Volume 9, 4: Be Dyed in [email protected]???(3/6)
“I think you rely too much on the machine. Investing is about reading the interactions of people’s hearts. Even if programs wearing the skins of user accounts are running rampant these days, the thoughts of the people building their algorithms will still affect things. You don’t understand the Kotemitsu style at all, Miss Error.”
“It pisses me off that you sum everything up using internet terminology! Is that in style these days? It wasn’t that long ago you used chess terminology to describe the family’s system!!”
“Noise that doesn’t fit the file format will not even reach my ears. If you wish to speak with me, then learn the Kotemitsu format first.”
“And why are you wearing that showy marching band outfit, you flat old lady!?”
“!! Mishima tricked me by saying this was a costume party!”
Mishima-san waved at me without looking back.
“Do something about this, Uchimaku-kun. You have no trouble going out for karaoke with a middle school girl, so you’re my final hope here.”
“I had a very good reason for that!! I just wanted a soundproof room for-..”
“That’s right. The detective dragged this innocent little girl into a private room where no one could see us or hear me scream.”
“It was so we could discuss strategy, you idiot!! That case had to do with the embassy, so we had no choice but to give up on more direct methods!!”
Seeing others behaving badly seemed to help people correct their own behavior. The Kotemitsu Sisters’ argument had heated up so much, but they calmed down when they saw our commotion.
Mishima-san sounded impressed as he chowed down on an abalone steak that used the large shell as a plate and was covered in a special sauce made from butter and its innards.
“Well done, Uchimaku-kun. You handled that so well I feel silly for wasting three hours with that. They say it’s best to go to the specialists and it looks like I should just leave all the young girls to you.”
“Who the hell is secretly manipulating the rails of my destiny!?”
I cried out while afraid of some invisible threads I felt were wrapped all around my body, but the rich bachelor wiped his mouth with a napkin and handed a black card to the waiter. He politely declined any dessert, finished paying, and guided me to the previous hidden room with a fancy coat in hand.
“The Yakata-II was built for the wealthy, so it has a satellite connection and card company servers linked to the casino and trading rooms. That makes it a perfect base for us.”
“But why use such a dangerous ship? There are plenty of nice rooms on the coast you could use.”
Seika-san answered my natural question.
“Those are so full of the newly rich that there won’t be an opening for years. It’s everyone from grade schoolers to housewives and even the elderly who have too much free time and pension money. Do you know what the most popular thing to get training in is these days? It’s apparently the investment business by a wide margin.”
“..”
Ugh.
I still only saw investing as another word for gambling, so this new era seemed absolutely insane to me. I shuddered just thinking about people who couldn’t connect a computer to a printer in computer class diving into a world where they could blow a hundred million yen in a ten thousandth of a second, but that probably just meant I was too set in my ways.
Then again, feeling that way was an important thing now.
The hidden room was the size of two school classrooms. Two chairs sat back-to-back in the center. In all 360 degrees, the walls, ceiling, and floor were covered with flat-screen monitors supported by the kind of arms used for desk lamps.
Countless numbers and graphs moved about wildly on the screens.
There was data on wars, disasters, mergers, buyouts, weather forecasts, and even hamburger prices in different countries. There were clusters of windows displaying every single online news article that could even slightly affect the stock or foreign exchange market.
I just felt overwhelmed.
You could recognize a single ant as an insect, but once there was a thousand or ten thousand of them, they looked like a single wriggling mass or monster. This provided the same sort of pressure.
“Where am I even supposed to focus?”
“I think the trick is to view it all at once without focusing.”
Madoka-chan casually answered me in her sailor uniform. She did not sound entirely confident in her answer because it was such a natural thing to her that she might as well have been explaining how to breathe or blink.
“So what’s the problem?”
“This.” Mishima-san turned one of the arm-mounted flat screen monitors my way. “The national natural convenience stores I mentioned before are just barely being contained. They use a new cold storage service to transport perishables without damaging them, but Madoka-chan and Seika-san targeted that by claiming it violates another company’s patent. That said, it’s really just buying time. The moral hazard itself is continuing to spread as data. It won’t be long before this kind of thing is considered normal and a few of the people’s threads have already burned away. Look.”
“..”
“The people who gained a small fortune with the bonds magic trick are starting to reach elsewhere. They have nothing better to do since the natural convenience stores have stalled.”
“Um, what is this? They’re buying land on the moon and mars?”
The Mystery Freak sounded confused and Madoka-chan shrugged.
