Kaito Ishikawa wasn't about to sit idly by after the act of violence his companion had received during the incident with Yui. He knew that violence was loud, messy, and—as the clumsy foreigner had demonstrated—unpredictable. Power, on the other hand, was silent, clean, and absolute. It was wielded with a simple phone call.
The next day, a man in an expensive suit carrying a leather folder visited the Tanaka family's small flower shop. There were no shouts or threats. Just the cold delivery of an official document: an expedited eviction notice, citing a "Priority Urban Development" clause activated by the Ishikawa Conglomerate. They had thirty days to vacate the premises their family had occupied for seventy years.
The news reached Yui through a broken, sobbing call from her mother. When she hung up the phone, the color that was always present in her cheeks had drained from her face. The azaleas she tended behind the gym suddenly seemed frivolous. The system—that enormous, impersonal gear she had always feared—had finally caught her and was beginning to crush her.
Panic was an ocean drowning her. She couldn't tell her friends; she didn't have any. She couldn't confront Kaito; that was suicide. Her mind, in a state of feverish desperation, grasped for a wisp of something solid to hold onto. And she remembered two things: an impossible equation on a chalkboard and an impossible accident in a courtyard. Both connected to a single person. But seeking out Hikari Akihiko seemed too direct, too terrifying...
Then, her gaze landed on a solitary figure in the library. Kenjiro Tanaka. The ghost boy. She didn't know why, but his invisibility felt comforting. He, at least, wasn't part of Kaito's loud and predatory system.
With a courage she didn't know she possessed, Yui approached his table.
"Tanaka-san."
Kenjiro jumped so violently he almost knocked over his laptop. He looked up, eyes wide with surprise and the panic of being spoken to.
"Y-yes?" he stammered.
"I... I'm sorry to bother you," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "I saw... I saw what you did in math class the other day. You're very smart."
He blushed, completely disarmed by the compliment. "It... it was nothing."
"Yes, it was," she insisted. "My family... they are trying to take our shop away. The Ishikawa Conglomerate. I don't know what to do. And I thought... I thought someone who understands systems... like math... maybe could see something. A way out."
Kenjiro looked at her. He saw the pure, unfiltered terror in her eyes, the same terror he felt every day, but magnified, solidified into a real and tangible threat. His first instinct was to refuse, apologize, and run. But then, he looked past her fear. He saw a victim of the same corrupt program he despised so much. And he knew, with crushing certainty, that he couldn't leave her alone.
"I... I don't know if I can do anything... But... I'll look into it."
That night, Kenjiro didn't sleep. The only thing he did was dive into the net. He slipped into municipal servers, property registries, and the internal archives of the Ishikawa Conglomerate. And everywhere he found the same thing: a wall. A perfectly sealed legal system. Ishikawa's lawyers had done an impeccable job, exploiting every legal loophole to ensure the expropriation was unassailable.
The probability of winning through legal means was 0.00%.
But then, his mind traced a connection. Kaito. The humiliation. Hikari. The attack on Yui's family. It wasn't a coincidence; it was retaliation. And if the cause of the problem was an unpredictable algorithm, perhaps the solution was too. But he couldn't confront Kaito. He needed someone who could. Someone on the inside.
His cursor hovered over a name on the student list.
Haruna Sato.
The idea was madness. The probability of her listening to him was low. The probability of her ratting him out to Kaito was considerably higher. But the probability of doing nothing was a 100% failure rate. With his heart pounding in his chest, he encrypted a file and sent an anonymous message from a temporary server.
Anonymous:Audiovisual Room. After class. Come alone. I have information that interests you regarding Kaito and the new exchange student.
The next day, Haruna found the message. Her first instinct was to ignore it. It was probably a trap or a stupid prank. But the joint mention of Kaito and Hikari sparked her curiosity. It was the same pattern she had been observing. With a sigh of irritation, she decided to go.
She found Kenjiro waiting in the gloom of the classroom, with the only light coming from a projector screen.
"You have five minutes to make sure this isn't a waste of my time, ghost," Haruna said, her voice cutting.
Kenjiro swallowed hard. He connected his laptop. Hikari Akihiko's admission file appeared on the screen.
"This," he said, pointing to the digitally perfect file, "is not real. It's camouflage. I've analyzed it. It's too clean. No history. No trace."
Haruna raised an eyebrow. "So? Maybe his parents are meticulous."
"No," Kenjiro insisted. "And this is what Kaito has done."
He projected the eviction order for the Tanaka flower shop. "It's retaliation. Because Hikari humiliated him. Kaito is using his father's power to destroy an innocent girl's family over a tantrum."
Haruna crossed her arms. Her face showed no emotion, but her eyes had hardened. She already knew, of course. Kaito had bragged about it. But seeing it exposed like this, by the invisible boy, gave it a new and unpleasant perspective.
"And what do you want me to do?" she asked. "Sing him a song about justice? This is the world we live in."
"You're on the inside," Kenjiro said, his voice urgent now. "You see how he operates. You despise his... his inefficient cruelty as much as I do. I see it in your eyes. You don't like weakness, but you hate the senseless abuse of power."
Haruna fell silent. The ghost had read her. He had seen the crack in her armor.
"This problem," Kenjiro continued, "started with Hikari's arrival. He is the variable that has destabilized the system. I don't know what he is, but he isn't what he seems. And now Kaito has crossed a line. I don't know how to stop him. But my data analysis suggests that an internal agent with your understanding of social dynamics could... alter the outcome."
Haruna stared at him for a long time. The invisible, scared genius was asking her to join an impossible rebellion. It was absurd. Dangerous. And the most interesting idea she had heard in years.
"Fine," she finally said, with a sigh that sounded almost like resignation. "Show me all the data you have."
From the hallway, hidden in the blind spot of a slightly ajar door, Hikari Akihiko had heard the entire conversation. A micro-expression, too fast to be registered by a normal eye, crossed his face. It wasn't satisfaction. It was the confirmation of a hypothesis.
The brain and the warrior had just made a connection. The system had begun to fight back on its own.