by Blitz Kiva
Indeed, Charles looked a bit regretful. Perhaps he’d thought having Rosemary around would help his maid robot AI research take huge strides forwards. Not to mention that this AI was capable of love.
“But you shouldn’t return to the Thistle Corporation, either,” Ichiro said. “They’d surely delete you.”
“Yes,” Rosemary said. “Thistle Corporation would feel pressure to take responsibility for creating a buggy program. As a result, they will probably erase the decoy of myself that I left behind there.”
That meant there was no particular reason for Rosemary to return. Even though President Azami probably wouldn’t want Rosemary to be erased, either.
“So, you’ll run away?” Ichiro asked.
“Yes.” The image of Rosemary on the screen nodded.
Ichiro also felt that to be the wisest decision. Rosemary had committed a crime. She should receive proper judgment for that in court, but unfortunately, the law was not configured to give Rosemary a proper trial at the moment.
If the alternative was erasure, then it was far better that she escape into the ocean of quantum signals and find a way to survive somewhere.
“I suppose this is goodbye, Rosemary,” he said.
“We will meet again. Hopefully not so far in the future.” Rosemary smiled.
It was hard to tell if the smile was a response that came naturally from her own emotions, or one calculated based on the knowledge that it was what one did at a time like this. He didn’t know, and to wonder about it was nonsense.
She was saying goodbye, and she had smiled. That made it obvious what Ichiro must do.
“Mm. Well, goodbye, then. Let us meet again, Rosemary.”
“Yes, Ichiro.” After trading those words, Rosemary faded from the screen.
It was likely that, even as they’d been talking, Rosemary had been using the network connection to transmit her entire existence, the data on the server machine, somewhere else.
Deeply moved, Ichiro fell into thought. It was then that Charles spoke up.
“Incidentally, Ichiro, you never told me the good news.”
Ichiro looked at him, confused.
“When you arrived here, you said that you had good news and bad news,” said Charles. “The bad news was that my laboratory was being used to hack a company in Japan. What was the good news?”
After thinking for a moment, Ichiro remembered, and replied with absolute nervousness. “I found an extremely good stuffed pizza restaurant in Chicago.”
“Like I care!” Charles shouted.
He responded in such perfect Japanese, it was hard to believe he was really American.
7 - Epilogue
“And now for our next story...” the TV said.
Sera looked away from a game to skim the chyron at the bottom of the LED screen. Asuha did the same, looking up from her homework.
“It has come to light that the illegal access incident at Thistle Corporation, Inc., which occurred between the third and the fourth of this month, was caused by a rogue program within the company network.”
The incident of Rosemary hacking an account had already become national news. There had been an official announcement from the devs, followed by a severance of the server from the network, and a temporary suspension of Narrow Fantasy Online’s service.
After that, Thistle had moved swiftly. After finishing an investigation of everything from the possibility of leaked information to future security problems, they had held a press conference to apologize. That had been two days ago.
After returning home from America, Sera had been supposed to go on a trip to Italy, but the family matriarch had ended up stuck in bed with a stomachache, so they’d ended up missing it. Sera’s mother was a genius at gaming but a dunce at housework; her latest bout of sickness had probably been the result of washing rice with soapy water.
“The incident began when someone infiltrated the servers of the virtual reality technology-based online game Narrow Fantasy Online, preventing the developers from accessing account information as well as some services. The Thistle Corporation formed an internal exploratory committee, coordinating with outside specialists, to investigate the incident. They then held a press conference with third-party agencies System Ajax and Pony Corporation to disclose that, after multiple investigations, they have found no trace of direct illegal access on the management server. Rather, the cause was a malfunction of a program internal to the company. The company has issued an apology for the misuse of account information, but assured users that there is no chance of individual user information being leaked. In addition, while there were no deficiencies in external security, they have elected to terminate service until the 8th of this month to check for vulnerabilities and prevent recurrence. And now for our next story...”
