Chapter 6
The next day, before heading to the office, I apologized to Chris about yesterday. Chris smiled and said she didn’t mind, but even so, her lonely expression when we parted ways yesterday couldn’t have been my imagination. However, Lisa’s words were also stuck deep inside me, and because of that, I couldn’t give her the accessory.
Then, when I told her I would be away from home for about two days to investigate Avalon, she clearly mumbled something. Thanks to Lisa’s meaningful look, I finally realized that Chris had been wanting to talk about the get-together with Cerault. Given that it would be a bunch of male researchers showing up, it must be nerve-wracking for Chris. I told her that I should be able to go with her to that. Seeing Chris’s relieved smile made me feel warm inside, too.
There’s love that starts like a lightning strike, and love that is nurtured. Lisa’s words continued to throw my scales off balance.
However, unlike four years ago, I had learned the social skill of hiding my feelings. Putting on a calm facade, I was able to keep a lively conversation going about trivial things the entire way to Newton City with Chris. Chris seemed to be enjoying the conversation, and it wasn’t like I didn’t enjoy that kind of talk, either.
When we arrived at Central Station, I parted ways with Chris, who was heading to the office. When I joked, “Since you closed all your positions yesterday, it’s an easy commute, right?”, Chris stuck her tongue out at me, laughed merrily, waved, and walked off. And, as I stood still and watched her go for a while, she turned back one more time and waved at me. Since she didn’t look lonely like when we parted yesterday, I lightly waved back and started walking.
When I headed to the Grand Central Hotel, instead of limousines and men and women in formal wear gathering, people who seemed to be tourists from Earth were wandering around. They were probably there to have a meal as part of their sightseeing. Slipping through the gap between them as they looked around curiously, I was greeted with a smile by the hotel man who had become a familiar face, and I boarded that golden elevator. Looking outside from the fiftieth floor, perhaps due to the dome’s transparency, the vacuum of space could be seen clearly beyond the dome even though it was daytime.
When I pressed the doorbell for room 5002, Eleanor soon opened the door and showed herself. She was wearing a hat and seemed perfectly prepared, but seeing her outfit, I was completely taken aback.
“Is something wrong?” Asked by Eleanor, I hurriedly shook my head side to side. Eleanor looked over her outfit, wondering if something was strange. “No, I think it’s fine.”
That was all I could say. Holding a large trunk case and a parasol, she looked somewhat like she was heading to a resort. Truly a noble, I thought with a mix of exasperation and amusement.
“Shall we leave right away?” “Yes. If you are ready, Hal-san.” “Then let’s go.” “Yes. Let’s call a car and head to the port. However, this is a bit…”
Eleanor was pulling the trunk case without a shred of elegance. Looking heavy, it finally started rolling.
“Shall I carry it?” I was on crutches, but as a man, it was a sight I couldn’t help but offer. “No, I’m, fine…”
It seemed the carpet’s pile was too long, making it extra heavy. Even so, I was exasperated wondering what on earth was inside. Did she pack a tea set or a ball gown?
“Let’s do our best until the elevator.” Saying that, I helped push it with my hand. Once we got down to the lobby floor, the hotel staff would carry it even without us asking. We got into the car without issue, crossed Lunar City, and arrived at the port. The place where ships traveling to and from Earth took off and landed was incredibly crowded. Announcements constantly echoed, and many people carrying luggage like Eleanor were wandering about. Many of them were being sucked into or spat out from the entrances leading to the massive underground tunnels. I strongly realized that this was the gate connecting the two different worlds of the Moon and Earth.
“This is an amazing place, isn’t it.” “Eh? Ah, right, you were born on the Moon, Hal-san.”
Eleanor said that and gave a small smile.
“For me, it’s nostalgic. I still can’t forget the emotion I felt when I first landed on the Moon five years ago.” “I wonder if I’ll feel the same thing if I go to Earth.” “Fufu. I highly recommend it.”
Eleanor said this, rolling her trunk case as we walked through the port.
“Since it’s a charter flight within the Moon…” “Isn’t it that way?” “Ah, you’re right.”
We followed the signs that read “Private Craft Takeoffs/Landings, Shuttles”. On the surface of the Moon outside the urban areas, there are various experimental facilities conducted in low-gravity conditions, observatories from countries around the world, as well as mines and power plants. Most of the passengers looked like scholars or workers, but there were some tourists among them. They were probably going to take a sightseeing boat that cruised around the city.
We completed some simple procedures, were carried underground by a moving walkway, and passed through the dome’s wall. There was even a polite panel saying, “From here on is outer space.” The walkway eventually rose, and then, spreading out beyond the reinforced glass was not a blue sky, but an endless, pitch-black universe.
“It’s exciting, isn’t it?”
Eleanor, with a somewhat buoyant atmosphere, said this restlessly. People from Earth apparently get very excited when they see space, but for me, it’s rather the opposite. The cold, all-too-vast universe. It seems there are quite a few people who are driven by the fear of being swallowed up by that vast universe, which has been named “spacephobia”. In short, it’s similar to acrophobia or claustrophobia. However, I am afraid of outer space in a different sense from those. Perhaps I am afraid of being made to think how tiny and meaningless my existence is if the universe is this vast.
Thinking such things, I followed Eleanor and headed toward the dock. Waiting there was a stubby, personal spaceship.
“It’s a ship meant for space camping. It has everything from a bedroom to a shower, so it’s apparently quite comfortable. However, the fact that the driving is fully automated is a bit…” “It’s safer than a human driving.” “…I understand the logic, but.” “If an accident happens and we meet a terrible fate, you’d rather it be by your own hands instead of leaving it to a machine.”
When I said that, Eleanor smiled wryly and shrugged her shoulders. “It seems I am still very much an Earthling.” “I think it’s a matter of getting used to it.” “Perhaps so.”
After such an exchange, Eleanor and I passed through the final gate, went through the pressure chamber, and entered the ship. The interior of the ship was built more as a living space than a means of transportation, feeling like we had entered a hotel room.
“Well then, let us depart.”
As the door closed, Eleanor said that while we heard the hiss of air escaping in the distance.
The contents of Eleanor’s trunk case were neither a mountain of dresses for a change of clothes, nor a pillow she had used for years or a stuffed animal she was used to hugging. It was entirely a mountain of paper; work tools.
“The only things I was exempted from were meetings and recordings, so…”
The only place to line up the books and documents coming out of Eleanor’s trunk case one after another was the desk in the common room, so I moved a chair to the corner of the room and watched the spectacle, my exasperation now surpassed by admiration.
“Are paper media really that good?” “Yes. I absolutely love them.”
Depending on how you took it, it had the nuance of a Moon-bastard mocking an Earth-bastard, yet Eleanor picked up a bundle of papers and smelled the unique scent of paper and ink, looking truly as if it were fragrant.
“Perhaps it’s because I grew up accustomed to them since I was little, but there are many unexpected encounters, you see.” “Unexpected encounters?” “Yes. For example, while flipping through randomly looking for the necessary section, you might encounter information you never anticipated, or when you hit a dead end, you might open to a random page and discover an unexpected solution. Electronic media are very superior in searchability, but you rarely have those kinds of encounters.” “That thing called the necessity of wastefulness, right.” “Fufu. It’s strictly my personal theory. Occasionally, when I absolutely cannot find what I’m looking for, I do fly into a rage, of course.”
A phrase like “fly into a rage” was so unsuited to Eleanor, which gave it a strangely endearing quality. However, that hotel room with countless sticky notes, and her attitude of taking notes on whatever was at hand—even with rouge—made me realize that it resulted in that state because she was trying to fulfill the role of an excellent search engine herself.
“Arrival at the transit point is in four hours, right?” I asked while watching Eleanor diligently spreading out the paper media to prepare. “I believe so. But I am truly sorry for taking over this space…” “No. Being able to borrow such a nice ship is exactly thanks to that work, isn’t it?” The charter fee for the ship wasn’t from Eleanor’s money, but was apparently covered by Platinum Smith as expenses for Susie Wu’s job. “You could say that, but…” “The private room is also an amazing room. I’ll be reading a book in there. On electronic media, though.” “Does that mean you are conservative when it comes to encounters, Hal-san?”
When I made a pointed remark about the state of the desk, Eleanor countered skillfully. It wasn’t affected, and it wasn’t the somehow intimidating feeling Lisa had, either. This led me to the word refined.
“Well, I certainly can’t say I have many friends.” “Fufu. I have my own firm opinions regarding that point, too.”
Eleanor said that jokingly. However, just as Eleanor said, I couldn’t easily imagine friends her own age.
“You said you came to the Moon five years ago, right?” “Yes. When I was thirteen.” “Thirteen.”
With that, I finally learned that Eleanor is eighteen now. Looking at her, Eleanor has an atmosphere that makes you believe whatever age you’re told she is. She’s petite, and to speak without reserve, she has a baby face. If you were told she was a smart, calm, mature fourteen-year-old, she would look like it, and if you were told she was a twenty-two-year-old who acquired intellect and elegance without losing her innocence, that would also be believable.
“I hated going to boarding school, and if I had to leave home anyway, I selfishly said I wanted the Moon, and came here.” “It’s a very fitting story, but may I believe it?” “Fufu. I was a very typical young lady.”
A cheeky, selfish rich daughter? It was hard to imagine from the Eleanor standing before me, but when she said that, her demeanor, which even hinted at Susie Wu’s arrogance, felt entirely natural. Furthermore, her stubbornness of absolutely never forgiving those who tarnished her family name was extraordinary.
“Grandfather doted on me even when I was like that, and since it was right around the time he moved the company to the Moon, I came with him. However, the school my parents told me to attend, I only went for half of the entrance ceremony.” “Heeh?” “Because from that time on, through the investment bank my grandfather ran, I was deeply immersed in this world. Compared to the world of investment, things like school… how should I say it, looked like they were standing still.”
It felt like I was listening to my own words from four years ago. “I barely went to school either, so I sort of understand that.” “Is that so?” “Right now, I am biting down on the weight of the proverb ‘Make haste slowly’ (Hurry, go around), though.” “Make haste slowly.”
Eleanor muttered it inside her mouth, and as if she had eaten a sweet and sour fruit, she laughed and pursed her lips.
“That is true. Thinking back, I wonder what I was in such a hurry for back then.”
“You were in a hurry?”
“Yes. It was right around the time I had inherited a small portion of my grandfather’s company, Schweitzer & Zerga’s stock. The position I was given in the company was like child’s play, but I fancied myself a full-fledged executive. The first time I attended a board meeting held at a round table, my chest felt like it was going to burst with pride.”
I could almost see the image of a young Eleanor, chest puffed out, spine straight, looking triumphant.
“But, at the same time I felt pride, I also felt that I had to grow faster, gain power faster. From then on, I studied investment frantically. The reason Grandfather summoned Le Goff here was because he found out I wasn’t even taking proper showers.”
At that story, a sense of nostalgia spread through my chest. Not taking baths, not sleeping with my limbs stretched out properly, sharpening my senses like a beast, believing there was a place I could reach only by doing so—that was exactly the sensation I had back then.
At the same time, there was a comforting kind of heartache in realizing I wasn’t the only one who thought that way.
“Le Goff, who had been drilling manners into me on Earth, was bedridden for several days after seeing me. Let alone a knife and fork, I wouldn’t even pick up anything I couldn’t eat with one hand.”
“It’s hard to imagine from the Eleanor-san I see now…”
I started to say, but then remembered how she was eating the hamburger.
“…Actually, it’s not entirely impossible to imagine.”
“Fufu. You really are mean, Hal-san.”
Eleanor said this, sighing somewhat cheerfully.
“But it was very fun. I was convinced that the more I moved forward, the more I was able to grow.”
“I completely agree with that, but…”
“But?”
“I think if we had met four years ago, we probably wouldn’t have even spoken to each other.”
At my words, Eleanor looked a bit blank, and then shrugged her shoulders, laughing as if tickled.
“Perhaps. Thinking back on it now, I was an impolite little girl who could only elicit a wry smile.”
“I have the exact same impression. I was also quite the little shit, but,”
I said, my eyes naturally narrowing with nostalgia.
“I feel like I had some charm.”
