"Oh? Is that so?"
Faced with the panicked voice of his First Chair secretary on the other end of the line, Seiji Fujiwara's tone was as flat as if he were listening to a dull weather forecast.
That godlike calm passed instantly through the current to the other end, and somehow steadied his frantic secretary as well.
"Yes, Boss. The statement was just released, and our stock price... has already started to swing violently on the overseas markets."
The female secretary drew a deep breath.
"What's more... the remnants of the Saionji Family have joined with ASML's Japan division, and announced that they will hold a press conference at the Tokyo Imperial Hotel at ten tomorrow morning. They claim they're going to expose to the entire world that your FinFET technology is nothing more than a castle in the air without top-tier EUV lithography support. They... they're trying to choke us off at the upstream of the supply chain!"
"Understood."
Seiji answered lightly, then hung up.
He couldn't be bothered to add a single word of reassurance.
There was no need.
Before absolute power, every scheme and intrigue was nothing more than a laughable farce.
He turned and looked at Yukino, still slumped on the carpet, her gaze hollow, and the smile at his lips turned colder.
Right on time.
He had been wondering how to find a stage grand enough for the gift he'd just acquired.
Now these Western fools had built that stage for him with their own hands.
...
The next morning, the press hall of the Tokyo Imperial Hotel.
It was packed beyond capacity, every seat taken.
Hundreds of media reporters from all over the world had crammed the place to bursting, lenses long and short bristling everywhere, flashbulbs firing without pause.
At the center of the dais sat several pale-faced men whose eyes burned with the diseased pleasure of revenge. They were the last remnants of the Saionji conglomerate.
Beside them sat a blond, blue-eyed, haughty middle-aged Westerner: Smith, the head of ASML's Asia-Pacific region.
"Friends of the press!"
The Saionji Family representative spoke loudly. "Today, we are here to expose to the entire world a colossal fraud! A swindler named Seiji Fujiwara, and his so-called FinFET technology, are nothing but a lie!"
"Without the world's only EUV lithography machine, supplied by our company ASML, that ridiculous design diagram of his is just a piece of waste paper!"
Smith took the microphone in turn, just as arrogantly. "ASML represents the absolute peak of human lithography technology. I tell all of you on the record: we will never supply so much as a single screw to a technology thief like the Fujiwara conglomerate. He has been cast out by the entire civilized world!"
The hall erupted in murmurs and a frenzy of camera shutters.
Just as this "trial assembly" was about to reach its climax, the heavy back door of the press hall slammed open with a thud.
Under the astonished gaze of the entire room, Seiji Fujiwara, the very protagonist they were "trying," walked in at a measured pace, surrounded by a squad of black-suited bodyguards, like a sovereign making his entrance.
He ignored entirely the few clowns up on the stage whose faces had instantly turned ghastly, and, pursued by countless flashbulbs, walked straight up to the dais.
"Good morning, everyone. Looks like I haven't missed this denunciation rally held in my honor."
He casually picked up the microphone, an amused smile on his face.
"Just a moment ago, I heard Mr. Smith here say that without your lithography machines, my technology is waste paper?"
He turned to the ASML executive, whose face had already begun to drain of color, his smile turning crueler.
"Then I'd like to ask you a question, Mr. Smith."
As he spoke, he drew from his pocket a flat glass vial sealed in a special quartz casing.
Inside the vial was a small pinch of metallic powder glowing faintly violet.
"What if I not only don't need that scrap heap of yours, but can even produce, on my own, the most central light source that drives a lithography machine? Then, in my eyes, what exactly are you, and that laughable ASML Alliance behind you?"
So saying, he tossed the quartz vial, with its ominous glow, along with a sheet of A4 paper printed with only a few lines of spectral data, onto the center of the dais.
"What... what is that?" a young reporter asked instinctively.
The German engineer seated to the side, ASML's chief technical representative invited as a technical advisor, the moment he saw that spectral data sheet, jolted out of his chair as if struck by lightning!