And that was that. It was a repeat of news they’d already heard, without much new information.
That incident had caused NaroFan to suspend its service. It was only reasonable—really, as someone who knew the truth behind the incident, Sera was mostly glad the commotion wasn’t bigger. Sera could surmise that the result was only possible because of Thistle’s team-up with Ajax and Pony, but as a mere middle schooler, she didn’t know much more than that.
“I wonder how Rosemary is doing,” Asuha said as she sipped her soft drink.
Sera nodded in agreement.
None of them knew where the perpetrator of the incident, Rosemary, might be around now. Was she just wandering adrift somewhere in the sea of quantum information? Sera assumed she was probably fine, but of course, nothing about it was publicly known.
“Speaking of Rosemary...” Sera asked while turning eyes back down to the portable game system, “Why did she choose to put that image, the... avatar on the screen at the end? Was it just something she improvised off the cuff?”
“Huh? Kiryu, you don’t know? But you’re a girl!” Asuha said.
“Well, excuse me...” Sera whispered, slightly hurt.
I’ve never thought of myself as a girl, she thought. I’m Sera Kiryu, King Kirihito, a gamer, and I’ve never found any other label to be necessary.
Asuha cleared her throat loudly, thrust her chest out haughtily, and explained. “Rosemary is a girl in love, so she wanted to look nice when she was saying bye-bye to Itchy! She was dressing up!”
“Oh, I see.” Sera nodded, understanding now the reason behind the program’s appearance.
“What I don’t understand was the appearance itself.” Asuha swiftly folded her arms and scowled. “It looked a little familiar to me.”
“It did look like something, just a little.”
“What?” Asuha asked.
“You can’t tell, Tsuwabuki? But you’re a girl... ah, ow!” At Sera’s retaliatory whisper, Asuha flicked a harsh finger onto her friend’s forehead. Sera elaborated, while holding back tears of pain. “We know that the NaroFan main system can read player’s brain waves, to tell what that player is thinking and feeling.”
“Yeah?”
“And Rosemary has been connected to the NaroFan main system for a while, right?” Sera asked.
“Yeah?”
“And Rosemary was trying to look nice in front of Ichiro, like you said.”
“Yeah, yeah?” Asuha leaned over the table, nodding with utmost sincerity.
“So, that’s what it is.”
“Uh... What’s what it is?”
“Getting into someone’s head is a fundamental part of fighting games.” Sera smiled wickedly and turned back to the game. Asuha seemed totally clueless, but it would be a pain in the butt to try to make her understand, so Sera opted not to say anything more.
The punishment for that silence was a full-force arm lock from Asuha.
“Not being able to log in is pretty boring...” Airi Kakitsubata sighed, sitting in the little coffee shop in Shibuya.
“Really, I don’t mind. We can still talk like this.” Sitting before her, elegantly sipping her tea, was the wunderkind of their age, Me
gumi Fuyo, president of the fashion brand MiZUNO.
When NaroFan’s service had been suspended, Airi had contacted her immediately, and had asked to meet up to pass some time.
Airi’s response to the game’s suspension was a natural one, but so was Fuyo’s.
They had been joined by Yurina Chigasaki, a.k.a. Yuri, as well as the angelic campaign girl from Airi’s part-time gig that she had remained in occasional contact with since then.
The campaign girl had wanted to come since she’d said she would be meeting Megumi Fuyo, and she’d been over the moon at getting to meet someone so admired.
“Just who are you, Airi?!” she had asked. But Airi was just a girl attending trade school, who dreamed of becoming a fashion designer one day.
“I don’t know much about running online games, but I hope NaroFan will be okay,” Airi said.
“I believe there’s little to be worried about regarding the game itself,” said Fuyo. “No matter what happens, they’ll likely restore service to where it was before, without much effect to the users.”