“If you can put a price tag on it and sell it, it doesn’t matter what it is. Do you know why pure gold and platinum are so valuable? Because there are a lot of people who find that convenient. And in this case, land on the moon and mars can’t fall victim to land speculation, can’t jump in value due to a sudden railroad expansion, can’t fall into a fight over sun exposure rights due to a high-rise building, and can’t have protestors stage a sit-in. And unlike gold and diamonds, thieves can’t run off with it. Once it has a price tag, there is no more stable savings box.”
“Plus, there are no international or national laws concerning the land of other astronomical bodies. Setting aside how effective it is, there’s no problem with buying and selling this land as data. These days, avatars in virtual space open up shops and sell digital products for digital money. Even if you can’t reach it, it might actually be a plus that there’s something physical attached to the deal.”
At this rate, they were probably going to pour a bunch of money into the candy of some nonexistent fantasy land.
I was utterly exasperated and Mishima-san showed me yet another window.
“But once all the land on the moon and mars has been sold off, those greedy people will move onto another market. This one’s growing pretty hot right now. It’s also space-related.”
“The satellite debris business?”
“Detective, if you include the ones of unknown nationality, there are currently one to two thousand satellites in operation. But their average length of durability – that is, their lifespan – is between five and ten years. And what do you think happens to a satellite that’s role has ended?”
“Well, isn’t it sent into the atmosphere to burn up on reentry?”
“With the controllable ones, yes.” Seika-san slowly sighed. “But when control is lost due to a malfunction, that can’t happen. There are an estimated seven to eight thousand ‘empty shells’ orbiting the earth. Include the separated parts, separated paint fragments, and small debris, and it’s rumored to be more like four to thirty million.”
The estimated range had grown quite a bit.
That must have shown how little anyone knew about it.
“So they’ve placed price tags on the trash orbiting the earth and acting like it’s as valuable as diamonds or platinum?”
“At first, but things have changed.”
Mishima-san held out the finishing blow.
It said the following:
Don’t let the wealth gather at the top!! Help us distribute it to everyone!!
We have started this group to bring an end to the satellite debris business that unfairly manipulates the value of money using formless economic activity. With help from civilians, we have begun developing a special type of small satellite. It is loaded with explosives and it detonates near the valuable debris floating in orbit to send that debris into the atmosphere.
Satellite destroying satellites, aka killer satellites, are banned, you say?
That treaty was signed between nations, so it does not apply to a borderless civilian nonprofit like us.
Doesn’t it seem odd to all of you?
Don’t you think the people diligently working up a sweat at their jobs should be making money too?
If the country refuses to do anything about it, then civilians like us must act in their stead.
We are not asking for monetary support. It can be message boards, blogs, SNSs, or whatever else, but please explain to everyone that what we are doing is right. The support of public opinion can’t be taken lightly. Your support will be our greatest strength.
Hishigami General Trading Group
“What..the hell?”
I could not help but groan.
When I saw the name Hishigami, I glanced over at the Mystery Freak.
The twintail girl quietly bit her lip.
“This is the problem with those Hishigami Men. They always go on and on about being reasonable, but as soon as what the country or the world considers reasonable becomes distorted, they raise the white flag.”
“Is this even possible? You mean it isn’t someone pretending to be them!? But the Hishigami Group is an international corporation with over two hundred thousand employees! Flip through the channels during primetime and you’ll see their ads pretty much everywhere!!”
“Those men will do anything if the concept of ‘reasonable’ has been distorted. Do you need to check a history textbook to know who it was that first started releasing tanks and fighters during wartime?”
“But still..”
Explosives on civilian satellites? Sending them to space and detonating them? Treaties between nations didn’t matter for individuals and civilians? That nonsense would never work. A rocket turned into a weapon was the very definition of a missile. If individuals and civilians used that without the military’s management, others would fight back. This seemed to be on the Hishigami Group’s website, but where were their headquarters located? If it was in Japan, then weren’t they essentially announcing to the international community that our island nation was a dangerous place that couldn’t manage its own ballistic missiles and could start firing them like crazy at any moment!?
“You couldn’t find a greater moral hazard, could you?” Mishima-san sounded disgusted too. “And there are two frightening aspects to this. First, the fact that the police have shut down and can’t act even with this nonsense going on. And second, that a fair number of people are agreeing with this.”
“..”
“..”
What look did I have on my face? It was probably the same as the one on the Mystery Freak’s face next to me.
A short text SNS said the following:
“Frappe: What’s wrong with that? I don’t really have anything against them, but it’s important to keep things in motion. Preventing stagnation will make everyone happy, so we need to give the economy a shot in the arm like this.”
