It was Aya who chose the place.
A private-room restaurant in Ebisu with far too much indirect lighting. The little sharing plates gleamed for no reason at all, and Mio assessed it as "Excessive illuminance. An overinvestment designed to stage the color temperature of the food."
"You're the only person who'd offer that kind of review at a group date, Mio."
Aya shrugged. "Listen. Tonight is networking. That's real work too. If we want Makoto to go from a few hundred users to a few thousand, we need reps connecting with people on the outside. I say this as a designer."
"I have no interest in people on the outside."
"I know. But you want data, right? What people say once they've had a few drinks and loosened up—that's a kind of raw log too."
Mio's hand stopped just short of her glass.
"...That does have observational value."
"Too easy," Aya said under her breath.
Mikoshiba was already seated in a chair by the wall near the entrance. He apparently believed he was perfectly hiding the look of a man who did not want to be there. By Mio's prior, Mikoshiba should have been a man who thrived at networking events. He'd been a top salesman, after all. And yet tonight, all the way here, he'd been hovering just short of a bad mood.
"Why are you coming, Mikoshiba?" Mio had asked on the way.
"The CTO's external exposure is part of our branding," Mikoshiba had answered. "I can't send the technical face of the company out into the world without being present. That's all there is to it."
Mio had nodded. "Rational." Mikoshiba's presence always came with a perfectly valid business reason.
The problem, once again, was Mio's off-duty clothes.
Not a suit, not the hoodie of an all-nighter. A pale-colored dress, her hair let down. Back straight, gaze softly lowered, head tilted slightly to listen whenever someone spoke. Mio's "demure demeanor" was running again tonight. Precisely because she had no interest in anyone, she used a harmless exterior to slip past their curiosity—for Mio, it was nothing more than her usual power-saving setting.
But that power-saving setting had the opposite effect on the men across the table.
"Ms. Himuro, you're an engineer, right? You don't look like one at all."
"That's amazing, a CTO at your age."
"Can you hold your liquor? You look like a lightweight."
The estimate of "lightweight" was fatally wrong. But Mio didn't correct it. Corrections cost man-hours. She simply tilted her glass with a harmless smile. The men drifted naturally toward her.
Mikoshiba watched from the wall. No tablet in hand, just watching. The instant the man next to Mio held out a glass to her, Mikoshiba rose smoothly to his feet.
"Mio. It's cold over there. The air circulation is better on this side."
He moved his own chair between Mio and the man. A perfectly natural motion. Along exactly the same path as the time, back at the office, he'd wedged a chair between Aya and Mio.
"Optimizing the traffic flow," he said to no one in particular.
"Oh, sure," the man said, giving up his spot without quite knowing why.
Mikoshiba called her "Mio," while the men across the table called her "Ms. Himuro." Only one person at the table noticed the difference in distance between the two, and that was Aya.
Aya watched the whole thing from behind her glass.
The man who'd staked out the seat on Mio's right picked up the menu. "What are you having next?" Mikoshiba's hand reached out a moment before the menu did.
"Mio will have an oolong highball. It's better to start with something low in alcohol. If the CTO gets drunk and it interferes with tomorrow's work, that's my managerial responsibility."
"You really look after your people, huh," someone said.
"Risk management," Mikoshiba replied.
Aya pretended to raise her glass to her lips and hid her mouth behind it. She made no sound. All that escaped was a single puff of breath. Everything else, she processed entirely on the inside.
—Master Mikoshiba. Once again today, a splendid interception, all in the name of risk management. Every hand that reaches for the honorable CTO's glass, you sweep aside, one and all, by optimizing the traffic flow.
—And yet the honorable CTO herself has not the faintest notion that she is besieged on all sides, nor that her president is crushing each advance one move at a time.
—If I may be so bold, this group date is taking on the character of a defensive war with no victor. I shall continue to observe from the front row.
Mio had not identified why Aya was laughing. Mikoshiba had moved seats because of the air conditioning, presumably, and ordered the oolong highball to manage alcohol content. Both were valid descriptions. Mio analyzed the volume of attention directed at her as "Slightly above-average attention. The neutralizing effect of the off-duty clothes is working too well. Next time requires correction," and read no further meaning into it.
Every variable was correctly classified. Except one.
The modulation came, as always, without warning.
Still cool in profile, she reached for her fifth drink, and then crossed a certain line. The switch flipped.
"Listen up."
Mio set her glass down on the table. A little too loudly.
"You lot, I've been sittin' here listenin' to you go on about startups and salaries and titles... All right, now you listen good."
The demure demeanor peeled away. A rough, low voice. The man beside her flinched back in alarm.