“Fufu. It somehow feels like you’re peeking into my head, Hal-san.”
“Then, the caveat attached is probably the same too.”
“Caveat?”
Eleanor asked back, and then lowered her eyes and smiled as if she understood.
“‘Until you make an irreversible mistake’, right?”
“I might sound ridiculous saying this,”
“What is it?”
“Regarding that point, I am very grateful to you, Eleanor-san.”
“…”
Eleanor, keeping her smile, erased only the emotion from her face.
What do you mean by that? her face alone asked.
“That even irreversible things can be reclaimed. I was able to learn that at least there is someone who believes so.”
“…”
Eleanor stared at me, took a slightly deeper breath, strengthened her smile, and then looked away for a while.
“Because I spent four years thinking that an irreversible thing is, by definition, irreversible.”
“And now?”
“Now? Let’s see.”
I thought for a moment and said,
“There is a person who courageously stands up to a place I was too afraid to step into. I think that if I stand next to that person, I might be able to reclaim at least a fragment of what was irretrievable.”
“You’re conservative, aren’t you.”
“Because I was born on the Moon, I’m soft.”
“My.”
Eleanor said this and giggled.
And, after laughing for a while, she gave a small shrug and showed a self-deprecating expression.
“When I was about to give up and you asked me, ‘Are you okay with this?’, I really lost my temper.”
“Yes, it was very scary.”
“Um, please don’t say things like that, even as a joke. I am reflecting heavily on it.”
“I’m sorry.”
I apologized, but there was almost no emotion in it. Eleanor, receiving the apology, seemed somewhat happy. If my face could move, I definitely would have been smiling.
“Besides, when you told me there were still things we could do, I was truly surprised.”
“When I said that, I actually didn’t have a single plan in my head.”
“Eh.”
“I thought of it on the spot. Solely out of a desire not to let things end there. But, regarding that motive, how should I say it.”
I hesitated and faltered, but then thought there was no need to hide it.
I felt like Eleanor would understand.
“It wasn’t because I thought something might actually work out. Deeper, going even deeper, chasing it to the point where anyone would think it’s ridiculous—and if we still couldn’t get it back even after all that, then I thought I might be able to find closure.”
At my words, Eleanor made a strange face, as if wondering whether she should be angry or laugh.
“…Normally, I think upon hearing what I was trying to do, people would just tell me to give up.”
“Well, it is pretty much a delusion of grandeur.”
“Fufu. If it weren’t you, Hal-san, I would have thrown you out of the ship.”
In the first place, Eleanor needed someone who would tell her that her delusion of grandeur wasn’t a delusion, and she had pulled me in as an ally for that reason.
In that case, I had to meet her expectations.
“I feel like a delusion of grandeur has a way of being chased that is fitting for its scale.”
“…I won’t deny that.”
“Taking a ship out into the empty lunar desert, suspecting a super-elite major corporation from the top down, and going to investigate on-site… it’s practically paranoia.”
“Yes, seeing as even I couldn’t think of it.”
“But if even this fails, couldn’t you laugh?”
When I asked, Eleanor lightly tucked her chin in.
Her face remained smiling, but there was an atmosphere about her that felt like she was about to cry.
“I could laugh. I think I could laugh and tell Grandfather, ‘It was no good.'”
“I think that’s what’s important.”
“Yes, you’re right. Perhaps it is.”
Eleanor let out a breath, releasing tension as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
In that hotel room, decorating the headboard of her bed, was a bright red crest flag.
Do not forget what you did.
Thinking back on it now, it could only be seen as an instrument of torture Eleanor used to blame herself.
I understand that feeling incredibly well. The reason my face and left leg don’t move is probably the exact same thing. I cannot forgive myself. There was no way I could.
However, I felt like what happened with Eleanor was the first step toward being able to forgive myself someday. At the very least, when I look at Eleanor, I think she shouldn’t blame herself so much. If that’s the case, perhaps I, too, am allowed to lend an ear to Lisa and Chris, who say the same things to me.
Eleanor is my mirror.
No, she might practically be myself.
“But, I had one doubt about you, Hal-san.”
“Doubt?”
“Yes. You won’t get mad if I tell you?”
“…I might lose my temper and yell.”
“Fufu.”
Eleanor laughed, and then said it as if it were nothing.
“I thought that, truthfully, you were just pitying me, Hal-san.”
“…Pitying you?”
“A pitiful, foolish woman.”
With that single phrase, I felt like I could clearly imagine what kind of girl Eleanor used to be.
“To be honest, I did think you were unfortunate and foolish.”
“…”
Eleanor’s face twitched, caught in the delicate balance of whether she should laugh or not.
“But the reason I reached out was solely out of a desire to undo my own failure from four years ago. So, no matter how far we go, in the end, I’m only thinking about myself. For that reason, I am not pitying you in some noble sense. Please rest assured. Or,”
“Or?”
I won’t be surprised by anything you say anymore, Eleanor asked back with a fearless smile.
“Were you pitying me, Eleanor-san, when you called out to me?”
Eleanor smiled brightly.
“To be honest, I did think you were unfortunate and foolish. Being tricked by fake insider information is far too typical.”
“That’s harsh.”
“But I thought that this person, who recognizes his own failure as a failure, would be useful. As an investor, and also in the sense of having someone support my delusion of grandeur. Therefore, I didn’t think at all about saving you, Hal-san, or anything like what Lisa-san seemed to be expecting.”
I was surprised by the unexpected fact that came out of Eleanor’s mouth.
Lisa definitely seemed to think my meeting with Eleanor was for my sake, but I didn’t think she had actually told Eleanor that.
“…Did Lisa say something like that?”
“Yes. Lisa-san is a good person, but I even thought that perhaps she was the reason you were acting like a coward, Hal-san.”
I myself think I rely on Lisa too much.
That said, Eleanor’s observation was also quite harsh.
I felt like I was catching a glimpse of the Eleanor from before her wings were broken by failure—different from how she is now.
“…I’m truly relieved I didn’t meet the Eleanor-san from the past.”
“I’m sorry. Our altitude seems to have risen a bit, so the mask that was held down by gravity might be slipping.”
Eleanor held her face exaggeratedly as she said that.
And, indeed, just as she said, my body felt a little light.
On the Moon, as altitude increases, gravity noticeably decreases.
Stock prices and dreams have a similar quality.
“So, the reason your mood lightened is because of the gravity, rather than the content of our conversation?”
“Fufu. Let’s say yes. Because it’s impossible for us to share the exact same feelings on so many different things merely by coincidence.”
There was no hesitation or stagnation in Eleanor’s lines. We understood perfectly what we could say to each other and how far we could step in. That might be because, as humans who had similar experiences and chased similar things, we connected on some deep level.
It had been since Hagana that I felt this way.
“Well, we’ve talked a bit too long. I’m sorry for interrupting your work.”
“No. Because I never get the chance to have conversations like this.”
Eleanor looked at me and said that. As expected, I couldn’t deny those words.
It wasn’t that Eleanor didn’t trust Marco or Le Goff, but I didn’t think she was consulting them about truly painful things. The reason I couldn’t honestly accept Lisa and Chris’s comfort was probably the same. Lisa and Chris might have been victims of that incident, but they weren’t the perpetrators.
I looked back into Eleanor’s beautiful eyes and gave a small shrug.
“I’m going to go take a nap in my room. Or, if there’s anything I can help with, I’ll help.”
“If there’s anything you can help me with, Hal-san, perhaps I should ask.”
She probably meant Don’t worry about it.
In reality, Eleanor didn’t seem as cornered as I had feared.
“Like someone to sleep next to?”
“I’m a restless sleeper.”
From the state of her hotel bed, I knew that was a lie.
But, I said this:
“That’s the first time we haven’t matched up.”
“Yes, finally.”
Eleanor said such a thing, and leaving behind the lingering trace of a joyful smile, dropped her eyes to the documents at hand. Without continuing the conversation any further, I stood up from my chair and left the room.
Befitting a sightseeing ship, once I left the room, the scenery of space could be seen clearly from the hallway windows. It seemed we weren’t on the side where the sun was visible yet, so it was quite dark, but even so, in the unlit hallway, I could tell that faint light was shining in through the windows.
Even though it looks like pitch darkness, light exists everywhere.
Even in space, where darkness continues endlessly.
Thinking that, I returned to my private room and lay down.
I felt like the ship had entered an area of almost zero gravity.
It’s probably just my imagination, I thought, while staring at the ceiling.
While lying down and reading a book on my terminal, occasionally replying to emails from Chris, I seemed to have fallen asleep at some point. When I checked the time, it was almost time to arrive at the transit point.
When I operated the panel in the room to display the location data, we had come about 2,000 kilometers from Lunar City. Inside the city, even the unit of ten kilometers rarely comes up.
I couldn’t quite grasp the sense of how far a distance that was, but since they say it’s 380,000 kilometers to Earth, which looks like it’s right over there, maybe it wasn’t that big of a distance.
However, seeing the scenery spread out beyond the large single pane of reinforced glass, I stood rooted to the spot. A mass of intense light floating in the pitch-black sky was illuminating the endlessly continuing lunar desert.
It was a landscape illuminated by the bare sun, something you couldn’t see from inside the dome.
I realized anew that such a world spread out beyond the place where I had lived for twenty years.
“Amazing.”
I muttered involuntarily, sighing self-deprecatingly that I hadn’t even known something like this.
However, amidst such emotion, my stomach growled, feeling slightly hungry. The body is very honest.
Thinking I would eat something before we arrived, I headed to the common space. The reason I fumbled down the stairs wasn’t because I just woke up, but because of the change in gravity. I walked unsteadily down the hallway, which, probably because the sun had come out, was almost blindingly bright even though the hallway windows had switched to a mode that blocked sunlight.
I knocked on the door of the common space and opened it to find Eleanor engrossed at her desk in the exact same posture as before I retreated to my room.
“Have you been working this whole time?”
“Eh? Ah, yes. It was quiet, so I made great progress.”
The fact that she seemed a little bewildered meant she must have been that concentrated.
“Did you look outside?”
“Outside?”
“It’s an amazing view.”
“Eh… Ah, yes.”
She didn’t seem very interested.
“Ah, right. Since you came from Earth, you’ve seen it plenty of times. I guess it’s weirder that I, born on the Moon, have never properly seen the Moon’s surface.”
“N-No, I don’t think that’s the case.”
Eleanor smiled awkwardly. Because she had been immersed in her work, she might not have been able to switch gears yet.
“Besides, we’ll be seeing plenty more of it from here on, and on the way back, too.”
“True. How long was it again after we stop at the transit point?”
“It looks like charging and resupplying will take about two hours, but then it’s another hour from there.”
“It’s the ends of the earth.”
When I said that, Eleanor merely smiled.
“I was thinking of getting a light bite to eat…”
Next to the clock displayed on the wall, the estimated arrival time was shown.
It was less than fifteen minutes away.
“We do have some food loaded just in case, but it looks like there are some shops at the transit point, so why don’t we go there?”
“I wonder if it’s something meant for aliens.”
“My, are you the type who believes in aliens, Hal-san?”
“In the sense of it being a matter of probability.”
“I’m disappointed by such a lunar response.”
Eleanor, who had been tapping the stack of work documents into alignment, said that with deliberate elegance, as if she had regained her usual tone.
“Then, what would an Earthling say?”
“Are we not also splendid aliens?”
When I shrugged, Eleanor laughed joyfully.
The ship arrived automatically, and the doors opened.
I had been watching the landing from the window; the transit point was a spherical facility that looked like a drastically scaled-down Lunar City, with several landing pads extending from it like octopus tentacles.
Another building was visible nearby, and according to the map, it seemed to be some kind of research facility.
“…It said there were shops, though…”
Stopping by the transit facility, Eleanor said this in a lobby that had only a few benches and a large display hung on the wall, placed there seemingly just as an excuse.
“No way, nothing but vending machines.”
In front of Eleanor, who was looking disappointed, there was a section where vending machines were crammed into a tiny space. It had a sign that read ‘Auto Food Station’, and a large painted text saying ‘Delicious!’, creating an undeniably cheap atmosphere.
“Isn’t it very space-like?”
“Are you trying to say it looks like what an Earthling would imagine?”