“Round: I’ve got more news! It seems Hishigami is focusing a lot on the angle of entry. That way the abandoned satellites that are nearly whole can survive reentry and reach the surface. We can get all the rare earths we want from them. Yahoo!”
“House Mouse 21: It really is a redistribution of wealth. C’mon, we need even more of this. Really, having just a small part of the population gaining so much using fictional price tags was what made no sense. Now we’ll have jewels raining down across the globe. What a wonderful age we live in.”
No matter how much we scrolled, there were always more new messages.
Plus, the opinions were gathering in single direction. Out of the hundreds and thousands of short posts, there was not a single real rebuttal.
It felt like these were the residents of some creepy dictatorship.
“Amazing, isn’t it? This isn’t even an anonymous message board. Of course, the anonymity of those message boards only gets you so far, but still. They aren’t even trying to hide their identity with proxies. I’m impressed they can post this kind of thing under their own screennames.”
Madoka-chan really did sound impressed.
These kinds of posts would normally lead to suicidal levels of embarrassment, but no one seemed to care. No one was even flaming them. The moral hazards had already made it that far into the normal functioning of the world.
But not even that was the core of the problem.
“But detective, isn’t this really bad? I mean, whole satellites raining down? Wait just a second there. Satellites are designed to burn up on reentry, so they tend to have some pretty dangerous things inside. They tend to use nuclear batteries and the kind of rocket fuel that burns the skin on contact!”
“And that will be raining down across Japan..no, across the world..?”
The Intellectual Village brand name would collapse instantly.
In fact, the entire globe would be contaminated!
“The natural convenience stores that led to this new age must be panicking. If that ultra-valuable brand-name is destroyed, their stores lose all meaning. And it’s too late to try to stop each individual one now. Plus, there’s no guarantee this is the only moral hazard. At this rate, they’re sure to start popping up like bamboo shoots after a rain.” Mishima-san looked to the screen. “So let’s start a war void of morals using this network that connects the world. What can we buy and sell, what can we say, and what online news can we use to bring an end to this worst case scenario? That’s what I want all of you to think about.”
Part 6 (3rd person)
While the Package was being constructed, the Yuki Onna walked out into the yard, took a ladder from the shed, and placed it against the wall of the house.
“Eh heh heh.”
When she heard a bewitching female laugh, a tremor ran down her spine.
She could not believe it. She simply could not believe it.
When the short girl fearfully turned around with a cold sweat dripping down her face, she saw a most unwelcome vision.
“M-Mizore!? And Hadare!?”
She had no idea when they had arrived, but two similarly dressed Yuki Onna had locked onto her. They were old friends who had lived on the same mountain as her, but the Yuki Onna of the Jinnai household had a reason to be nervous.
Mizore, who had spiral glasses and two braids, spoke up hesitantly.
“H-Hyou-chan, we were all worried about you when you suddenly left the mountain in the heat of midsummer. We hadn’t heard anything from you since you said you were going to find a human husband, so we thought you might have ended up like a popsicle dropped on the asphalt during summer break.”
“Gulp..!?”
“And the seasons have finally changed, so we left to search for you. I’m glad you’re doing well. So Hyou-chan, did you meet a lovely person?”
Those 100% well-intentioned words stabbed into the Yuki Onna’s chest in rapid succession.
It was like going to a class reunion and finding out you alone had made no progress whatsoever.
(Gh-ghhh! Why did they have to show up now? ..Oh, is this the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi’s interference that Jinnai Shinobu was talking about? Is her power shifting destiny off track? I really want to kill her right now..)
Some steam started rising from her due to the pressure, but then the Yuki Onna named Hadare opened her mouth. She was a sexy woman with her light blue hair worn up.
“Heh heh heh. I told her you would be fine. I mean, you’re such an unusual Yuki Onna, Hyou. You can’t even make proper snow, yet you can bring down blocks of ice during the summer. Hee hee. You just don’t have the elegance of the snowscape.”
“Kh. Why you..!!”
“So how did it go? The Yuki Onna is the standard example of a beautiful Youkai, so after wandering around down here for about half a year, surrrrrely you’ve managed to snag at least one guy. Right, Hyou?”
Hadare’s confidence came from what she held in her arms.
Yes, she was a Yuki Onna that came with a baby.
