Chapter 5

The “Optimism Measurement Program” that Cerault had gathered people to make for us kept having revised versions sent over one after another before we even said anything. Especially after the developers learned that Chris could understand mathematical formulas and algorithms and read code, they were merciless. Apparently.

I say ‘apparently’ because I didn’t understand the details.

However, Chris reduced the time she spent going to the office, and groaned as she compared the formulas and programs projected onto the wall panel right up until she went to sleep—in other words, until Lisa’s patience was about to snap. Except for meal and prayer times, she was always staring at her terminal, chewing on her pen tablet or pulling at the skin under her chin with her fingers.

It didn’t feel as pathological as Hagana, but it was certain she was absorbed in it.

Even now, sitting on a sofa with weakened springs and deflated cushions, next to me checking the companies extracted by the program, Chris had multiple terminals open, proceeding with revisions and decryptions one after another using both key touches and her pen tablet. Specialized books were also open for reference, and apparently, there were even obscure papers among them that weren’t publicly available.

As for how she could read them, it was because Cerault, who apparently got his doctorate at Lunar City University and was still registered as an active researcher, had lent her his ID and password for the paper database. You could understand that connections were a kind of asset in places like this.

“I think crawling the net to gather information is a good concept, but…”

When I said that, Chris, who had been staring at her terminal with her knees drawn up as if hugging it, quickly looked my way. From the speed of that movement, you could glimpse the speed inside her head.

“It’s hard to handle. Especially anonymous message boards, this is impossible.”

“But several causes for the soaring and crashing prices have been identified here, right?”

“The same thing is pointed out in revision 2.21. It collects and classifies all the rumors written, and compares them with the frequency of stock price surges and crashes along that timeline. To me, it doesn’t look like the number of rumors and the frequency of surges and crashes are correlated.”

In other words, whether people dance to the rumors written there is random.

“But I calculated the expected value if you obediently followed all the rumors the moment a new one came out, and the result is positive.”

“A rumor index?”

The yield assuming you invested in all stocks is calculated as a stock market index. So, the one assuming you invested based on all rumors could be called a rumor index.

However, that’s a performance even a monkey could achieve. If a human is going to think and invest, they have to remove the junk stocks from among all the stocks and surpass that index.

Even so, if the expected value of a bet is positive, shouldn’t you take it, no matter what it is?

Chris looked at me, but I shrugged.

“The number of stocks, and the performance?”

“U-Um, the number of stocks is 522, and the performance is 22% in half a year.”

Investing mechanically without thinking and getting plus 22% might not be bad.

Is that what one would normally think?

“The yield of the real index was around that much, right? Try randomly selecting the same number of stocks as those rumors, regardless of the rumors themselves, and calculate the expected value. You’ll probably get a similar number.”

“Ah.”

“The more rumors there are, the closer it will get to the real index.”

“Ugh…”

I don’t mean to call her an idiot savant, but even if she excels at the number of ideas she can come up with and her ability to actually analyze them mathematically, taking a step back and thinking about it is something she struggles to do. Seeing the whole picture is a very difficult thing.

Even with the applications for the subsidy system for welfare organizations, even if they were perfect on paper, Rena completely failed to notice that the number of people on the paperwork obviously couldn’t fit inside a building of that size.

“But I feel like I’ve finally caught a clue on how to analyze corporate homepages.”

“Eh?”

Chris, who had been groaning with her chin resting on the edge of her terminal, suddenly looked up.

“That’s the part I understand the least. Even though the word sample size is small and many can’t withstand statistical processing, you are genuinely selecting stocks with statistical significance, Hal-san. Everyone is twisting their heads. They’re asking, ‘Is it magic?'”

“This data.”

“Umm… ah, the word analysis? But this didn’t really have any particular meaning.”

“No, it does. Though I only understood it vaguely, too.”

“Eh?”

Chris peered into my terminal.

Her fluffy blonde hair brushed against my nose a little, tickling me.

“I don’t understand at all, though…”

“That’s because you’re only counting the number of words. Look at the types.”

“Types?”

“Yeah. When you construct sentences, even if the words are chopped up, it forms a sentence, right? For example, ‘Me, you, eat whole,’ or something like that.”

As I said that, I grabbed Chris’s head with my hand, and Chris pulled her body back, laughing as if tickled.

“Jeez. Yes, but what about it?”

“I noticed when I looked at the chopped-up words lined up. These guys are only talking about themselves.”

“…Eh?”

“For example, this.”

When I pulled up a certain company’s page, a CEO with a receding hairline and a protruding belly, looking very energetic, appeared.

“I found a wonderful method that can beat the services of existing companies, and I came to the Moon. I believe that if it is our company, which can realize that, we will undoubtedly be able to contribute to the efficiency of the Moon, and the company will also be able to grow.”

“…Right.”

“This is typical. You could raise the madness level by one notch.”

Chris still didn’t understand at all.

I had no reason to tease her, so I gave her the answer right away.

“There’s an easier example to understand. Try to think of companies where you can remember the name of their figurehead.”

“Eh? Umm… okay.”

“Now, try to think of companies with good performance whose names frequently pop up in your program—in other words, stocks I like.”

“Umm… huh?”

“They don’t overlap, do they.”

“…”

Chris looked at me blankly.

Data, in the end, is nothing more than a collection of methods used to extract results. And if investing is the act of choosing something from among that group of stocks.

There are many companies that almost everyone knows if told, but won’t remember until they are told. So, what should guys do whose performance isn’t that great, but who want people to remember them to drive up their stock price?

The president just has to step out to the front and shout.

“The companies I want to assign madness points to at a glance have the words ‘I/me’, ‘win’, ‘growth’, ‘absolutely’, ‘believe’. Rearranged, it’s ‘I’, ‘absolutely’, ‘win’, ‘believe’, ‘growth’. Imagine a foreigner speaking broken language like that right at the top of a corporate page. What do you think?”

“…”

Chris looked at me, a half-smile on her lips.

“On the other hand, word analysis was also done on the stocks I like. What’s there is ‘We’, ‘Everyone’, ‘Steady’, ‘Development’… and, ‘Effort’, ‘Improvement’.”

“…”

“Or rather, whether it starts with ‘We’ or ‘I’ completely changes the overall impression. You can tell if it’s a strong company moving forward as one, or a dictatorial president aiming for a one-shot reversal who only sees his subordinates as tools, right? But the easier one to understand is ‘I’. Between being told ‘Look at me, believe in me, I will win,’ and ‘Please look at us, please believe in us, we will win,’ which one makes you want to side with them?”

Chris looked at me as if slightly surprised, and answered timidly.

“…T-The ‘me’ one.”

“Right. A person has a face, rather than an organization. Therefore, companies where you can’t remember the president’s name usually have very impressive logos instead. But guys whose heads are boiling over in the stock market will likely drift from things that are easy to understand to things that are even easier to understand. The gateway to that is ‘I’.”

After hearing my explanation, Chris let out a massive sigh, as if expelling everything in her chest. The way she slowly returned her gaze to the terminal seemed to say she had never even thought of such a thing.

“I could never notice something like this, something so unrelated to numbers. Hal-san, you are…”

“Hm?”

“You really are amazing.”

Sitting on the sofa with her knees up, hugging her terminal, Chris said that and smiled warmly.

There was a sort of softness to her that couldn’t be fully encapsulated by expressions like ‘innocent’ or ‘naive’. Lisa had once said that Chris was like the sun.

I felt like I understood the meaning of those words just a little bit.

“No… but that’s…”

“It’s true that someone’s choice of words expresses their character. Hal has come to understand that, and Big Sis is so happy, you know?”

Having stood there before I knew it, Lisa lightly bonked me on the head from behind with something rolled up.

“…I was just about to say exactly that.”

“Oh my, was that rude of me?”

Smiling warmly, Lisa started heading towards the chapel just like that. I thought, Stop treating me like a kid, but since I happened to remember something, I called out to her back.

“Ah, right. Eleanor said the apple pie was delicious.”

“Oh my.”

“Said she wants you to make it again.”

“Really? I’m sure there are mountains of delicious pastry shops over there, so I was actually a little worried.”

“Yeah, it might have been flattery.”

When I said that, Lisa’s face twitched slightly, but she shrugged and walked towards the chapel.

“Lisa-san’s apple pie is truly delicious, you know?”

“Eleanor being happy about it didn’t look like an act, either.”

Chris seemed to think my joke was in poor taste, pouting a bit and saying she would tell Lisa-san. I knew myself that wanting to play harsh jokes on Lisa was just me acting spoiled towards her.

“Well, that’s how it is. If you gather information along these lines, the accuracy should go up considerably.”

“Yes. I’ll try conveying that. But…”

“Hm?”

When I looked at Chris, she had started giggling again while typing on the keys.

“Now that I remember, Hal-san, four years ago you truly were blunt, after all.”

“…Was I?”

I admit my tone was somewhat rough, but I didn’t think it was that bad.

“You were. You looked incredibly busy, and spoke in a rushing manner.”

“…When you say it like that, it’s not like nothing comes to mind, but…”

“That was four years ago. You seem to have grown, haven’t you?”

Chris said something like that, looking up at me mischievously.

It was probably payback for our exchange at Avalon.

Her cheekiness was so much that my hand reflexively shot out.

When I pinched Chris’s cheek, she squealed and laughed, shrugging her shoulders.

“No, but it’s true.”

“Fue?”

“I have grown, even just a little. I couldn’t have done it alone.”

Chris, with her soft cheeks pinched, looked silly, like a face reflected in a distorted mirror.

However, her eyes were very intellectual, a beautiful blue.

She smiled gently and took my hand.

“That’s right. You aren’t alone.”

I lost four years ago, fell into an abyssal hole, and Hagana, who I was holding hands with, disappeared. I felt like I had lost everything, but in the end, that wasn’t the case.

Lisa helped me, and Chris stayed by my side. Even Cerault looked out for me in various ways, and my parents didn’t abandon a foolish son like me.

I wasn’t here by my own strength alone.

Even the analysis on words, something Lisa had told me was a major catalyst. Because when the words I spoke were occasionally imitated back at me, I understood all too well just how vain and foolish they sounded.

Furthermore, the program Chris and I were tinkering with right now was certainly something that couldn’t have been made without connections to many people.

The reason Chris was happily typing something into her terminal must have been because, just as much as the act itself was fun, doing something together with someone else was fun.

I thought, This isn’t so bad.

I didn’t really think it was because my dream of going to untrodden ground had been shattered, either. It’s better to have someone by your side, and more than anything, I suppose I should say I realized that even if you go to untrodden ground, if you look back, you are surely supported by many people.

Thinking that, I suddenly realized something. I fiddled with my terminal and checked my email.

It was an email from Eleanor.

“The apple pie yesterday was very delicious. In the end, I ate it all by myself. Please give my thanks to Lisa-san. Also, regarding that matter, I will continue to gather data on my end as well. If there is any data or information you want, please contact me. I believe that with your ‘eyes,’ Hal-san, you will be able to see something I couldn’t. P.S. Could you have her make the apple pie again? It was truly delicious. I’m also sorry for inviting you to a meal so suddenly. But it had been a while, and it was very enjoyable.”

There was no need for word analysis or anything. I knew what kind of room Eleanor was typing this email in. However, reading it over again, I couldn’t help but acutely feel it.

Eleanor is truly alone.

Surely, just as Lisa said, if you searched, there would be any number of delicious apple pie shops. Even so, the act of asking Lisa for it gave a premonition of something else.

The same goes for her mention of the meal. She was the one who treated me to a meal of probably an unbelievable price, and Eleanor was unmistakably the busy one. Of course, just as I jokingly told Lisa, it could just be the way one writes a polite, diplomatic email.

But, I had definitely heard it from Eleanor’s own mouth.

I can’t do it alone anymore.

If I was able to recover even a little from four years ago, it was because I wasn’t alone.

But in Eleanor’s room, there was no Marco or Le Goff, and the only place to relax was in front of the fish tank in a cafe.

And what I remembered again was our conversation in the car on the way to the restaurant.

Eleanor has convictions, and she is gritting her teeth to realize them. However, reality is something where friction occurs just by living. If so, the massive amount of medicine Eleanor had lined up on that desk might not be solely due to hard work.

I was leisurely verifying data and such in the living room of the church Lisa managed, with Chris and Lisa there. In contrast, Eleanor was working in a merciless world where massive sums of money flew back and forth, forcefully acting out a character completely different from her own personality in front of TV cameras.

Just looking at that room, I could tell an unreasonable strain had been placed on the life Eleanor was leading.

However, I might have misread the full picture.

I suddenly became worried about Eleanor.

“What’s wrong?”

Chris suddenly asked that.

I should have been expressionless, but she still seemed to tell.

“No… I just remembered something.”

“What is it?”

Chris turned innocent eyes toward me. The reason I was at a loss for words wasn’t because it was something I couldn’t tell Chris. Even if I was worried about Eleanor, what could I actually do?

Thinking that, I realized I didn’t really know the specifics of what kind of work Eleanor did.

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“About analysts.”

“Ah, we have that data too. Their yields are as impressive as you’d expect. Umm, if I recall…”

“No, not that…”

“?”