“You’re being combative.”
“I was looking forward to it.”
She closed her eyes and dramatically showed her disappointment with a ‘good grief’ gesture.
As expected, Eleanor might be the reason Marco is so obsessed with the 20th century.
“It might be unexpectedly delicious, you know. Besides, you wouldn’t eat something like this in the city, right?”
“Well, that is, true…”
“Moreover, it’s incredibly expensive.”
“It must be tough delivering all the way out here.”
“Which one will you have?”
“I hate all of them, though…”
Since Eleanor gave her frank opinion, I chose the one I wanted to eat the least.
SUSHI.
“…”
With a clunk, it dropped into the retrieval slot, and Eleanor stared at it wordlessly, with eyes like she was looking at an alien egg that had just popped out.
“Freeze-dried, huh. As expected, it’s not raw.”
“Um… are you really going to eat that?”
“Do you hate sushi? I hear it’s a popular food on Earth, though.”
“…That is not the sushi that I know.”
“You’re conservative when it comes to food, aren’t you?”
When I got back at her for the comment on the ship, Eleanor pulled her chin back, looking a bit frustrated.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
Saying that, I opened the wrapper and tossed the food—which looked like porous, compressed cereal labeled ‘Fatty Tuna’—into my mouth. Crunch, crunch, it had plenty of texture. I nodded knowingly with an ‘I see, I see’ look on my face.
“…”
To Eleanor, who was looking at me with a frown, I offered the whole box. Eleanor looked at the sushi inside the box, which was glossy only in appearance, and then looked at me.
Then, looking at the sushi one more time, she timidly picked up a yellow piece of egg. Perhaps thinking it was still better than fake raw fish, I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she boldly tossed the egg into her mouth.
That kind of thinking is probably useless.
“Ugh.”
Instantly, Eleanor was groaning with her hand over her mouth. Even while expressionless, I stopped pretending to be fine and immediately chugged the contents of my canned juice. Eleanor crouched down on the spot and didn’t move.
I threw the rest of the box’s contents into the trash can, gently offered her the empty box, and quietly put some distance between us.
When I returned, Eleanor glared at me intensely.
The empty sushi box had vanished from Eleanor’s hands.
“You really are mean.”
“It’s frustrating to be the only one suffering, isn’t it?”
When I answered nonchalantly, Eleanor puffed out her cheeks.
“Well then, jokes aside, shall we eat something decent?”
When I said that, Eleanor turned her gaze back to the vending machine corner.
She had a face that said she didn’t think there was any decent food here.
“Lisa made me bring some apple pie. Let’s eat that.”
“! Um, I’m really going to get mad, you know?”
“But if this manufacturer was claiming that this sushi series is super popular among lunar workers, you’d know it’s a lie, right?”
“True, since no analyst would go out of their way to come all the way here to eat it…”
“It’s a valuable experience.”
“…I’ll admit it’s hard to come by.”
“It was so bad, I actually thought about buying one as a souvenir.”
I felt like Lisa and the others would find it quite amusing, but Eleanor said nothing, only letting out a sigh.
After that, we spread out the apple pie in the corner of the lobby, boiled water on the ship, and made black tea. The black tea was one of the few very ‘young lady-like’ items Eleanor had packed in her suitcase.
“It’s unmanned here, isn’t it.”
Because the apple pie was a masterpiece made by Lisa, who was entirely fired up after being praised by Eleanor, Eleanor’s mood had also recovered.
“The guide said something like there was a resident staff member, though.”
“There was a display saying they’re at the nearest transit point. They’d probably be lonely all by themselves.”
“…It’s a strange place, isn’t it.”
Eleanor said that while looking around the strangely vast and empty lobby.
“The view from the second floor was nice, you know. The dome part is all glass.”
“Eh?”
“The upper floor is a somewhat more proper rest space. The dome part was like a planetarium.”
“Is that, so.”
“Do you want to go up there?”
When I asked, Eleanor gave a somewhat awkward smile and said,
“We have a display right here.”
“Is that so?”
I didn’t feel like forcing the issue, so I didn’t push it any further.
After eating the apple pie, perhaps as a rebound from working continuously on the ship, Eleanor absentmindedly watched the programs shown on the display. Apparently, protests over the electricity rate hike were occurring in Lunar City, and since it was the first protest on the Moon in a long time, it was being covered extensively.
However, no matter how favorably you looked at it, the vast majority of the people filling the streets weren’t people dissatisfied with electricity rates, but onlookers who had come to see the rare sight of a protest.
I stared blankly at it alongside Eleanor for a while, but then wandered around the facility once more.
It was a two-story building; the first floor had a front lobby, a nap room, shower rooms, and also an evacuation room marked ‘For Emergencies’. It was a space where, in the unlikely event of an accident, you could run inside, manually close the door from within, and secure airtightness. If something happened out here, two thousand kilometers away from Lunar City, there was no choice but to escape into this cramped space and wait for help.
I lightly knocked on the door separating the evacuation space with a clunk. When I thought about how the place I had locked myself in for four years must have been like this, I felt like an idiot.
I had come all this way to settle the aftermath of four years ago. Encountering something like this here felt like some kind of irony, and my face, which shouldn’t be able to move, felt like it was going to laugh.
My mood wasn’t quite exhilarated, but it was very calm. It felt like the moment you finally see the prospect of unwinding a massive stock position you’ve been holding onto forever.
It took four years.
I only felt the deep emotion of, It’s been a long time.
I walked down the hallway and came out into the vast lobby. Eleanor was still sitting on the sofa in front of the display, watching the news.
“Isn’t it about time to depart?”
“Is it that time already?”
Eleanor checked the time on that old-fashioned item called a wristwatch, and stood up from the bench.
“The destination is apparently about an hour from here.”
“Then dinner over there?”
“You talk about food a lot, don’t you.”
Eleanor said with a slight wry smile.
“Then, shall we talk about Avalon?”
When I said that maliciously, Eleanor challengingly raised her chin while maintaining her wry smile, but then immediately let out a sigh through her nose as if losing all her strength.
“No. Let’s talk about food.”
With that, I finally realized that the reason Eleanor had been watching the display here the whole time wasn’t because she was nervous. Elegant, refined, yet stubborn, with willpower like steel. Moreover, appearing on TV dressed as Susie Wu, I thought she was immune to ordinary nervousness.
However, after boarding the ship, while heading to the destination on autopilot, Eleanor didn’t even glance at her work documents, just spacing out the whole time, her mind elsewhere. Seeing her looking so helpless like that, she seemed exactly like a normal girl.
Inside the ship, where only the mechanical sounds of fuel combustion and attitude control echoed, there was no conversation to speak of.
Once we reached the destination and confirmed what was there, we would have to settle something important within ourselves; considering that, it was perhaps natural.
However, regardless of the result, I thought we would surely be able to settle it cleanly. That’s what we came to such a place for. I thought so, and Eleanor probably did too.
According to the ship’s navigation display, we were less than ten minutes from the destination. Deceleration had begun, so we could probably confirm it by looking out the window even from here. I didn’t have any particular awareness of being nervous, but before I knew it, sighs or something similar were escaping me frequently.
The fact that we had come to confirm the very foundation of whether Avalon was truly a fiction suddenly brought a strange sense of reality. However, the result was almost entirely predictable. Thinking normally, it was obvious.
The possibility of ‘what if’ was truly one in ten thousand, and you could safely assume such luck wouldn’t happen. The fact that I still expected it anyway felt just like stock trading.
Because there are so many guys who think they alone will succeed, the stock market is so incredibly popular.
You can’t act completely calmly and rationally.
Eleanor, too, remained seated in the chair at the table, her face stiff.
Then, with less than five minutes remaining, I stood up from my chair.
I can’t flinch, I told myself.
“It’s almost time.”
When I called out to Eleanor, she looked at me and nodded.
However, she made no move to stand up.
I was about to make a light joke, but I noticed Eleanor’s face had gone pale.
“Are you feeling sick?”
Anemia and vomiting from nervousness are common occurrences. During truly intense trades, stomach acid can rise up as if your stomach is being directly squeezed. In that sense, this moment might be the biggest trade of her life.
However, Eleanor courageously shook her head side to side, placed her hands on the table, and stood up.
Her posture was so unsteady that I reflexively held out my hand.
Eleanor’s hands were trembling.
“You’re too nervous.”
Unable to just watch, I purposefully said that while pulling up the corners of my lips with my fingers.
As if her pride had been wounded, Eleanor took a deep breath and glared at me.
To cheer up a truly strong-willed tomboy, just one more push was needed.
“Or, shall I go look instead?”
“Do not make a fool of me.”
Expression returned to her face, and Eleanor straightened her back, but she didn’t start walking.
Eventually, the display showed: Remaining: 3 minutes.
“…?”
When I peeked at her face, Eleanor had her lips pressed tightly together.
“…Won’t you… laugh?”
“At what?”
When I asked back, Eleanor directed her eyes to the display showing two minutes remaining.
And, she looked at me.
“I can’t do it.”
“Can’t do it?”
Nodding slightly, Eleanor said,
“I have… outer space… phobia…”
“Eh.”
With that, I remembered that Eleanor hadn’t looked at the scenery on the way here, hadn’t tried to go up to the second floor at the transit point, and that there had been a somewhat awkward unnaturalness to her behavior. This was what it meant.
Eleanor looked like she was about to burst into tears at her own uselessness. This had nothing to do with being nobility or rich; it was a matter involving the unadulterated pride of a single girl.
Remaining: 1 minute.
Tears began to well up in the corners of Eleanor’s eyes. There was no way she didn’t want to go see it herself. For far longer than me, betting something incredible, she had gritted her teeth and chased Avalon.
But because of a phobia that couldn’t be overcome by willpower alone, her legs wouldn’t move.
But, I wasn’t exasperated with Eleanor. Things like that happen. They really do.
I, who had shaken off a precious person’s hand and frozen in place, was able to start walking because I was pulled along by other people.
I looked into Eleanor’s eyes and said,
“We’re going.”
And, I offered my hand. Eleanor looked at my hand, her lips trembling violently.
Slowly, her hand overlapped mine. Remaining: 30 seconds.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“…!”
“Let’s go.”
I pulled Eleanor and left the room. Even though the windows were in light-shielding mode, the sunlight was still pouring in with full force, blinding to the point of pain.
However, the reason Eleanor was squinting and hunching her back probably wasn’t because of that.
Pulling such an Eleanor to the window, 10 seconds remaining. Eleanor looked at me as if frightened.
I squeezed Eleanor’s hand tightly, swung it up and down slowly in a large motion, and said this:
“Ready, set…”
At such a childish act, Eleanor’s face broke into a distorted smile.
And, if she could smile, it was a victory.
Remaining: 1 second.
“Go!”
I disabled the invisible mode with the button beside the window, and together with Eleanor, looked out the window.
What lay there was a silver world of the lunar surface, laid bare by the sunlight.
Eleanor and I had come to such a place through a strange connection of two separate events that happened in that small Lunar City. While gazing at the scene outside the window, I was tightly squeezing Eleanor’s hand. I think it was probably to the point of hurting.
However, Eleanor was also squeezing back with the same amount of force.
The Moon, a small satellite floating in the vast universe. Looking at the scene spreading out in this place that felt like the ends of it, I didn’t know what kind of emotion I should have.
What brought me back to my senses was the sound of Eleanor sniffling.
And then, probably unconsciously, Eleanor tried to wipe her tears with the hand connected to mine, and remembered my presence. She looked at me with a slightly surprised face, and then smiled warmly while her eyes were still wet. Her platinum blonde hair, exposed to the sunlight, looked as if it were woven from silver threads.
“Hal-san.”
Eleanor said, and looked outside again.
“We’re going to be busy, aren’t we.”
That phrasing was so very Eleanor that I almost laughed involuntarily.
But, she was exactly right.
Beyond me and Eleanor, holding hands.
What lay there was a completely empty, infinite wasteland.
Forgetting even to eat dinner, we flew all over the lunar surface.
And I mean that literally; we input coordinates into the autopilot one after another, contacted Lunar City control, and changed our destination. Because we changed our destination so frequently, halfway through the controller’s responses became sloppy, and our applications became sloppy as well.