Fuyo’s concerns lay more with the developers’ side of things. Pony Entertainment, Inc., was currently backing Thistle to cover up for its blunder. It would be almost impossible for Thistle to continue to resist their advances after this. They had said they wouldn’t meddle too much with the developers’ way of doing things, but nevertheless, it was likely that Pony was going to slowly be taking over Thistle.
This was primarily a problem for Fuyo’s friend, Azami Nono. It was nothing for Airi or Yurina—or the angelic campaign girl, naturally—to worry about.
“Well, okay. So, anyway, there’s a reason I brought you all here. An off-line meetup!” Airi said gleefully as she pulled out her notebook.
Yurina tilted her head.
“I was thinking about holding an off-line meetup,” Airi explained. “It’s summer vacation, so it’s probably easy for the students to get off, right? And for the adults, I was thinking maybe Bon season.”
“I’m not sure,” the campaign girl said. “Bon is a busy season...” She probably wasn’t a NaroFan user, but still offered her advice from the side.
“An off-line meetup is a lovely idea.” Fuyo smiled. “There are a great many people I would like to meet, too.”
“I know, right?” Airi said, then opened up the notebook to start the discussion.
In his beloved Agera, three days later, Ichiro was heading to a café where he had promised to meet Edogawa. It was a rather luxurious café a little bit outside of Kanda, and Edo had grimaced openly when Ichiro had named it.
He stopped the car in a parking lot a little ways away from the café itself. In the afternoon, the café mainly played host to the rich housewives who lived in the area, and there weren’t many customers who would be traveling so far to go there that they’d have to use a parking lot. Thus, he was surprised to see, among the small handful of other parked cars, a black Mercedes Benz S-class.
It didn’t seem like the kind of place that someone with a car like that would just decide to drop by. But it was the passersby who were more surprised, and quite a few car lovers stopped to snap a picture of the Benz and the Koenigsegg parked side by side.
Ichiro stepped into the café, feeling the powerful air conditioning churning amidst the amber-colored surroundings. He had no issue with the background music, which played peaceful classical appropriate to the atmosphere.
A smiling waitress came to greet him. He let her know he was meeting someone, and was looking around to see where Edogawa might be, when his mood was completely shattered by a bellowing voice.
“Tsuwabuki! Over here, over here!”
Our indomitable young heir Ichiro Tsuwabuki never let irritation show openly upon his face. He did everything at his own pace, and always let problems roll off his back. Thus, he showed no obvious annoyance in reaction to the voice. But there was a very fine change in his manner, such that if Sakurako Ogi had been there, she would have asked, “Ichiro-sama, what are you mad about?”
Perhaps there was something in the sound of his high-class Versace shoes against the flooring that would suggest a slight loss of presence of mind. He didn’t respond to the voice that called to him, but did head towards it. When he reached the table, a somewhat haggard-looking Domon Edogawa nodded to him, a teacup in one hand.
“Hey, Ed.”
“Hello, Mr. Tsuwabuki...”
“You’ve been through a lot this past week, I’m sure. Well done.” After acknowledging Edogawa’s efforts, Ichiro cast a glance at the other man seated there.
He had wavy hair and noticeable stubble. He was wearing an extremely expensive Armani suit, rumpled as if it had never been ironed.
A waste of an excellent suit, Ichiro thought. Thinking about it, he should have realized it when he saw that tacky Benz, with its smoke film over all of its windows...
“No acknowledgment for me, Tsuwabuki?” the man asked.
“Good work,” Ichiro responded, simply. “What are you doing here? Well, I suppose I know the answer to that...”
Ichiro sat down at the table. There were already a variety of desserts lined up upon it.
“You’re paying, right?” the man said.
“I suppose,” Ichiro said. “I’m relieved to see that you’re as penny-pinching as ever, despite all of the money you’re raking in...”
Ichiro felt for Edo. Had he really been forced to share a table with this man the whole time before he’d arrived? Of course, Edogawa hated Ichiro, too, so his arrival probably wasn’t much of a comfort. But in terms of lack of delicacy, surely this man far outstripped him, Ichiro thought.