Chris looked at me blankly. With that, there was one person who came to mind.

I stood up from the sofa and headed toward the chapel.

There, Lisa was doing her daily cleaning, and she looked surprised when she noticed me.

“Oh my, what is it?”

“There’s someone I want to contact for a bit.”

“My, my. Did you have that many acquaintances?”

Perhaps payback for the apple pie, Lisa said something pretty harsh.

However, it was a fact so it couldn’t be helped, and the people I’d want to contact were very limited.

“Do you know… Toyama-san’s contact info?”

I hesitated a bit and added the honorific. The moneylender who had lent money to Lisa and the others back then.

Lisa stopped cleaning and looked at me with a serious face.

“There’s something I want to ask him.”

Lisa tried to say something, but ultimately kept her mouth shut.

I kept it a secret that I noticed her eyes were looking at my right hand.

---

“Oh, how’ve you been?”

Across the display, that same old dreary face appeared.

“You can even see the Moon from this room tonight. Although… Lunar City is right in the shadows, so you can’t see it.”

Toyama disappeared from the screen for a few moments and quickly returned. He might have opened the curtains in his room.

“Sorry to call so late at night.”

“Hm? Doesn’t suit you to apologize.”

Toyama laughed in amusement. When I first met this Toyama, I had pinned his arm and wrestled him down on the spot. Even after that, I had looked down on Toyama—who had both age and experience—in various ways, but now I regretted it just a little. He was definitely drab, but Toyama was a relatively cool adult.

“So? What do you need? Planning to become a moneylender?”

“No, I have some things I want to ask about banking operations.”

Before becoming a moneylender on the Moon, Toyama apparently worked at a bank on Earth.

When I asked, after a slight time lag, he made a surprised face.

“Hm? Are you planning to invest in an Earth bank or something?”

“I want to ask about the work of an investment bank, or things like that.”

On the slightly frame-skipping screen, even accounting for the communication lag with Earth, Toyama looked surprised after a brief pause.

However, at my words, Chris and Lisa, who were beside me, also looked puzzled.

“An investment bank, huh. I was in commercial banking, so I don’t know if I can teach you, but I know a little.”

“It’s about the work of an analyst.”

I could sense Chris and Lisa exchanging glances behind me.

“An analyst, huh. I hear they’re super popular over there. I even see them on TV here sometimes.”

“Do you understand what they do?”

“Well, somewhat. But what do you want to know?”

“Umm, like, what exactly they do… maybe?”

I didn’t really know what I wanted to ask, either. Because of that, Toyama also looked thoughtful, but he still answered with what came to mind.

That being said, his first sentence was quite intense.

“To put it roughly, they are slaves.”

“…Slaves?”

“Yeah. Investment banks are called the sell-side. As the name implies, they sell something. And what they sell are stocks and bonds. An analyst’s job is to do corporate analysis in order to sell those stocks and bonds. They are confined to a windowless room from morning till night, forced to analyze companies. And it’s a daily grind of creating reports that no one reads, that no one looks at.”

It was a bit different from my understanding.

“What about rating companies?”

“That’s when they’ve been upgraded from slave to commoner. Ratings are fundamentally done for the investment bank’s clients. Kid, you wouldn’t read that kind of stuff even if it was emailed to you, right?”

He said it with a laugh, and since it was true, I nodded.

“In the case of a skilled analyst whose words people will listen to at least a little, they pen a report saying this stock seems like it will make a profit for such-and-such reasons. Then, the brokers inside the bank call their clients based on that report. Saying things like, ‘Our analyst found a good stock, you see.'”

“What about an incredibly skilled analyst?”

“An incredibly skilled analyst. That’s like looking for a horse’s nest.”

“?”

“Meaning it sounds like it could exist, but it doesn’t.”

“But…”

In reality, there are skilled analysts. There are actually those who are praised like rock stars, like Eleanor. Leaving aside analytical power like Iceman’s—which would be almost impossible without insider information—the popular ones must have a corresponding level of skill.

But at my words, Toyama laughed just a little wickedly.

“Skilled analysts become traders. After all, they know the good stocks themselves. Or, armed with their own reports, they go out to sell stocks and become star salesmen. Otherwise, they change jobs to a consulting firm. Normally, no one stays an analyst.”

“Why is that?”

“Because guys who can’t make money can’t climb the ladder at an investment bank.”

An easy-to-understand logic.

Right. In that world, equality, or making logical sense, or being ethical, or because God decreed it—those things are not justice.

Money alone was justice.

“I kind of get what you want to ask, Kid. You want to ask about those popular analysts who appear on TV, right?”

“…Yes.”

“Those are exceptional existences that have popped up recently. But I think the reality inside is the same. Fundamentally, they are fertilizer for the investment bank’s operations. The main reason they appear on TV and gain popularity is so that brokers can use that popularity to sell stocks to clients more easily. ‘Did you watch the information program this past Sunday? This is the stock that our popular analyst so-and-so was recommending.’ Like that.”

“…”

When a fraudulent company issues new stock, it was the exact same content as the conversation I had with Eleanor.

I was getting closer to what I wanted to ask.

“Or, lately, they’re probably in high demand for things like new stock issuances too.”

“! Y-Yes, exactly. It’s about that.”

“Like I said earlier, analysts create reports so the investment bank can sell something. The investment bank takes outrageously high commissions for issuing new stock, but in exchange, they are required to sell the newly issued stock they’ve underwritten without a hitch. For that purpose, the analysts write good reports like their lives depend on it. Truthfully, it’s a conflict of interest and nothing to be praised for.”

“Conflict… of interest?”

“Yeah. Obviously, right? For the bank, as long as they can take their commission, anything goes, so they have a motive to tell as many lies as they want to push the new stock onto their clients. If they can sell a lot of new stock to clients, the company wanting to issue the stock will come to them too. Moreover, buying stock is the buyer’s own responsibility, so even if the price drops later, they won’t get sued. Well, the brokers who deal directly with the clients might feel awkward, but it’s only over the phone anyway. If they get yelled at, they can just gently place the receiver on the desk and play Solitaire until the other party gets tired of yelling.”

Being able to easily imagine such a scene made me feel sick. Eleanor had spoken about this calmly, even while harboring anger, but since Toyama was someone who had lived in the Outer District, the malice of the actual scene resonated directly.

However, listening to Toyama’s story, I was convinced.

As expected, a story like refusing cooperation for a listing because the company was obviously fraudulent simply didn’t fit in a nest of greed like an investment bank.

“For example, let’s say…”

“Hm?”

“Let’s say there’s a company that requests a new stock issuance job from a certain investment bank because they want the stamp of approval from a popular analyst.”

“Yeah. Sounds like a typical story.”

“But let’s say that company’s contents are so terrible that the popular analyst refuses the job. What happens?”

“Haha. If you could do something like that, it would sure feel great.”

Toyama said, sounding amused.

“It’s like telling a terrible boss who forces unreasonable demands on you, ‘What you’re saying is wrong!’ It might feel great in the moment, but as for what happens from the next day on, well, leave it to your imagination. I told you earlier, right? The guys who can make money are justice there. If so, there’s no need to even think about what happens if you do something that not only doesn’t make money, but throws it down the drain.”

“…”

Even if I had imagined it, having a third party say it made me truly understand the sheer stupidity of that heroic act.

Toyama’s face also clouded over slightly as he lowered his tone and continued.

“They dress it up spectacularly as ‘super popular analyst’, but the inside is undeniably miserable. On the Moon, new listings and corporate acquisitions are booming, right? The amounts of money involved are in the realm of one hundred million or a billion Mool. When it gets huge, it even exceeds ten billion Mool. Investment banks desperately want that kind of work for the massive commissions. But there’s a limit to how much you can reinforce your sales squad. It’s difficult to differentiate yourself from other investment banks. That’s probably why they created popular analysts who are loved by the masses and can move clients enough to actually influence stock prices. Saying, ‘Using our bank means you have that analyst at your disposal.'”

Toyama stopped there and took a breath. What I heard after that was a withered way of speaking, like he was longing for something, or perhaps giving up.

“That place is a terrible world, truly. It’s like the Moon boiled down.”

Kicked out of the Outer District along with us, Toyama returned to Earth.

The Moon is not a mother earth like Earth. It is a world swirling with greed and deception, where not even flowers bloom.

“In truth, commercial banks might be sleepy places compared to investment banks, but in exchange, there is a relationship of trust with the clients.”

A moneylender doesn’t exchange money, they exchange trust, Toyama had said.

“But at an investment bank, someone is always deceiving someone else. The company deceives the analyst because they want the stock price even a little higher, and the analyst deceives the broker because they want to be evaluated and escape from being a slave. The broker deceives the client because they make money on a commission basis if they sell the stock.”

At that terrible food chain, I couldn’t help but interject.

“So the clients are the only ones being deceived, is that it?”

“No?”

Toyama looked at me with a serious face through the display and said,

“The clients deceive themselves. Because in the end, the ones buying the stock of a company that is obviously strange no matter how you look at it are the clients.”

“…”

“I won’t tell you it’s a bad idea. You might see a glamorous popular analyst and want to become one, but—”

“Umm, that’s not it.”

“Oh? Is that so. Well anyway, if you want to be in the financial industry, a small bank is fun in its own painful way. Relationships with clients span decades. If a borrower goes under, the bank easily gets blown away right along with them. Consequently, the relationships become close. It’s fun. Doing something with someone else. I’ve returned to that old stomping ground now, too.”

Toyama said that and laughed. I would have thought that sounded sleepy in the past, but now I could understand its value. It seemed I had grown just a little bit.

As I was thinking that, Toyama let out a short yawn across the screen.

That reminded me that it was night over there.

“I’m sorry. Keeping you talking so long late at night.”

“Hm? Ah, no. But, you know. Being worried about by you, Kid, it really is a strange feeling after all.”

Toyama said that while laughing. Remembering how I had pinned Toyama down and spoken to him cheekily, I had no choice but to shrink my neck in embarrassment.

“But well, it was nice to talk after so long. So, finally, could you put Lisa-san on for a bit?”

“Yes. …Thank you very much.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Bowing to Toyama as he waved his hand, I stood up from my chair and signaled Lisa, who had been listening while leaning against the wall in the corner of the room. Lisa looked at me with slightly puzzled eyes, but sat in the chair and started talking to Toyama.

I left the room and let out a small sigh. Chris came out a moment later.

“Is it about Eleanor-san?”

“Yeah.”

I answered briefly, ruminating on my conversation with Toyama.

A terrible world.

Because massive amounts of money were involved, it couldn’t be otherwise. But when I heard Eleanor had rejected the trading deal, the most I could imagine was that any job comes with its own share of hardships. What was the reality, then?

Friction with those around her would be born?

Don’t be stupid. That friction carried the weight of ten million Mool.

My chest hurt terribly when I thought about how incredibly happy Eleanor was about the apple pie. Even when she ended up ridiculously dangling a cloth bag that was far too out of place in such a stylish restaurant, she didn’t seem to care in the slightest. Looking incredibly happy, she peered inside like a child looking at a Christmas present.

What if Eleanor was physically being crushed by the sheer volume of her work, and on top of that, having her conscience tested as well?

Because of her position, Eleanor was required to evaluate terrible companies favorably for the sake of her employer. But I had to remember the circumstances under which Eleanor’s own company went under. Wasn’t it exactly because of that kind of shady report?

If so, evaluating a fraudulent company favorably and taking part in shoving junk down people’s throats for the sake of a commission was unmistakably contrary to Eleanor’s justice. And Eleanor had actually handed down a decision of ‘No’.

But I had horrifyingly misjudged what kind of result that decision would invite. Because she was so popular, I thought she would be treated like a god even inside her company.

Eleanor’s delicate build, and the medicine on her desk.

The volume of work, and above all, the pressure.

I recalled the disastrous state of that room.

A room is nothing other than a mirror reflecting the inside of its resident’s heart.

“Hal-san?”

“Ah? Yeah… I’m going to go send an email for a bit.”

Unable to stand still, I returned to my room and booted up my terminal.

However, the moment I tried to write the email, my hands stopped. Even if I wanted to help Eleanor, I couldn’t find anything I could actually do. The most I could do was investigate Avalon, and even then, I wasn’t an accounting expert or a corporate analysis expert. I was just good at guessing the ups and downs of stock price movements.

I’m always like this. I understand the superficial aspects of the other person and only take on superficial assistance.

But the moment I care even a little deeply for the other person, I crash into my own powerlessness. I thought I had become closer to Hagana than anyone else in this world, yet in the end, I don’t even know Hagana’s real name.

Even so, I tried to write an email. Even if it was menial tasks, or cleaning her hotel room, or whatever it was, I wondered if I couldn’t be of some use. There was something like a terrible sense of impatience in me.

I might be projecting Hagana onto Eleanor. That thought was in my head, but the emotion that had welled up wouldn’t easily disappear. I didn’t want to see the people involved with me become unhappy anymore. I didn’t want to regret, thinking, I should have done that back then.

Ignoring my stiffening right hand, I typed the letters with my left. I didn’t think about whether it might be a sudden nuisance, or a complete misunderstanding. If so, then fine. That’s all there was to it.