On the lunar surface, where there is no such thing as airspace to begin with, the applications are just a measure to prevent getting lost.
And, there was no way we would get lost now.
We were heading straight for our destination.
“Is it a joke that not a single officially announced power plant actually exists?”
“What’s amazing is the fact that no one actually checked until now.”
“Probably, someone must have gone to look at first. But they were surely told it was ‘under construction’ or ‘a planned site’, and eventually stopped coming to check. Because no one would think they could possibly be doing something this bold.”
“Indeed, no one would believe it based on just talk.”
“Even with photos, they’d be half-in-doubt.”
Exactly.
Who on earth would imagine that an unshakeable major corporation was officially announcing non-existent power plants as assets? But, if you scour past cases on Earth, there actually are such examples. There are tons of deceptions that make you think, No way, it must be a lie, right?
I continued to record the view from the window on recording media, and Eleanor, looking at Avalon’s data, indicated our next destinations one after another. In the end, we flew around here and there until our fuel was almost gone, and by the time we arrived at the transit point, it was past 11 PM Lunar City time.
While charging and refueling, we were working at the large desk in the second-floor hall of the transit point. From the walls to the ceiling, everything was glass, making it feel like we were working in the middle of outer space, but Eleanor didn’t seem to mind anymore.
Also, to refuel ourselves and not just the ship, we were holding food Eleanor had brought, which, as one might expect, were sandwiches.
Food invented so an Earl who loved games could eat without interrupting his game. There was nothing more appropriate for this situation.
When I asked, Did you anticipate it turning out like this? Eleanor tilted her head slightly and said, It’s a secret.
“I did a rough calculation, and just from what we could confirm, their sales will drop by eight billion Mool.”
“Which means, let’s see…”
As I started to turn to the data, Eleanor said,
“Numbers like that don’t mean anything anymore.”
With my hand still reaching for the terminal, I looked at Eleanor.
“They don’t mean anything?”
“Speaking from experience, a company doing things like this is definitely doing the same thing elsewhere. Worst case scenario, they might not actually own a single power generation facility.”
“…No way.”
“It’s possible. Please look at this.”
Eleanor pointed to the documents spread out on the desk. From her profile, I couldn’t even imagine the way she had been on the verge of tears just hours ago, saying she was too scared to look outside.
“This is an extraction table of data containing Avalon’s name, but some of it is data saying Avalon owned it in the past.”
When I looked at the displayed data, indeed, the ‘Current Owner’ column had changed.
But what truly surprised me was because Eleanor showed me several more pieces of data.
“Look. Avalon is repeatedly buying and selling power plants with a few specific companies.”
“Wait, but, this is…”
“Yes. Avalon and these few companies are buying and selling the power plants that we saw today, which are supposed to be empty lots.”
There’s a round square. It was an unsettling sensation, like being told such a phrase.
When I looked at Eleanor, she seemed truly amused.
“It’s a classic technique. There are Store A and Store B, which deal in antiques whose true value no one knows. However, sales are dropping for both stores, and they don’t want their families to know. So, the owners of the two stores had an idea. The owner of Store A sells a vase he bought for 10 Mool to Store B for 100 Mool. In return, the owner of Store B buys a painting that Store A bought for 10 Mool, using the 100 Mool he received from Store A. The amount of money in their registers doesn’t change for either of them, but somehow, on paper, they’ve both generated a profit of 90 Mool. And they all lived happily ever after.”
“You’re saying… Avalon is doing that? On a massive scale?”
“Yes. And the thing about padding numbers is, once you do it, you have to do it on an even larger scale the next time. That’s probably why they ended up having to acquire so much land. I’m already past anger; I’m just full of surprise and exasperation. It’s far too classic, and far too bold.”
Eleanor sighed.
“But, it’s decisive evidence, right?”
When I said that, Eleanor took a deep breath.
Her face was unexpectedly stiff.
“It will serve as at least a foothold for an accusation.”
“…That’s a very loaded way to say it.”
“To be honest, I think it will be tough with just this.”
“Eh?”
“You can’t do something like this without involving the accounting auditors. They’ve probably created numbers that won’t collapse with just a little shaking. The fact that it hasn’t collapsed so far means exactly that.”
Companies have to show their financial statements to third parties and have them evaluated for legitimacy.
That evaluation is called an accounting audit, and if it’s a major corporation, they should be requesting it from a major accounting firm.
“…In other words, the people who are supposed to be checking if the financial statements are legitimate are lending a hand in cooking the books?”
“Conflicts of interest aren’t exclusive to investment bank analysts. Accounting firms that check whether a company’s financial results are proper receive money from the very company they are auditing. How many people can maintain their conscience against a company that might be paying them tens of millions of Mool in compensation every year? Schrodinger Street is always like this. That place is a den of evil. Someday, someone has to clean it out.”
Eleanor puffed out her chest and said that, as someone who had maintained her conscience. If she had succumbed, she surely wouldn’t have been able to say it like that. In trading, not bending your own theories even in difficult situations is truly painful. Because you never know what the future holds.
Even for us, it was entirely possible that after mustering our courage to look outside the ship, power generation panels were lined up exactly as the documents said; in fact, the probability of that was overwhelmingly higher.
But, Eleanor endured.
And, she won the bet.
In that case, I needed her to puff out her chest.
“But, the fact of these power plants being incredibly important remains unchanged.”
Straightening her back like Susie Wu, puffing her chest, Eleanor said while glaring down at the documents and data,
“The fact that they are lying here means they must be lying elsewhere, too. Pointing out a single lie might allow them to escape, but if we combine it with several lies, I think we can corner them. What’s truly important is that this, Avalon…”
As Eleanor spoke, perhaps overcome with emotion, her voice became tearful and she looked down.
Wiping the corners of her eyes with her wrists, she looked at me and laughed embarrassedly.
“That this, Avalon… was worthy of being an enemy. With this, I…”
Eleanor’s wrists were no longer enough; she took out a handkerchief to wipe her eyes, took a deep breath, and smiled.
“I think I can endure anything. I will absolutely bite down and never let go now.”
A smile that looked almost arrogant.
But, it was the face I always saw reflected in the mirror four years ago.
Having a goal, having a conviction, having courage and willpower.
Eleanor was fine now.
“Hal-san.”
Eleanor looked at me.
“Thank you.”
And when I grasped the hand she offered, it was very warm and possessed a firm strength.
“Well, in any case, the real battle starts now, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then, shouldn’t we go to sleep soon to prepare for tomorrow? The date has already changed.”
“Eh.”
Eleanor looked at her wristwatch.
“When did it get so late.”
“Or does it feel like your work normally starts from now?”
“Well… yes. It depends on the day, though.”
Thinking for a bit, Eleanor said. It didn’t seem like a joke, so looking at her lifestyle, she probably didn’t have much concept of time.
“But, you’re right. Let’s go to sleep. Today, I feel like I’ll… be able to sleep very well.”
Eleanor said that with a soft smile.
“Let’s tidy these up just in case, too. We don’t know who might come.”
“You’re right.”
Then, Eleanor and I cleared the things spread out on the large desk and brought them downstairs.
However, it seemed the ship’s charging wasn’t finished yet, so Eleanor and I sat side-by-side on the sofa lined up in front of the large display. With no conversation in particular, and the display set to mute, it was very quiet.
The footage still playing was the commotion in front of Avalon’s headquarters, now showing a sit-in continuing through the night. While they were doing that, someone like Eleanor was also closing in on the core of the issue.
The fact that we might actually be able to take down Avalon felt somewhat like a dream.
No, it actually was a dream. An absurd dream that Eleanor had seen.
I wondered what kind of expression the owner of that absurd dream was making while watching the events on the display, and it was right after I tried to glance at her from the corner of my eye.
My shoulder was tapped with a thump, and my body flinched as if my misdeeds had been seen through.
However, it wasn’t my shoulder being tapped.
Eleanor, having fallen fast asleep, had rested her head on my shoulder.
“…”
Letting out soft sleeping breaths, she was sleeping comfortably.
It wasn’t the unnatural sleep, with pained breaths, that she had shown at the Grand Central Hotel. The tension might have broken, and all her accumulated fatigue might have come out at once.
Eleanor’s cheek touching my shoulder, Eleanor’s body touching my arm, had a high body temperature like a child’s.
I gently placed my hand over Eleanor’s completely limp hand.
With this, we could move forward. I truly thanked Eleanor for that.
And, perhaps that excitement showed in my hand a little.
Eleanor let out a small, muffled voice from the back of her throat and suddenly woke up.
Trying to lift her head, failing, and just as she was about to fall back asleep, she seemingly realized she was resting her head on my shoulder.
This time, she hastily sat up.
“A-I’m, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t mind it?”
I shrugged and said that to Eleanor next to me. I had gently pulled away the hand I had laid over hers.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve fallen fast asleep on me, after all.”
When I said it teasingly, Eleanor looked at me with a displeased face.
“You really are mean.”
“I’m just a kid.”
“My.”
Eleanor said as if exasperated, smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt with her hands and fixing her hair with her fingers.
“Is the ship not ready yet?”
“Looks like it needs a little more time.”
When I answered, Eleanor looked toward the doorway leading to the landing pad and let out a small sigh.
Then, she gave a big yawn, elegantly wiping the corners of her eyes with the pads of her fingers.
“Why don’t you sleep? I’ll wake you up.”
“Ugh… no, I’ll manage to stay awake. If I sleep now, I really don’t think I’ll be able to wake up…”
“I’ll carry you.”
“I’m a restless sleeper, so I surely won’t fit in your arms.”
“I see.”
When I shrugged, Eleanor chuckled.
And, after laughing for a while, she let out a small sigh and said this:
“But, can I lean on you just a little bit more?”
When I glanced at Eleanor out of the corner of my eye, she was looking away.
“Only for what I’m being paid.”
“…My.”
Eleanor looked at me again and gave a wry smile.
“In that case, I won’t hold back.”
Saying that, she rested her head on my shoulder again.
There was a sweet scent, like perfume.
“Hal-san.”
Eleanor said suddenly.
“I have one request.”
“What is it?”
“Could you hold my hand, for what you’re being paid?”
I reflexively looked at Eleanor when she said that, but since she was resting her head on my shoulder, I couldn’t see her expression from that position. But, that was probably on purpose.
I didn’t answer, hesitated for just a moment, and laid my hand over hers. Eleanor moved her hand slightly as if fretful, found a comfortable position within my hand, and then stopped moving.
The hand of the girl who had been fighting alone all this time was incredibly warm. It was perhaps the very heat of the blood circulating through her body.
I rested my cheek against Eleanor’s head on my shoulder. I didn’t think much of it, I just felt I should. Eleanor, perhaps slightly surprised, started to move her body, but immediately relaxed.
A quiet lobby situated all alone in the lunar desert, with no one else around.
Eleanor’s hand moved awkwardly within mine, intertwining with my fingers.
Was it just my excessive self-consciousness that made me think she was expecting something?
I hesitated slightly, but strangely enough, there was something irresistible about it. I had a different feeling toward Eleanor than I did toward Chris.
Perhaps it was because we had gone through similar experiences and were trying to solve similar problems.
Facing the same direction, moving forward hand in hand—it was a wonderful thing that nothing else could replace.
While it was very comfortable, at the same time, Hagana’s figure flickered in the back of my mind.
But, Eleanor was here now, and right at this very moment, our fingers were touching.
I squeezed Eleanor’s hand back.
And, as we both shifted our bodies without either of us initiating it, right at the moment our gazes were about to intertwine—
“!”
Probably, both of our gazes turned toward it at the same time.
It wasn’t that some tactless fellow had shown their face. It was something that had been there all along, but hadn’t entered our field of vision. Both of our gazes were stolen by the footage displayed on the screen.
“Susie… Wu?”
When I muttered that, Eleanor shot up as if she had been flicked, and turned up the display’s volume using the control buttons attached to the bench. Like gradually connecting to the world, the reporter’s voice could be heard.
“I repeat. According to breaking news that just came in, it appears the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into popular analyst Susie Wu of Platinum Smith on suspicion of violating the Securities Exchange Act.”
At those words, neither of us could move.
