He admired the faint, unnatural flush rising on her noble, composed face from the strange sensations rippling through her body.
He admired the slight tremor in those tightly clenched fists, born of the violent collision between her body's instinctive reactions and her heart's extreme resistance.
Every minute, every second, was a mental torture for Fuyumi Irisu.
At last, Seiji Fujiwara paused his "lecture."
"Irisu-san," he said with a slow smile, "your reactions are telling me... that you've already begun to actively 'accept' this transaction."
His words sent a jolt through Fuyumi Irisu's entire body.
Her eyes snapped open, and a flicker of fury at being seen through and panic at being exposed flashed through her composed gaze.
"I have not!" The denial came out almost reflexively, her voice carrying a tremor she couldn't disguise.
The retort was so feeble that even she couldn't convince herself.
"Oh?"
Seiji Fujiwara's tone took on a hint of teasing amusement.
He seemed to enjoy this look of hers, on the verge of losing control yet desperately trying to maintain her composure.
A girl in this state was like a volcano of ice about to erupt, full of contradictory and stirring beauty.
"In that case," Seiji Fujiwara said, releasing the arm that had encircled her while his finger pointed lightly at an extremely tricky data node on the screen, "to prove your 'concentration,' answer me one question."
What his finger indicated was a redundant backup encoding within the virus genome sequence, related to the core algorithm of "Information Mimicry."
"This seventeenth redundant backup, why does it use a reverse-encryption algorithm rather than the forward algorithm used by all the other backups? What specific role does it play in the entire transmission of the 'self-destruct' instruction?"
It was an extraordinarily tricky question.
Under normal circumstances, with Fuyumi Irisu's intellect, she would only need a few seconds of thought to produce the answer.
But right now...
Her mind was in a state of extreme tension and exhaustion.
"It seems you really are 'distracted.'"
Seiji Fujiwara's voice turned cold in an instant, without a shred of warmth.
A second later, he applied more force.
"Ah!"
A startled cry slipped from Fuyumi Irisu's lips.
Her body, struck by the abrupt stimulation, nearly collapsed to the floor as her legs gave way beneath her.
"No... not right..."
On the brink of being completely swallowed by unfamiliar pleasure and humiliation, Fuyumi Irisu summoned a tremendous force of will.
She drew in a deep breath and even bit through the tip of her own tongue, using the pain to force her brain, which had begun to slip into chaos, back into high-speed operation.
"Redundant backup... reverse encryption..." She raced through the deduction in her head, countless data streams flickering through her mind. "It's to prevent... to prevent the T-cells in the immune system, after receiving the 'self-destruct' command, from undergoing 'logical autophagy' due to over-expression of the command... it's... it's a 'fuse'! A 'secondary calibration' program that ensures the command is executed one hundred percent without being interrupted by accident!"
She delivered the perfect, correct answer aloud.
But this desperate counterstrike, in Seiji Fujiwara's eyes, looked so laughable, and so... endearing.
"Correct."
Seiji Fujiwara laughed softly, and that laugh held the condescending appreciation an adult feels watching a child trying its best to perform.
Then he pressed Fuyumi Irisu down.
...
[Congratulations, Host. You have successfully completed a stage of the conquest of 'Fuyumi Irisu.']
[Received Stage Reward: Full-Sequence Virus Rapid Analysis & Reverse Engineering Algorithm.]
The corner of Seiji Fujiwara's mouth curled into a smile.
He knew that this jewel of the Kamiyama Region, from this moment on, had irrevocably begun her descent.
...
...
The first rays of morning sunlight streamed through the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, spilling across the cold laboratory floor and illuminating the wreckage.
Fuyumi Irisu was curled up on the couch in the rest area, a thin blanket draped over her.
She had been awake half the night. Those eyes that had once been sharp as blades now held only emptiness and numbness.
Seiji Fujiwara, by contrast, showed no trace of fatigue.
He had already changed into clean casual wear and was sitting at the main console, watching the holographic screen before him with focused attention.
On the screen, countless lines of code and gene sequences flashed, recombined, and rearranged at a speed beyond the limits of human comprehension. That was the reward he had just obtained, the Full-Sequence Virus Rapid Analysis & Reverse Engineering Algorithm, running at full power.
Just five minutes.
The century's puzzle that had plagued the entire Japanese medical community for weeks, leaving countless top experts at a loss, was completely cracked in those short five minutes.
A flawless, cheap, and even crudely simple solution was clearly displayed on the screen.
"It's done."
Seiji Fujiwara closed the algorithm program, his tone as flat as if he were saying "the sun's up."
He turned his chair, and his gaze fell on the girl on the couch, who looked like a delicate doll.
"Come here."
The voice wasn't loud, was even gentle, but it carried a command that brooked no argument.
Fuyumi Irisu's body trembled instinctively.
She didn't speak, didn't hesitate. She silently lifted the thin blanket aside, and on bare, snow-white little feet, stepped onto the cold floor, walking step by step to his side.
The high school uniform was still on her, but in complete disarray.
Several buttons had vanished from the deep blue top, exposing her delicate collarbones and a sliver of snow-white skin still bearing some lingering traces, lending her a heart-stopping, broken beauty.
"Watch."
Seiji Fujiwara pointed at the screen, paying no mind to her current state.
He spoke in a tone of plain fact:
"Step one. I'm going to anonymously send this treatment plan to every mainstream media outlet in Japan and every A-grade or higher medical institution. I want the panic in the Kamiyama Region to be completely extinguished within today."