I tried to send the email, just writing to ask if there was any work I could help with.

It was at that moment that the door to my room suddenly opened.

“Hal-san!”

I thought my heart would stop, but when I turned around, Chris had come into my room still holding her terminal and placed it on my desk. Displayed there was a TV screen labeled ‘Breaking News’, and written in a sensational font was: “Panic in front of Avalon Headquarters.”

“Um, o-on TV, right now…!”

Chris said, pointing at the terminal.

Indeed, a large crowd of people had gathered there, each loudly asserting something. Looking at that image, for a moment, I didn’t understand where it was. It said “In front of Avalon Headquarters,” and certainly that impressive building was standing in the back. But the people there were all heavily bundled up in clothes, their breath rising white as if they were freezing.

“The night market is moving incredibly fast… but I can’t close out my positions…”

Meanwhile, Chris choked on her words and looked at me. Looking at Chris’s terminal, the numbers were bright red with losses. She couldn’t close her positions because the program couldn’t be booted up without going to the office on Schrodinger Street.

“Calm down, what happened? What is this?”

Probably due to her first loss and the market chaos, Chris was truly panicking from the bottom of her heart.

“When I turned on the TV, u-um, Emerald Industries was holding a press conference. But, m-m-more than that…”

“Emerald Industries is?”

Because of that, I thought maybe someone had launched a hostile takeover against Avalon. However, that wouldn’t explain why there was a sell-off across a wide range of stocks in the night market. Something that would have a widespread social impact must have been announced.

Following my habit, I launched the investment tool on my terminal and checked the news. The screen was filled with the words “Breaking News”.

Opening one, I gasped.

“At 19:00 this evening, Emerald Industries, ticker EIND, securities number 2201, announced a major change to the urban dome environmental maintenance policy commissioned by the Lunar Government. They project to lower the temperature inside the domes by ten degrees for the time being.”

“Ten degrees? Ten degrees is…”

“Apparently, it’s already below freezing in places close to the air conditioning. It’s going to get cold around here soon, too…”

Glancing sideways at Chris, who was anxiously staring at the dizzyingly moving market as she spoke, I opened another news article.

“Due to the repeated, rapid rises in electricity rates, Emerald Industries had been seeking a revision of its pre-existing contract with the government. Regarding this issue, Emerald Industries’ extraordinary board of directors announced a policy to lower the temperature inside the domes by ten degrees, based on provision 3.2, the asset preservation rights clause for contracted enterprises. With this, the negative spread situation—where the expenses required to maintain the environment inside the domes exceeded the fees paid from the government-commissioned contract—is expected to be resolved. In the night market, Emerald Industries is up 5% from the previous day. Regarding the soaring electricity rates, voices pointing out the responsibility of the major power trading company, Avalon, have also emerged from some experts.”

When I returned my eyes to the news on the terminal, the camera had at some point started showing a quiet scene. It looked like some conference room or something, showing a desk with dozens of microphones placed on it, and several chairs. There were clattering sounds, making it obvious that they were right in the middle of setting up.

Apparently, Avalon’s CEO, Kevin Wraith, was going to hold a press conference.

For Avalon, a company suspected of having power trading in the palm of its hand and driving up the Moon’s electricity rates, it was probably unavoidable.

However, it seemed there was still a little time before the press conference, as the screen quickly switched to show tickers outlining the Moon’s power problems, and in the corner of the screen, the scene of the uproar in front of Avalon’s headquarters was displayed.

“What’s happening with Avalon’s stock price?”

When I asked, Chris looked up, split her terminal screen to display Avalon’s stock price, and stared at the remaining portion as if in prayer.

Avalon was up 13%.

According to the breaking news, following Emerald Industries’ announcement, power futures were soaring in the power trading market due to speculation that the Moon’s electricity situation would become severe moving forward.

When I searched for power-related companies on my own terminal, generation, transmission, and sales were all rising across the board. Besides those, companies making solar panels and major semiconductor companies were also trading higher in sympathy. Other companies, especially manufacturing companies based on the Moon, were falling across the board. Because it was predicted that operating costs would jump. Transportation companies that consume energy were also almost entirely wiped out. It was presenting the aspect of a massacre.

However, looking at all of that, I was somewhat bewildered by the state of the market. It wasn’t because I was seeing that losses were appearing across a wide range of stocks and the program I built with Chris had become completely powerless.

It was because the news stating that prices were rising due to speculation that the power situation would worsen moving forward because Emerald Industries lowered the temperature inside the domes by ten degrees was incomprehensible to me. I thought, That’s ridiculous.

The largest bulk consumer, Emerald Industries, is saying they are going to save electricity from now on, right? Why would prices go up because of that?

Emerald Industries announced they would lower the temperature because electricity rates had gone up, not because they are predicted to go up from here on out. Are prices going up because people anticipate that each household’s electricity usage will increase moving forward since the temperature inside the domes is dropping? That line of thinking could also hold up. Even so, it seemed like a terribly distorted picture to me. It felt like there was no rationality there.

The prices looked like they were moving entirely on emotion.

At that moment, the terminal’s TV screen switched back to the conference room from earlier.

With a clattering sound and the noise of camera flashes unchanged from the old era, Kevin Wraith appeared. Befitting a man who had built a massive corporation in a single generation, his body was actively lean and toned, and he had the facial expression of a short-tempered young man who made decisions swiftly and decisively.

Wraith took his seat with a displeased look on his face, bringing several attendants with him. One attendant in a suit placed documents in front of Kevin, and another woman fixed Kevin’s hairstyle. The guys in suits chatting behind Kevin were probably his advisory lawyers.

During that time, Kevin kept looking at the documents with a displeased look. Judging from his clothes, it felt like he had been on his way to an evening party and was suddenly called back.

“We will now begin the press conference by our CEO, Kevin Wraith.”

A voice came from the TV terminal. Flashes went off again, and Kevin frowned, looking increasingly displeased.

“Ah—thank you all for gathering here on such short notice today.”

Kevin spoke toward the array of tabletop microphones, then suddenly leaned back and said something to the person standing by behind him. The person behind him checked their wristwatch, and Kevin seemed to let out a sigh.

“Excuse me. Today, there has been a major movement in the Moon’s power situation, and our company, which operates the power trading market, also has a grave interest in this.”

Kevin flipped through the documents just like that, flipped some more, returned to the first page, and then let out an even bigger sigh than before. Throwing the documents to the side, he picked up one of the microphones and spoke.

“To get straight to the point regarding the unfair view that I am directing the inflation of electricity rates—it is an absolute no.”

The lawyer-looking men standing by behind him were astonished. One of them tried to hand Kevin what were probably legally sterilized documents, but Kevin wouldn’t take them. A childlike stubbornness oozed from his face. It was as if to say, I’m not going to read off a document. I am the one talking, and I have things I want to say.

Such a Kevin stood up, stared at the cameras, and spoke.

“In the commodity futures market, there is not a single instance in history where cornering the market and driving up prices has succeeded. In the history of the commodity market, there have been countless schemes that attempted to drive up prices by purchasing massive quantities amounting to several times the annual demand. To give a famous example from Earth, there was the silver corner by the Heinz brothers. But they all failed across the board. Gold, silver, crude oil—all of them, without fail, are ultimately traded by consumers according to demand. Furthermore, it should be glaringly obvious that electricity, our company’s primary product, is impossible to hoard. The price is strictly determined by demand. Of course, our company is also aware that there are people suffering due to the rising electricity rates. However, I have grown this company by bringing efficiency to the power market. As for the issue of poverty, is that not a problem the government should solve? I am aware of the voices saying we should direct our earnings to charity, but our company’s purpose is to generate profit for our shareholders, and any other action is a betrayal of our shareholders. That is all.”

Finishing his speech, Kevin put down the microphone and promptly got up from his seat. It was an unconventional press conference perfectly suited for the name “Kevin, the man of action.”

The cameras hastily tried to follow Kevin, but got blocked by bodyguards and other cameramen, and his figure disappeared in the blink of an eye. In the end, the cameramen seemed to give up, and the screen switched again, showing the uproar in front of Avalon’s headquarters.

I was half a little impressed by Kevin’s fearless behavior that wouldn’t even dread God.

Then, I hurriedly shook my head.

This man might certainly not do anything underhanded, and while he’s rough, open, and has a bad mouth, he seems far removed from cheap tricks—or so this performance might be designed to make me think.

“What happened to the positions?”

I asked Chris next to me. Chris was still staring at the screen, but the slight calm she showed was probably because the market movements had settled down for a moment. The most painful time when you’re taking a loss is when the numbers keep moving.

“The stocks we’ve purchased are at an average loss of 9%… We also have some stocks we’re short selling, and those are showing a profit, so overall, it’s about a 4% loss…”

“That’s just a scratch, isn’t it.”

Chris’s position was close to three million Mool, so it was a loss of 120,000 Mool. The annual income of a high earner. That said, proportionally it was 4%, so in reality it should just be a scratch.

And yet, Chris continued to stare blankly at her terminal with a face like she had lost the entire amount.

I recalled Lisa’s words. Chris had always been rewarded for the efforts she put in. She had never made a mistake. In other words, she had probably never taken a loss.

“I-If I had fewer positions carried over from the previous day… I could have reduced the damage more… I knew that if I carried them over to the next day, something like this might happen…”

While speaking, Chris finally burst into tears. I wanted to grab her by the scruff of the neck and tell her, Look at the performance, it’s a wonderful number to be proud of, but I also knew that would be useless.

Losses are a very painful thing. Strangely enough, profits and losses are not the same.

“Even if you know there’s a possibility, you don’t know when that disaster will actually come. You just have to be more careful moving forward.”

When I placed my hand on Chris’s head, Chris hiccuped, and then slowly gave a small nod.

“Still, electricity rates are going to go up even more, huh. Lisa is going to be mad.”

“…Yeah, I guess so… I just peeked at the power market earlier, but… hic… it had gone up by ten percent…”

“Ten…”

At that number, an anger akin to exasperation welled up in me.

“I understand that if Emerald Industries lowers the temperature by ten degrees, everyone will spend money on heating. But does that explain a 10% jump?”

The utterly irrational movement made me angry. Who was it that said the market was smart and rational?

My anger had apparently shown even on my expressionless face.

Chris was looking at me with a puzzled expression, her eyes still wet with marine blue.

“…B-But, if you look up the statistics on power demand and such… I’m sure it can be explained. Besides, regarding market prices… hic… there’s something called the wisdom of crowds.”

“…That thing where the collective has greater wisdom than its individual parts?”

When I looked at Chris, she seemed to have calmed down quite a bit.

Wiping the corners of her eyes with the palm of her hand and sniffling, her expression also became somewhat normal again.

“Yes. Apparently, they had passersby guess the number of jellybeans in a jar, and when they took the average, they were able to guess the exact number of jellybeans in the jar.”

The idea that market prices are rational is supported by that kind of logic.

But I had learned four years ago, and Chris’s program right in front of her had its profits jump precisely by introducing the metric that people are not rational. In other words, it means believing that even though the market contains a great deal of irrational elements, it will ultimately result in a rational outcome.

Chris was a genius who could pass the Lunar City University exam.

Or perhaps, was it just that I lacked faith?

“B-Besides, anyone can hedge against the rise in electricity prices.”

Perhaps regaining herself through intellectual conversation, Chris said this while re-examining the investment tool screen that was bright red with deficits, as if staring at her own injuries.

“Are you talking about trading in the power trading market?”

“No. Avalon’s stock price has hit its upper limit, up 13%. So if you invest in Avalon, you can get a profit that exceeds the rise in electricity, right?”

Even though she still had the habit of crying lingering, Chris said that happily and tapped her terminal.

“Ah, i-it really is so. Converted to an annual rate, Avalon’s stock price is growing at several times the speed of the rise in electricity rates. Everyone… before they complain, they should just invest more smartly.”

In front of the terminal data, forgetting that she had just taken a massive loss, Chris said such a thing innocently. Or perhaps, she just wanted to encourage herself that way.

At any rate, I was staring at Chris’s profile expressionlessly.

It was by no means just because my face couldn’t move.

It was because I realized an incredible fact was hidden there.

“Avalon’s growth is outpacing… the rise in electricity rates?”

“Yes. It has consistently and overwhelmingly exceeded it. But since Avalon has its hands in various things, I suppose it’s natural.”

“No way,” When I said that, Chris looked at me in surprise.

“…Eh?”

“No, that’s strange. It’s absolutely strange.”

“Eh? Eh? What is?”

“I see. This is it. This is probably the true nature of the ‘discomfort’.”

Looking at the data Chris was pulling up, I thought.

Humans, it seems, are constantly making situational judgments subconsciously, even if they aren’t consciously calculating.

Even if you don’t realize you’re seeing it, there’s a lot of information entering your field of vision, and humans are heavily influenced by the information they collect subconsciously.

The reason Eleanor, who had been staring at numerous pieces of data, said that Avalon felt unnatural in its overall size was because of this.

I spoke, almost as if muttering to myself.

“Just try doing the multiplication.”

“Eh?”

