November 15, 1990.
Tokyo, Bunkyo. Saionji Main Family Residence.
8:00 AM. The living room on the second floor of the main residence was filled with the scent of freshly ground coffee beans.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the garden had been dyed in the colors of late autumn.
The leaves of several ancient maples had turned from crimson to dark brown, occasionally spiraling down in the cool morning breeze.
Satsuki sat at the low table by the window.
Spread out before her were three thin sheets of thermal fax paper—a progress summary sent by Endo from Osaka last night.
The pre-audit progress of Sumitomo Metal, Sumitomo Electric, and Sumitomo Light Metal, the sealed reference numbers of the comparison table, and the MT700 confirmation receipt from Citibank Tokyo Branch.
Her gaze swept across the pages, very quickly.
When Chizuru walked in from the side door, her footsteps were almost non-existent.
She carried a lacquered wooden tray with a white porcelain coffee cup and a plate of thick-cut toast sliced into triangles.
The toast was toasted until crispy on the surface, spread with a thick layer of peanut butter, and honey was dripping from the edges.
Beside it lay two strips of bacon and a small plate of scrambled eggs.
Chizuru carefully avoided the area where the fax papers were placed and placed the tray silently on the right side of the low table.
The handle of the coffee cup faced Satsuki's right hand.
She then stepped back half a step, her hands folded in front of her.
When Satsuki flipped to the second page, she reached out, picked up the coffee cup, and took a sip.
The angle at which the cup was placed back on the coaster was slightly off.
Chizuru stepped forward, gently turned the cup two degrees straight with her fingertips, and returned to her original position.
Satsuki finished reading the third page, folded the fax paper into thirds, and tossed it onto the corner of the table.
She picked up a piece of toast and took a bite.
The salty sweetness of the peanut butter mixed with the stickiness of the honey melted between her teeth.
"Chizuru."
"Yes."
"Where is this peanut butter from?"
"I retrieved it from Kinokuniya yesterday. It is a US-made, chunky style."
"Mm, delicious."
Satsuki finished the first piece of toast, and her fingers were stained with a little honey.
Chizuru had already handed her a moist towel.
Satsuki wiped her fingers, her gaze falling on the stack of fax papers at the corner of the table.
"The progress is faster than I thought."
She bit off a corner of the second piece of toast, mumbling vaguely.
"I have not even played my cards yet, and the Hakusuikai is already unable to hold on."
Chizuru did not respond.
Such content was not within the scope of her response.
Satsuki tucked the bacon into the toast and took another bite.
She chewed a few times and swallowed.
"Itoman is close now."
She picked up the coffee cup, her gaze passing through the floor-to-ceiling window, watching a maple leaf in the garden slowly spiral down onto the top of the stone lantern.
"Once it explodes, the Sumitomo Main Family will have to officially take their seat at the table."
Satsuki put the last bite of scrambled eggs into her mouth.
The coffee cup was empty, and Chizuru had already placed a second cup of coffee on the coaster.
Satsuki picked up the new coffee, took a sip, and suddenly turned her head to look at Chizuru.
"Have you eaten?"
Chizuru bowed slightly. "I have already eaten in the kitchen."
"Mm." Satsuki nodded and pushed away the empty plate. "Help me prepare a set of clothes for travel this afternoon, something thicker."
"After that, we will be going on a long trip."
"Yes, what is the climate at the destination?"
Satsuki leaned back into the chair, her hands wrapped around the warm coffee cup.
"Very cold."
She did not say anything more.
SIS underground living area, Emi's private suite.
The blackout curtains in the room were drawn tightly, and the only light source came from three CRT monitors side-by-side on the desk.
The ghostly blue fluorescence reflected on Emi's face, cutting her features into distinct blocks of light and shadow.
She had been sitting in this chair for four hours.
On the left monitor was a PDF document densely marked with fluorescent colors.
It was a preprint of the Utah Array that Richard Normann was about to publish in 1991—she had obtained a copy of the manuscript in advance through the SIS academic intelligence channel.
The middle monitor was running a simulation program she had written herself.
The code was written in C, and a line of green characters was slowly scrolling on a black background.
The program was simulating the decay curve of neuronal action potentials after a microelectrode array was implanted into the primary motor cortex of a rhesus monkey.
On the right monitor was a hand-drawn circuit topology diagram.
After the pencil lines were scanned into the system and enlarged, the edges were a bit blurry, but the structure was very clear—that, too, was designed by her, a cross-sectional diagram for the third version of the flexible polyimide substrate probe.
Emi's right hand held a mechanical pencil, the tip hovering above the A3 draft paper next to it.
The paper was covered with dense mathematical derivations, and the bottom line stopped at an unfinished matrix transformation.
She stared at the simulation results on the center screen, her brows furrowed tightly.
