The next morning, I arrived at the office at my usual time.
Only this time, flanked by two men in suits nobody there knew. My lawyer, Mr. Uno, and a detective carrying a police badge.
The air on the floor came to a dead stop.
"Ms. Aizawa...? Why aren't you working from home—"
Kuroda, the department head, came rushing over in a panic. I slipped right past him and kept walking.
My destination was the desk next to mine. Rika Mochizuki's desk.
"Good morning, Rika."
Rika looked up from her phone. When she saw the two men behind me, her smile froze in an instant.
"...W-who are they?"
"My lawyer, and an officer from the Metropolitan Police Department's Cybercrime Division."
I set a sheet of paper down on her desk.
"What do you think this is?"
Rika looked at the paper. It was the access log for the account called "The Industry's Conscience."
"Posted at 2:14 a.m. The device ID it was accessed from. And also—"
I laid another sheet on top.
"The login history for your public account, 'RIKA.' Same device ID. Same IP address. Everything matches."
The color drained from Rika's face.
"Th-that's obviously fabricated! How would you even get that kind of information—"
"It's visible to me through operator access," I said quietly.
Somewhere on the floor, someone caught their breath.
"The company that runs this social network is FirstNext. I'm its largest shareholder. More than thirty percent of the outstanding stock. The platform you used to drag me through the mud? I've owned it all along."
"...Huh?"
Rika's phone slipped from her hand.
"The spread, the firestorm, and who's really behind your burner account. I could see all of it from my side, right from the start."
Mr. Uno stepped forward.
"Ms. Rika Mochizuki. Defamation through the dissemination of false information, as well as obstruction of business. The police have already accepted the criminal complaint. The post logs and device information have all been preserved. They can no longer be altered or deleted."
The detective went on, unruffled.
"We'll be asking you some questions shortly. It's voluntary, but you'll come with us, won't you?"
Rika tried to stand and staggered.
"Wait, Yui, this is—it's not— It was just a joke—"
"Twenty thousand quote retweets," I said, cutting her off.
"Those included death threats and slander against me—all of them. That's not a number you get to laugh off as a joke. We'll be filing disclosure requests on the senders one by one, too. You're going to clean up properly after the fire you stoked."
Then I turned to look at Kuroda. He had gone deathly pale and was backing away.
"Mr. Kuroda. You cut me loose without even looking into it, didn't you? Work from home, the company has an image to protect, you said."
"N-now, wait, I only said that because I was thinking of what was best for you—"
"It's fine."
I gave him a faint smile.
"People like you are the most honest about which way the wind is blowing. It makes you easy to read. I'll remember that."
Kuroda's face crumpled.
That day, Rika voluntarily accompanied the police to the station. Later, she was dismissed on disciplinary grounds, and her hundred and twenty thousand followers vanished overnight.
The fabricated post was deleted by the operator. In its place, an official notice was displayed, stating that it had defamed me and explaining how its poster had been identified.
The accounts that had been bashing me went quiet, like a tide going out. Mr. Uno is filing disclosure requests, one by one, against the handful who kept up the slander. Anonymity is no longer a shield.
People tend to think online lynch mobs only ever go one way. That the attackers get to throw stones from somewhere safe.
But who builds the ground that safe place stands on? They had probably never once thought about it.
I went back to my usual seat.
I opened the laptop on my desk. The blue logo used by forty million people.
The firestorm had already burned itself out.
I took a sip of black tea and murmured, in a voice no one else could hear:
"Before spreading it around, you should have checked whose garden you were dancing in."
The sky outside the window was perfectly clear.