“The limit of sales that Avalon could possibly obtain assumes they monopolize the entire power market on the Moon. Therefore… isn’t Avalon’s stock price already too high right now?”

“…”

Chris turned back to the terminal screen with a face that said she didn’t know what I was talking about.

Avalon’s stock price is too high?

She looked dumbfounded, wondering what on earth that meant.

“Avalon’s stock price has a P/E ratio of 70x and a P/B ratio of 7x.”

The price-to-earnings ratio, P/E, and the price-to-book ratio, P/B. The P/B ratio is an indicator of how much liquidation money would be paid out per share if the company were to fold its business and liquidate at this very moment, compared to the current stock price. In other words, if Avalon were to fold the company right this second, only one-seventh of the stock price would be returned per share.

And, compared to sales of 40 billion Mool, Avalon’s market capitalization has reached 120 billion. This number is too high.

That doesn’t mean compared to the average of other stocks. If that were the case, Avalon is clearly too high, but since a stock price inherently prices in future prospects, whether it’s too high or not can’t be known in the ‘true sense’. Because a stock price is strictly just the average value of everyone’s future predictions at that point in time.

But Avalon had the possibility of being high in the ‘true sense’. Because even if they controlled all the electricity used on the Moon, from generation to transmission, it was unknown if they could reach this number.

Furthermore, Avalon doesn’t own all the power plants, and is merely taking a commission from the rest in the power trading market. You could even try multiplying the trading volume of the power market by their commission rate to calculate the profit. Even with a quick glance at the data on Chris’s terminal, it looked impossible to explain Avalon’s sales.

I wrote an email to Eleanor.

She must have been at the hotel or something, because a reply came immediately.

“I will investigate it.”

For a moment, I almost felt relieved by that, but then hurriedly sent another email. As far as I heard from Toyama, Eleanor probably doesn’t have the leeway to be doing extra things. In fact, it was exactly because she didn’t that she called out to me.

I wrote that I would investigate it on my end, so I would contact her with the results as they came. Also, to please focus on her main job. And I added that Lisa was enthusiastic about making the apple pie for her.

Eleanor’s reply read, “I now have many reasons to work hard.”

Chris, as expected, wouldn’t commit the bad manners of peeking at someone else’s email.

But she was glancing over, as if curious about what I was doing.

“What… are you doing?”

I cast a sideways glance at Chris, who asked such a question.

I hesitated, but said something slightly removed from the truth.

“Teaming up with Eleanor to plan shorting Avalon.”

One of the investment methods where you make a profit if the price goes down. It was a method naturally built into Chris’s program too, and Chris said this, sounding a bit miffed.

“Is it a separate trade from mine?”

“It’s different in nature from program trading. It’s a longer-term one.”

“…”

Chris puffed out her cheeks with a muu, but since program trading and long-term trading are like the far side and near side of the Moon, she ultimately just sighed.

Right then, Lisa walked in.

“Hey, did you two see the news?”

“Yeah. That electricity rates are going up.”

“Eh, is that so? Not that the temperature is going down?”

“The result of that is a price hike. Apparently.”

“Ugh… What a real pain. But, did they say that on the news?”

When Lisa said that, Chris looked up at her mischievously from behind her glasses, and said this:

“Because we are traders. We’re fast when it comes to information.”

“…It’s like there are two Hals.”

“…”

As I was exasperated and kept my mouth shut, Chris nestled her body up against me with a smile.

“More importantly, hurry up and take a bath before the cold wave hits. You too, Chris, go to bed early today. You’ll catch a cold if you stay out.”

“Yeeees…”

The reluctant reply was exactly the exchange between a mother and a child engrossed in a video game.

“You too, Hal.”

“Tch.”

I glared at Lisa resentfully, thinking I’m already twenty years old, you know, but Lisa shrugged and walked away.

A human relationship, once built, rarely ever changes. To Lisa, I was still just a sixteen-year-old kid.

Chris, who had known Lisa since she was even younger than I was, let out a small sigh, obediently closed her terminal screen, and stood up.

“Well then, I’ll go take a shower first. Could you tell me our countermeasures for tomorrow later?”

“Ah? Yeah.”

“Thinking about tomorrow makes me feel depressed, though…”

“But that’s trading. There’s no such thing as a certainty.”

“…”

Chris looked away from me and sighed once more.

“I’ll carve that into my heart.”

I nodded and saw Chris off.

Chris’s program was mathematically managed and shouldn’t have been taking on risks beyond a certain level. However, reality has nothing to do with mathematics. If the program had just kept running, we might have weathered this storm completely unscathed, but the risk of not being able to trade unless we went to the office wasn’t programmed into it.

I guess I have to consider things like this from now on too, I thought, but my mind inevitably kept being pulled toward something else.

It was the single stock floating on my terminal. Avalon.

I was boiling with determination deep in my chest. Avalon undeniably has a secret. I was convinced of it.

And when that secret is exposed, Eleanor will be able to realize her justice.

The reason I harbored such terribly sentimental feelings about it was probably because I couldn’t save Hagana. Bought from Earth, she ran away from home, ultimately caused trouble for Lisa, and amidst all that, right after she thought she could do something for someone else for the first time in her life, she was betrayed by me—her greatest partner—and vanished in despair.

Of course, even if I help Eleanor, Hagana won’t come back. Even knowing that, I still wanted to do something for Eleanor, who had sought my help. I thought that by doing so, I might be able to take back just a tiny fragment of what had been irretrievably lost.

Therefore, this foothold against Avalon was also a clue to reclaiming my own past.

No matter what, I felt impatient.

I tapped my terminal, searching for data to corroborate my thoughts about Avalon.

However, my hands soon came to a halt.

“…Eh?”

I muttered involuntarily in front of the terminal, and tried a few more times, but the result was the same.

Then, shortly after, a sound notifying me of an incoming email rang from the terminal.

Looking at it, it was from Eleanor.

“There was a major movement in the market, wasn’t there. I heard a warning from Le Goff regarding Chris’s positions. However, I believe that with you there, Hal-san, it won’t turn into a major disaster. By the way, prompted by your words, I immediately tried checking the data (I’m sorry, even though you told me to focus on my main job. I was so curious I couldn’t concentrate on my work). However, I couldn’t find the data. Lunar power statistical data stopped being published over ten years ago. The only thing that comes up is the minimum power required to maintain the lunar cities. I confirmed this with both Emerald Industries and the government offices. The data circulating in the public seems to be an estimate based on the power usage of Earth cities of a similar size.

Additionally, Avalon’s fee revenue from the power trading market should be around 30 million Mool annually. The daily trading volume is roughly 100 million Mool, and with a flat rate of 0.1%, the rest is simple math. I cannot imagine this covering their 40 billion Mool in sales. Therefore, as expected, the vast majority of their sales must come from the traditional method of generating and selling electricity. But to think that the data which would serve as a clue to Avalon’s unnaturalness has stopped being published—I sense something almost like a conspiracy. I suppose I’m reading too much into it, though. Please laugh at me.”

Surely, they didn’t stop publishing the data due to pressure from Avalon. Ten years ago was a time when Avalon wasn’t even that big yet, and I had a vague guess as to the real reason.

Probably, since there was no hindrance to the Moon’s operations even without power statistics, compiling the data was pushed down the priority list and shoved away in the back of a shelf in some department. I knew all too well from personal experience that the Lunar Government was dysfunctional.

However, while Eleanor made it sound like a joke, I thought she must surely be feeling disappointed, but the email continued like this:

“At this point, we might have no choice but to hit every possible power plant and calculate the power generation amounts ourselves. I think this can be managed through brute force human wave tactics, so while it might take time, I believe it’s possible.”

In theory, yes. The problem was whether that was actually realistic.

However, I couldn’t think of any method other than Eleanor’s. If it were the flow of a river, you could see it and measure it, but electricity is invisible. Even the transmission lines are almost entirely underground. There’s no way to grasp it.

Or perhaps, that is exactly why Avalon can lie so brazenly.

“No… it’s not like it’s been decided they’re lying yet.”

I, too, was heavily tainted by my preconceptions.

But, there was something that suddenly caught my attention.

“No way to grasp it?”

I felt a sudden click at those words.

I felt like I had heard a similar case recently.

“What was it…?”

I traced back my memories little by little. I only talked about investment-related topics with a limited number of people, and as Lisa had meanly pointed out, I didn’t have many people to converse with in the first place.

In that case, the most likely candidates were either Chris or Eleanor.

But with Chris, I mostly talked about the atmosphere of the market, so it was probably Eleanor.

I frantically pulled at the threads of my conversations with Eleanor, and finally remembered.

“The fraudulent company at the Grand Central Hotel, huh.”

Eleanor had said that the government wouldn’t likely grant them a construction permit for their catapult. What was the reason? Because land on the Moon outside the urban areas is government-owned, and restrictions are placed on its use.

If anything, an observatory, or…

“The installation of power generation panels!”

In that case, if we count those with our own eyes, couldn’t we figure out the exact number? Moreover, it would be a perfect number that no one could falsify. For a moment I thought all paths had opened up, but then I suddenly realized.

The surface area of the Moon exceeds 38 million square kilometers. Even Japan, my parents’ homeland, which is called a tiny economic powerhouse, is about 380,000 square kilometers.

Furthermore, I had heard that solar panel power plants are installed quite far from the cities because the Moon cycles through day and night every two weeks. If they weren’t, when the city entered the lunar night, the power panels would also enter the night and be unable to generate electricity.

Unless we could use a lunar orbiting satellite, counting all the panels—or even getting a rough estimate—would be impossible.

I almost gave up for a moment.

But there was one more piece of information in Eleanor’s words.

“There are land applications.”

If there are restrictions on land use, there should be a screening and application process for it.

If we look at those applications, we would know the scale of the land being used for power generation. The performance of solar panels is all largely similar, and the reason Avalon hasn’t monopolized the power generation business is because they simply can’t. Because they aren’t power plants requiring massive capital like nuclear, thermal, or hydro plants on Earth, the barrier to entry is low. It’s enough if you can just place panels and pull the electricity to the transmission grid leading to the city.

Besides, if Avalon was lying, this was a powerful tool to expose that lie in a single strike.

Because, from the total amount of land Avalon had applied for and purchased, their power generation capacity would become crystal clear. It would immediately reveal how much of their sales were covered by the power generation business.

However, the biggest problem lay ahead.

How do we check those application documents?

Thinking for a while, I remembered that Eleanor had confirmed with the government office that the company she dismissed as a fraud had submitted an application for a catapult construction permit. I conveyed what I had thought of to Eleanor, adding at the end to ask if she could investigate it on her end.

This time the reply took a while, and as I waited while staring at the linked data from Chris’s program, the answer came about ten minutes later.

“I think your idea is wonderful. However, the government office’s data is categorized by designated plots—meaning, we can inquire about what applications are currently submitted for a specific piece of land, but we cannot do it the other way around, like asking if a certain company has applied for anything. When I investigated that fraudulent company I told you about before, I got into quite an argument with the bureaucracy… This is probably due to the way the government office manages its data.”

“Damn it.”

I had experienced firsthand just how terrible the government office’s data handling was. Due to the strong demands of bureaucrats who had just arrived from Earth and the like, some data even existed exclusively on paper. Government data management had reached a point where it was almost entirely out of control.

Seeking searchability in land use application data was asking for the moon in the first place.

“However, since human wave tactics are also effective for this method, I will look into it just in case, but it might be practically impossible. Even if the Moon is smaller than Earth, it’s still plenty big…”

Eleanor’s email ended with such disheartening sentences.

I reflected that my idea had perhaps only given Eleanor false hope.

If we could peek directly into the database, there might still be a chance, but…

“Directly?”

I had one lead regarding that possibility.

Connections are truly an asset. A bond with someone is also a form of wealth.

I wrote to Eleanor saying I would investigate it on my end too, and told her not to feel down.

Her reply was, “Thank you very much.”

After that, I tapped the keys on my terminal and brought up the contact info.

Looking at Rena’s contact information, I thought that no experience ever truly goes to waste.

---

The next morning, Lunar City had become a country of ice.

At least, that’s how I felt. It was also my first time learning that being ‘cold’ meant being in ‘pain’.

When I mentioned this to Lisa, she looked blank for a moment before laughing at me. Curse her Earthborn privilege, I thought, but when she told me to wear gloves if I was going outside, I was skeptical, yet when I actually put them on, they were very warm. On the Moon, gloves were strictly for manual labor, but I learned for the first time that on Earth, people wear them to retain heat too.

And so, I walked through the streets of the Outer District, which looked sparkling and radiant due to the frost that had settled everywhere under the dome’s lights, and stood in front of the tram station.

It had only been a short while since I stopped commuting to the government office from here, yet it felt like years ago.

Perhaps this is what it means for one’s position to change.

“Ah, excuse me.”

As I was facing the people spilling out of the tram, a voice called out from behind me. When I turned around, Rena was standing there holding coffee and what looked like a vegetable sandwich.

“I thought I still had plenty of time…”

“No, it’s before our meeting time.”

Feeling somewhat relieved by the unchanging Rena, I felt like she somehow looked very striking today. But looking closely, nothing had actually changed from when I was there, and the tiny stain from spilled food told me she was wearing the exact same clothes.

