That night, at the Gotanda office.
Mio sat almost slumped over her desk, gazing vacantly at the streetlights outside the window. Between the all-nighter and the site visit, she was worn down to the core.
Mikoshiba took several small cups of pudding out of a paper bag and lined them up by her hands. He set a spoon beside them.
"Here. You've been gnawing at that thing all night and haven't eaten a thing, have you? Aya was furious, saying at this rate you'd turn into dried fish."
Mio picked up the spoon sluggishly and brought a bite to her mouth. The sweetness slowly soaked into her empty brain.
"So. How did you get there?" Mikoshiba pulled a chair over and propped his chin in his hand. "You were counting votes and slipping and stewing. How were you finally able to stop counting?"
"...Sumo."
"Sumo?"
"My hobby." Mio reached for a second pudding. The temperature of her voice changed, just slightly. "Wins from match-fixing deviate from probability and line up too neatly. I used to play at calling that too-neatness from nothing but the sequence of wins. So the part where 'too neat' becomes a fingerprint was in my hands from the start."
"But I was counting the votes one by one, and kept slipping," Mio went on. "What let me stop was something Aya said. 'Real people press it more randomly, on a whim.' That swapped out the unit I was looking at. Not a single vote—the way they press it. Not points—fluctuation. The moment I bundled the fluctuation and looked, it connected with the sumo wins."
"If we're talking debts, I owe Aya for one more thing," Mio added. "Aya's always harping on 'I don't trust things that are too perfect' and 'I'm not building an addiction factory.' That gut-level dislike of 'creepiness'—I don't have it. That's what led to the report button you can press on 'this seems weird.' In short, I just redistributed Aya's instincts to the fingers of a few thousand mothers."
Mio said it neither as a boast nor as modesty, but as an allocation of facts. The seeds were her hobby and Aya's words; the processing was her own. She had only drawn the boundary.
"I see," Mikoshiba said, nodding as if impressed.
Mio stopped her spoon, as if she'd suddenly remembered. "By the way. Those seconds you were timing all night."
"Yeah."
Mikoshiba's hand touched the notebook where he had written down each bout.
"I don't need them anymore."
Mio said it plainly.
"The time from initial charge to decision—someone put decades' worth of it online long ago, by venue and by wrestler. I looked it up just now, and the exact same numbers came up, all of them."
Mikoshiba's fingers stopped on the notebook for a while.
"I made you go to all that trouble for nothing. A single download would have done it."
Mio tilted her head slightly, then immediately shifted her attention to the next pudding.
A whole night's worth of effort had just been turned worthless in a single remark. The fact that he had spent the night picking up again with his thumb data that had been lying there from the start was rendered meaningless. Beyond that, even that devotion never so much as made it into her calculations.
"...Pfft."
A stifled laugh escaped from the shadow of the kitchenette. Aya, who was supposed to have gone home, had snuck back and was peering over with the face of someone at her limit. The laugh wasn't aimed at Mio. It was aimed at this pitiful prince, who even after an all-nighter didn't notice that none of it had been rewarded in the least.
Aya pressed both hands over her mouth, desperately keeping her voice stifled, and bowed deeply on the inside.
—Master Mikoshiba. Once again today, a most magnificent swing and a miss. Having ticked off the seconds with your thumb all night long for Lady Mio's sake, and then being informed that the whole heap had been lying about online for free—even so, not a trace of regret. Of all that the master has done for Lady Mio, not a single letter remains in her logs.
—This front-row seat, I have no intention of relinquishing for as long as I live.
Mikoshiba gave a wry smile toward the shadows. Mio, as ever, had no idea at all what Aya was so delighted about. Nor did she think to try to understand.
Mio was a woman who could see through too-perfect applause in a single night. She had the eyes to cut away anything that didn't fluctuate as fake.
And yet, right beside her, every day, the signal of just one person, lit with the same intensity as if stamped out. That applause, the most "too perfect" in the world, was the only kind that never once caught in her net. Even though it was far more unnaturally orderly than the poisoned votes. On Mio's board, it would never even reach the threshold of "noise."
"...What's the next problem?"
Mio picked up her fourth pudding and was already starting to think about the next board. This woman who loved fickle fluctuation more than anyone, forever failing to pick up only one thing: the most orderly feeling in the world—
Tonight too, that applause went on, from a seat for just one person, counted by no one, quietly never ceasing.