The face of Susie Wu displayed on the screen was looking right at us.
The Securities and Exchange Commission? On suspicion of violating the Securities Exchange Act?
What on earth was happening? Eleanor, who had sat up and was staring at the display, was also dumbfounded.
However, she seemed to immediately realize what she needed to do. She reached for the terminal she had left with her books and documents, tapped in a number, and made a call. The terminal displayed “Platinum Smith Executive Office”.
“This is Susie Wu. Put me through to Alan Remnick.”
“Miss Susie Wu, correct? Please hold a moment.”
A voice that was hard to tell if it was synthesized or human came from the terminal. As expected of a giant in the financial world that never sleeps, despite the hour, it connected immediately after ringing.
“It’s me. I saw the TV. Um, what on earth is—”
“Wait.”
Saying that, the call abruptly cut off. Eleanor tapped the terminal again and was about to call back when she received an incoming call from somewhere. When Eleanor pressed the answer button, the middle-aged man’s voice she had just heard came through.
“It’s me. All company phones are recorded, after all.”
“Um, what on earth is—”
“You stepped on a tail.”
“Eh?”
“You stepped on a tail. You tried to peel back the robes of the Sun God. Am I wrong?”
I felt something incredibly unpleasant at that terribly roundabout way of speaking.
Moreover, he had called back because the lines were recorded.
Investigation on suspicion of violating the Securities Exchange Act.
Those words bit into my chest like a penetrating cold.
“Um, but, that is—”
“We received a report that your business trip over these two days was to write a report, but it didn’t specify what kind. In other words, there was a possibility it was something no one wanted.”
“…”
“No, that doesn’t matter. Only the facts matter. The SEC is moving, naming Susie Wu. The charge is a violation of the Securities Exchange Act. According to the document that arrived at the company, Susie Wu apparently opened a securities account with Harald Bros., and while promoting stocks herself, she was trading those stocks in her personal account to illegally obtain profits. Quite the villain, isn’t she.”
The tone of the person on the phone wasn’t even mocking. It was a tone that sounded somewhat angry. But, he surely didn’t think Eleanor would actually do such a thing.
Moreover, the reports said Susie Wu opened an account. Susie Wu is someone who shouldn’t actually exist in reality. There’s no way such a person could open an account, but if it’s Harald Bros., it’s not impossible. If it’s the company where the Iceman who framed Eleanor’s company is, the company that is connected with Avalon.
All expression drained from Eleanor’s face.
Not just once, but twice.
“The Sun God was nervous because of an upcoming event. They noticed that Susie Wu, who had consistently shown no movement until now, suddenly made a move. Probably, one of your subordinates was a devotee of the Sun God.”
Saying it so bitterly implied that one of Eleanor’s subordinates was receiving money from an Avalon spy. What was Susie Wu really trying to investigate? Avalon, with skeletons in their closet, would constantly be on alert. Especially toward an analyst who didn’t wag her tail for them.
And even if Susie Wu had a will of iron, Susie Wu’s subordinates would likely have handed over the information easily if they were paid.
“Of course, I don’t know the factual accuracy of what’s being reported. The SEC will investigate that from now on. But, this story has already been leaked to the media. She’s finished.”
The other person was speaking as if talking about someone else entirely. It was the cunning of the monsters nesting in the executive suites of giant investment banks, spending their days in endless political struggles.
“Susie Wu earned us a lot, but our company cannot keep people who commit legal violations around.”
It meant the company had no intention of protecting her.
But, Eleanor didn’t stay silent.
“Have you no shame! In exchange for how much commission did you do such a, this—”
“Are you a passionate fan of Susie Wu? But, Platinum Smith is the largest investment bank. Even without Susie Wu, getting a contract from the Sun God is nothing. She worked hard, though. Well, even if she gets fired over this incident, someone like her wouldn’t need to return to this industry anyway. I’m sure she’ll publish a turbulent autobiography and make money off that.”
“!”
Eleanor’s breath hitched. This was a clear threat. A threat that if she returned to this industry, they would expose that Eleanor is Susie Wu. If that happened, Eleanor would be ganged up on and tormented by the gossip-hungry lunar media.
Clearly, the executive on the other end of Eleanor’s phone call and Avalon were colluding. In exchange for eliminating Susie Wu, who was investigating things inconvenient for Avalon, Platinum Smith was likely able to sign a contract to take on Avalon’s work for a massive commission.
Everything is converted into money. What was trying to crush Eleanor’s dream was the weight of money, and nothing else.
The fact that it wasn’t even done out of malice made it exceptionally hideous.
“Well, looking at Susie Wu’s future, many others will surely mend their ways. I hope that fraud will be wiped out from this industry.”
And, the call was unilaterally disconnected. Eleanor seemed unable to get angry, or even shed tears. Like an empty shell, she sat dumbfounded with the terminal on her lap.
Probably, the SEC had also been bought by Avalon. It’s said that 10,000 cases are brought in a year, only a dozen or so are investigated, and zero result in guilty verdicts. For them to move with such lightning speed amidst all that, there was undoubtedly money or pressure coming from somewhere.
Avalon knows what they are. They know how many skeletons are in their closet. That’s why they went all out to completely crush the spark.
The opponent is an organization with an income comparable to a nation’s tax revenue.
I took the hand of Eleanor, who was like an empty shell. The moment I did, she flinched, and expression returned to her face.
But, it was bewilderment, not anger.
“It’s going to be okay. Justice is on our side.”
I said that, and Eleanor reflexively nodded. The fact that Avalon made a move, conversely, means without a doubt that Avalon is a fraudulent company. And yet, the reason those words echoed hollowly was likely not because the lobby was too large.
The Moon is a crucible of evil. It easily swallows up the justice of a single person.
Eleanor and I returned to the readied ship. Eleanor, still in a daze, lay down as if bedridden with illness. I stayed by the bed and held her hand until she fell asleep.
However, its meaning was completely different from what it was just moments ago. On the terminal, the news of the “popular analyst’s fraud” was buzzing.
Justice is on our side.
It should be.
Thinking that, I left Eleanor, who was sleeping as if she had fainted, and closed the bedroom door.
The ship arrived at the port as scheduled around 8 AM, but Eleanor’s face remained stiff the entire time.
On TV, it was an uproar like a poked hornet’s nest, with coverage of Susie Wu playing. Even in front of the large displays at the airport, moms and dads who looked exactly like the type to buy up stocks recommended by analysts were watching the news with looks of irrepressible indignation.
However, fortunately perhaps, the information that Susie Wu is Eleanor didn’t seem to have leaked, so it wasn’t as if she was surrounded by the press the moment she arrived at the airport.
Instead, Le Goff and Marco had come to meet her.
When Eleanor saw Marco, her expression softened slightly, and she asked him what happened to school. Having his head patted right over his hat by Eleanor, Marco looked like he was about to cry.
“Young Lady, as I informed you, your contract with the hotel has been terminated.”
“…”
Eleanor stood up and nodded.
Happening just one day later, it was obvious harassment.
“My luggage?”
“Everything is at your home.”
“Home… I see.”
She said shortly, and sighed.
“Hal-san.”
“…Yes.”
The slight pause might have been because I was afraid of the words that would follow.
“Thank you very much for everything.”
Then, she looked down as if to take a breath, and raised her face, forcing a smile.
“I will definitely repay this favor someday.”
Leaving those words behind, Eleanor turned her back to me and walked away, taking Marco and Le Goff with her.
Only able to watch her back as she left, the conversation we had around dawn on the ship heading back to Lunar City came back to me.
“It’s probably, finally over now.”
Eleanor had said that with an expressionless face.
“But fraud is fraud. If we go public with it, definitely—”
She silenced me as I tried to argue, using only her gaze.
That was how much life was gone from Eleanor’s eyes.
“Even if we take it to the police or judicial authorities, it will just be added to the very end of a long list waiting for investigation. The reason I chose to become Susie Wu is because I was convinced they couldn’t be relied upon at all.”
Eleanor looked at my hand holding hers, and said this:
“Avalon is more serious about the 20 billion Mool corporate bond issuance than I thought. Just as we went to the ends of the Moon, they probably intend to go beyond good and evil with that money.”
“…”
“In any case, it’s over. Susie Wu is dead.”
And then, Eleanor smiled weakly.
“Thanks to you, Hal-san, I was able to go to a place I absolutely couldn’t have gone alone. My outer space phobia seems to be cured, too. Besides,”
She paused her words, quietly rested her forehead near my collarbone, and said,
“For the first time in a long time, a really long time, I was able to sleep comfortably. Even if just for a moment.”
She was talking about the waiting time in the lobby.
Eleanor raised her head and gave a slightly embarrassed, shy smile.
I couldn’t say anything.
I couldn’t say a thing.
Given the actions of Avalon, Platinum Smith, and Harald Bros., I had absolutely no idea how to help Eleanor. I couldn’t even imagine how an individual could stand against the swift and powerful actions of large organizations wielding massive capital.
I didn’t even feel a sense of powerlessness anymore. Only after experiencing this sensation of being completely at a loss did I understand that the dream Eleanor was pursuing was many times, dozens of times larger than I had imagined.
We were ultimately pushed back to the starting line. We couldn’t change a single thing in the world. But, we must have gained something, right?
If I didn’t think that way, I felt like I would collapse to my knees right there.
“Welcome… back.”
When I arrived at the church, Chris, who came to greet me, flinched upon seeing my face. I just gave a small nod, pulled out a chair at the table in front of the kitchen, and sat down. I didn’t even have the energy to return to my room.
Susie Wu is dead, and Avalon continues to live.
I didn’t want to accept such unreasonableness.
“Um…”
Holding her terminal, Chris was looking at me. It was probably about improvements to the program, but I really couldn’t humor her right now.
“Is Eleanor-san…”
When Chris said that, I finally remembered that Chris was also someone who knew Eleanor was Susie Wu.
“She went back home. Le Goff-san and Marco are with her.”
“I see…”
Chris said that, standing uncomfortably without sitting in a chair.
“Are you going to the office today too?”
Having no choice, I asked her that.
“N-No. Le Goff-san said that today is, you know…”
“Well, I guess so…”
I said that, closed my eyes, and leaned back in the chair.
If I were to help Eleanor, what could I do? Of course, the best thing would be to thoroughly gather irrefutable evidence of Avalon’s fraud, take it to the judicial authorities, force it through, and make them launch a mandatory investigation. But I know full well how ridiculous a delusion that is.
For one thing, exposing Avalon’s fraud alone would be completely impossible for me. Eleanor investigated that much and couldn’t figure it out, and even that empty lot of a power plant was practically a coincidence.
I couldn’t imagine at all how they managed to cook up a number as massive as 40 billion Mool. Thinking about it again, 40 billion Mool was such an absurd amount of money that I wouldn’t even know how to spend it.
“Eleanor-san is innocent, right?”
Chris asked me that.
“No matter how you think about it, it’s a fabrication. Susie Wu doesn’t exist in reality, after all. But, it seems that doesn’t matter. As long as the media jumps on that information and socially eliminates Susie Wu.”
“Eh… eliminate…”
“It’s Avalon.”
I said, glaring at the empty table.
“I told you I was planning to short Avalon, right? We were getting close to finding bad news, so they struck first. That’s about it. It’s amazing, isn’t it. I’d forgotten that a company I only know by its ticker symbol and stock price is on the same scale as a nation.”
“…”
Chris gasped and hugged the terminal against her chest tightly.
And, she said tentatively,
“But,”
“Hm?”
“But, does that mean you almost succeeded?”
“…Well, yeah. We grabbed information that wasn’t out on the market.”
“Eh.”
“But it wasn’t enough. It’s no good…”
Chris took a deep breath at those words.
“Um, in that case…”
And then, unusually for Chris, she leaned in and was about to say something. In that exact moment—
“Oh, Hal, you’re back?”
I heard Lisa’s voice, and turning around, Lisa, who had apparently finished her daily prayers in the chapel, was standing there with a Bible in one hand.
“Lisa.”
“What is it? Oh my, what a terrible face.”
“I need to talk to you for a bit.”
I had no one else to rely on but Lisa. Is this kind of unreasonableness allowed? How on earth had Lisa dealt with massive unreasonableness?