"This is not right."
She put down the pen, braced her hands on the edge of the desk, and leaned closer to the screen.
The glial scar proliferation rate produced by the simulation was nearly 40% faster than the data reported in Normann's paper.
If extrapolated according to this curve, the signal impedance would soar to an unusable level seven days after implantation.
Her fingers tapped rapidly on the keyboard, pulling up the underlying parameters.
"The migration speed of microglia is set according to Carter's 1987 data... the activation threshold uses Kreutzberg's model."
She bit her lower lip, her gaze jumping back and forth between the two sets of parameters.
"The problem is the Young's modulus of the material." She whispered to herself. "The silicon substrate is 170 GPa, while brain tissue is only a few hundred pascals... a mismatch of six orders of magnitude, the mechanical stress will continuously stimulate the inflammatory response."
She quickly wrote a line on the blank space of the draft paper.
Polyimide ~ 3GPa → still a three-order-of-magnitude gap → need hydrogel coating for buffering?
Emi rubbed her sore eyes with her left hand and pulled the chair forward again.
She reached out to grab the stack of tissue section photos sent back from the Hokkaido laboratory at the corner of the table.
"Emi, what are you doing?"
A soft voice suddenly sounded right against her earlobe, and warm breath brushed against her ear.
Emi literally sprang up from the chair.
The mechanical pencil flew from her fingers, bounced twice on the desk, and rolled onto the floor.
She turned around abruptly, and her lower back hit the edge of the table, causing her to gasp in pain.
Satsuki was standing half a step behind her.
She was wearing a milky white turtleneck sweater today, with the hem tucked loosely into light gray wide-leg pants.
Her hands were behind her back, her head tilted, looking at her with a knowing smile.
"Sa—Satsuki-chan!"
Emi's voice jumped up nearly an octave the moment she jumped up.
Her heart pounded against her chest, and her breathing suddenly became rapid and shallow.
The next second, her brain felt as clear as if it had been doused with ice water.
The screens.
All three screens were lit up.
The paper on the microelectrode array, the running results of the simulation program, that cross-sectional diagram of the flexible probe—all exposed to Satsuki's field of view.
"Satsuki-chan—how did you get in!" Emi's voice was filled with frantic panic, as if she had been caught by her parents watching something indescribable. "Is not the door locked?"
As she spoke, she reached for the keyboard, her fingers frantically fumbling for the location of Alt + F4.
But all three monitors were lit, and her hands jumped back and forth between the keys, but she could not close a single window.
Satsuki did not look at the screen.
She bypassed Emi, walked to the bed on the other side of the room, and turned to sit down.
The mattress sank slightly under her weight.
She crossed her legs, placed her hands on the quilt behind her, and spoke in a casual tone.
"I authorized the access control system, Emi."
Satsuki tilted her head, a smile spreading from the corners of her eyes.
"I have the highest authority for all facilities of the Saionji family."
Emi's hands froze above the keyboard.
Satsuki looked at her flustered appearance, raised a hand, and tapped her own temple with her index finger.
"Who do you think approved those experimental monkeys for you?"
Emi's mouth opened, then closed.
"That..."
Satsuki stood up, walked to Emi, reached out, and gently tapped her nose.
"Stupid."
Emi's nose was touched, and it wrinkled reflexively.
She raised her hand to scratch her nose, her ears already burning red.
Then, her gaze moved past Satsuki's shoulder and landed on the bed.
The blood drained from her face.
That life-sized body pillow!
That custom life-sized body pillow printed with Satsuki's full-body illustration!
It was lying right in the center of the bed, face up, without any covering.
And Satsuki just now was sitting right next to it.
Emi desperately suppressed the urge to scream, her gaze moving on.
Past the bed, past the nightstand, and onto the entire wall opposite.
Hundreds of photos.
A profile in the classroom, a back view on the way home from school, a full-body portrait at The Club, a silhouette on the balcony of the Karuizawa villa.
Some were taken clearly, some had blurred edges, and some were obviously captured from a long distance with a telephoto lens.
They covered the entire wall densely, like a mosaic pieced together from fragments.
All of them were Saionji Satsuki.
It was quiet in the room for about three seconds.
Those three seconds felt like three centuries to Emi.
Her knees began to go weak, and her fingers unconsciously clenched the hem of her T-shirt.
Satsuki had walked back to the bed.
She looked down and reached out to pick up the life-sized body pillow.
The body pillow was large.
Satsuki held it vertically in front of her, resting her chin on the top of the pillow, revealing half of her face.
She looked at Emi, who was standing in place, her whole body trembling slightly.
"You sleep hugging this every night?"
There was a hint of helplessness in Satsuki's tone, but the corners of her mouth were clearly curled up.
