That night, after Mio had gone home, Aya told Mikoshiba everything that had happened that afternoon. The parts Mio had left out before heading home—the words Kiryu had used to appraise her.
Mikoshiba leaned back against the sofa and listened to Aya without so much as a nod. The relief from earlier was gone without a trace.
"—So then Mio goes, 'You asked the wrong question,' and just sends him packing." Aya shrugged. "That guy, he was spouting stuff like, buy the blueprints for what Mio made, toss them to an outsourcer, and it'd be the same. I was right there and heard all of it, and he doesn't have the first clue what Mio does every day. And on top of that, he says technology's only worth the money it makes, she doesn't know her own worth. —Talking price to Mio, of all people."
Mikoshiba's finger stroked the arm of the sofa, once, slowly.
His face had gone completely blank.
That seamless smile, which had won people over hundreds of times in the field, was now nowhere to be seen. In its place was a chillingly quiet nothing. A man who shouted was easier to handle. Mikoshiba's anger was the kind that had no temperature.
Kiryu had it wrong. He thought he could buy Mio with money; when she'd cut him down as crude, he'd tried to lure her with a title; when that didn't work either, he'd finally appraised what Mio had made as "a single blueprint." That man converted everything he couldn't measure with his own yardstick into a price. And whatever couldn't be converted, he assumed was worthless.
What Mikoshiba couldn't forgive wasn't that Kiryu had wanted Mio. It was the one thing Mio guarded and never ceded to anyone—data freedom, the line of never distorting the technology. Mikoshiba knew better than anyone that Mio faced the world on that single point alone. And Kiryu, of all things, had stomped squarely on that very line. "You use data however makes money."
Apparently Mio had cut him down with a single remark—"You asked the wrong question"—and gone home. Mikoshiba had only heard it secondhand from Aya, yet he could almost see the length of Mio's stride as she left. She wasn't hurt in the least. Mio had never set foot in Kiryu's ring to begin with. But whether Mio had been hurt and whether Mikoshiba would forgive it were two separate matters.
The other day was the first time Kiryu had shown his face in person. But Kotoba's shadow itself had been falling over them since well before that. Under the guise of small talk passed along through intermediaries, feelers—"there are parties interested in Sigma"—had reached Mikoshiba several times already. The company was not for sale, and neither was Mio. Each time, Mikoshiba had crushed them with a smile, but without leaving a shred of room. He had never once had any intention of selling. He hadn't told Mio, or Aya. He didn't want noise like that to stop Mio's hands.
—That morning, whenever it was, when Aya had mentioned that "Kotoba's sniffing around." Mikoshiba had brushed it off with a perfect salesman's smile. He'd noticed that Mio had been looking at that smile oddly. Maybe he hadn't fully covered it up. That woman, at the very moments that mattered, saw even things she didn't need to see.
"Aya."
Mikoshiba spoke low. His voice was quiet. Which was exactly why a faint chill ran down Aya's spine.
"Makoto's cash flow, next quarter's credit, contact details for our past clients. Pull all of it together by tomorrow, please. And—get whatever you can on Kotoba's recent moves from the reporters I know."
"...Boss."
"That man," Mikoshiba said, looking at the city lights outside the window, just lit against the dusk, "wanted the company and was turned down. Wanted Mio and was rebuffed. His type of person, when they can't have something, goes about breaking it next. He'll retaliate. No doubt about it."
"So you're going to crush him first?"
"I'm going to annihilate him. In business."
Mikoshiba said it very quietly. Without shouting, without strain, as if simply settling a single fact.
"The numbers he believes belong to his own company. That empire he thinks he inherited from his father. I'll smash it head-on, in the ring of business. The thing he prides himself on more than anything, I'll take from him root and branch, by his own methods. —This man will do it. Without fail."
Aya couldn't say anything.
Aya had watched, from the front row, all the doting this boss of hers directed at Mio, with nowhere for it to go. So ordinarily, this would be the moment she started her butler-voiced commentary in her head. But tonight, of all nights, she felt not the slightest urge to chime in.
Aya had never before seen the man named Ritsu Mikoshiba get this quietly, this deeply angry on someone's behalf. It was no longer something you could call by sweet little words like doting or jealousy. It was something colder, something far more serious.
Meanwhile, in the president's office at Kotoba headquarters, Sota Kiryu was crumpling the offer letter Mio had left behind in his fist.
"...Data freedom, my ass."
To the very end, Kiryu didn't understand what Mio's words meant. Things he didn't understand, Kiryu always processed as defects on the other person's side. That woman was out of her mind. He'd piled it up for her, three times, five times, and she'd lined up some incomprehensible logic and rebuffed him. A little girl with nothing but a high school diploma.
She had looked down on him.
That alone circulated through Kiryu like poison. Fear of what he couldn't understand turned, as always, into anger.
"...Fine."
Kiryu tossed the crumpled paper into the wastebasket.
"If I can't buy it, I don't need it. And I won't stand for something I don't need growing up right in front of my eyes. That toy called 'Makoto'—this sense of safety or whatever that's drawing customers in, I'll take the whole thing from above. We've got Kotoba, one of the biggest in the country. Put the same sign up over our town square, throw money at it, and paint them over. A tiny company like that, I'll dry it up in six months."
In his face reflected in the window of the president's office, Kiryu saw the face of a winner. Already forgetting the crushed offer, he murmured in high spirits.
"'Zero Scam Ads'—I'll make that Kotoba's banner. I'll pile on as much money as it takes."
That was the first stroke of the shadow that would later drive Sigma into its greatest crisis. But that night, Kiryu had no idea at all what the banner he'd raised meant. Nor did he realize that he was eating through the company his father had left behind.
A few days later, at the Gotanda office.
Mikoshiba was oddly fired up.
Checking in with clients from past contract work. Next quarter's financial plan. Credit checks on business partners. He was making defensive moves several at a time, one after another. Ordinarily, this man was the type to quietly place only the single move that was needed. Now, he looked as though he was trying to fill the board from edge to edge with his own pieces. That only the aroma of the coffee he ground in the morning was the same as always made it all the more incongruous.
Mio watched his movements from the corner of her eye for a while. As usual, she didn't notice any emotional ups and downs. But the fact that his behavioral pattern had drifted from baseline was something she could pick up as data.
At lunch, when she was alone with Aya in the kitchenette, Mio broached it evenly.
"Mikoshiba's been awfully active lately. Did something happen?"
In front of the coffee maker, Aya's hand stopped for just an instant.
Aya knew. That on that night, the president of this company had decided, for the sake of one single person, to quietly destroy an entire company. That his profile had been something colder, no longer something you could call by sweet little words like doting or jealousy. And—that the one who had pulled the trigger was this obtuse genius herself, tilting her head in puzzlement right in front of her.
None of it could come from Aya's mouth. Even if she said it, probably not a single word would get across correctly.
"...Who knows? It's the boss's doing. A business decision, probably?" From behind the steam, Aya retreated into her usual flat delivery. "When the business grows, there's more to defend. That's all."
"I see." Mio didn't pursue it further. Apparently judging it an inefficient question, she picked up her cup and went straight back to her desk.
Watching her go, Aya let out a small breath.
Honestly, Mio, Aya grumbled softly to herself.
When it came to the underside of a project, she could see clear to the bottom of the earth; however cleverly a flaw was hidden, in the end she'd dig up every last one. And yet the fact that their composed boss had quietly started a war for her sake—that, probably, she would never see in her whole life.
Aya took a sip of her coffee, which was starting to go lukewarm.
Honestly. Their Ice Bayes didn't look like she'd ever change.