He rushed up to the front, snatched the sheet of A4 like a madman, stared dead at the few simple curves on it, then looked again at the violet-glowing quartz vial, and screamed as if he had seen a ghost:
"Unmöglich. Das ist absolut unmöglich. (Impossible! This is absolutely impossible!)"
"This... this spectrum... this energy peak... this is... this is LPP-EUV source target material at over 99.999% purity! The highest-purity radioactive isotope, tin-124!"
"Gott im Himmel! (My God!) Even the top laboratory at our headquarters can't refine target material to this level!"
The entire hall fell into a deathly silence.
Everyone understood what those words meant.
It meant that Seiji Fujiwara not only didn't need their lithography machines.
He could even build lithography machines of his own that were better and more powerful than theirs!
That so-called "technology embargo," in this instant, had become a joke!
The press conference plunged into utter chaos.
Smith, the ASML executive, after listening to his own technical representative's despairing scream, went paper-white in the face.
He looked at the young man on the dais, who looked like a demon-god come down to the world, a cold smile fixed on his face. Smith's legs went limp, and uncontrollably, in front of the world's media, he dropped to his knees with a heavy thud, in utter disgrace.
...
...
The press conference at the Tokyo Imperial Hotel came to a close in a manner of surreal theatricality.
The next day, every front page of every media outlet in the world was occupied by the same man and the same event.
[A New-Generation Light Source Giant Born in Japan! Seiji Fujiwara, Single-Handedly, Upends the Global Semiconductor Order!]
[A Historic Moment! ASML's CEO Flies into Japan Overnight, Waiting Eight Hours in Vain in Front of the Fujiwara Conglomerate Headquarters for a Single "Audience"!]
[The Coming of Technological Divinity! Is Seiji Fujiwara a Business Genius, or a Living God in Possession of Alien Technology?]
The news was filled, top to bottom, with the breathtaking scenes from that conference. The once lofty business empire had, in a single night, become an abjectly tail-wagging vassal.
And the man who had set all of it in motion, Seiji Fujiwara, showed an extreme indifference to all of it.
After he returned home, he didn't even spare a glance for those reports praising him as a "god."
He walked into the master bedroom and saw that Yukino Yukinoshita had already pulled herself up off the carpet on her own, and, like the most dutiful maid, had brewed Earl Grey for him at exactly the right temperature.
She seemed to have recovered from the previous night's collapse, or rather, to have entered a deeper stratum of numbness.
Her face once again wore that cool, emotionless expression.
She held the teacup in both hands, walked over to him with steps that still wavered slightly, and offered it up respectfully.
Seiji didn't take it.
He looked at her beautiful face, now stripped of every trace of haughty radiance, and suddenly felt a touch of boredom.
This kind of numbed doll, played with for too long, eventually grew stale.
He spoke in an offhand tone of command:
"Open your mouth."
"...Yes."
Her body stiffened on instinct, but she didn't resist. She knelt obediently on the floor and slightly parted her small lips.
Seiji wore a satisfied look on his face, then made his deposit in full.
"Mm..."
The thick, murky scent forced an involuntary little tremor across her ice-carved face.
Even after tasting it many times, she still couldn't get used to that flavor.
...
Across town, in the Saionji Family's luxurious hospital ward, the last remnants of the Saionji conglomerate watched the footage of ASML's CEO begging abjectly for mercy, and ash-gray despair settled over their faces.
They knew their final chance to retaliate had been completely shattered.
What awaited them was the merciless reckoning of the Fujiwara conglomerate.
Inside the villa bedroom, Seiji savored, with relish, Yukino's humiliated expression, the way her mouth twitched faintly at what it held, wanting to swallow but compelled to wait for his command. A satisfied smile touched his face.
This was exactly what he wanted.
He wanted her to know that even the most childish bit of mischief, so long as it was an order he had given, she had to endure unconditionally.
He bent down and gave her the next humiliating instruction:
"Now. Don't swallow, and don't spit either."
"Go down to that twenty-four-hour convenience store on the corner. Buy me back something... interesting."
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