Earth had spent three weeks arguing about whether Hajin was real, and Earth had money.
The argument had started innocently, the way the biggest arguments do, with a media-company chief financial officer watching the river deployment out of professional habit.
His handle was studio_accountant, plus he had joined the stream during the coronation arc.
He had spent every week since trying to prove the whole thing was a staged production.
His filings, recited in the chat with the weary pride of a man showing his work, included compositing budgets plus positioning impossibilities.
He had also produced a forty-page analysis of why the siege mathematics were fake, which the chat had read in full, to its own lasting surprise.
The analysis was wrong, but it was wrong footnoted, which had earned him a strange respect early on.
Tonight, the latest two-front deployment had finally broken his ledger open.