Then, suddenly looking at the clothes of the people walking behind Rena, I realized.

Those plain, dead-grass-colored clothes actually looked warm in this level of cold.

“Breakfast?”

“Yes. Lately, I’ve been loving the vegetable sandwiches from the coffee stand over there… Oh, you don’t eat breakfast, do you, Hal-kun?”

“I didn’t intend to, but lately that hasn’t been the case.”

Living under Lisa’s roof, there was no way I could get away with such sloppy eating habits.

“Hmm? Then you must have found a good workplace.”

There are only happy things in this world. Rena’s smile was one that could almost convince you if she said she believed in such an innocent dream.

I thought that the guy who put the ring on Rena’s ring finger must have done so calculating that spending every day with a Rena like this would undoubtedly be fun.

“Well, I have no complaints.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Umm, so…”

“We can talk while walking. And, while you eat.”

Seeing Rena glancing repeatedly at her sandwich, I said that, and my former boss, who was older than me, let out a bashful “Ehehe,” opened the wrapper, and took an unexpectedly bold bite.

“So, you have a favor to ask or something?”

Wiping mayonnaise from her mouth with her ring finger, Rena asked.

There was some on the right side too, so when I pointed it out with my finger, she frantically wiped it away. It was as if Chris had just grown up as is.

“Yeah. I thought it would be better to ask directly rather than explaining over email.”

“Well, what could it be… I wonder if it’s something I can do.”

She tilted her head mischievously, but to her, it probably wasn’t much of a joke.

I think she is a serious and very sincere woman, but if asked whether her practical business capabilities were high, I would need to withhold my judgment a bit.

“If I recall, before you came to your current department, you said you were in a department that checked various application documents, right?”

“…”

Rena looked at me with her teeth still sunk into the vegetable sandwich, and then bit it off with an air of resignation.

Then, after munching and chewing, she closed her eyes and swallowed like a child.

“I have a very bad feeling about what you’re going to say, Hal-kun.”

“I want to peek into the government office’s database.”

“…”

Rena looked at me and drank her coffee. Inside the dome, it had long since looked like morning, but the temperature wasn’t rising at all. When Rena took her mouth away from the coffee cup and sighed, her breath danced white like magic.

“Is this for… your job?”

Her eyes had become the eyes used for looking at an outsider.

I thought, Maybe she’s an unexpectedly solid person when she’s out and about.

“In the sense that it aligns with my employer’s intentions.”

“Are you planning to blow smoke with that kind of phrasing again? Absolutely not. You are no longer my subordinate, Hal-kun, and you are not a government employee.”

She flatly rejected me. A stiff, bureaucratic government worker.

Because she was exactly that, I was actually somewhat relieved.

“So it wasn’t a very good line of work after all.”

Rena stopped walking, looked at me, and said.

“You suddenly got money, and even quit being a scholarship student.”

“Well, it’s nothing decent. Work on Schrodinger Street.”

“…”

With that single phrase, a vague smile appeared on Rena’s face.

“What, so you were actually good at stocks after all, Hal-kun…”

“I’m not good at it. Just better than average, it seems.”

At my phrasing, which she disliked, Rena made a displeased face just as expected.

“Absolutely not. I won’t be a party to money-making schemes. That’s corruption. I misjudged you.”

Saying that, Rena started walking away. With my leg, I couldn’t catch up.

So, I threw words at her back.

“It’s for justice.”

“…Huh?”

Frowning, Rena turned around.

“It’s for the realization of justice.”

My face is always expressionless. That can look lethargic, or it can look displeased.

Or else, in situations like this, it can look serious.

“She says there’s too much malice on the Moon.”

“W-What does that matter?”

“My employer is that kind of person, too.”

In the car heading from the Grand Central Hotel to the restaurant.

Eleanor was the same. The type who can’t just accept crooked things as they are, the type who finds living difficult. For Rena, it ended with her being tucked away in the corner of a rundown government office, but in Eleanor’s case, it didn’t.

Reading the emotion from my expressionless face, Rena quietly swallowed hard.

“It’s not about making money. Well, to be honest, it might make some money depending on the circumstances, but…”

“…J-Just for reference, what do you want to know?”

She would at least hear me out formally.

That kind of change of heart is what you call a concession.

“About land use outside the urban areas.”

And that answer apparently betrayed all of Rena’s expectations.

“Huh?” she said, totally caught off guard.

“B-But, something like that… you can just inquire about it without telling me…”

“I know that. But that won’t work.”

“Won’t work…?”

Rena looked around as if troubled, then walked up to me, tugged my sleeve, and pulled me to the side of the road.

“Um, what are you thinking? I also don’t think you’re the kind of person to break the rules for money, Hal-kun.”

Coming from me, who had suffered terribly from Burton’s insider information four years ago, it was an itchy evaluation to hear, but it was also true that I had been pathologically afraid of foul play ever since.

“I want to know the big picture of what the land on the Moon is being used for.”

“The big picture?”

“Yes. My employer already went to the government office to check, but they could only inquire plot by plot. But what I… no, what we want is to know how much land a certain company has acquired on the Moon. And for that, there’s no other way than to extract the data directly from the database and analyze it.”

“…”

“Is it a no? Saying it’s for justice isn’t a lie. And this is the only breakthrough I could think of.”

At my words, Rena lightly turned her face away. To an onlooker, it probably looked like a timid woman being bothered by a man hitting on her during her morning commute.

However, Rena looked at me, and her eyes were unexpectedly gentle.

“You know the regulations regarding lunar land, right?”

“Yes.”

“…”

Rena stared at me intently, and then suddenly looked up at the sky.

Seeing that, I thought that this person was definitely smarter than I gave her credit for.

“I’ve seen this kind of thing in newspapers and on the news.”

Then, she returned her gaze from the dome overhead to me.

“So I’m the ‘source’ in ‘according to a source familiar with the matter,’ huh.”

After saying it with a terribly serious face, Rena smiled, her lips twitching as if trying to suppress a laugh.

“‘Please. It’s for justice. But I can’t say the details right now…'”

Then, she mimicked a line from TV or a movie. The reason I felt strangely embarrassed was exactly because I had been spouting those same kinds of lines.

“You’re serious, aren’t you.”

“…Because I don’t know where the plan might leak from.”

“Understood. But this makes us even.”

“Eh?”

“The subsidy applications.”

I was completely dumbfounded by those words.

“Jeez. You didn’t use that as a hostage right up until the very end. It makes me look like the bad guy, doesn’t it.”

“Eh, ah… right.”

I hadn’t thought for even a fraction of a second that it was such a bad thing that it could be used as a hostage.

“But that was—”

“Right. That was my justice. You agreed with it, Hal-kun, but you also let it slide.”

“…”

“The Moon is full of malice. So much so that even if you walk with good intentions, you’ll get caught in it. Please do your best.”

Rena said that and started walking.

“I think I can probably email you by noon. That’s better, right?”

“Eh… yes, that would be helpful.”

“Once it’s realized, please tell me what kind of justice it is.”

Speaking from a distance, Rena waved her hand grandly, completely unconcerned with the stares around her.

Like an idiot, I gave a small wave back.

A plain and slow woman?

It seemed my eye for stock selection was strictly limited to shares of stock.

---

Although the cold still lingered, it had gotten quite a bit warmer by around ten o’clock when I arrived back at the church.

The reason I was a bit late was that I had been lost in thought at a cafe, watching people hurrying to work with hunched backs, enduring the cold. Even though the temperature had suddenly dropped ten degrees, the world showed no signs of agitation outside of their clothing, moving exactly as usual. Past nine o’clock, the stock market should have been in a situation that exacerbated last night’s chaos, yet it was a little strange and amusing that the rest of the world was moving as it always did.

However, Chris, who was deeply immersed in the market, surely wasn’t like that.

Thinking that I would be swamped with dealing with Chris all day today, I wanted to spend some time alone before that, thinking over various things about Avalon.

But in the end, all that came together in my head was what I had thought of yesterday. Besides, thinking Chris would get mad if I was too late made me lose focus.

I returned to the church saying “good grief,” but Chris was already nowhere to be seen.

“Huh, where’s Chris?”

“Oh, you’ve finally returned? She left ages ago.”

“…”

In the church’s living room, which felt tidier than usual perhaps due to the cold, I lightly scratched my cheek.

“She was nervously waiting around until about 8:30, though. She went to Newton City saying she had some trading stuff to do.”

“Ah, I see…”

With that, I remembered that even though Chris could run the program fully automated, she had to go to the office to do anything about the program itself.

Even aside from that, Chris was messing with other people’s money.

There was such a thing as responsibility.

“She looked incredibly anxious, though?”

Lisa, who had been wiping things down, put a hand on her hip and looked at me in exasperation.

“There were unexpected losses, but nothing that would blow everything away. Even I felt like my stomach was going to twist off the first time I took a huge loss. But if she can’t overcome that, she should quit investing.”

“…”

“Of course, a loss that wipes everything out is a different story. Even a flexible branch will break if bent to the breaking point. If that happens, of course I’ll go support her.”

“I understand the logic, but take a loss, endure it, take another loss, and keep going until an unendurable loss comes along?”

“That’s a matter of the quality of the loss. Even if Chris were to produce a one million Mool deficit, the worst that happens is she gets fired. In my case, the impact of the loss was bottomless.”

That was what Lisa was worried about.

The reason Lisa is so conservative that Chris calls her stubborn is exactly because of that.

“Well, I’ll trust what you say, Hal.”

“Protecting Chris is one of the reasons I went to Eleanor, so I’m thinking about it properly.”

“Because it never shows on your face.”

I shrugged as if to say Not a bad joke, and started to head back to my room.

Lisa stopped me.

“But,”

“Hm?”

“It’s a strange undertaking, isn’t it.”

“…Are you talking about stocks?”

“Yeah. The reason Chris was so antsy was because the dome’s temperature dropped ten degrees yesterday, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“It’s a strange story.”

“Is it?”

“It is. I mean, if the dome’s temperature drops ten degrees, does the company’s value also drop ten degrees?”

It sounded like the words of a complete amateur, yet somehow, it pierced deeply.

“No… Stocks are a claim to a company’s profits, so if profits are expected to decrease…”

“It’s the same thing. I wonder what relation there is between a company’s profits decreasing and the dome’s temperature dropping ten degrees.”

Told that, I was about to retort that Emerald Industries lowering the dome’s temperature was in itself a major clue predicting the soaring of electricity rates, and that a hike in electricity rates would increase corporate operating costs… but then I suddenly realized.

This was the exact explanation for the surge in the power market that I had thought was ridiculous just yesterday.

I lightly knocked my own head and admonished myself that I couldn’t laugh at Chris either.

“No, you’re right. There is no rational reason. It’s all speculation.”

“…”

“Like, it’s bound to become this way in the near future, it’s bound to become that way. And normally, it’s a place where the people who successfully outsmart the thoughts of those trying to predict what everyone else thinks—or the people who outsmart even those people—make money. In other words, things like what the company is doing might ultimately be irrelevant.”

“…”

Lisa kept her arms crossed, making a face that said, And?

“And, into that place where they’re trying to read each other’s speculation, reality occasionally throws a punch.”

“A punch?”

“Yeah. Like, ‘Reality isn’t as simple as you guys think, wake up.'”

“Hmph.”

“Then, everyone panics and starts thinking about the world after receiving that punch.”

“…Is that actually solving any problems, I wonder.”

“It’s not. But if you don’t get woken up occasionally, you’ll just stay asleep, right?”

“Then I wonder if things like stocks are even necessary in the first place…”

Lisa tilted her head with her arms crossed, but even I couldn’t answer such a profound question.

“The original raison d’être might have been something completely different, but it might have become something else now.”

“What reason do you say it exists for now?”

“Well,” I shrugged and answered. “It’s a ticket to dream, isn’t it?”

“Nightmares included?”

“Right. But it’s ultimately just a dream. If you return to reality… at least if you have someone to pull you back to reality, you won’t die.”

Lisa stared intently at my face, and then let out a massive sigh.

“Big Sis is happy that you’ve grown up.”

“The tuition fee was incredibly high, though.”

“I just hope Chris doesn’t end up paying it.”

“I think the reason I was able to pass the university entrance exam was because I had two tutors I couldn’t possibly afford the tuition for.”

Lisa smiled, almost like a wry grin, and said,

“Then shouldn’t Chris’s teacher be by Chris’s side?”

“…Well, I guess it’s about time.”

“Want to take anything for lunch?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Make sure you eat properly.”

“I know.”

After answering that, I went back to my room. This time, Lisa didn’t stop me.

However, there was a lot to think about from my conversation with Lisa. Ultimately, the vast majority of trading is occupied by speculation, which is exactly why occasionally an unexpected punch flies in from reality. People’s speculation is shallow, and no matter how much you make full use of mathematics, reality is full of elements that cannot be completely scooped up.

When I got ready, took the train, and went to the office, an exhausted Chris was sprawled face-down on the desk, and Le Goff’s tie was crooked.

“…Was it tough?”

That was all I could ask, and Le Goff cleared his throat, then cleared it again, seemingly having talked so much he had gone hoarse.

