"I can't say we've won completely."
That night, at the office in Gotanda, Mio had the lines she hadn't been able to trace all the way to the end up on the monitor at her seat.
The domestic network of withdrawal runners had been crushed. The money windows, Kotoba's collusion—those had been cut off too. But at the very back of Mio's graph—the area closest to the ringleaders—a number of lines broke off abruptly. Payments were routed overseas, bank accounts had been opened outside the country, and the delivery orders came from servers across the border.
"Past this point, my map can't reach," Mio said, tracing the bundle of broken-off lines with her finger. "The physical bases are across the sea. The Japanese police can't go in on their own. Even if they strike through international cooperation, they rebuild right away. A few days after a bust, the same scheme starts moving again under a different name. It's the same as the Hydra. Cut off one head, and the body is still alive."
"So we can't get all of them," Mikoshiba said, bringing over two coffees and setting one beside Mio's hand.
"We can't," Mio said clearly. "There's no such thing as a 'total victory,' and there never was. All we can do is deter them and keep the damage to a minimum. Tonight, in this country, even one fewer person gets deceived. Even one victim who'd vanished comes back. That's enough. Technology that promises perfection is a lie."
They weren't words of defeat.
Mio had known from the start that the world was shaped that way. So she neither tried to win too much, nor felt she had lost too much. She had protected what she could protect. Makoto had not been painted over by the side of lies. That one point alone remained, for certain.
Mikoshiba looked at Mio's profile for a while.
"There's something I want to tell you."
Mikoshiba brought it up suddenly. Mio looked up from her monitor. Mikoshiba wore his usual cool prince's face. But behind it there was a slight stiffness, as of someone taking out something he had kept tucked away for a long time.
"The day you left Kotoba. When I called out to you as you walked out of the building. That wasn't on impulse."
"I know," Mio said. "You couldn't stand by, from a cost standpoint, while a talented engineer got unfairly cut. A rational decision."
"No."
Mikoshiba denied it quietly.
"It didn't start that day. From before that. Since our days at the previous company, I'd had my eye on your 'talent' the whole time."
Mio's fingers stopped.
"There was no way a talent like that belonged in a company that rotten. Someday, I'd build my own company and bring you in. I'd decided that."
Mikoshiba looked straight into Mio's eyes.
"The day you were fired was just the perfect opportunity to move that plan up. That's why I didn't hesitate. No one at the previous company evaluated you properly. Among them, there was one person who had recognized your talent before anyone else. I wanted you to know that much, at least."
The air in the office was quiet.
This was a mountain of emotion. There had been one person who, from long before, had looked straight at Mio, crushed at her previous job and never properly measured by anyone—and that confession was now, unmistakably, being spoken from Mikoshiba's mouth. And yet Mikoshiba did not mix a single word of romance into it. He didn't say he liked her, or that he'd fallen for her. All he revealed was the fact that he had been watching her talent. That was this man's way, which he would never break to the very end.
Mio was silent for a while.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
"So it was a rational decision."
Mikoshiba's expression froze, slightly.
"Spot a talented engineer early and secure them. Get in ahead of everyone and recruit a talent that can be acquired cheaply, one overlooked by the people who measure others by academic credentials and titles. As a business owner, that's an extremely rational fixation. Correct, as an eye for investment."
The candidate she had sketched that night in a faint line and left on hold with low confidence—"monopoly / locking in"—finally had its evidence complete.
Mio nodded, as if impressed.
"So you had a good eye, is what it comes down to. An up-front investment in the technology that is me. You'd calculated the return efficiency well. I'm convinced. That's why you've always been making sure not to let go of my 'technology.'"
Mikoshiba said nothing.
He had no words to deny it. To deny it would mean speaking of love. That, to the very end, he would not do. So all Mikoshiba could do was smile faintly. With that bare face of his, the one that cracked only for Mio. The mountain of emotion he had revealed had its address rewritten as "investment in technology," and remained suspended in midair, reaching nowhere.