data however I want. If you bend the technology for business decisions, I'm out."
Mikoshiba looked, just slightly, pleased.
"I thought you'd say that. As expected of the Ice Bayes."
"...You know that nickname?"
"At Kotoba, it's a bit of a legend. A genius nobody can get near, cool-headed, who says 'prior' every time she opens her mouth. I've been, for a while now—"
Mikoshiba broke off there. It was a pause like he had started to say something and swallowed it.
"...No. Anyway, the point is, leaving you alone was not an option."
Mio didn't pay the unnatural pause any particular mind. The probability model inside her didn't yet have any reason to.