“I have learned the dangers of leaving things to machines.”

“Chris?”

When I called out to her, Chris slowly raised her head and looked at me.

She wasn’t crying, but her face looked worse than if it had tear streaks. She looked completely drained of all energy and spirit.

“…I couldn’t stop the program properly…”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve done phone trading. The other side was also in an uproar and couldn’t execute trades, it sent chills down my spine.”

Whether it’s an individual investor or a fund, there is fundamentally an investment bank acting as an agent for the final settlement. It’s just a matter of whether the scale is large or small. If orders come flooding in all at once, even the lines will crash.

Especially when things get this rough, many people would turn off their machines and pick up the phone, so it must be even worse.

“We restricted trading to the office only for risk management, but it seems that comes with its own set of problems,” Le Goff said, directing his gaze at Chris. Perhaps their hearts had connected through the morning’s death struggle, because Chris nodded in profound agreement.

“The results?”

“Ugh…”

Groaning, Chris perhaps realized she couldn’t hide it, looked at the display, and said,

“I couldn’t stop the program… Because of the trades I couldn’t stop, overall, it’s an 18% loss…”

An estimated loss of 500,000 to 600,000 Mool. If you take an 18% loss, you need about a 25% profit to make it back. In the world of stocks, the stairs going up and the stairs going down do not have the same number of steps.

“I feel bad for our financier, Eleanor-san, but it was a good experience.”

I said that while taking a seat. Showing up after noon, I didn’t have the admirable modesty to think it was an irresponsible remark. In trading, it’s a given that speculation will be wrong. Because taking losses is a given.

“Ugh…”

As Chris groaned, Le Goff said,

“You seem to be quite resilient to losses.”

Perhaps it was meant as a sarcastic remark, but I said this to the former Swiss private banker without even looking his way.

“Because I have seen a world of minus 273%. It was a coldness that froze the blood.”

“…”

When I opened my terminal, an email from Rena had just arrived.

It said that the data categorization was sloppy, but to please do something about it on my end.

I wrote an email of thanks and sent it. Whether he found fault with that or not, Le Goff called out to me while adjusting his tie.

“I hear you are planning something with the Young Lady.”

“Yes. In the morning, I was researching for that.”

Chris didn’t even seem to have the energy to complain about that; though she had managed to sit up, she was just staring blankly in her chair.

And, paying no mind to such a Chris or Le Goff who was rubbing the bridge of his nose, I enthusiastically opened the data from Rena.

It was in the file format of a commonly used spreadsheet program, but there were almost an infinite number of them.

Moreover, exactly as Eleanor had said, the titles of those files were written in the coordinates of the land plots, so there was absolutely no way to tell from the filenames which files contained the name Avalon.

To check, there was no choice but to actually open them, but just thinking about opening them one by one made me dizzy.

“Hrmm…”

I pursed my lips for a moment and looked at Chris.

“?”

Perhaps because she was tired, Chris showed me a face that looked even younger and more innocent than usual.

I nudged the terminal toward that Chris.

“Could you write a little program for me?”

“…”

Chris grinned toothily and said,

“Only a little bit, okay?”

If Le Goff hadn’t been there, I would have pinched her cheek, but Chris took the terminal from me, launched an editor, and looked at me.

“What kind of program is it?”

“I want you to search for a specific word inside these files, and extract the data that contains it.”

“Okay.”

“And, I want you to output this number inside them as well. The file format is all the same.”

“Understood.”

“Umm… also, if possible, can you add up this number from the files that come up?”

“Leave it to me.”

As she listened to me, she kept typing on the keys almost without pausing for a single breath, and in a flash, turned the terminal toward me.

“It’s done.”

“…”

It was so fast I thought, Is this magic? but Chris looked triumphant at my surprise.

“I can’t realize creative programs like Cerault-san, but I have strong confidence in processing known things.”

The words of someone who understands their own strengths. The brain that could skip grades to enter Lunar City University was not just for show.

I thanked her, took it, and looked over the numbers that had popped out.

There, exactly as I speculated, the total amount of land applied for by Avalon was recorded.

Opening one of the individually extracted files as a test, the usage method column read “Power Generation”.

The exhilaration when your own idea spectacularly strikes dead center is irreplaceable.

More than anything, with this, we could gouge out Avalon’s guts.

I then pulled an appropriate price from the power trading market’s log data and triumphantly multiplied it by the average power generation capacity of solar panels per unit area that I had researched beforehand.

I doubted my eyes at the result not just once.

I doubted them twice, verified the number of digits and multiplied it a third time, and for the fourth time, I tried multiplying it by the electricity rates from a few years ago, which were cheap compared to now.

That’s ridiculous. I was frozen, staring at the terminal.

Beside me, I could tell Chris was looking my way with a puzzled face.

Trying to recalculate it one more time, I realized my own foolishness. Speculation being wrong is the norm.

And, the blow from reality is always heavy.

“…What’s wrong?”

At Chris’s question, I could only lean my body against the backrest of my chair.

A single number was displayed on the terminal.

Recorded there was Avalon’s possible sales revenue.

Namely, 67 billion Mool.

40 billion Mool was too much?

My speculation was completely off the mark.

---

That afternoon, I spent my time watching the market, which had begun to show signs of settling down despite the chaos. Due to the Avalon matter, I was more depressed than I had imagined.

Of course, I didn’t hide the results, and emailed Eleanor as well. There was no reply from Eleanor; was she busy, or was she similarly depressed?

If trading is a chain of speculations, and a loss is a miscalculation, then I had been crushed by a loss. I had been talking big to Lisa about how you can’t let yourself be crushed by losses, yet here I was in this pathetic state.

Easy to say, hard to put into practice.

On the other hand, Chris had completely regained her composure by the time the market closed.

In the evening, Marco came directly from school before the market closed, and while experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions over the summary of the day, his jaw dropped wide open at the menial tasks Le Goff ordered him to do.

Looking at that, I felt a bit sorry for him, but since there was nothing I could do even if I stayed, I decided to go home.

Since the land method ended in a misfire, I had to think of another method, or otherwise consider the option of giving up.

Because if there was no problem with Avalon, the meaning behind Eleanor continuing to play Susie Wu would also fade. Because if possible, she should quit that lifestyle.

However, letting such a strong lead slip away inevitably left me disappointed. While I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing, as I stepped outside the office, Chris, perhaps unable to just watch me like that, took my hand and said,

“Would you like to drop by Clapton Square?”

“…”

Chris still carried the tired afterglow of feeling like she had just been in a battle, but I thought that might not be a bad idea, so I decided to stroll around for a bit.

Exiting the rundown building that housed the office, a cold wind blew against us.

When I shrank back in surprise, Chris chuckled.

“On the Moon, a wind that actually feels like a wind like this is rare, isn’t it.”

“…What is this?”

“I think it’s because the temperature change is so sudden. While the sun is out, the city is warmed up, but because the dome lowered its heat retention function, it rapidly cools down from above—”

“Tch.”

A cold wind blew through again, and Chris laughed merrily once more.

“And so, a wind like this blows down, I hear.”

“Is this a normal thing on Earth?”

“In cold regions, I don’t think this is anything at all.”

“…So I was raised in a greenhouse, then.”

“If you were raised in a greenhouse, Hal-san, who wasn’t?”

“Hm?”

When I looked back at Chris, she was staring at me with beautiful eyes that looked like ice polished in the cold.

“Your words to Le Goff-san today… It’s a bit much to say it like this, but… it was cool. Saying you’ve seen a world of minus 273%…”

Hugging my arm, Chris said something like that.

Was the redness of her cheeks due to the cold, or…

“I’ve been telling you this and that for four years, Hal-san, but today, after experiencing a loss for the first time, I feel like I understand just a little bit… what it was like.”

I glanced at Chris, and then, using my free hand, I pulled up the corner of my lips.

“It was a bluff.”

“That’s. A. Lie.”

Rare for Chris, she denied it clearly.

And then, she said quietly,

“I was so, so scared…”

Chris and I clumsily walked down the freezing Schrodinger Street.

“Even though the numbers were just decreasing, it was incredibly terrifying…”

It wasn’t her own money. Even if it was gone, she wouldn’t die. She wasn’t even bleeding.

And yet, there is a terror in taking a loss akin to bleeding.

It’s very similar to the memory of falling down as a child, and even if the injury itself doesn’t hurt, crying and screaming in fear at the amount of blood gushing out.

Stop it, please stop it already. Why couldn’t I do that, when I knew this would happen?

The world of minus 273% was a land of extreme cold.

A chill like this was certainly nothing in comparison.

“Sorry I couldn’t come back this morning.”

I said that to Chris, harboring just a little bit of the pain of a guilty conscience in my chest.

It was exactly because I knew Chris would be scared and looking for something to cling to that I had killed some time.

Whether Chris realized that little lie of mine or not, she didn’t answer right away.

The words she finally spoke were these:

“If you feel bad about it…”

“?”

“Reflect on it properly, okay?”

“…”

Looking embarrassed, with a face doing its absolute best.

With my free hand, I firmly grabbed Chris’s head and shook it as if stirring her hair.

“Kya, ah, geez!”

Chris shrugged her shoulders happily, even while sounding angry.

And when I took my hand off her head, she said with a smile,

“Right, Hal-san?”

Her sun-like smile looked especially warm on the freezing Moon.

She had stayed by my side for four years, and was directing so much affection toward me.

I sighed and nodded. I had no choice but to nod.

“So, we’ll eat at Clapton Square… Ah, I have to contact Lisa-san before that.”

Just as Chris was about to take her terminal out of her bag, I also received a notification on my terminal.

Wondering if it was an email, I took it out of my bag and checked it.

Chris seemed to be calling the church, pulling out the terminal’s audio jack while looking this way.

Then, I looked at my terminal and tensed up. It was an email from Eleanor.

“Thank you for contacting me. I double-checked the calculations on my end as well, but it turned out to be a disappointing result.”

The way it was written, as if she was actually concerned about me, gave me a pain like the depths of my heart being scratched.

However, there was a continuation.

“So, I would like to talk with you for a bit; where are you right now? I asked Le Goff, and he said you had just left the office. If you wouldn’t mind, please come to the hotel.”

With that, I was about to reply immediately, but suddenly stopped myself.

Right next to me was Chris, who apparently was being given a tedious scolding.

“I’m not going to drink alcohol… A bad place like that…”

The fact that she was smiling in a troubled manner actually made her look very happy.

Perhaps Lisa was warning her about this and that because Chris looked so happy.

It pained me to broach the subject with Chris, but if Eleanor was going out of her way to call me over, she must have something to say about Avalon.

I hesitated for a few moments, and in the end, placed my hand on the shoulder of Chris, who was talking to Lisa.

“Chris.”

“Ah, please hold on a second… Hal-san, Lisa-san says there’s something she wants us to buy on the way back.”

To Chris, who said it with a face like What a pain, right?, I said expressionlessly,

“Sorry. Something came up.”

“…Eh?”

Chris froze with her smile still on, and then only her eyes darted around.

“E-Um…”

“Sorry. I’ll handle Lisa’s shopping, and I’ll buy some souvenirs on the way back.”

From the earphones, Lisa’s voice could be heard faintly asking, “Chris~?”

When I patted her on the shoulder, Chris finally seemed to remember the phone call.

She turned back to her terminal, but her gaze was directed at me, as if clinging to me.

“Sorry.”

And with that single word, she seemed to understand that a thin thread had been severed.

“Um, Lisa-san, I think I’ll go straight home after all.”

I heard a “Huh?” or something from the earphones, but with that, Chris ended the call. While putting the terminal back in her bag, she hadn’t shown any real expression, but the moment the bag’s clasp clicked shut, she broke into a smile as if a switch had been flipped.

“You can’t go to any bad places, okay?”

“No, Chris—”

“Well then, I’ll go home first and review today’s market. I’ll be up waiting for you.”

“Chri…”

Before I could finish saying her name, Chris, still smiling, had started walking away with a slight bounce in her step.

And before disappearing into the crowd, she turned back, waved grandly, and walked off.

“…”

I thought I’d done a bad thing, but Eleanor’s situation was more critical.

Feeling a weight in my chest, I sighed and replied on my terminal.

I’m heading there now.

The reply was fast.

“I’ll be waiting. What about food?”

I started to write I haven’t eaten, but then thought it would look bad, like I was expecting her to provide a meal from the start. I thought for a bit, then wrote, Should I buy something on the way?

The reply was short.

“In that case, please get hamburgers from the Golden Arches, which has spread further across the world than any religion.”

---

Buying a burger at the American-born hamburger chain, which is even called the prime example of cultural invasion, wasn’t that unusual. It was convenient, and the taste was guaranteed.

However, carrying that distinctive bag recognizable from a hundred meters away into the Grand Central Hotel made me look completely out of place. Even the porter seemed to give a slight wry smile when he tried to take my luggage.

I took the sort of exclusive elevator from before and went up to the fiftieth floor. Outside, it was dusk, the edge of the dome barely retaining a crimson hue. The gradient between the black of space, the indigo of the dome, and the crimson was very beautiful.