"A title's no different from a sticky note slapped on your data. You can collect all the sticky notes you want, but if there's nothin' behind 'em, the model doesn't get one millimeter smarter."
—Ah, the type who appraises people by title, Mio thought dryly. There had been no shortage of them at her last job. "Why does a little girl with nothing but a high school diploma have production access?" Faces that hadn't even looked at the ten percent of answers she'd delivered, and had cut her loose based solely on whether she had a sticky note.
Ridiculous—she rolled the thought around once at the bottom of her drunkenness, and threw it away.
The mood of the group date cooled rapidly.
"Mikoshiba." Mio's aim swung around. "You too. You've been fussin' over my glass all night. Listen, you idiot, I'm tellin' you to worry about yourself for once. Walkin' around with that face like you gotta carry everything alone. A company, see, is..."
"All right, all right, I get it."
Mikoshiba gave a wry smile. But somewhere in that wry smile was relief. Once this started, no one could get near Mio anymore. The evening would be wrecked, but the defense would be complete.
"I'm sorry, our CTO has a bit of a problem with drink," Mikoshiba said, bowing his head to the other side of the table. The men had already begun working out how to get home.
The group date dispersed magnificently. A total conquest, at the end of which Mio's lecture had swept the table clean, every last one. No one won.
The king's strings were cut just after they left the restaurant.
The moment the last of them went home and there was no one left to sweep aside, her fuel ran out. Even standing up was a cost in man-hours now. Aya reached out to lend her a shoulder—"See, what did I tell you"—but before her hand got there,
Mikoshiba, quite naturally, lifted Mio into his arms.
One arm at her back, one arm behind her knees. Far too businesslike a grip to be called a princess carry. Mio's body floated gently above the nighttime street.
"...Mikoshiba," Mio murmured hazily. "This is... poor transport efficiency. Walking on my own would burn fewer calories..."
"You can't walk," Mikoshiba said, facing forward. "I let you get drunk, so it's my responsibility. Falls under managerial responsibility, wouldn't you say."
"Managerial responsibility..." Mio filed the term in the correct drawer. Then, with her drink-dulled head, she lined up two options. Walk on her own—excessive caloric expenditure, high risk of falling. Be carried—minimal cost. "Then I'll let you carry me. That's more efficient."
It was Mio who gave permission. There was no love in it, no flutter, no racing heart. She had simply chosen the cheapest route and adopted Mikoshiba as her means of transport. That was all. Completely indifferent, Mio closed her eyes.
Walking a little behind them, Aya pretended to hold up her phone and pressed a hand over her mouth.
—Master Mikoshiba. Today's possessiveness: a complete victory by princess carry, of all things. Sweeping aside the riffraff that gathered one move at a time, and in the end, into your very own arms. Magnificent—there is no other word for it.
—And yet. For all that ardor held in your arms, the reply was nothing but "poor transport efficiency." If I may be so bold, today too was a flawless swing and a miss.
—This one-sided love, by my estimate, is surely a lifelong affair. Rest assured. This front-row seat, I shall never relinquish.
She made no sound.
In Mikoshiba's arms, Mio suddenly murmured something.
It was nearly talking in her sleep. Words that started to form and didn't quite. The echo of a thought.
"...That smell of money... it still doesn't connect..."
"Money?" Mikoshiba asked.
"...But one thing... the timing's aligned... they're running on the same clock... it's so regular... and still, the last thread, it's missing... the evidence..."
Mikoshiba took it for drunken babble. A woman who'd had five drinks, unleashed a lecture, and was now being carried while talking in her sleep—who would look for meaning in the fragments coming out of her mouth?
"Sure, sure." He kept facing forward and didn't slow his pace. "By tomorrow you'll have forgotten all of it."
That was only half right.
The next morning, Mio would probably remember none of it—not the lecture, not being carried, not the sleep-talk. The memory would vanish, as it always did.
But there was one thing that would not vanish.
At the very bottom of Mio's brain—at the end of her list of problems to solve, the line she herself had added. The inexplicable movements of money, scattered thin and even. But tonight, at the bottom of her drunkenness, Mio had definitely gotten a grip on one thing. The ad placement times were too aligned. A swarm pretending to be scattered was breathing to the same beat. The whole still didn't connect. But the first loose end was already touching her fingers. Even as her consciousness dissolved in drink, that sense of contact stayed seated at the bottom of her notebook.
Mikoshiba walked on through the nighttime street. In his arms, Mio was fully asleep now.
Far beneath the lingering echo of the laughter—a footstep no one had yet named sounded, once, unmistakably.