The old man's fork stayed where it had stopped, and for a while it did not move.
It was the way something stops when it is checking something in the mouth.
The older woman beside him spoke to him gently.
"Sir, is something the matter?"
The old man did not answer.
He only set his fork back down on the plate, slowly.
He set it down, and then he let out a long breath.
This side of the glass was soundproofed.
Voices from the other side came through a separate set of microphones the editorial department had arranged, and into the camera crew's headphones.
The young man wearing the crew's headphones suddenly turned to the side.
"...Mr. Kiryu. Ms. Sakura."
"Hm?"
"The white-haired gentleman in the far seat on the judges' side is saying something."
"Put the mic through, please," Kiryu said.
A staffer pressed a few buttons.
The low voice from the other side began to flow into this side of the venue as well.
It was the old man's voice.
Low and hoarse.
"...My mother used to make one like this."
"Oh?"
The woman beside him stopped her fork.
"Your mother, sir?"
"Yes."
The old man turned his face toward this side of the glass.
From this side, only the outline of the old man could be seen. Even so, the single deep rise and fall of his shoulders came through clearly.
"She's been gone a long time now."
"..."
"It's been a long while since I remembered."
That was all the old man said, and he lowered his eyes to the rim of the plate. He said nothing more.
The air in the room changed.
Kiryu looked at the plate in front of him.
The plate his robot had produced.
There was no scorch on it, and no cheese.
Instead, grains of mixed ground meat and onion were buried in the egg, lined up evenly. The single line of ketchup on the plate ran straight.
It was the bottom of the valley of a hundred thousand people's chew counts, in a place the hands of the old man's own mother could never reach.
On this side of the glass, Kiryu let out a long breath.
The temperature of the breath he let out could not be heard by the camera crew on this side.
Even so, the shape of the breath alone came across to this side as a faint tremor in the outline of Kiryu's shoulders.
Over at the judges' table, the forks had stopped.
The editor-in-chief beside the old man rested her fingers lightly on the rim of her plate and gave a small nod. She began to say something and in the end did not. The remaining judge, a man in his forties—a general reader chosen at random—kept moving his eyes back and forth between his own plate and the photograph of Kiryu's robot's plate on the other side.
The air in the room was wavering.
On this side of the glass, Kiryu stood with his hands still clasped behind his back.
The way his hands were clasped had not changed from the first ten seconds.
Only the line of his shoulders had lost a little of its tension.
The editorial staffer acting as emcee took back the microphone.
"Everyone, thank you for sharing your impressions. —We will now proceed to the vote."
White, unsigned ballots were handed to each of the three judges.
Kiryu watched.
Mitsuki watched too.
The vote was over in two or three minutes.
The count began.
The editorial staffer in charge of the count counted the ballots. When she had finished counting, she checked the numbers once more. When she had checked them, she handed them to the editor-in-chief.
Before reading out the result, the editor-in-chief looked once at the faces of the two chefs on this side.
Then she brought her mouth to the microphone.
"I will now announce the result."
The air in the room stood still.
"Roti Smart, Mr. Ryo Kiryu: one vote."
"Ichotei, Ms. Mitsuki Sakura: two votes."
"The win goes to Ichotei, Ms. Mitsuki Sakura."
A small round of applause rose from the camera crew in the venue.
Applause drifted over from the judges' table too.
In the midst of it, Kiryu stood with his hands clasped behind his back and did not move for a while.
Eventually, he slowly turned to face her.
Kiryu bowed his head slightly.
"—I lost."
"..."
"The robot wins on every item that can be measured. Salt, butter, how the egg's beaten, temperature, how the ground meat's mixed, the gloss on the ketchup—it comes out ahead on all of it."
"Yes."
"And it lost."
"Yes."
Kiryu laughed.
Or rather than laughed, he had failed to choose how to laugh.
The camera crew began setting up their equipment. A camera for the interview was swung into position between the two of them.
A woman from the editorial department came over.
"Mr. Kiryu, Ms. Sakura. Would you mind doing an interview?"
"Not at all," Kiryu answered.
"Mind if I go first?"
"Of course."
"Let me ask Sakura the first question."
"I'm sorry?"
"Sorry about this."
Kiryu pressed his palms together lightly toward the woman from the editorial department.
The camera's red light came on.
Kiryu turned to Mitsuki.
"Sakura."
"Yes."