The view from Avalon’s headquarters was even more magnificent than this; if you could obtain a view like that, you might indeed commit a little fraud.

Thinking about such things, I rang the doorbell for room 5002.

“Good evening.”

“Good evening. I’m sorry. Asking you to do such a strange errand.”

“No. I wanted to eat it for the first time in a while myself.”

“Fufu.”

Eleanor smiled and pulled her body back to open the door.

When I stepped inside, the room was the same as ever, but she must have made an effort to tidy up, as a path had been cleared.

“That area is serving as the dining room for now, so over there.”

The phrasing “for now” bothered me, but as I followed the path carved through the mountains of documents to the indicated area, I understood the reason.

“I see, ‘for now’ indeed.”

Normally, this would offer a sweeping view of Newton City’s nightscape from the fiftieth floor, allowing one to dine while gazing at a hundred-million-Mool view, but right now, books and documents were piled high on the long table.

Moreover, perhaps because she normally used it as a storage space, the way things were piled was terrible. The other seats couldn’t even be pulled out; the only open spots were two facing seats and the head of the table, making three seats in total.

As I placed the paper bag of hamburgers in an empty space on the table with exasperation, Eleanor came over holding a teapot.

“I bought drinks, you know?”

“Ah, no. This is for when food gets stuck in my throat.”

“Eh?”

“If it’s carbonated, wouldn’t it be disastrous?”

I couldn’t help but stare intently at Eleanor’s troubled smile.

She probably had an experience where it was disastrous.

Imagining something like that, she seemed silly and a little cute.

“Therefore, I always prepare lukewarm tea.”

“…And a knife and fork?”

“My. Hal-san, you really are a little mean, aren’t you.”

It wasn’t entirely without the nuance of a slight jab at her being a descendant of nobility, but I was asking somewhat seriously. Because the tea set meant for when an eight-Mool combo hamburger gets stuck in her throat looked like it had two or three extra zeroes on its price tag.

“Well then, shall we eat?”

Eleanor said that, took out a hamburger, and unwrapped it.

“Nom.”

It wasn’t a sound effect; Eleanor actually said that as she took a bite. I couldn’t tell if the hamburger was huge or if Eleanor’s face was just small, but it almost looked like she was being eaten by the hamburger.

Moreover, it was unexpectedly vigorous, and it didn’t feel like a peaceful meal and conversation.

She continued to eat in silence for a while, only taking a breath after the hamburger was about half gone.

“As expected… it’s delicious when it’s been a while.”

She said this with an admiring sigh while wiping the mustard and ketchup from around her mouth with a napkin.

“What do you normally do for meals? Around here, it seems like there are only formal restaurants.”

“Eh? Umm…”

Seeing Eleanor’s eyes suddenly dart around, I thought I had asked the wrong question. Eleanor was wealthy nobility, so her standard of living was different from us, who casually ate things like hamburgers.

And, there are those who intentionally want to show that off, and humble people who don’t.

I didn’t even need to wonder which type Eleanor was, but then Eleanor lowered her eyes and mumbled quietly.

“Cereal, or… nuts…”

Apparently, she didn’t want to say it for a completely different reason.

“…That doesn’t sound like a very commendable diet.”

“It inevitably just becomes whatever I can eat between tasks… When I’m Susie Wu, they prepare all sorts of things for me over there, though.”

“What about room service or something?”

“It was always so elaborate that it became a hassle, and I stopped.”

Eleanor didn’t seem like the type of person who could fully enjoy luxury, which made me feel a sense of affinity.

“Like something you eat with a knife and fork?”

“Yes. Like something you eat with a knife and fork.”

Eleanor laughed and bit into her hamburger.

“But wouldn’t that make you even more reliant on fast food?”

“Yes, it would. I normally try not to eat it as much as possible. Jiiy—… Le Goff gets mad.”

She corrected herself, looking a bit embarrassed, and drank her cola.

“Because you’ll gain weight?”

“I’m told it would be better if I gained a little weight.”

“…True.”

However, to avoid looking at a weird place while saying that and causing an untoward misunderstanding, I answered bluntly while grabbing some fries.

“Besides, if I eat a hamburger like this, digestion is tough and my head stops working. So, it ends up being convenient cereals or nuts that I can buy at the lobby shop.”

“I’d recommend exercising.”

“My.”

Eleanor said that, picked up a fry, elegantly dipped it in ketchup, and nibbled on it.

I watched her, thinking it looked like some kind of dance, and spoke.

“So, your work is done for the day, which means closing it out with a burger?”

“Yes.”

Eleanor said that, bit into the burger, pinched a fry, and drank her cola.

There was something slightly unnatural to me about this thoroughly un-noble dining scene.

No, it wasn’t the mismatch of nobility and hamburgers.

It was Eleanor’s expression.

“About Avalon, I ended up getting your hopes up for nothing.”

When I said that, Eleanor’s hand stopped for a moment.

However, her hand immediately grabbed a fry and ate it with a crunching sound.

“No, corporate investigations are always full of things like this. Especially when you hold preconceptions.”

The way she tilted her head with a wry smile made me think things like this happened regularly.

“I’m not that depressed over it. Ah, but,” Eleanor said, and hurriedly tried to patch it up. “Of course, it’s not that I wasn’t hoping. It’s not that.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, really…”

Eleanor said, and just like that, her expression suddenly sank.

“?”

When I looked at Eleanor, she quickly raised her head and forced a smile.

“Did you take some medicine again?”

Down at the cafe, it was to the point where she fell asleep mid-conversation.

But it didn’t seem like that kind of situation. Eleanor shook her head while keeping a wry smile, took a deep breath, and straightened her back.

“It’s fine now.”

And, she said that.

“I asked the unreasonable of you, Hal-san, but…”

“Eh?”

“It’s not an allowance for your time, but as a token of thanks—”

“Um.”

The words came out before I could think, cutting Eleanor off.

“It’s fine now?”

“Yes.”

With her half-eaten hamburger still in her hand, Eleanor looked at me and smiled like a girl smiling sadly inside a portrait.

“Yes, it’s fine now.”

Then, she ate the hamburger. As if she had to.

“Did something happen?”

I couldn’t help but ask. Because giving up just because a promising lead had been crushed wasn’t what Eleanor was doing.

And Eleanor didn’t stop eating.

I repeated myself.

“Something happened, didn’t it? At work… no, inside the investment bank.”

“…”

Her hands stopped, and she looked at me. It was an almost frightened look in her eyes.

“…I talked to a bank guy for a bit. About what it means to turn down a ten million Mool commission. And… about what position an analyst is in.”

“…”

“I don’t really think I can be of much help, but still, I can at least listen…”

It was when I had said that much.

Eleanor smiled and put down the hamburger.

“Thank you. Your sentiment makes me happy.”

“Um.”

“Truly.”

Eleanor said, taking a large, deep breath, and then poured lukewarm tea from the tea set.

“I knew it would come to this eventually.”

Staring at the steamless cup, Eleanor wrapped it in both hands as if to draw warmth from it.

“What do you know about the conflict of interest between analyst operations and investment banking operations?”

Asked that question, I nodded quietly.

“Just a little.”

“This is a typical example of that.”

Eleanor gave a small laugh and drank her tea.

She seemed so sharpened, it was hard to remember that she had just been eating a hamburger.

“I was asked to evaluate Avalon.”

“Eh.”

“There is a large-scale bond issuance. Corporate bonds. Platinum Smith has been lagging behind in the corporate bond sector, so they desperately want a large deal. Therefore, they want to handle this bond issuance implemented by Avalon as the lead underwriter, and jump to the top in the corporate bond sector. However,”

Eleanor was like a dolphin swimming elegantly in the water; yet she wasn’t a fish, so if she didn’t come up for air, she would drown.

In that manner, she paused her words, took a deep breath, and continued.

“Because I have consistently refused to evaluate Avalon, there has been pressure for a while now. Even so, Avalon has always designated Harald Bros. when procuring funds, so there was no room for others to step in. Because of that, I wasn’t pressured too strongly, but…”

“That suddenly changed?”

No, I thought.

Commissions.

Always, it’s about money.

“What is the scale of the corporate bonds?”

“I’m told it’s twenty billion Mool.”

“…”

I opened and closed my mouth like a fish, looking at Eleanor.

Twenty billion Mool.

Twenty billion Mool!

“And, apparently they are going to start a water business next. The Moon’s water pipes utilize gravity to collect water in Newton City and then distribute it back out in a cycle. You need electricity to both apply pressure and release it, so they have good synergy. Such incomprehensible claims.”

“B-But, water supply belongs to Emerald Industries…”

“Correct. In other words, a massive step toward realizing their corporate philosophy. They are no longer a dwarf chasing a giant, but an entity standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the giant. Perhaps they truly will conquer the Moon.”

Eleanor said this, glancing at the hamburger. Now cold, it looked undeniably grotesque, hardly even recognizable as food. The epitome of industrially manufactured food created by advanced capitalism.

“Whether a twenty billion Mool bond issuance will actually succeed or not is unknown. It’s unprecedented, after all. But if it is executed, a terrifying amount of commission fees will enter the lead underwriter’s pockets. Even at 3%, that’s 600 million Mool. As expected, they’ll likely use multiple investment banks, so they wouldn’t get the whole thing, but…”

“Which is exactly why Platinum Smith has a chance.”

“Of course. Our bank is the largest investment bank.”

Eleanor said this transparently, picked up a french fry, looked at it coldly, and then put it back.

“Furthermore, the trading division has been generating unprecedented profits, and one of my bosses, an executive officer, is placed in a difficult position in the internal power struggle. Susie Wu is certainly powerful as a billboard for attracting customers, but she’s no match for the trading division.”

The inside of an investment bank follows the logic that the one making money is justice.

From her boss’s perspective, Eleanor—who outright refuses, saying she won’t evaluate fraudulent companies—likely just looks like someone who isn’t utilizing her abilities to the fullest for the sake of her own division.

“You’ll get fired?”

“No, that…” Eleanor smiled wryly and said, “They won’t do that. Because I still have utility value.”

Utility value.

My right hand twitched at the way she spoke of herself like an object.

“However, today, regarding that matter… a few things happened.”

Eleanor sighed and directed her gaze toward the nightscape of Newton City.

“Even though I have no intention of succeeding as an employee there, being verbally abused to my face still takes a toll.”

“That’s—”

“Because that’s the kind of world it is there. Macho, coarse, and there are almost no women. Rolled-up sleeves, cigars, and alcohol are the three sacred treasures. On Earth, alcohol is frequently replaced by cocaine. You can’t put up a fight with skirts, cinnamon, and aspirin.”

Shrugging her shoulders, she almost looked like a schoolgirl happily talking about something a little scary that happened at school.

But this wasn’t that kind of story. It was a place where massive amounts of money were involved, where the power to easily alter people’s lives was at work.

“Besides, there is absolutely no way I could ever evaluate Avalon.”

Eleanor suddenly raised her head and said,

“It’s not a preconception or prejudice. Even if I didn’t have my own personal circumstances, it would be the same. Because Avalon doesn’t release the materials needed for analysis. I gave them to you, Hal-san, didn’t I?”

“Y-Yes. They announce one-off trades, saying they made a profit on this or that, but there’s no systematic explanation about the company itself.”

“Yes. Also, even during conference calls gathering analysts, questions to the executives aren’t permitted. We just listen to their reports and write based on that. If we don’t, we won’t be assigned the various jobs that drop massive commissions. The other analysts aren’t doing this out of whim like I am. Mortgages, their kids’ tuition, living expenses. They have to earn all that in that storm-swirling world. There’s no way they would defy a company like Avalon.”

Powerlessness.

That word crossed my mind because Eleanor had looked down, rested her elbows on the table, and buried her forehead in her hands.

“You said earlier that you won’t be fired, but…”

“…is there a possibility?”

Eleanor didn’t answer my question.

In that world, it’s impossible for that possibility alone to not exist.

“To take down Avalon, Susie Wu is necessary. But to continue being Susie Wu, I have to evaluate Avalon. And if I evaluate Avalon, it can be nothing other than a positive evaluation. Does that align with my ethics?”

With her hands still on her forehead, Eleanor opened her eyes and stared at the table with hatred.

It was the face of someone cornered and suffering.

“I know it’s impossible to completely force my own will through. But even so, what if Avalon really is a fraud? There are many people who buy stocks based on my reports. If I were to find evidence of Avalon’s foul play afterward, would I be able to loudly proclaim it?”

It wouldn’t be done out of goodwill or ignorance. It would be done under duress, knowing it, and suspecting it.

For Eleanor, who had been deceived by the Iceman, had the company bearing her family name cruelly crushed, and had been bought, it was something she could absolutely never tolerate.

“If I did something like that, I would become just like the Iceman…”

Eleanor completely hung her head. She might have been crying.

That frustration was something I couldn’t even imagine.

I felt endlessly regretful over the results of the data Rena had sent. And, I felt apologetic. She must have had high expectations. The noose slowly tightening around her was closing in, and right as the axe was about to swing down, this clue had flown in. There was no way she wouldn’t hope.

My heart ached with that pathetic feeling and guilt. The dining room was as quiet as suited a storage room, as if even breathing wasn’t permitted.

