The problem was the working capital right in front of them.
Operations had begun to run. The work of ten could now be handled by three people and a team of agents. Personnel costs had been lightened, root and branch, by the share of the employees who'd left. But the money coming in was itself still thin. A company running, and that company being in the black, were two separate problems.
"What about salaries?"
Mio said it out loud, on a whim. Mio herself had no attachment to a salary, the same as when she'd been unemployed. But Aya presumably wasn't like that.
"They'll be paid," Mikoshiba said honestly. This, at least, he didn't mix any lies into. "Next month, I can promise the same amount as before. ...But beyond that, honestly, I can't guarantee anything."
"It's ironic, but with all the employees quitting, operating costs got a whole lot lighter. On top of that, thanks to Mio, operations can run even with this headcount. The very skeleton of our expenses has changed. But if work doesn't come in, honestly, it's going to be tough. Aya, for you—"
"You don't have to say it."
Aya looked up from her monitor and cut Mikoshiba off. Her voice was as breezy as ever, but there was a core to it, different from her usual teasing.
"I'm here because I decided I'm going to build Mio's UI. If we sink, then that's that—I'll go down with the ship with you. Don't sell my resolve short." Aya shrugged. "—Besides, you know."
Aya looked over at Mio.
"If Mio's still here writing code and having fun, that means this company's still okay, right? I'm just trusting that face. You two can handle the hard business decisions."
"I'm not having fun."
"Yeah, I know." Aya laughed a little. "Says the person who pulled three all-nighters with that look on her face. Honestly, Mio, that's so you."
Mio didn't really understand why Aya seemed so happy. Logically, this was not a moment for laughing. But if Aya said she was staying, then that was fine. That was what she thought. That kind of incomprehensibility, Mio didn't dislike.
The path to investment had already been cut off.
The venture capital firms Mikoshiba approached shook their heads, one and all. The reason was the same everywhere. In the same space, Kotoba had staked capital on a different order of magnitude. "We can't put money into a fight you can't win." It was a sound argument. People who six months ago would have offered their business cards with a smile wouldn't even open the same business plan to the end today. A tsunami of cash had swept away not just the customers, but had gotten ahead of them and knocked the legs out from under the people with money, too. There would be no rescue through investment.
While Mikoshiba struggled, what got them through was a single, unexpected phone call.
"It's Ohata. The tofu."
Mikoshiba answered and immediately beckoned Mio over. From the speaker came a hoarse but vigorous voice. The owner of that tofu shop, the one who had given Mio and the others their very first sale after founding the company.
"I hear you folks are in trouble," Ohata said, with no preamble. "My son heard it at some get-together of young people. Says you're being crushed by some big outfit called Kotoba. That one that's been going around making a big noise lately about 'Zero Scam Ads,' right? They're only big because of money. Nothing inside."
"...So it's reached your ears," Mikoshiba said with a wry smile.
"It's been a year and a half since you folks found Tadokoro's mornings for us." Ohata's voice dropped a little. "Since then, the shop's gotten back on its feet. That dead man's instinct comes up on the screen every morning. My son's growing up watching it. What you folks gave us wasn't a machine. It was his thirty years. —I haven't forgotten."
"Mr. Ohata—"
"I can't give you money."
Even Mio could tell that Mikoshiba braced himself, slightly.
"A tofu shop can't do angel investing or any of that. It's not who I am. But listen." Ohata's voice grew thicker. "Work, I can give you. My son says he wants to expand the shop. We're starting prepared foods too. Purchasing, foot traffic—we can't read any of it again. —Build those mornings one more time. Tadokoro's instinct, enough for the new shop too. It's not charity. It's work we really need."
Mikoshiba didn't answer right away.
"And I put the word out. To a few people," Ohata went on. "Some of them went off to Kotoba's bargain prices. But there were a few left who didn't. Not about the price. They want to hire you again because it's you."
"Mr. Ohata," Mikoshiba said, after steadying his voice. He was not a man to gratefully accept work done out of obligation and leave it at that. "Let me ask just one thing. —Is this sympathy work, to keep us fed? Or is it work you really need?"