"That half-shade-deeper scorch on the far side. My robot's evaluation function would take a big deduction for it. —It's the farthest direction you can go from the median of a hundred thousand people. And you pulled the cheese back further than a family breakfast would. You knew that too, didn't you?"
"The AI at home told me."
"It told you, and you did it anyway?"
"I did."
"Why?"
For a while, Mitsuki looked into Kiryu's eyes.
The calculating at the back of his eyes had stopped.
Instead, something like a child that had lain faintly sunk at the bottom of the calculations had now risen to just beneath the surface of his eyes.
"Mr. Kiryu. Our AI is my father's AI."
"Yeah. —I figured as much."
"My father's AI told me—"
Mitsuki broke off there for a moment.
"I can't put it well."
"Okay."
"My father's AI said that your robot and itself would probably come down in the same place."
"The same place."
"Yes."
"And beyond that?"
"That beyond that, it exists only on my tongue."
For a while, Kiryu said nothing. He was no longer choosing how to laugh.
"...That's the Professor's line, isn't it."
"I don't know whether it's something my father said while he was alive. The AI might have reconstructed it from somewhere."
"Right."
"But my father never said it to me while he was alive."
Kiryu let out a long breath. When he had finished, he shook his head slightly.
"—I'm floored."
"Mr. Kiryu."
"Yeah."
"My father left you in his night logs."
"Night logs."
"Logs where my father, while he was alive, let out his doubts to a simulation of my mother."
"...Ah."
"In them, there was one line where he wrote that you had refuted him."
"..."
"My father wrote that you had refuted him."
"Refuted?"
"Yes."
"I don't think I managed to refute him, though."
"My father thought you did."
Kiryu was looking at the plates on the other side of the glass, which were already starting to empty.
The old man's plate was nearly empty already.
"...I see."
"Yes."
"So the Professor thought I'd refuted him."
"He did."
"Huh."
"Mr. Kiryu."
"Yeah."
"From that night on, my father tried to write a rebuttal to you. He started it, then they found his illness, and he died without being able to write it."
"..."
For a while, Kiryu looked toward the glass. Then he moved his eyes to the monitor beside the robot arm.
The graph on the monitor was no longer moving. Only the final values were displayed. Every one of them sat at the bottom of the valley of numbers.
"My robot reached the bottom of the valley of a hundred thousand people's average."
"Yes."
"Your egg went outside it and lodged in a different valley."
"Yes."
"—So that's what it was."
The camera was still rolling.
No one in the camera crew interrupted.
Kiryu was no longer looking at her.
He had set his gaze on the empty plates on the other side of the glass.
"Sakura. Just one last thing, if that's all right."
"Yes."
"The Professor's remains went to Tokyo Bay, didn't they? Offshore."
"Yes."
"So out there offshore, the Professor's been writing the rest of his last paper this whole time."
"..."
"I feel like today I was made to read the rest of it."
"Yes."
Kiryu pressed his lips together there for a moment.
"—No."
"Yes."
"I can't accept it just like that, though."
"Yes."
"But I do understand that much—that I was made to read it."
Kiryu bowed his head slightly.
It was almost the same angle as the slight bow he had given that first time in the conference room.
The camera staff stopped the camera.
The woman from the editorial department let out a soft breath.
"Thank you very much. —We'll take a short break now. Please both rest for a bit in the waiting rooms."
"Sure."
"Yes."
The waiting rooms were two separate rooms, one for each of them.
Before stepping out into the corridor, Kiryu looked at her once more.
"Sakura."
"Yes."
"I'm going to rethink my robot. —Just adding scorch and cheese on top of the ground meat and ketchup probably won't be enough."
"Yes."
"How much I rewrite, I'll figure out from here."
"Yes."
For a while, Kiryu kept his eyes lowered somewhere around the corridor floor.
After going two or three steps down the corridor, he suddenly stopped. He did not turn back toward her.
"I might head out to the shore tonight. —I haven't decided whether I'm going or not."
"Yes."
Then Kiryu laughed lightly. For the first time, it had come up to the surface of his eyes.
Kiryu disappeared down the far end of the corridor. She heard the sound of an elevator button being pressed.
In the waiting room, she took off her chef's coat. The green embroidery on the chest warped slightly with the creases. She changed into a navy dress and untied the apron strings. She was remembering where the strings of her mother's linen apron had sat.
She left the waiting room. While she waited for the elevator, beyond the glass of the corridor, the camera crew were packing the arms of Kiryu's robot into a silver transport case. The sound of the lid closing reached faintly into the corridor.