I'd heard from Koyomi a while back that Shota's father's company was a subcontractor for the Kisaragi Group. That the world was smaller than one might think.
But that its books had been muddy from the start—and that Koyomi had known it since long before—I'd never even imagined.
That night, on the top floor of the tower condo.
While I was working on my manuscript, Koyomi set a teacup down at the exact angle my right hand could reach, as she always did. Those fingerless gloves meant to keep my fingers from getting cold were laid neatly at the edge of the desk, too.
Koyomi had the face of someone who already knew everything about how my day at school had gone. That Yuna had grabbed my sleeve, that Shota had mocked me at the shoe lockers. Even if I asked who she'd heard it from, she probably wouldn't answer. This person kept track of everything around me in finer detail than I did.
"My god. There is one thing I would like to tell you."
Koyomi broached it quietly.
"I mentioned it to you before, did I not? That Shota's father's company is a subcontractor for the Kisaragi Group."
I nodded. It was something I'd heard from her a little while ago.
Next to the scripture notebooks, Koyomi set down a different thick file. Not like the leather-bound notebooks—a businesslike bundle of gray documents.
"There is something odd in that company's books. ...I did not tell you at the time."
I stopped my pen.
That night—when Shota's name came up, Koyomi's smile had looked cold for just an instant. That hadn't been my imagination after all.
"You knew, and kept quiet?"
"There was no need to say it."
Koyomi gently laid a finger on the bundle of gray documents.
"This is a record of that company's transactions."
I couldn't really read the documents. They were rows of numbers and technical terms.
But when Koyomi's slender finger stopped on a certain line, even I could tell.
Only there, the numbers were unnatural.
"The materials that were supposedly delivered never actually arrived anywhere. Only the invoices are floating in midair."
Koyomi's voice had returned to her usual emotionless sub-zero.
"Fictitious transactions. A subcontractor padding its bills to the prime contractor. A common method, and yet one that must never be used."
I didn't understand the first thing about business or bookkeeping. Even so, the wrongness of that one line her finger traced came through. Something that should be there wasn't. Money was being paid for something that shouldn't exist. That feeling that something was warped, which even a child could see.
"This isn't just once or twice, is it."
"No. For years, a little at a time. Amounts small enough not to be noticed. ...They must have convinced themselves they would not be noticed."
"...Isn't that bad?"
"Yes. Very."
Koyomi gently stroked the gray documents with the backs of her fingers. As if touching something dirty.
"For years, without anyone noticing?"
"In the Kisaragi Group, every business partner undergoes a routine audit each year. ...However, the year-round audits pass as long as the numbers add up. They do not go so far as to match each invoice against the actual goods."
"So it got overlooked, then?"
"Rather than overlooked—no one was looking that deeply to begin with."
Koyomi squared the corners of the documents with her fingertips.
"And so those people must have convinced themselves. That this much would never be noticed."
I felt a chill run straight down my spine.
Not noticed. For years, it hadn't been noticed. So from now on, too, it wouldn't be noticed.—The lies they'd built up little by little that way were still sitting there, intact, inside that gray bundle.
They hadn't disappeared. It was just that no one had been looking.
Shota probably had some vague idea of this shady side. Knowing it, he'd flaunted his father's business card and laughed at my story as "the power of money." Conveniently ignoring that his own family was the one propped up by the power of money.
But—I thought.
"There are people working at that company besides Shota, right?"
Koyomi didn't answer.
She pretended not to have heard me and quietly closed the gray documents.
Her profile looked different from both her usual face of faith and the face of the Ice Princess.
I was remembering that easy smile of Shota's. Flashing his father's business card, hinting at his family's comfort, laughing at my story as "the power of money." That the ground beneath that comfort had been standing on sand like this.
Shota probably had a faint inkling. Having that inkling, he pretended not to see it and sat on top of it, puffed up. Conveniently ignoring that it was his own family that ran on the power of money, he'd been looking down on me.
"Koyomi."
"—My god, please think only of your writing."
Koyomi smiled. But her eyes weren't smiling.
The spine of the gray file glinted dully under the fluorescent light.
Koyomi's finger slowly traced, once more, the name of the company written there.
I didn't yet understand what that motion of her finger meant.