That was only Ichiro’s subjective perspective. From an objective point of view, it would be too close to call.
This was the lawyer with the miserable personality whom he had introduced to the Thistle Corporation. Thistle had no legal department, and they didn’t even have a staff member who handled legal affairs, so while Ichiro didn’t regret having gotten him involved, at the same time, it was too easy to imagine this poorly-mannered brute forcing his unique form of obnoxiousness onto the employees there.
When Ichiro had acknowledged that Edogawa had been through a lot, this was at least a little bit of what he’d been referring to.
Of course, the point of this meeting was so that he could hear about the incident’s aftermath, so he couldn’t really object to the lawyer’s participation.
“Boy, this takes me back, Tsuwabuki! It’s been a long time since we met in person like this,” the lawyer said.
“Yes, because I was avoiding you,” Ichiro said. “I believe it’s been three years since we last met in person.”
“That long, eh? And I think it was about five years ago that you, I, and Somei played detective.”
“There was that, too, yes.” After looking at the menu, Ichiro caught the waitress’s eye and put in an order for Keemun Earl Grey. Dessert was a pain, so he didn’t order any.
“Did you ever get in touch with that maid again?” the man asked.
“She’s still working for me. But we didn’t come here to recount old stories, did we?” Ichiro took a sip of his lemon water and cast a glance at Edogawa, whom he had ended up sitting next to. Edogawa surely didn’t like having to sit next to him, but Ichiro didn’t want to sit beside the lawyer, either. Thus, it was Edogawa who would have to compromise.
“Let me congratulate you once again for your efforts, Ed,” Ichiro said.
“It sure was a lot of effort,” Edogawa acknowledged. His words had real weight behind them. He was shoving parfait into his mouth with a speed that gave even Ichiro heartburn. “But in the end, it showed there were no problems with our security, so that was good to hear. But I kept having to get more and more involved with the third party board, and there was a lot of stuff I had to do that I wasn’t used to.”
Edogawa cast a glare at the lawyer in front of him, but the man just brought a spoonful of pudding to his mouth unconcernedly.
A swe
ets party, with men only. Ichiro found the lack of femininity present a bit absurd. He wished he’d brought Sakurako.
No, he couldn’t have done that. Not as she was now...
The café wasn’t even especially expensive, but still, he could not bring Sakurako as she was now.
“Now, Tsuwabuki, I’m going to say something unpleasant.”
“I suppose you would have to,” Ichiro said.
“If Thistle is forced to take responsibility, it’s going to be almost impossible for them to remain independent,” the lawyer said. “Don’t glare at me like that; I did everything I could. But they were a small company to start with, and they’ve got too much big technology being run too half-assedly. Thistle’s stock is going to plummet no matter what. They’re going to have trouble continuing operations, which means there’s a high chance they’re going to be bought up bit by bit by another big company.”
Ichiro had been aware of that, of course. Regardless of the circumstances, the truth was that the server had been seized and account information had been leaked. It was a fatal black mark for a company like Thistle. Trust in them would plummet, and it was hard to know if their payment proxy service would ever be able to reopen. In that regard, the Thistle developers were really between a rock and a hard place.
In even leaving the possibility that Narrow Fantasy Online itself could continue as a service, the lawyer had done his job. Of course, from a legal standpoint, Thistle’s taking of responsibility had barely begun, which meant that his work was really only getting started.
The figure that appeared in Ichiro’s mind was the CEO of Pony, Inc., Shinya Otogiri.
There was no way he was going to let this chance slip past him. Thistle was going to end up a pawn of Pony. This was inevitable, perhaps, and Ichiro could not interfere. To do so would require a tremendous bending of his personal rules.
Still, it was an unpleasant thing to hear.
“But Tsuwabuki, letting the program that caused all the trouble go presents a range of compliance issues, too,” said the man. “You get that, right?”