Does God really exist in this world? I wondered.
“…I’m not quite sure what it is, but…”
“Please.”
I stood up from my chair, and Lisa looked back and forth between me and Chris.
I glanced at Chris and said shortly,
“Sorry. Later, okay?”
“…No…”
Holding her terminal, Chris replied somewhat absentmindedly.
While I was sitting on a pew in the chapel, Lisa finally arrived.
She was holding two cups in her hands, filled with hot cocoa.
“When I came back with a terrible face, this is what you brewed and waited for me with, right?”
“…Even though you specifically called to tell me to brew it.”
“Oh, was that it? But, I haven’t run a bath for you.”
“…So you do remember.”
When I said that, Lisa laughed exaggeratedly and sat next to me.
“And? What is it you want to ask your big sister about?”
She dramatically narrowed her eyes and leaned her body into me aggressively. Four years ago, I would have found it to be annoying teasing, but the current me felt like burying my face right into Lisa’s arms.
“Is God really real?”
When I looked at Lisa, Lisa was, as expected, Lisa.
Without erasing her mischievous smile, she accepted my words and gaze.
And, drinking her cocoa, she said,
“He does, you know?”
“But—!”
As I leaned in and started to speak, Lisa hurriedly supported the cup in my hands. Some of the contents splashed out and spilled onto Lisa’s hand.
However, Lisa didn’t seem bothered by the heat at all; she gently took the cup from my hands and placed it on the seat in front of us.
“…Sorry, your hand…”
“Ah. It’s fine, this is nothing.”
Saying that, she casually licked it off.
“Since you’re cornered enough to ask me a question like that, Hal. Something like this is nothing.”
Words like that were hard to believe outright; just sweet-sounding lies.
But I know Lisa is serious.
Even when I blew away everything Lisa had, Lisa truly didn’t get angry.
“But, God does exist. Otherwise, why do you think I came all the way to the Moon to dress like this?”
“But… but the world is unreasonable. Those chasing justice are easily set up in traps, and only the fraudsters are running rampant. If so, where the hell is God?”
“It’s written in the Bible. God is the one who is, and who was, and who is to come.”
“I don’t mean… some childish comfort…”
“Hal, I’m going to get mad.”
When Lisa said that, my body flinched. I was still a child in front of Lisa.
Lisa smiled, dramatically placed her index finger against her lips, and looked away as if thinking.
“It’s the truth. God is always with us. But, I definitely understand what you mean, Hal. Indeed, He doesn’t casually lend a hand when you’re carrying a heavy load, does He.”
Saying that, Lisa drank her cocoa, twisted her mouth into a cynical smile, and directed her gaze to the cross at the very back of the chapel.
“Of course, there are many forms of faith, and everyone’s definition of God is different. For me, dressed as a sister, to say something like that is actually pretty bad, though.”
Lisa said it playfully, but I knew she was completely serious.
As I stared at Lisa, she returned her gaze to me and smiled gently.
“Some people wake up to faith one day, and some arrive at the existence of God theoretically. Some believe because everyone around them did, and some think it’s better to believe just in case. But me, I have actually met God.”
Lisa’s eyes looked straight at me. Normally, they would be words that make you doubt her sanity, but I recognized that look in her eyes.
Eleanor.
And, the me reflected in the mirror four years ago.
“Of course, it wasn’t a bearded old man. In that sense, I haven’t seen Him, but it’s like a puzzle.”
“Pu…?”
“A puzzle. A puzzle where there’s a complete picture, but just one single piece is missing. And without that final piece, the whole thing would fall apart, become irretrievable, and should have been completely ruined. But, it didn’t fall apart, and it didn’t get ruined. I couldn’t believe it. At that moment, I thought, ‘Ah, God really does exist.’ Because without that piece, it couldn’t be explained; it was something that simply couldn’t be explained unless God was there. It was different from luck; it was on a completely different level. Something that I could only think was definitely orchestrated by someone with intent. I thought there was no way something so convenient could happen. I can only think of that as God. God was always by my side. Truly.”
Having graduated from Lunar City University, being a more grounded adult than anyone else, that Lisa was seriously spouting nonsense about God existing. But to me, her spouting that nonsense looked incredibly cool, looking like nothing but a solid mass of something.
I thought that was probably what’s called ‘conviction’.
“And, the reason I dress like this is because, as a servant of God, I hope to give even a fragment of that almost unreasonable luck to someone else. Taking in runaways, helping people in trouble. That’s why it’s the Moon. Precisely because it’s here, where no one looks out for others, when someone appears to reach out a hand in a place like this, everyone will think, ‘So God was here?’, right?”
“…”
“I believe that through that, I can make people feel the presence of God. Therefore, Hal.”
And then, Lisa put down her cup and hugged me. Without any reason, without expecting anything in return, without showing off, without hesitation—just because it seemed like the right thing to do, probably for that reason alone.
An unconditional feeling so pure that it was almost scary to be on the receiving end.
“If you rush to the side of someone in trouble, that someone will surely see God by your side. Even if… you yourself can’t see Him.”
Lisa looked deep, deep into my eyes.
“This is the other, rarely spoken, yet very important meaning of the phrase ‘God is always by your side’.”
When Lisa finished speaking, I noticed the bizarre quietness of the chapel.
No, that wasn’t it.
The noise in my head was gone. Whatever was tormenting me had vanished.
I looked at Lisa.
Lisa pulled her body away from me and took my right hand.
“The reason you look at this right hand as if it’s something detestable is exactly that. What you regret the most isn’t that you couldn’t save Hagana. It’s that you couldn’t be by Hagana’s side until the very end.”
That’s right. I was indeed near Hagana.
But at that time, at the very last moment, I was only physically near Hagana; my mind had gone to another place much further away. That’s exactly why I keep trying to reach out to that blurry white something.
“Well then, this time for sure, what you need to do is decided, isn’t it? Because God certainly does exist in this world, right?”
Lisa said that mischievously at the end, and gave my hand a small shake up and down.
Staring at Lisa, I muttered absently.
“Lisa, you really…”
“Hm?”
“You really are like a Sister, huh.”
Stopping shaking my hand, Lisa smiled wryly while looking down.
“I’d like to get angry, but I guess that’s a fair assessment right now. Because I can’t solve all problems.”
“…If you solved everything, you’d become God, Lisa.”
“Fufu. Right. That would be too presumptuous. But you know, Hal,”
Lisa let go of my hand, stretched out, picked up the two cups from the seat in front, and stood up, saying this:
“Just don’t lose sight of what’s truly important. You should know how fragile it is, and how incredibly hard it is to get back.”
Looking up at Lisa, I nodded slowly and seriously.
“Yeah.”
“Then. Go. It’s cold, so dress warmly.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“You’re basically a kid. Even I’m basically a Sister.”
Having it thrown back at me, I couldn’t argue with that.
But it felt incredibly pleasant.
I thought Lisa truly was a massive presence, like an older sister.
“But, there’s one more thing I want to ask.”
“Hm?”
“How much of everything do you know, Lisa?”
Or perhaps she had just been hearing bits and pieces from Chris and logically inferring the rest. However, Lisa truly seemed to see through absolutely everything, so I had to ask.
And Lisa herself blinked, then grinned teasingly and said this:
“Only God knows, I suppose.”
I’m glad Lisa wasn’t an enemy. Just for that alone, I might be able to believe in God.
Thinking that, I stood up from the pew and followed Lisa out of the chapel. Leaving my unnecessary belongings in my room, I got ready to head out taking only my terminal. As I passed by the living room, Chris, who was fiddling with her terminal while hugging her knees, looked at me.
“Um.”
“Sorry. Later, okay?”
“…”
With that, I brushed past Chris, walked down the hallway, and reached the entrance.
As I put my hand on the door, Chris, standing still in the middle of the living room, said this:
“You really mean, later, right?”
Was it just my imagination that her voice sounded like it was fading away?
I nodded, raised one hand, and slipped outside through the gap in the door.
With a clack, the door closed, and the cold outside pierced my body.
“God is always with us.”
Muttering that, I walked down the freezing hallway, leaning on my crutches.
I couldn’t imagine Eleanor living in the Outer District. Making that assumption, on the train heading to Newton City, I contacted Le Goff.
Le Goff was saying things like The Young Lady will not meet with anyone, but when I told him I absolutely needed to see her and was already on my way, he replied, I will at least relay the message.
Or perhaps it meant that they didn’t want someone like me getting close anymore. Maybe they wanted to put an end to giving Eleanor false hope, only for her to be hurt over and over again.
The entities that swatted Eleanor down like a fly exist everywhere in the world. That power is far too mighty, and those who are swatted down are all equally made to realize their own insignificance.
I just had to remember the sight of that anti-Avalon middle-aged man who was part of the company tour when I went to observe the Avalon headquarters building. Surely what he was saying wasn’t that wrong, and it must have spoken for the feelings of many people. Yet, in that place, what suited him was ridicule.
He was so powerless, so incredibly out of place, that it was almost embarrassing to even take him seriously.
The entities gathered in the stock market are not local general stores. They are corporations on a scale completely different from individual endeavors, entities holding the power to fundamentally control people’s lives.
I might have gotten carried away because someone told me I could see through people’s speculations behind the numbers. I couldn’t even understand the realistic meaning of the massive amounts of money appearing there, but I had simply let those words go to my head.
Even on the train, the built-in display continued to play the news about Susie Wu.
Reporters and so-called experts were using panels, explaining Susie Wu’s ‘conflict of interest’ with knowing looks.
However, somewhere inside, my heart felt strangely cold, and I didn’t feel any anger toward the irresponsible people on the other side of the TV. Instead, I sensed something bizarre in this bashing of Susie Wu. Perhaps money was flowing from Avalon to the media.
Bashing Susie Wu directly protected themselves, while on the other hand, if they could glue the public’s eyes and ears to the downfall of a deified analyst, it would also serve to deflect criticism directed at their company over the electricity rate hikes.
It was the same principle as selecting stock tickers.
Even if something definitely exists there, people cannot remember it unless they are told.
As long as they have the funds and connections, those with power can choose the world that the masses see.
What is hidden by that might be the tragedy in conflict zones on Earth, or it might be the protest sit-ins taking place in front of the Avalon headquarters building. Or perhaps, it might be the truth of the battle of a single girl trying to oppose the hideous system created by a man named the Iceman, who works hand-in-hand with Avalon to commit injustices.
Things like this aren’t that difficult to understand. It’s as obvious as saying the world can’t be changed that easily, or that moving a mountain is no simple task.
However, I had come to know Eleanor, and I had grasped her hand. I couldn’t pretend not to see it now, and I couldn’t act as if it never happened.
In that case, I had no choice but to move forward, because that is by no means meaningless.
Because I think that, even if you realize there’s no road ahead, when you must accept that this is the final stop, there should be someone standing next to you.
I got off at Central Station, where the lingering traces of the morning rush still remained, and when I exited from the exit specified by Le Goff, who had called me back, it was the path leading to the residential area of that Clapton Square.
It was a wide, gently sloping passageway, with ornamental plants and aquarium spaces modeled after miniature waterfalls on both sides, truly feeling like an apartment complex meant for the upper class.
The faces of the people walking toward the station were also brimming with confidence, as if saying they had no worries in the world; the atmosphere was completely different from the Outer District.
As I proceeded, I eventually reached a lobby space with a reception desk, and Le Goff was there.
Even those old-fashioned clothes didn’t look out of place here.
“The Young Lady says she will meet with you.”
“…”
I nodded silently.
Le Goff stood slightly ahead of me and entered through the automatic door next to the reception.
Both of us proceeded in silence, and got on a hotel-like elevator aiming for the upper floors.
When we got off at the thirty-second floor, there was a pond with large goldfish swimming in it and a waterfall right before our eyes.
The hallway was, of course, carpeted, and chandeliers hung from the ceiling.
Le Goff proceeded down the hallway without hesitation and stopped in front of the door marked 3215.
Then, looking down at me from an imposing height.
“…”
The former Swiss private banker, who supposedly knows even the amount of Eleanor’s allowance. Probably, coming all the way to a place like the Moon to play babysitter for Eleanor isn’t just out of a sense of professional duty.
A Young Lady, and the old butler who protects her.