Was it derived from the Ubume or had a similar story come about by coincidence? The white Yuki Onna was generally thought of as a symbol of virginity, but there were some that held a baby. They were a deadly Youkai that asked travelers to hold their baby and, if the traveler agreed, would crush them as the baby gradually grew heavier and heavier. Just like with the Onbu-Obake, it was a stereotypical Japanese ghost story of destroying oneself by taking on a burden.
Of course, one could not make a baby on their own.
Nothing could apply greater pressure on a marriage-seeking Youkai.
“She was just dying to show her to you, Hyou-chan. Her name is Sou-chan and it’s spelled with the character for frost. Isn’t she cute?”
“Sh-shut up! I did not miss her at all!! And I was really planning to turn that guy into crushed ice..”
“Hyou-chan, don’t you think we did a wonderful thing by stopping her?”
While plain Mizore wore spiral glasses and had a flat chest, the steam weakening effect gave her a dynamite body when she stepped inside an open-air hot spring. The hot water would make her dizzy, but since that made her harmless, beautiful, and carefree, she was ranked third or fourth on a list of Yuki Onna that skiers wanted to run across. Any old story or drama that included a silly Yuki Onna that could not seem to kill anyone and always failed was generally based on her.
And as the pressure bore down on her, Yuki Onna Hyou gathered all her strength and began fighting back.
“Heh..heh heh heh. What are you talking about? Of course I’m super popular. I have so many to choose from I might as well have my own harem. I was just late in reporting back to you because I was having trouble choosing from them all.”
“Ah ha ha! Of course. A Yuki Onna can capture a husband in a single ski season, so it would be pathetic if you couldn’t get a single guy after freely wandering around for half a year!! By the way, my husband runs an IT startup and owns the entire top floor of a Roppongi apartment building. He’s super rich from that bond trading that’s popular these days!! But I’m a Youkai, right? So I don’t like the city air much and I’ve had to reject his invitations even if it is a luxury apartment. Instead, I’ve settled down in a Karuizawa mountain villa. Oh, sorry about getting sidetracked on my boring old self. So what kind of person is your man? What’s his salary? I want to hear all about your luxurious and happy new life. Heh heh heh.”
“Y-y-y-y-you’ll be shocked when you hear it. But, um..oh, right! This would be a little much for a baby, so I will restrain myself for now. I’m definitely not making excuses. This is for your sake.”
“Ehh? That’s amazing, Hyou-chan!”
The spiral glasses provided dreadful supporting fire by innocently placing a hand over her mouth with that comment. The Yuki Onna was going to have to keep up the act until the end of the world now.
Steam started rising from her head as she continued.
“H-he is incredibly bold, and..”
“Yes, yes?”
“He’s so nice he invited me into his basement ice room when the summer heat was getting to me..”
“Oh?”
“I-I can’t even imagine living without him anymore..ah, this is too embarrassing! I’m melting. My body is melting!!”
She seemed to have reached her limit.
White steam burst from the already small Yuki Onna’s body as if she had used a ninja smokescreen technique. Mizore coughed and wiped off her steamed-up spiral glasses before putting them back on.
Then she placed a hand over her mouth.
“Huh? Where’d Hyou-chan go?”
“Heh heh heh. Oh ho ho ho ho!! The little girl couldn’t stand it any longer, so she ran off! Lie all you want, you can always smell the desperation in a bachelorette!!”
Hadare laughed loudly while holding the baby that symbolized a happy life while Mizore remained oblivious. They looked around to see where the other Yuki Onna had hidden and then they glanced to the open door of the shed.
They peered inside without actually going in.
“She isn’t here, Hadare-chan.”
“Honestly. This is what happens when you try to tell a blatantly made-up-..”
Hadare trailed off as she recalled Hyou mentioning her man introducing her to a basement ice room when the summer heat had gotten to her.
“Hm? Hmm? Wait. Does that mean Hyou was dizzily collapsed on the side of the road and he took her home to his private basement for a honeymoon?”
“Hadare-chan, why are you fidgeting?”
“N-no!?”
Hadare frantically shook her head, but it still bothered her. Was there maybe an entrance somewhere in the floor in the shed’s darkness and did it maybe hide some stairs down into a basement?
Her eyes were naturally drawn in that direction and then she spotted something.
Some rope was sitting in the back of the shed.
“Wait!!”
“Eek!?”
“No, no, no. That doesn’t mean..that doesn’t mean anything. There are all sorts of ways to use rope and a shed is a perfectly normal place to store it. It doesn’t mean that short girl has entered a dangerous territory not even I’ve-..”
She came to a stop when she saw something else.
She spotted a strange silhouette in the back of the shed.
Yes.