On the other end of the line, Ohata gave a short laugh. "It's work we really need. But the people we ask have got to be you folks. —It's both. You folks haven't lost all your customers yet, have you. There's customers left who won't go off to a place just because it's cheap. That's what this is."
Mikoshiba cast a glance at Mio's screen. That core group Mio had spent four nights protecting to the end. People who hadn't moved a single needle's width even when they were offered double the points. That band alone, amid the line chart of departures, hadn't so much as twitched downward.
"...Yes," Mikoshiba answered, looking at that number. "This company isn't a bucket with the bottom knocked out. The work we've done so far is shaped to properly generate what comes next."
"Figured," Ohata said, satisfaction seeping into his voice. "That's why I want to ask you folks."
For a while, Mikoshiba couldn't say anything. This man, who was never at a loss for words, kept hold of the receiver with his eyes lowered.
"...Thank you very much."
The voice he squeezed out wasn't his usual cool prince's. It was closer to that bare voice of his, the one that only broke down in front of Mio.
While the call was still going on, Mio had already begun rebuilding the revenue model.
Fitting the handful of jobs Ohata was sending their way into the current cost structure. This was where it would be decided. Even with the same handful of jobs, if the structure you loaded them onto was different, the answer would be something else entirely.
With the old Makoto—with the cost structure from back when ten people were running operations—these few jobs would have done nothing more than make the hole of the deficit a little shallower. Personnel costs had been eating up the gross margin on contract work, one job after another. Repeat orders were welcome, but they'd have been nothing more than an IV drip to prolong life.
But now it was different. Over four nights, Mio had rebuilt that very premise. Operations for ten ran on agents and three people. Personnel costs, the heaviest weight of all, had been removed root and branch. On this lean skeleton, Ohata's handful of jobs would—not be an IV drip to prolong life, but turn straight into profit. Repeat orders were different from one-time money. Every month, thin but certain, it came in, and the next month, and the month after that, it piled up.
Mio laid the two lines over each other once more. Expenses light as if the bottom had dropped out, and on the income side, monthly continuations piling up. There was only one answer.
"...In the black. And at a much higher profit margin than when we were growing."
The balance line lost its downward slope toward the bottom, and then—slowly, it began to point upward. In exactly the opposite direction from that line chart back at the start, the one where the user count had turned downward.
The company wasn't just surviving. It had grown lean, and strong—and had turned into the black, at a higher rate than before.
"...Trust compounds."
At Mio's murmur, Mikoshiba, after setting down the receiver, smiled slightly.
"Compounds, huh."
"Yes." Mio pointed at the screen. "Trust that's sustained becomes the principal for the next trust. Interest generates interest. It grows by multiplication. Whoever can wait the longest wins. Your decision not to chase short-term discounting, and to bet on the customers who wouldn't run—in the long term, it was the investment with the best rate of return."
"...When you put it that way," Mikoshiba said, smiling at the corner of his mouth, "it doesn't sound bad, as a business decision."
The customers who wouldn't run had stayed. Before it was a matter of numbers, it was the one and only proof that this year and a half had not been a mistake.
Mio was thinking about what came next.
They'd turned into the black. They'd come through the phase of fearing the fall. Then there was room to think.
There was a sticky note she'd stuck in a corner of her mind a while back. An unnatural connection between scam rings and someone, somewhere. And the "too-clean town square" she'd found at Kotoba. No gatekeeper, yet scam ads didn't overflow. The two anomalies weren't connected yet, but they were lined up near each other.
"...Maybe it's about time I chased it for real. Where this attack is coming from."
Mio was finally about to open the folder with the sticky note on it. The structure of the attack was getting interesting. Not a sense of mission. It was simply interesting. That was the unchanging driving force of the person called Mio.
It was just then.
In the corner of the screen, Makoto's detection log gave a small jump.
At the newest end of the pile of rejection records. An unfamiliar face had slipped in, all by itself. A face walking precisely a few centimeters outside the shape that Mio's engine remembered as "scam."
Lately the news had been reporting, day after day, on the surge in investment scams. That wave was now beginning, in earnest, to lay its hands on the gate of Makoto, which flew the banner of "zero scams."
"...Well then. The next game begins."
Mio called up the unfamiliar face that had slipped through, filling the whole screen.
The sound of the world receded, just a little.