A reality like a European fairy tale was right before my eyes, and history and tradition were there.
Le Goff, the embodiment of that, then bowed deeply on the spot.
“Please take care of the Young Lady. I am powerless to do so.”
This is the Moon. A hellhole swirling with greed and conspiracies, abandoned even by the Pope.
I nodded, and entered the house through the door Le Goff held open.
The first thing I noticed was the smell of a brand-new house.
The smell of a pristine building with absolutely no trace of someone living in it.
However, there was a mountain of luggage. Along the walls of the vast, almost semicircular, vaulted entrance hall, cardboard boxes were piled so high they seemed to reach the handrails of the second floor.
Looking right or left, cardboard boxes were piled up in the hallways. They were probably the things moved from the hotel Platinum Smith had contracted.
“Eleanor-san!”
I called her name in the dead silent hall.
However, there was no reply. Having no choice, I decided to look for her myself. Since it was an apartment, I thought it wouldn’t be much trouble, but I soon realized that was a mistake.
To begin with, the entrance hall had a vaulted structure you wouldn’t expect in an apartment unit, being a maisonette type. Deciding to search the first floor first, I headed right from the entrance. A dining room, a kitchen, and a room resembling a hotel lounge continued endlessly down the hallway; it was so spacious I couldn’t even guess how deep it went.
However, the doors to every room were left wide open, and they were empty. It wasn’t that there was no furniture or furnishings, but it smelled of brand-new things, almost like chemicals, and was cold and inorganic. It had the kind of atmosphere where, if a living thing had wandered in, you would know immediately.
Reaching the end of the hallway, I came out onto a terrace where you could look down at Central Station. There was an outdoor sofa set that looked tacked on, but naturally, there was no sign of Eleanor.
Turning back down the hallway and heading to the opposite side across the entrance, there was an empty study, a bathroom, and a second dining room. When I tried entering the bathroom, there was a marble bathtub in a shower room surrounded by glass on all four sides. One entire wall was a massive single pane of glass, allowing a panoramic view of Newton City. It was hard to believe this facility served the same purpose as the shower room in Lisa’s church, with its mold, unstable water pressure, and hot water that constantly turned cold.
I returned to the entrance hall and went up to the second floor of the maisonette. When I climbed the stairs, a long hallway stretched into the back, with rooms on the left and right. The structure was simple, but it was there that I felt nervous for the first time.
A massive amount of paper was scattered across the hallway. Crumpled up, crushed, or torn, they seemed to be from notebooks or something, and were covered densely in writing.
Stepping over those remains, I entered the only room with a half-open door.
When I did, that place was a recreation of her hotel room.
No, it was worse.
Cardboard boxes had been overturned haphazardly, their contents scattered and completely messed up.
Looking at the state of the chair tipped over nearby, I could mostly guess how the hole in the wall had gotten there. And, I realized that a massive amount of notebook scraps, just like in the hallway, was scattered here too, apparently torn up and thrown away after she had blindly scattered everything else.
I picked up one of the pieces. Reading Eleanor’s slightly quirky handwriting, I felt like my heart had been grabbed. Raising my face with a stifling feeling in my chest, that path of paper scraps stretched toward one corner of the large room. At the end of it was another door, which was also half-open.
Gulping down the lump in my throat with a pounding heart, I headed in that direction.
When I gently opened the door, it led into a dress room connected to a bathroom. A large vanity and an even larger single mirror would serve as a foreshadowing for an ominous scene to anyone used to watching horror movies.
Moreover, there was again a massive amount of notebook scraps scattered around.
I no longer hesitated; I pushed open the half-open frosted glass door with my crutch.
The reason I had prepared myself for the worst was because of the ‘what if’.
However, the large tiled bathroom wasn’t dyed bright red.
I was relieved by that for the moment, and I immediately knew Eleanor was safe.
But, that was because of the faint sound of sobbing I could hear.
I entered the freezing bathroom, taking care not to slip on the paper scattered so thickly it covered the floor of a room as large as the living room in Lisa’s church, and walked over to the bathtub. There, hugging her knees inside the bathtub and crying, was the figure of a small Eleanor. Scattered around were the handwritten data concerning Avalon that Eleanor had continuously gathered.
If the bathroom is a place to wash the dirt off one’s body, the scattered pieces of paper were perhaps the things that had been clinging to Eleanor’s body.
However, I looked down at Eleanor and said,
“Weren’t you going to bite down and never let go?”
Eleanor didn’t react.
I lightly poked the scattered papers with my crutch and opened my mouth again.
“Eleanor-san.”
“Shut up!”
Eleanor yelled without raising her face.
Expressionlessly, I looked down at Eleanor.
Humans can never become perfectly rational.
“What do you want me to do!? Do you have any ideas!? Say them!”
Eleanor raised her head and glared at me.
Her eyes and nose were completely red; it was a face that had cried its heart out.
“Do you have anything!? You don’t, do you!?”
“I don’t.”
“Then—”
“Then why did you let me in here?”
When I said that, Eleanor pressed her lips tightly together and pulled her chin back like a little girl throwing a tantrum.
“I’m not Superman, so I can’t just casually come up with a solution. But you must have known that, Eleanor-san.”
“Then,”
Perhaps because she had yelled, Eleanor said in a hoarse voice,
“Then… why…”
“Because I thought there was meaning in coming here.”
Saying that, I crouched down. Eleanor flinched and pulled back, but I only picked up a notebook scrap at my feet.
“This is a notebook about Avalon, isn’t it.”
“…”
“What I’ve gained over these past four years is that admitting a past mistake and denying the past are two different things.”
“…”
Having let her emotions explode as much as they could, Eleanor kept her exhausted, absentminded face turned toward me, as if she had forgotten how to get angry, how to cry, or even how to suffer.
If she had spewed out everything pent up inside her, then from now on, she just needed to pour in something new and refreshing.
“We don’t have any moves left to play, but we still have a pathetic, ugly struggle left in us.”
“…Eh?”
“For now, let’s get out of there. You look silly.”
At my words, Eleanor gave a loud sniffle and wiped the corners of her eyes.
It seemed that amount of time was enough for the formerly cheeky Young Lady to compose herself.
“On Earth… everyone… does this.”
I shrugged my shoulders and reached my hand out to Eleanor.
“Your hands are in tatters, aren’t they. Where’s the first aid kit?”
Eleanor’s hands, which must have been tearing notebooks apart in a fit of rage, were sliced to ribbons by the paper.
“Under the… dresser…”
“Dresser? This?”
When I opened the shelves next to the large mirror one by one, a small first-aid kit came out.
I took out some bandages from it and urged Eleanor to go to the next room.
“It’s a terrible state, isn’t it.”
Those words applied to both the room and Eleanor, but Eleanor didn’t say anything in particular. When I righted a chair that had been knocked over by the wall, she just sat there blankly as prompted.
“Do you not normally use this house?”
I asked while applying bandages to Eleanor’s hands.
“…This is the second time I’ve come here.”
“…”
Only twice to such a huge house.
I didn’t even want to imagine how much rent she was wasting.
“So you lived in the hotel the whole time?”
Eleanor nodded silently. As I wrapped bandages around her fingers one by one, it felt like Eleanor was aging a year with each one. From a five-year-old girl, to a sensible young woman.
But, the reason she still looked somewhat spaced out when I finished might be because I could only wrap ten bandages.
“Are you really going to throw the notebooks away?”
When I asked, Eleanor was staring at her hands as if she were wearing avant-garde gloves.
Then, raising her face and looking around the room, she looked like she was about to cry again.
No words were needed for an answer.
“Let’s gather them up.”
At those words, Eleanor nodded silently.
Even in this state, fortunately, Eleanor hadn’t had the luxury of tearing the notebooks into tiny pieces. She had grabbed chunks, ripped them, slammed them to the ground, and ripped again, so consecutive pages had fallen together; despite how it looked, it wasn’t a completely hopeless situation.
There were page numbers, and Eleanor seemed to know exactly which section it was just by glancing at the contents, so her hands moved quickly to organize them. I left that task to Eleanor and focused on picking up the main bodies of the notebooks, which had been torn as much as possible and slammed against the wall in a fit of rage.
There were fifteen books in total, and about half the pages still remained in the main bodies.
“I kind of wanted to see you tearing these up, too.”
When I said that, Eleanor’s face quickly turned red.
And, continuing to smooth out the notebook pages in her hands, she said,
“You really are mean.”
“I thought it might cheer you up.”
“…”
Eleanor looked at me.
“…It does.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
I said transparently.
“But, on the way here, it was nothing but news about Susie Wu.”
“…”
Eleanor didn’t show any particular reaction, and without raising her gaze, silently continued the task of smoothing out the wrinkles in the pages.
“Just as you said, Eleanor-san, the public’s attention was high. So, I was thinking.”
“…?”
“If you, Eleanor-san, were to step forward right now, declare that you are Susie Wu, that you are doing these things for these reasons, and that Avalon has this many suspicious points, wouldn’t that gather attention too?”
“Is that the pathetic struggle?”
“…One of them.”
“…”
Eleanor returned her gaze from me to the notebook in her hands, and smoothing out another page, she said,
“When the company Grandfather entrusted to me collapsed, I lobbied here and there to have the Iceman’s fraud taken up. Do you know what the result of that was?”
The lack of life in Eleanor’s eyes was probably because she was staring at the past.
“From an outsider’s perspective, it was blatantly obvious that the Iceman was doing incredibly unnatural things, but no one cared about that. The media is a business too, so rather than that, they chose the angle of: ‘The playboy noble from Earth crushed a historic company, serves her right.’ Because that’s what gets better ratings. Here, anyway.”
I recalled the tone of the articles when I had searched for Eleanor’s news. It was exactly as Eleanor had said.
But, thinking normally, that makes sense. Eleanor is stubborn and extreme once she sets her mind to something, but she has at least the wisdom to follow steps. She must have already tried the orthodox methods, despaired, and Susie Wu was the conclusion she arrived at.
Eleanor sighed and said,
“It’s show business. If I were to nonchalantly step forward now, I think I would just be made a laughingstock.”
“…”
“So, what is the other struggle?”
As I was feeling disheartened by the shallowness of the Moon, Eleanor asked me instead.
“The most orthodox of orthodox methods. Bring all the information to the judicial authorities.”
“To the judicial authorities that would swallow whole the information that a fictional character created an account and was trading, and act on it?”
There was a reason Eleanor tore up all these notebooks and cried in the bathtub. She had no choice but to do so; that’s how desperate it was.
“It’s better than doing nothing.”
I said, almost as a mutter.
“That might be true.”
Eleanor said that, too.
Then, looking at the mountain of notebook scraps that were piled high due to being crumpled, a smile-like expression finally appeared on her face.
“Besides, doing something distracts you. It’s an important thing to do to calm down.”
Eleanor suddenly fell silent, and when I looked over, she was looking at me with a face that looked like it was about to cry again.
“Are you being sarcastic? I am perfectly calm now…”
And then, she says something like that. I didn’t know what she was talking about for a few moments, but when I finally realized, my shoulders were shaking and I almost laughed.
“You looked pretty dramatic yelling inside the bathtub, too, you know.”
“~~…”
Eleanor grimaced as if holding back a headache, and with her lips pursed, returned to the task of smoothing out the notebooks.
“Mean.”
I just shrugged my shoulders.
For a while after that, the two of us worked on smoothing out the notebooks and aligning the pages, but the room was a little too quiet. Looking around, at least the furniture was all there, so there was a wall-mounted display.
“Mind if I turn on the TV?”
“I don’t mind, but…”
“The one being bashed on TV is Susie Wu. Someone who is dead.”
“….That’s, true. No,”
Eleanor forced a brave smile, even if it was unnatural.
“You’re right.”
“There might be some new information coming out, too.”
“Like her three sizes?”
Eleanor, who seemed to harbor a deep grudge against the media, said something that sounded like the very definition of a cheap crowd-pleaser. The media’s malice created an atmosphere where it honestly wouldn’t have been strange for the story to turn into such vulgar gossip.
While turning on the TV and getting back to work, I watched the immediately-airing clips of Susie Wu’s past appearances and said,
“Just how much were you actually padding it?”
