Sota Kiryu came again, without an appointment.
Three days later, in the evening, he had deliberately picked a time when Mikoshiba was away on a business trip. When Aya reached for her phone—"I'm calling the boss"—Mio stopped her with a hand. Calling him wouldn't change what Kiryu wanted. In that case, getting it over with quickly was more efficient.
"I'd like to talk to her alone," Kiryu said, with a glance at Aya. "Sorry, but would you excuse us?"
Aya didn't move. She stayed standing beside Mio, looking down at Kiryu. Mio thought that was fine. She didn't know what Aya was wary of, but if she wanted to stay, she could stay.
"Keep it brief, please." Mio sat on the edge of the sofa. "Without Mikoshiba, no contract talks can move forward. I have no authority to sign off on anything."
"This isn't about a contract." Kiryu grinned. "It's about you personally."
Mio's brows drew together slightly. That the category personal would come out of this man's mouth at all was, to begin with, unexpected.
"Back then, I fired you on impulse." Kiryu crossed his legs and drew a sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. A document in an envelope, some kind of offer, it seemed. "But I've reconsidered. We really do need your skills. That toy engine for Makoto or whatever it's called—you built that, didn't you? Put that kind of skill into Kotoba's various products. The quality of our entire service would jump a whole level. We could strip customers bare with data and see exactly what they want. Once we have that, there's no end of ways to sell to them."
Mio didn't take the paper. Only the last part of what he'd said snagged in her ear. Strip customers bare with data.
"Come work for us." Kiryu slid the paper across the table. "How much do you want a year? Name your price. How much is Mikoshiba paying you? Triple that. I'll give you a position, too. Executive officer, in charge of technology—high school graduate or whatever you are, as long as you've got a title, you look like the real thing from the outside."
"..."
"Not enough?" Kiryu seemed to read her silence as haggling. "Then five times. We'll buy that algorithm you made, the whole thing. You won't have to lift a finger. Just hand over what's inside the design. We'll send the rest to some cheap outsourcer. Come on, once something's built, it doesn't matter who maintains it."
"..."
"You just don't get it." Kiryu's voice dropped, low with irritation. "People like you aren't suited to a place like that. Mikoshiba's got you humoring all his naive drivel about dreams and ideals, doesn't he? Wiping out scams? That won't make a single yen. Technology is only worth the money it makes. You don't know your own worth. I'm offering to show you the right way to use it."
Aya pressed her lips together. Mio touched her arm lightly from the side. It didn't even mean it's all right. It was just a signal that Kiryu had run out of anything worth listening to.
Mio herself felt, strangely, nothing at all.
She was aware, logically, that she was being insulted. But what caught on her was not the feel of the insult, but the error underneath it. This man thought that what Mio had made was a fixed machine that, once assembled, would be the same no matter who tinkered with it. The data shifting day by day, scam techniques changing shape, yesterday's correct answer becoming today's false positive—he had never even imagined that this ceaseless updating was the substance of the thing. Toss the blueprints to a cheap outsourcer and it would rust within six months. Kiryu didn't even understand what he was trying to buy.
Even so, the scale inside Mio didn't move by a single needle's width. Everything Kiryu was laying out was something Mio had never once wanted. Money. Titles. Ever since that last conference room at her previous job, when he'd cut her down as "a little girl with nothing but a high school diploma," this man hadn't improved the precision of his observations one bit.
There was just one thing. Only one thing Mio wanted to confirm.
Without so much as glancing at the paper on the table, Mio simply, quietly, asked him a question in return.
"...What happens to data freedom?"
Kiryu froze.
"Huh?"
"The data I'd be analyzing if I went to Kotoba. How it would be handled," Mio went on evenly. "Can you promise that what I find won't be distorted by business decisions? Can you hold that line?"
Kiryu stared blankly. He had the face of someone who truly did not understand a single word of her question.
"...What are you talking about?" Kiryu tapped the paper irritably with a finger. "You use data however makes money. Sell as much of the customer information advertisers want as you can. What's the problem? That's what data is for, isn't it?"
Inside Mio, something quietly came into focus.
