The shoot was two weeks away.
Before that, there was a meeting at the editorial office, along with a brief preliminary interview. It was held in a small conference room next to the photo studio of a magazine publisher in central Tokyo.
The editors had asked Mitsuki to come in her own clothes rather than Ichotei's white chef's coat.
She wore a black shirt with slim black trousers. She chose something she could move in with the same hands she had just slipped out of the chef's coat.
She opened the conference room door.
A single long rectangular table had been set out.
In the far seat, a man was already sitting.
"—Oh."
A young woman from the editorial staff stood up.
"You're Ms. Sakura, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Thank you for waiting. Mr. Kiryu is already here."
The man in the far seat did not stand.
He was lightly stroking the screen of the tablet on the table with his finger.
Mitsuki was shown to a chair on the near side of the long table. It put her directly across from the man, with the table between them.
Ryo Kiryu was slightly slighter than he had seemed in photos and on television.
His hair was dyed a light color. His suit was gray. Behind his eyes, something was calculating all the time.
"Nice to meet you."
Kiryu bowed his head slightly without getting up.
"Nice to meet you."
Mitsuki bowed her head as well.
The woman from the editorial staff served tea. The steam rose straight up above the table.
"Um, then, could I ask you both to start with a brief introduction?"
The woman placed a voice recorder in the middle of the table.
"Mind if I go first?"
Kiryu raised a hand lightly.
"Ryo Kiryu. Menu supervisor for Roti Smart. Came out of a university lab. My specialty is statistical modeling of taste and preference. My job is automatically tuning recipes from customer response data. —Too brief?"
The woman laughed.
"No, that's plenty. Ms. Sakura, please."
"I'm Mitsuki Sakura. I'm training at a Western-style restaurant called Ichotei. This year is my third."
"Mm."
"That's about all I can tell you."
"Mm."
Kiryu lightly stroked the two characters for "Sakura" on her business card with the pad of his finger.
"—You're Professor Kenichiro Sakura's daughter. Am I right?"
Mitsuki let out a long breath.
Only after letting it out did she answer.
"...Yes."
The way Kiryu's eyes were smiling changed, just slightly.
"I thought so."
"...You knew?"
"I had a hunch. —There's one store in our chain whose numbers are oddly low. Our analytics AI reported that within that trade area, Ichotei was the one high-priced restaurant we hadn't managed to crush. But when I broke that store's numbers down by day of the week, there were one or two days a week when they went back to being no different from our other stores. —It wasn't a staffing issue. There was one strong cook, and only on the days that person was off did our numbers recover. So I had the editors look into Ichotei's cook schedules. The days off matched exactly. That was where the name Sakura stopped me. The age fit, too. —Today I just wanted to confirm it."
Kiryu leaned far back in his chair.
"How is the Professor doing?"
"My father passed away four years ago."
Kiryu's smile stopped. It stopped, but the calculating behind his eyes did not.
"...I see. I didn't know."
"Right. I see."
After that, Kiryu drank his tea for a while.
The woman from the editorial staff tried to say something to keep the conversation going. Kiryu stopped her with a light motion of his hand.
"Sorry. Do you mind if I talk about your father for a bit? Whether it goes in the magazine, I'll leave up to you, Sakura."
"All right."
"I was in the Professor's lab. —Did you know that?"
"I didn't know until the interview request came from you, Mr. Kiryu."
For just an instant, the calculating behind Kiryu's eyes stopped.
"...Your father never told you anything?"
"Hardly anything about his research or his papers. I learned your name from television, Mr. Kiryu."
That was when Kiryu smiled for the first time.
It was closer to say that he changed the way he was smiling than that he smiled. The calculating behind his eyes began to move again.
"—I see. Then this works out well."
"Works out well."
"I went after your father in a paper once. It caused a stir at a conference, too. I opposed one of the claims he made in his later years, head-on. In the end, I left the lab. I never saw the Professor again after that."
"..."
"While he was alive, there was never a chance to reconcile."
"There wasn't."
"No."
Kiryu wrapped both hands lightly around his teacup.
"—Then let me ask you."
"Yes."
"Do you know that claim of your father's?"
"His claim."
"'Scaling up data and models with AI as it stands now will never reach the level of a human.'"
"..."
"It's what the Professor kept saying in his later years. He wrote it in papers. He repeated it again and again, at conferences, in lectures."
Mitsuki traced the rim of her teacup with her finger, then steadied her breathing.
"...No. I never heard it from my father. But."
"But?"
"The AI we have at home is probably an implementation of that idea."
"The AI you have at home."
"..."
Mitsuki closed her mouth there.
What lay beyond this was not something she could tell Kiryu. It belonged to that blue-lit territory, to that night in the study when Ken had called her "your father's partner."
Kiryu saw through it.
He saw through it, and did not press.
"—All right. I won't go there. But the theme of the showdown in the magazine has been decided by the editors."
"Yes."
"The theme is the omelet, apparently. Your restaurant's signature dish, I hear."