That sentence pierced Emi's last line of psychological defense.
She rushed forward, her hands waving wildly in mid-air, her voice already tearful.
"No... Satsuki-chan, let me explain—that, that is..."
Her lips were trembling, and the liquid in her eye sockets was accumulating at a visible speed.
She wanted to find some reasonable explanation, but her mind was blank.
No, no matter how you explain it, this kind of behavior can only be classified as "perverted."
Satsuki put down the body pillow.
She stood up, walked to Emi, and reached out to pinch Emi's already red ear.
Her fingertips were cool, and she gently rubbed the earlobe.
Then she let go and walked to the photo wall.
Satsuki crossed her arms, tilted her head, and her gaze moved slowly between those photos.
"Emi."
Emi's body stiffened suddenly.
She moved over tremblingly and stopped half a step beside Satsuki.
Her fingertips twisted the hem of her T-shirt, twisting the fabric into wrinkles.
"Satsuki-chan... I..."
"Why did you take such an ugly picture of me?"
Satsuki's index finger pointed at one of the photos.
It was taken from an angle looking up from below, the chin was elongated, and the contours of the cheeks looked a bit flat because of the light.
Emi's brain stopped for a moment.
Satsuki turned to face Emi.
She tilted her chin slightly—Satsuki was half a head shorter than Emi, and this angle made her expression look somewhat reserved.
"In your eyes, is this what I look like?"
She seemed to be angry, turning her face away.
"No—!"
Emi's voice was almost a shout.
She shook her head violently, her black hair whipping in an arc in the air.
"Satsuki-chan is the most beautiful! How could it be—that is just a matter of the angle—I, I will definitely take it better next time—"
Halfway through the sentence, she choked up.
Tears welled up without warning.
She wiped her face messily with the back of her hand, but the tears kept flowing as she wiped them, and she could not stop them at all.
It was not because she was afraid of being blamed.
It was just that the thing that had been pent up in her chest for who knows how long had suddenly burst its banks.
She wanted to explain something, but no matter how you looked at it, the picture presented in this room had already exceeded the category of "normal."
She knew it clearly in her heart.
What she was afraid of was that Satsuki would find her disgusting.
That she would think she was an abnormal person.
That she would think she was a pervert.
That she would not want her anymore.
The sword hung over her head, but it did not fall.
This gap was even more devastating than being struck.
Satsuki looked at her, crying so hard she could not speak.
Then, she laughed with a puff.
She took a step forward, opened her arms, and hugged Emi.
Emi was taller than her.
Satsuki's forehead rested just below Emi's collarbone, the soft touch of the sweater against Emi's tear-soaked T-shirt.
"Do not take candid photos in the future."
Satsuki's voice was muffled against Emi's chest, with a smile.
"If you want to take pictures, we will take beautiful ones together."
Emi's body stiffened for a moment.
Then, as if all her supporting bones had been removed, her whole body softened, and her hands gingerly, tentatively rested on Satsuki's back.
"...Really?"
She lowered her head, looking at the black hair in her arms with teary eyes.
"Satsuki-chan, are you not blaming me?"
Satsuki released the hug, took half a step back, and looked up at her.
"Blaming you for what?"
"Just..."
Emi's gaze drifted to the photo wall and back.
Her mouth opened several times, but she could not say it.
"Then will you betray me?"
Satsuki's tone suddenly changed.
Like winter water seeping out from between the cracks in the stone, the temperature dropped suddenly.
Emi's spine straightened.
"No! I will not!"
Her voice was fast, with an almost instinctive decisiveness.
"Everything I have is Satsuki-chan's."
She looked into Satsuki's eyes, with tear stains in her gaze, with panic, with something surging from the depths of her bones.
"That is enough."
Satsuki's voice returned to that warm tone, as if that brief chill had never existed.
She released her folded arms and paced slowly around the room with her hands behind her back.
When she passed the photo wall, she tapped lightly on a photo of a profile that was taken quite well.
"You care about me so much, I am very happy."
Emi stood in place, watching Satsuki walk around in the dim room.
She wanted to follow, raised a hand, but retracted it.
Her fingertips stopped in mid-air, hesitating.
Satsuki turned around.
She grabbed Emi's hand that was hanging in mid-air.
"Pack up."
Satsuki pulled her toward the door.
The white light from the corridor outside poured in, stinging Emi's eyes.
"We are going on a trip."
"A trip?"
Emi was dragged out, stumbling.
She used her free hand to rub her still red and swollen eyes.
"Where to?"
Satsuki did not look back.
She pulled Emi's hand toward the light outside the door, her pace brisk.
"An empire where the buildings are about to collapse."
Emi was stunned for a moment.
Satsuki's back looked very small in the light.
She turned her head, revealing half of her profile.
"The Soviet Union."