Fuyumi Irisu's pupils contracted sharply at his words.
She stared at the miraculous solution on the screen, and her heart began to pound uncontrollably.
She knew better than anyone what kind of terrifying earthquake the release of this thing would trigger across Japan, and indeed across the global medical field.
"Step two." Seiji Fujiwara's gaze shifted to another screen. On it was clearly displayed a man's photograph, Kengo Yamamoto, alongside all his personal information. "I'm going to make the man who engineered this disaster, and the company behind him, 'Abundant Future,' pay the price they deserve."
His fingers tapped lightly across the keyboard a few times, and a top-secret file archive marked with red highlights appeared on the desktop.
"This contains all of 'Abundant Future's' internal transaction records over the past three years, their virus development logs, and every piece of evidence on their bribery of politicians and the media."
The instant Fuyumi Irisu saw the file name, her mind went briefly blank.
She stared dumbly at the file, and for a moment, she even forgot the humiliation she had endured the previous night.
A reverence and dread deeper and colder than humiliation rose like an irresistible chill from the depths of her spine, sweeping through every limb.
...
At the same time.
In central Tokyo, at "Abundant Future's" Japan division, the Vice President's office.
Kengo Yamamoto held a glass of expensive Burgundy red wine, standing self-satisfied before the floor-to-ceiling window, admiring the bustling city below.
The morning sunlight stretched his silhouette long, suffused with the air of a victor.
On his face was an undisguised, almost feral grin.
"President, the situation in the Kamiyama Region is in complete chaos."
Through the phone came the supremely fawning voice of his trusted subordinate. "The Irisu Family is at their wits' end, on the verge of bankruptcy! Even that so-called expert team they paid a fortune to bring in has publicly admitted defeat! Our plan is, you could say, flawless!"
"Good."
Kengo Yamamoto took a small sip of the wine, savoring the smooth, mellow liquid sliding down his throat.
The sensation matched his current mood perfectly, brimming with the pleasure of having everything under his control.
"Keep up the pressure on them! Spread the panic further! I want those stubborn old fools at the Irisu Family to come crawling on their knees to beg me!" he snarled, his eyes flashing with greed and lust. "As for that little girl Fuyumi Irisu... heh, once I've completely taken control of Kamiyama, I'll make her understand what a true, irresistible 'optimal solution' really means!"
He hung up the phone and drained the wine in his glass in a single gulp.
The fruits of victory seemed already within reach.
He had no idea that a judgment capable of grinding him and all his ambitions to dust had already been declared.
...
...
The atmosphere in Seiji Fujiwara's office was quiet enough to feel oppressive.
Fuyumi Irisu stood silently behind him, like a shadow without feeling, the most faithful of observers.
She watched his every operation with her own eyes.
There were no complicated procedures, and not a moment of hesitation.
He simply, as casually as sending the most ordinary email, set up an anonymous mass dispatch of the treatment plan that could overturn the entire Japanese medical establishment.
The recipients were all of Japan's top hundred media outlets and every A-grade or higher medical institution.
[Send]
With a soft click of the mouse, this bomb capable of changing everything was launched without so much as a flicker on his face.
...
One minute later.
Tokyo, the editorial office of Asahi Shimbun.
"Editor-in-Chief! Editor-in-Chief! Come look at this! Something huge!" A young, bespectacled editor leapt up from his seat as if he'd seen a ghost, his voice loud enough to carry across the entire office.
The whole editorial floor erupted in an instant.
"What is it? What's all the fuss?"
"We just got an anonymous email. The subject line is... the ultimate cure for the Kamiyama Flu?"
"Huh? Some bored guy pulling a prank again? There are too many of these scam emails these days, just delete it!"
"No! That's not it!"
The young editor's voice trembled with excitement. "I forwarded it the moment it came in to our contracted Tokyo University medical consultant... the consultant just called back, and he said... he said... if the data in that email is real... then... it's a Nobel-Prize-level discovery of the century!"
"What?!"
The entire editorial office fell into dead silence in an instant.
Everyone's work stopped. They all turned, in unison, to stare at the young editor.
A second later, the gray-haired Editor-in-Chief slammed his palm on the desk. His normally placid face now had eyes blazing with light, and he shouted aloud:
"Quick! Everyone! Verify the authenticity of this plan as fast as humanly possible! If... if this is real... we'll spare no cost to grab the exclusive headline!"
Similar scenes played out in Yomiuri Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, NHK...
In the editorial offices of nearly every mainstream Japanese media outlet, simultaneously.
A frantic race for the truth, ignited by a single anonymous email and counting every second, threw open its curtain across the entirety of Japan's media landscape.
"The Savior Has Arrived." This headline, full of suspense and anticipation, began to take quiet shape inside the internal draft archives of one outlet after another.
...
"Abundant Future" Corporation, Vice President's office.
Kengo Yamamoto's roar nearly shattered the bulletproof glass of the office.
"A pack of useless trash! Good-for-nothings!" He hurled an emergency report in his hand violently down onto the expensive rosewood desk and bellowed at the head of the PR department on the other end of the line. "One anonymous junk email scares you all this badly?! What am I keeping you around for?!"
"But Mr. Yamamoto, every media outlet out there is talking about this right now... our phones are about to explode..." came the troubled voice on the other end of the line.
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