Without stopping her hands, Eleanor tilted her head with a smile.
“Are you talking about the hair?”
“Yes, I’m talking about the hair.”
Eleanor giggled, and I shrugged my shoulders.
Noon passed in a flash, and I felt hungry. When Eleanor suggested ordering something and was about to call Le Goff out of habit, she let out a small “Ah!” in surprise.
Then, she hastily left me a word and rushed out of the room. She must have completely forgotten Le Goff’s existence. When someone is by your side too much, even an important person starts to feel natural and becomes invisible to you.
I knew that fact from my own experience.
Left alone, I was watching the TV without really watching it. The media was honestly just repeating the same things, and when Eleanor returned to the room a short while later, she seemed to genuinely not care anymore, rather than just putting up a brave front. Let them say what they want. The truth is over here. And above all, there is someone other than herself who knows it.
When my eyes met Eleanor’s between tasks, she gave me a slightly embarrassed smile that seemed to convey just that. As I thought, there was meaning in coming. Even if we couldn’t do anything new, even if we couldn’t solve anything, just being here had meaning in itself.
After that, we ate the meal Le Goff had prepared for us, and by the time we managed to roughly restore the majority of the notebooks, it was past 3:00 PM. Of course, even though I call it restoration, it was only to a certain extent, and many of the finer details were still missing. Still, it was back to a state where she could understand what she had been doing. And I thought that was enough.
“Well then, I suppose the final pathetic struggle is indeed submitting this to the judicial authorities.”
As I was idly watching the TV, Eleanor, who had brought coffee, said that.
“I think that’s for the best.”
“It’s depressing to submit it somewhere knowing they can’t be relied upon, though…”
“Those don’t sound like the words of someone who went to the ends of the Moon.”
“My.”
Eleanor smiled and picked up her cup.
“I have to admit, it is still a shame, though.”
“Eh?”
“I think I kind of wanted to see the scene on TV of Susie Wu brandishing the documentary evidence and condemning Avalon.”
“Fufu. But I yelled so much that my voice is hoarse.”
“It seems conveying something to someone is a difficult task.”
When I said that while looking at the display, I suddenly felt a gaze.
There was no one else around; Eleanor was looking at me, smiling.
“What is it?”
“No. I was just thinking how true that is.”
Eleanor put down her coffee cup and looked at the display.
“To convey something to someone requires courage, passion, and the conviction to not think a ridiculous thing is ridiculous. I was just shouting out stock tickers, but I felt that very strongly. The more emotion I put into it, the more I believed in it myself, the reaction was overwhelmingly better than any numerical backing.”
“That much?”
“Yes. Didn’t you improve Chris-san’s program by seeing through the fact that the market moves on emotion, Hal-san?”
“Well, yes, but.”
“Fufu. But, since it’s like that, if you miss the opportunity, that might be the end of it. Even with the exact same business idea, there are times when it’s too early, and times when it’s too late.”
“The Goddess of Fortune only has bangs.”
When I said that while looking at Eleanor’s bangs, she smiled, looking a bit displeased.
“Once she passes right in front of you, you can no longer grab the hair on the back of her head. That’s why people frantically reach out their arms, without fearing the risks, right?”
Eleanor was definitely one of the people who had reached out their hands.
However, the bangs of the Goddess of Fortune were far too short.
“…You are the graceful Lady Eleanor. There’s a limit to how much you can hike up your skirt and run.”
There must have been methods where she threw away all appearances. For example, methods where she buttered up Avalon, gave them good evaluations, and slipped inside.
The reason she didn’t do that was because there was a line Eleanor had to protect.
“That is exactly right. Since the refined me is not the type to shout and scream, after all.”
Eleanor lowered her gaze and let out a small sigh.
She took a deep breath, not to cry.
But to raise her face and smile bravely.
“But I believe that someday, someone will expose what needs to be exposed. I did a thorough job. I went as far as I could, and thought of everything I could possibly think of. I even went to the ends of the Moon to confirm it. So being stopped halfway is… of course, of… of course, it’s… sad, but…”
Eleanor, on the verge of tears, managed to hold them back, but a few tears spilled over anyway.
“I’m sorry.”
She just said that and retreated toward the bathroom, but I didn’t call out to her retreating back. I wasn’t worried, either. Because I believed she would come right back.
It’s better to let out everything you can. Just like how it’s better to do everything you can do.
Thinking such things, I stared at the TV. The special feature on Susie Wu, arbitrarily labeled the “Fallen Guardian Deity of the Masses,” ended, and like an intermission, the topic shifted to the electricity problem.
Things were the same as always over there; the area in front of Avalon’s headquarters was packed with people.
However, I felt like it was slightly different from what I had seen over the past few days, so I watched the screen carefully.
What is it?
As I was wondering, the scene cut to a close-up of a part of the crowd.
Then, right when the profile of the person standing at the head of the people, swinging their arms around, was shown, the video changed to a still image. The sight of him with his mouth opened wide as if letting out a war cry, raising his fist with all his might, looked like an old Baroque painting.
I recognized that face.
Then, that still image was enlarged further on the screen, and a caption appeared.
The young politician who roars for the masses. Presidential candidate, Fidel Gazanica.
With that, I remembered he was the person who had drawn sneers by proposing the unrealistic campaign promise of providing housing for all immigrants on the Moon.
However, my surprise wasn’t because he had come out to a place like this.
It was because I remembered my conversation with Eleanor.
Passionate, loud-voiced, gathering attention from people, and a person whose conviction doesn’t let him think a ridiculous dream is ridiculous. Exactly the kind of person who would raise his fist and bare his fangs against a super-giant corporation.
I was utterly appalled by my own stupidity. When improving Chris’s program, I had been exasperated that she was trapped by a single number and couldn’t see the whole picture, but I was the one who couldn’t see anything. Even when thinking about Avalon’s suspicious sales, I had smugly thought about looking at it from the opposite direction. Yet, I had overlooked something this simple.
Susie Wu is dead. There is no analyst who can take her place.
But that’s not the problem. Defeating Avalon is for the sake of justice.
And on this Moon, Eleanor wasn’t the only idiot with a screw loose fighting for justice. Even during the Avalon company tour, there was a man who marched into Avalon headquarters and had the courage to condemn them, even when everyone around him was an enemy.
An ally truly exists even on the Moon.
I stood up from my chair; the coffee spilled, and the cup fell to the floor and shattered.
But without caring about that, without even using my crutches, I dragged my leg and practically lunged as I grabbed the door leading to the bathroom.
Without knocking or anything, I pulled the door open, and Eleanor, who had been wiping her tears, looked at me as if I had peeked in on her bathing.
“…U-Um,”
“Eleanor-san.”
“Y-Yes.”
When I called out clearly, Eleanor replied as if swallowed by the momentum.
“Please get ready immediately.”
“Eh? Um… Hal, san?”
I said something that I will probably never say again.
“God might exist.”
Looking back, the past battle records of Fidel Gazanica, the politician who roars for the masses, were playing on the TV. The footage being used showed him climbing the pole where the company flag was hoisted in front of Avalon’s headquarters, appealing about something to the people. That sight possessed an intensity that would make even Susie Wu pale in comparison, and having reached this point, it seemed to have grasped the hearts of the people.
Because on this Moon swirling with greed, he was far too foolishly honest. When I first commuted to Schweitzer Investment, I witnessed his reckless courage when scouring the newspapers. Even before the Moon’s electricity problem became this severe, he had consistently roared for the masses. On this Moon, without accepting money from any corporation.
That stance was exactly the same as Eleanor’s, who didn’t evaluate Avalon no matter how much pressure was applied, for the sake of her goal.
What Eleanor was trying to achieve wasn’t just stock price predictions.
It was something broader: realizing justice.
If speaking of justice, it didn’t have to be a charismatic analyst.
Eleanor stared intently at the hand I offered.
“Come on.”
And then, Eleanor grabbed my hand, hiked up the hem of her skirt, and dashed out.
Eleanor’s methodology after deciding what to do was magnificent.
It was like a textbook example of following the proper channels from the proper sources to reach the proper destination; she didn’t flip through the phone book herself to contact Gazanica’s office, but called Le Goff without hesitation.
Then, it seemed she contacted Gazanica’s office via the proper connections on Earth. The power of a descendant of nobility with 500 years of history in Europe might lie precisely in such connections.
“They said he will meet us immediately, provided he isn’t detained by the police.”
Eleanor said that, phone in hand.
I didn’t understand what she meant for a moment, but when Eleanor pointed at the display, it showed Gazanica being dragged down from the flagpole by security guards.
“It seems he’s currently being cautioned at the police station.”
“…I know I brought it up, but is this person going to be okay?”
“Fufu. My dream, your dream Hal-san, and his dream. Which of those is the most audacious?”
When she said that, I could only shrug my shoulders.
Eleanor said something else on the phone and ended the call.
“So we can still move forward.”
“Whether we will reach the destination or not, I don’t know.”
When I said that, Eleanor shook her head side to side.
“No. That doesn’t matter anymore. You came to me, Hal-san. When things are truly painful, someone will reach out a hand. Just being able to believe that is enough. Of course, we will bet everything on asking Mr. Fidel Gazanica for his cooperation. There are still things we must do for that.”
Eleanor puffing out her chest had more than enough of Susie Wu’s intensity, even without piling up her hair and putting pads in her chest.
“Meaning?”
When I asked, Eleanor gave a wry smile and pointed to the restored notebooks.
“Let’s search again to see if there’s anything else. If there’s truly nothing else.”
“…Looking for flaws worth 40 billion Mool?”
“I just want to avoid the regret of having someone else expose it later and wondering why I didn’t notice it.”
“That’s common with puzzles.”
“Will you do it for me?”
Eleanor asked such a thing at this point.
But, I think that’s Eleanor’s style of refined playfulness.
“If it’s for my salary.”
Hearing my reply, Eleanor showed an innocent smile like a little girl.
“I’m counting on you.”
Then, we put our heads together and inspected the notebooks and data. We exchanged various opinions, threw out ideas anyway we could, and examined them. The buying and selling of those empty-lot power plants—besides being accounting fraud, we could also attack it from the angle that they secured the land for power generation, which should normally be generating power, but deliberately didn’t generate power in order to unfairly drive up electricity rates, and so on. Thinking about it that way, it’s somewhat understandable how they could continue to make massive profits in the electricity trading market. After all, since Avalon knows exactly how much they are lying about their own power generation capacity, it means they possess much more accurate information regarding electricity demand than other participants.
In the end, the odds of a bet are determined by the uncertainty of information. If you possess information more advantageous than others, you can outmaneuver them by that much, and because you can make bolder bets, your profits will also be larger.
We must have been talking about those things with truly intense concentration. When I suddenly came back to myself, I hadn’t even noticed that the cup I had spilled and broken had been cleaned up.
And as the sun set and the cold increased, a call came from Gazanica.
Eleanor took the phone from Le Goff, and after polite greetings, conveyed that we would head to his office.
The expression on Eleanor’s face after hanging up the phone was truly dignified.
“Well then, let us depart.”
Hugging the notebooks she had torn to shreds as if they were precious, Eleanor left the room.
Following her, Le Goff was waiting respectfully in the entrance hall.
Master and servant. Tradition and formality. Eleanor had come all this way to protect that honor.
As I watched the two of them, a sigh of admiration escaped me.
“I have called a hired car, so let us go downstairs.”
Eleanor turned to me and said that with a smile. It felt as if we were heading to a ball. If there is such a thing as a pleasant tension, this would be it.
Thinking that, I was about to follow Eleanor into the elevator.
It was right at that moment that the terminal signaled an incoming call.
“A phone call?”
Looking at the terminal, it was a call from an unknown number. I made eye contact with Le Goff and Eleanor, who were waiting in the elevator.
“Please go ahead, I will wait in the car.”
Eleanor smiled pleasantly, and the elevator doors closed.
I pressed the answer button on the terminal and switched it to call mode.
“Hello?”
I called out without any caution.
At the voice that came from the receiver, I felt the world invert.
“Hey, it’s been a while.”
A low, powerful baritone.
I stood rooted to the spot.
“Four years, I suppose.”
It was a call from Burton Kladwiesen.
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