It seemed to be made from several different pieces of wood. It had four legs like a table, but the top was not a flat surface. The center line rose to a point like a doghouse roof. And it was quite a point too. The overall silhouette did look something like a simplified version of an animal, just like some kind of playground equipment.
Now, then.
It was made of wood.
The back was a pointed triangle.
And it was modeled after an animal..specifically, a horse.
What was such a device called?
“H-h-heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!? Is this the legendary..the legendary..ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”
“D-don’t yell, Hadare-chan! You’re making your baby cry!!”
Hearing the commotion the two Yuki Onna caused as they ran off, Shinobu’s small grandmother arrived with a confused look. However, the source of the noise had already left.
“?”
The shed door had been left carelessly open, so she approached to close it.
Then she spotted something inside that she had not seen in a long time.
“Oh, we haven’t used the fish drying rack in a while. I should drag that back out once the sun blesses us with its presence again.”
Part 7 (Jinnai Shinobu)
Hm?
Did I just hear some screaming out in the yard?
That bothered me, but I had my hands full in the hallway.
Yes.
The large and small Furutsubaki duo was fighting.
“I am far more useful to Jinnai Shinobu. I’m taller, so I can reach things.”
“Why you..! You’re only two millimeters taller!!”
“I don’t want to hear anything from an inelegant and flat-chested child.”
“I’ll break your trunk and eradicate your roots!!”
They started grabbing at each other which pulled their kiminos from their bodies in a number of places, so I stopped them.
I was pretty sure this was another example of interference.
“You be the judge! Jinnai Shinobu, you be the judge!! Which one of us has the better transformation!?”
“Mh. How exactly will he judge that?”
“It’s about who’s more human-like, so it’s a softness competition! We’ll have him feel our softness!!”
“Okay, but let’s make this thorough. No spot is off limits.”
“Ah, stop that, you idiots! The look in Yukari’s eyes is really scaring me!! Oh, god! She’s coming this way!!”
This had to be the Ver. 39 detecting the Package preparations and shifting destiny off track to interfere, so why was the Zashiki Warashi herself so jealous that she seemed to be growing horns!? She was being manipulated as much as anyone!
I fled the Zashiki Warashi’s roaring fists like a klutz who had accidentally knocked down a hornet’s nest and then I spotted small Hafuri sitting on the porch in her purple kimono.
The Aburatori sat next to her.
They seemed to be watching the Furutsubaki duo from afar, but they had yet to actually join in.
“Are you not afraid of me?”
“Unfortunately, I claim to be a guardian of children,” said the old man who hid his expression below a bamboo hat with an eye pattern drawn on it. “For the other Youkai, it seems to be an issue of how they view you..no, how they view the term Hyakki Yakou. Plus, I knew the man named Majina and saw what Hyakki Yakou was during his time, so to me it seems odd to fear Hyakki Yakou.”
“..”
Hafuri fell silent for a moment.
“That man plotted to usurp Hyakki Yakou and began a national zombie outbreak to split the organization.”
“That was only to oppose the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi and protect the world you live in.”
“But..wait, how could you possibly know that?”
“The human heart is easily drawn to evil, but is also easily bound to good. If something grows even slightly distorted, you can readily accept yours and others’ deaths. I know that all too well. I saw who Majina truly was ten years ago. They say people never truly change and I doubt he would have changed that easily. His actions must be strictly judged, but we cannot take away why he did it. Not even the gods in heaven can do that.”
What did those words mean to Hafuri?
Majina had had his reasons for his actions. Someone in Hafuri’s position would be able to figure that much out, but how many people were there who would accept Majina’s reasons? Hafuri and Mei’s opinions were biased as they were family. And the members of Hyakki Yakou worked for Hafuri, so their acceptance would sound like nothing more than kind words for her. But the Aburatori was looking in from outside and he had accepted Majina. Maybe not his crimes or his results, but he had accepted his humanity and what had led him there.
Then something moves past my feet.
It was the Fox, Tanuki, and Badger.
“My, my. What are you doing here? It’s time for tea!”
“Hm? You aren’t afraid of me?”
“A lot of the others seem to be, but we realized we had already worked with you at Goldmine Island. We already know you don’t bite.”
When the Fox held his front paw out as he spoke, Hafuri thought for a moment and reached out a hand.
She shook that tiny, tiny paw.
The Badger shook his head vertically as a nod.
“And we also realized you look a lot like our master’s granddaughter. We hear you’re helping as an individual instead of as Hyakki Yakou, so we felt there was no reason to hold back.”
“Eh heh heh. So leave it all to a-->>