In the midst of that, Eleanor suddenly raised her head, sniffled lightly, wiped the corners of her eyes with her wrists, and gave a brave smile.

“It was a grand, very grand dream.” Eleanor said.

I reflexively retorted.

“Are you okay with this?”

Like a wounded beast having its wound touched, she snapped her head up.

“Of course I’m not okay with it!?” Eleanor yelled.

It wasn’t like I had a plan.

Unable to say anything, I fell silent.

“I’m sorry… But it really is fine now.”

Both grand dreams, and half-eaten hamburgers.

While they are hot, both are so good it can’t get any better.

However, once they turn cold, they are grotesque, greasy, and you don’t even want to look at them.

“It’s fine now. If Avalon really is a fraudulent company, it will surely be exposed someday. The later that happens, the higher up they will be. That Iceman included. In that case, I will watch them fall from that height. That’s fine.”

There was no way she meant that. It was obvious she was forcing herself to say it to convince herself, no matter how much she knew it hurt.

It sounded exactly as if she were blaming me.

Once again, I couldn’t be of help to anyone.

“Besides, I’ve done all I could.”

Eleanor raised a face that looked tired, yet somehow refreshed, and said that while looking around.

“I’ve done all I could…”

And, silence fell.

A person who could recklessly drive herself until this hotel room fell into such disrepair for the sake of her goal was saying she had done all she could. There was no way those words weren’t serious.

However, what made my chest ache was that there wasn’t a shred of fulfillment on Eleanor’s face. Because it was the face of someone blaming herself, forced to succumb helplessly with her ambitions half-realized.

Right.

Eleanor isn’t hating someone else. What Eleanor truly hates is herself—the herself who made an irreversible failure.

Looking at Eleanor, I couldn’t help but feel a twitch in my right hand. Because four years ago, even though I had reached out my hand to the black-haired girl who kept blaming herself, in the very end, I had shaken her hand off.

If I could go back to that time, I would never shake off that hand. No matter what happened, I wouldn’t shake it off again. I felt I understood well what the most important thing was now.

If so, what should I do right now? If I could reclaim even a little something from that time four years ago, what should I do?

“No.”

I said it without thinking.

After saying it, I thought, What a stupid thing to say, but my mouth had spoken on its own.

“There’s still something. If we’re talking about things we can do, there is still something left.”

“…That… is…”

Eleanor muttered as if taken aback, and her eyes quickly turned sharp.

“What is it? And, why now of all times?”

A natural question. Eleanor’s eyes were not expectant. They were eyes that said, Even as comfort, don’t say irresponsible things. And that was completely justified.

But I frantically racked my brain. Anything would do, even a bluff would be fine. A chance is not something that comes around often. A chance to win back something you’ve lost in life doesn’t come around often. Lisa had said that as she slapped my back.

I frantically searched for words, and then—.

“There’s no proof.”

“…”

“But if it’s something we can do, there is still something.”

“…”

Eleanor sighed and looked away.

“What is it.”

“Confirming the power plants.”

“Eh.”

She turned around without even blinking.

“On paper, they certainly existed. But that’s strictly on paper.”

There are guys who pull elaborate tricks even for welfare organization subsidy applications. Even four years ago, Burton had pointed at the stock on his terminal in the cafe below this hotel. And I had completely believed that a mountain of gold slept there.

But, I hadn’t confirmed it with my own eyes. My thinking stopped, and I didn’t use my own head. I hadn’t pushed through doing everything possible with all the power I could muster. It wasn’t that I couldn’t. I simply hadn’t done it!

“If you’re truly going to give up, if you’re going to give up after pushing until your hotel room looks like this… wouldn’t it be appropriate to do something that stubbornly refuses to give up as one last thing? And if even that fails…”

Then maybe you wouldn’t have to be tormented by nightmares chasing that blurry white light. I thought that this time, if I saw it through and did everything I could, even if I couldn’t reclaim the irretrievable, I might be able to forgive myself.

“…Of course, we can’t check everything, but…”

Even so, I didn’t want her to be left with only regrets like I was back then. Not believing the government documents, going hundreds of kilometers away to confirm a power plant. If even that failed, she should be able to laugh and say there was nothing more she could do.

It might not be that simple, but wouldn’t she gain the feeling that she had reached out to her absolute limit, her very absolute limit?

I stared intently at Eleanor. Eleanor also looked at me.

With eyes that were doubting, yet somehow frightened.

She had already reached out endlessly. And grabbed nothing but air. Her hands were numb, her eyes blurry, even her tears had dried up. That hand will just vanish into smoke again anyway, right?

I almost reflexively said, Hagana.

At that moment, Eleanor suddenly smiled wryly.

She laughed, as if exasperated.

“It’s strange, considering this is my dream.”

“…”

“But, I suppose you’re right.”

Eleanor looked at the hamburger, and picked it up.

“I’ll try struggling in vain just a little bit more. However,”

“?”

Eleanor bit into the cold hamburger and said,

“You’ll come with me too, won’t you, Hal-san?”

“Eh.”

“Going on a space trip alone when it’s not even a sightseeing boat is a bit…”

Come to think of it, she was right. If it was a power generation zone, there would be commuter shuttles for workers, or if not, it would have to be a charter flight.

“Umm… Yes, since I was the one who suggested it, of course.”

“Then let’s do that. If I tell the company it’s for Avalon, they’ll clear my schedule. It wouldn’t be a lie, either.”

Eleanor smiled mischievously and said that.

“But, really… even though this was supposed to be my dream…”

Eleanor looked this way, tilting her head slightly.

I shrugged my shoulders and looked at my hands.

There sat the wrapper of the hamburger that had been emptied a step ahead of hers.

Eleanor’s, on the other hand, was still half-eaten.

“Thank you.”

Eleanor said in a tiny voice that could barely be heard.

I pretended not to hear her, and crumpled up my empty wrapper.

I did the shopping for Lisa, bought a small accessory for Chris, and returned to the church.

As the sun set, the cold changed from mere chill to pain. Entering the Outer District, the almost complete lack of streetlights gave it the atmosphere of a world that had ended.

However, if I raised my gaze, I could clearly see the starry sky beyond the dome. Right now, outside the dome was also in the midst of its two-week-long night, so what was visible in the sky must have been the real starry sky. If there was just one good thing to come from electricity rates soaring and the lights diminishing, it was perhaps that the starry sky had become visible at night.

That felt exactly like the story surrounding Eleanor.

No matter how you looked at it, it was a losing battle. In reality, Eleanor was clinging to the Susie Wu persona by the skin of her teeth. If that connection were severed, no one would lend an ear to her accusations against Avalon, and on top of that, the very basis for those accusations was exceedingly uncertain. Normally, one should retreat before the wound widened.

And yet, I took the hand of Eleanor, who had continued fighting until she was covered in wounds and was finally about to fall to her knees. I took her hand, telling her to stand up.

That wasn’t something I did for Eleanor’s sake. I had simply found a fragment of the star I had lost within the darkness covering Eleanor.

I think to myself that I’m a terrible guy. But, I couldn’t help but reach out my hand.

Because four years ago, if I had only reached out my hand, I might not have lost Hagana.

Thinking such things, I climbed the stairs with unsteady footing due to the pitch darkness, groped my way down the hallway, and headed for the church. When I finally reached the entrance, the faint light leaking from inside brought me back to reality.

From four years ago, to the present.

When I opened the church doors, in the living room down the hall, Lisa was resting her cheek on her hand at the table, reading a book.

“Welcome back.”

“…Yeah. Here, the things you asked for.”

When I placed the bag on the table, Lisa looked at it with disinterest and stood up from her chair looking bothered.

“The trains weren’t stopped?”

“The frequency was reduced, so it was crowded.”

“Good grief. Cerault was saying something about sending a generator, I wonder if I should really have him send it.”

“A generator?”

“He was saying something about having microorganisms break down food waste and using what comes out in the process as fuel, but he probably just intends to have us test a new product.”

“He was doing that kind of development too? That’s somewhat surprising.”

“He was probably tempted by someone saying it was a good money-making story or something. He looks like that, but his defenses are actually quite loose.”

Lisa sighed as if to say good grief and put the things I bought into the cupboards and refrigerator.

Then, after finishing putting everything away and folding the bag, Lisa stared intently at me.

“So? What kind of mean thing did you do to Chris?”

It reminded me of when a misdeed was exposed and I was scolded by my mother.

“She hasn’t had any energy since she got back, and after eating, she locked herself in her room.”

“…”

“You two were planning to drop by somewhere, right?”

“…Urgent business came up.”

“Hmph?”

Lisa said that and let out a small sigh.

“I know it’s not my place to say this or that, but do something about it, will you.”

“…Do something?”

When I asked back, Lisa scratched her head and glanced toward the inner chapel and where our rooms were.

“About Chris. Do you dislike her?”

“!”

Asked so clearly, I was at a loss for words. Lisa directed an inquiring gaze intently at me, and when I remained unable to answer, she said quietly,

“Hagana?”

At that word, my body flinched as if poked with a stick.

To Lisa, that was a more than sufficient answer.

“Of course, I’m not telling you to give up. But, make it clear.”

“…”

“I feel sorry for Chris. Because you are strangely kind.”

“…”

As expected, I couldn’t reply.

Lisa sighed once more and called my name.

“Hal.”

When I directed my gaze at her, Lisa wasn’t angry.

“Are you feeling some weird sense of debt for Chris helping you?”

I felt a sensation like a needle pricking deep in my chest.

“If so, if you can’t properly distinguish that this is this and that is that, you’ll end up suffering, and you’ll make Chris suffer too.”

It was precisely because Chris had been by my side for four years that I was able to recover at all. I was grateful for that, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t happy having Chris direct her affection toward me. If possible, I thought I’d like to respond to her feelings. But, just as Lisa said, that might just be me feeling indebted for those four years.

Hagana still sat firmly within me. She occupied a very large space inside me.

That was exactly why I had even reached out my hand to a battered Eleanor.

As I was thinking such things, Lisa said something outrageous.

“If you don’t know your own feelings, you might as well just try dating her once.”

“Wha—”

It seemed like the furthest words from Lisa, yet it also felt like words only Lisa would say.

“There’s love that starts like being struck by lightning, and there’s love that is nurtured slowly. A girl like Chris isn’t someone you find often, you know.”

It sounded like a sales pitch, but it might actually be true.

Besides, I knew it myself. This was the exact same structure as when I went with Rena to confirm the abuse of the subsidy system.

If there is a goal, one should act rationally to head toward it. Then, if I can’t respond to Chris’s feelings because I can’t forget Hagana, why aren’t I desperately searching for Hagana right now?

What I am doing is, in the end, trying to return to the past.

The reason Lisa, who is meddlesome but very careful and fastidious about important things, went out of her way to say something like this is probably because she saw through the discrepancy between my feelings and my actions.

And, wasn’t that the very reason why I had been living while dead these past few years?

I started to open my mouth.

But, as expected, the words wouldn’t come out.

“Phew. Hal. Just don’t forget this one thing.”

“…?”

“You must not mistake gratitude for love. Nor sympathy.”

Saying that, Lisa tucked her book under her arm and gave a small yawn.

“The electricity bill is a waste, so I’m going to sleep soon. You should hurry up, take a shower, and go to sleep too.”

“…”

Lisa said that and was about to head toward the bedroom when she suddenly stopped.

“Ah, right.”

“?”

“I hear Chris has been invited to something by Cerault?”

“…Ah, yeah. Probably about the program she’s making…”

“Well, and because of that, a bunch of people she doesn’t know are coming, right?”

“…I guess. Seems like a bunch of researchers.”

“She said it’s the day after tomorrow.”

“Eh?”

When I asked back in confusion, Lisa frowned, looking uncharacteristically displeased.

“I’m saying she looked anxious. Did you forget that girl is shy around anyone but us?”

“Ah.”

“Well then. Goodnight.”

Saying that, Lisa left for good this time. Left behind in the cold living room, I looked at the small paper bag containing the accessory I bought as a souvenir for Chris, and thought.

Was my desire to respond to Chris’s feelings born out of gratitude and sympathy? Because she helped with my rehabilitation for my sake, and on top of that, directed her affection toward me, did I just convince myself that I had to respond?

And at the same time, was I truly unable to give up on Hagana? Telling myself that I mustn’t forget, that I mustn’t forget that lonely-looking Hagana—was I just selfishly sympathizing with Hagana?

I didn’t know my own feelings. I was so clueless that the idea of seeing through other people’s speculations to make investments felt ridiculous.

Carrying a problem without a conclusion, I returned to my room.

Then, I noticed that a message had arrived on my terminal.

It was from Eleanor. Opening it, it said we could head to the power plant via charter flight as early as tomorrow. However, since the distance to any of them was far, an overnight stay would be required for the round trip.

I didn’t have any particular plans, and Cerault’s get-together was the day after tomorrow, so there was no problem.

As if running away from the problem with Chris, I made a quick decision and replied to the email.

I can go.

An immediate reply came from Eleanor, saying in that case, to come to the hotel around noon tomorrow.

In my pitch-black room, receiving the light from the terminal on my face, I closed my eyes and sighed.