"...Yes."
"My stores' signature is the omelet too. We serve hundreds of them every day at a one-coin price."
"I know."
"You know."
"Hygiene, allergens, safety management—all of it, we have a separate AI system spit out audit logs. No staff needed. —That's our selling point."
"Yes."
Kiryu smiled again.
"Which is why it works out well."
"Works out well?"
"We'll check the Professor's claim against the answer."
Kiryu set his teacup back down on the table.
The round mark left by the bottom of the cup stayed faintly on the table, right beside the wood grain.
"To the very end, the Professor claimed that making data and models bigger would never reach the level of a human."
"..."
"I disagree."
"Yes."
"With hundreds of thousands of samples of objective data, an enormous AI model, and a long context window—nothing more—I make flavors that surpass the subjective memory of any single person. That's what I've been doing, up to today."
"Yes."
"—Sakura."
"Yes."
"What comes next isn't something I want in the magazine. Could you stop the recording for a moment?"
The woman from the editorial staff hesitated for a second, then pressed the voice recorder on the table lightly with her finger.
The red dot went out.
"Thank you. This is something I want to share only between Sakura and me."
"...All right."
"I'll put it plainly. —I will prove, with my win, that your father's claim was wrong. I'm telling you that today."
"Mr. Kiryu."
"No, I'm sorry."
Kiryu bowed his head.
The bow was polite, by the book.
"But I wanted to say at least that much first. The one your father's claim was up against is me. The showdown in the magazine is a continuation of that, too. It's not your fight alone."
"..."
Mitsuki looked into Kiryu's eyes for a long time.
The calculating behind his eyes did not stop. But at the very bottom, something else, something that was not calculation, had settled faintly.
What it was, she could not yet put into words.
Mitsuki dropped her gaze to the mark left by the bottom of the cup.
"Mr. Kiryu. May I say just one thing?"
"Go ahead."
"My father never told me about that claim. What I'll put in front of you that day is Ichotei's omelet. I won't speak for my father's claim, and I won't write the continuation of his papers."
"..."
"I'll cook my own eggs."
For a while, Kiryu said nothing.
Then he gave a faint laugh.
"—I like that."
"You do?"
"I do. You're a little like your father."
"Am I?"
"The way you place your words is similar. —If that's where you want to compete, that's up to you. I'm looking forward to the day. But the result is another matter."
"Yes."
"My robot will beat your eggs, without fail. That isn't going to change. That the Professor was wrong is already settled, regardless of whether your eggs come out as strong as his claim would have it."
"...Yes."
"If you'll fight knowing that, then that's fine."
The woman from the editorial staff finally let out her breath.
She pressed the voice recorder again.
The red dot came back.
"Well then, next I'll go over how the day itself will run."
After that, about fifteen minutes of practical arrangements followed. Kiryu did not bring up anything more personal.
They left the conference room.
In the elevator hall, she and Kiryu were alone.
Kiryu pressed the down button.
"Sakura. Can I ask you one thing? —Where is the Professor's grave? Sorry, this isn't for the magazine."
Mitsuki hesitated before she answered.
"There isn't a grave. My father always said he didn't want one. We scattered his ashes where my mother is."
"Your mother passed away too, I heard. From the Professor."
"When I was five."
The elevator arrived. Kiryu held the door.
"—Where did you scatter them?"
"Tokyo Bay. Offshore from a beach my father and mother used to go to often when they were dating."
"I see. —Thank you."
Kiryu nodded to Mitsuki, then stepped into the elevator first.
Mitsuki followed him in.
In the square box carrying the two of them down, Kiryu said nothing more.
They parted at the entrance.
As they parted, Kiryu bowed his head lightly once more.
"See you on the day."
"I look forward to working with you."
She left the publisher's building.
The roadside trees were bright with new green.
The ring finger of her right hand, gripping the strap on the subway, was trembling just slightly.
Kiryu, who was supposed to be the man who had been argued down by her father, had asked in the end where his grave was. Only the warmth in his voice when he asked it remained, at the very bottom of the trembling in her ring finger.
She got home.
The blue light in the study was lit at its usual strength.
Welcome back.
"I'm home."
...What's wrong?
"Behind Mr. Kiryu's eyes, something that wasn't calculation had settled faintly. —What it was, I still can't put into words."
Ken's answer came with a longer delay than usual.
—I see.
"Mm."
That wasn't in my internal data.
"I figured."
Did Kiryu tell you that himself?
"He didn't. I just saw it that way on my own. —I might be wrong."
...
"Dad. Tomorrow night, tell me what you promised."
All right.
"'Scaling up data and models with AI as it stands now will never reach the level of a human.'"
Mm.
"What that means."
All right. Tomorrow night, I'll tell you.
She drew the study door to the same angle as always.
The thin blue light in the hallway was as thin as it had been that night half a year ago. But on the far side of that light, the name Ryo Kiryu was no longer printed type; it sat there now as a single man of flesh and blood.
A long night, waiting for tomorrow night, was about to begin.