This man thought of data as nothing but merchandise. The same way he counted people like discs. Who was weak to what, and when—he had never even imagined that every single one of those was the profile of a living person. Kiryu had just, defenselessly, disclosed what kind of person he was inside.
Mio stored that information in a corner of her mind, in a folder that didn't yet have a name. She had a feeling it would be needed someday. Why she felt that way, Mio herself didn't know.
"That isn't an answer."
Mio stood up.
"I won't go anywhere that can't guarantee data freedom, no matter how much they pile on. That's my one and only criterion for a job. Not money, not titles. The answer was decided from the start."
Mio pushed the paper on the table back toward Kiryu with her fingertips.
"And one more thing. What you were trying to buy isn't a single blueprint. It's the hands that keep updating it every day. The moment you mixed those up, you couldn't even appraise your own purchase. —You asked the wrong question."
"Wait, hey—!"
Mio was no longer looking at Kiryu. She tucked her laptop under her arm and left the reception area. With the same stride she'd used walking out of that last conference room at her previous job.
After Mio left, all that remained in the reception area was Kiryu's click of the tongue, and Aya.
Aya didn't spare Kiryu a glance; she took out her phone. Addressed to Mikoshiba. That Kiryu had come, that he'd come to poach Mio by name—she typed just that, quickly, and at the end, deliberately tacked on a little line that sounded slightly troubled.
She didn't write that Mio had kicked it back on the spot without spending a second on it. If she wrote that, Mikoshiba would relax and carry on with his negotiation. Where was the fun in that? Aya confirmed it had sent, and at last let the corner of her mouth rise. Now then, how long would it take him to come flying back?
That day, Mikoshiba was out on his business trip. A big deal was one final push from closing—it was right at that climax.
Under the table, his phone gave a short buzz. From Aya. Aya almost never contacted him in the middle of a negotiation. Mikoshiba excused himself and dropped his eyes to the screen.
Kiryu came. For Mio, by name. What do we do...
That one line was enough. Mikoshiba cut the negotiation short then and there.
In the car on the way back, quite out of character, he asked the driver, "Please hurry." The city lights flowing past the window seemed strangely slow.
Logically, he didn't think Mio would accept Kiryu's offer. Even so, an image wouldn't leave the corner of his mind—an empty desk with one line left on it: "The data conditions were better at my old company." It was absurd. Mio was not the kind of woman who left notes like that. Even so, his feet hurried.
He opened the office door, and Mio was there.
At her desk, in her usual posture, typing away. At Mikoshiba's ragged breathing, she raised only her face. Resting heart rate disrupted. Had he run up the stairs, or had something caught fire in the negotiation? Either way, the number was trending up.
"Welcome back. That was quick." Mio narrowed her eyes slightly. "Good timing. My hands are free. Hurry up and go get the next project."
Mikoshiba stood with his hand on the doorknob, unable to move for a while.
"...Right," he finally managed. "I'll go get one right away."
"You blew off the deal and came flying back, didn't you," Aya said flatly from the back. "Must've been some talent you were really worried about."
"Risk management," Mikoshiba said, catching his breath. "Losing talent is a business risk."
Mio was no longer listening to the two of them. She'd long since turned back to her screen and was gazing, bored, at the empty slots in the project list.
Suddenly, Mikoshiba's gaze fell to his own hands. They were empty.
"...I'm sorry." Mikoshiba, unusually, faltered. "I forgot to buy a souvenir. Your pudding."
Mio's fingers stopped on the keyboard. The station-exclusive pudding that Mikoshiba never failed to bring back, one of them, every time he went on a business trip. Fuel for Mio's brain, and in Mikoshiba's words, part of "managing the asset's utilization rate." Today, it wasn't there.
"...You forgot that?" Mio narrowed her eyes slightly. Not anger. A pure observational anomaly. "That's unusual. Did something happen?"
"Nothing," Mikoshiba answered at once. "I'll make sure not to forget next time."
In the back, Aya was desperately holding in her laughter. A man who'd thrown away a deal to come flying back and dropped a single souvenir pudding along the way was insisting it was "nothing." Those empty hands were the most eloquent report of the day. Mio, for her part, was no longer thinking about anything but the missing fuel.