She stood at the window of her own office.
In the hospital below, the panic continued to spread. A few medical staff who had just finished their resignation paperwork dragged their suitcases out the side entrance in silence, their backs forlorn.
Everything she had painstakingly held together over the past few days was now falling apart in a way that could not be undone.
She took out her phone and pulled up the number she had once disdainfully sworn she would never dial.
Her fingertip hovered over the call button on the screen for a long while, as if it weighed a thousand pounds.
A fine cold sweat seeped from Fuyumi Irisu's palm. Each breath felt like inhaling shards of frozen glass, stabbing at her lungs.
In the end, she pressed it.
The phone rang only once before being picked up.
No sound came through the receiver. Only dead silence.
That silence was more wounding than any mockery, because it conveyed one clear message: the other party had long since anticipated her call, and was now waiting quietly, like an audience enjoying a stage play, for her surrender.
Fuyumi Irisu drew in a deep breath, forcing down the humiliation rising in her throat, and asked in a steady voice utterly devoid of emotion, as though speaking to an automated answering machine:
"Mr. Fujiwara, does your earlier proposal still stand?"
"It stands."
A young, level male voice finally came through the receiver.
He didn't seem to care in the slightest about her current state of mind. He was merely stating a fact.
"In half an hour, a black Toyota Century will pick you up at the hospital's main entrance. License plate Shinagawa 300, A8888. Come alone."
With that, he hung up cleanly.
He didn't ask why she had changed her mind. He didn't add any extra conditions. He didn't even adopt the slightest victor's air. As if all of this were a matter of course, as if her bowing her head right now had already been written on the first page of his script.
...
Half an hour later, that black Toyota Century, dignified and solemn in the night, glided silently up to the hospital entrance like a ghost, right on time.
Fuyumi Irisu pulled open the door and got in.
The cabin was spacious and quiet, the top-grade soundproofing completely sealing off all the chaos and clamor of the outside world.
The vehicle started smoothly and merged soundlessly into the city traffic.
She leaned back into the absurdly soft leather seat, watching the familiar city night scenery scroll backward past the window, her heart numb and cold.
She knew this was a road leading to the abyss.
She herself, step by step, had walked to the edge of the cliff and pushed open the gate to hell with her own hands.
The driver was a middle-aged man wearing white gloves. From the moment she got in, he had not said a word, had not even glanced at her through the rearview mirror, like a robot running on a preset program.
...
The vehicle finally stopped in the private underground parking garage of the Fujiwara conglomerate's headquarters.
A young assistant in a black suit, equally taciturn, was already waiting. He opened the door for her, gave a slight bow and a "this way" gesture, then led the way.
They took a private elevator that required dual iris and fingerprint verification, going straight to the top floor of the building.
The elevator doors slid open without a sound, revealing an absurdly enormous private laboratory.
Various pieces of precision equipment that she had only ever seen in top-tier scientific journals operated quietly under a cool blue indicator light, suffused with a cold, surreal sci-fi atmosphere.
In the center of the lab, the man who had spoken with her on the phone stood with his back to her, leisurely examining a three-dimensional data report suspended in midair.
He wore a simple white research coat. His figure was tall and slender, his jet-black hair impeccably groomed. From behind alone, he looked like a handsome, focused young scholar immersed in his own world.
Hearing footsteps, Seiji Fujiwara turned around.
He didn't stand, nor did he offer any pleasantry. He simply looked at her with the calm gaze of someone examining an object. There was no urgent desire in that gaze, only a composure resembling a connoisseur appraising a rare collectible.
His eyes traveled over her without any pretense of restraint.
Fuyumi Irisu wore the deep blue uniform of Kamiyama High School, the well-fitted tailoring outlining the slender, graceful curves of a young girl.
Her figure wasn't the kind of exaggerated voluptuousness, but rather a perfectly proportioned symmetry suffused with intellectual and ascetic beauty.
Especially those straight, slender legs wrapped in the pleated skirt, gleaming with an ivory sheen under the soft indoor light.
Fuyumi Irisu's face was the typical, exquisite face of an ice-cold beauty.
Pale skin, refined features, and a head of crisp, short black hair that added another layer of cool detachment. Most striking of all were those eyes.
A pair of eyes calm to the point of coldness, as if they could see through the essence of all things, filtering out anything sentimental or superfluous.
To outsiders, she was an absolutely unattainable ice goddess.
And now, this rare commodity stood here in silence, like merchandise put up for sale, awaiting the buyer's appraisal and possession.
"I solve your family's crisis."
Seiji Fujiwara's voice broke the dead silence with perfect calm.
"The price is you."
No threat, no enticement, not the faintest ripple of emotion.
He stated it as an established fact, like reciting a cold physics formula of equivalent exchange.
Fuyumi Irisu stood there in silence. The constant, faintly chilly air of the laboratory seemed about to freeze her blood entirely.
The hands at her sides clenched involuntarily into fists. Her neatly trimmed nails dug deep into the tender flesh of her palms, sending sharp jolts of pain. Only this distinct pain could confirm to her that she was still alive, and not merely a soul-emptied shell to be handled however he pleased.
A few seconds of silence stretched as long as a century.
In that brief span, countless thoughts flashed through her mind.
Her pride was screaming, her reason was wailing, her self-respect was being ground to dust.
But all of these emotions were ultimately overwhelmed by her father's exhausted, resolute words: "The future of the family matters more than anyone's pride."
In the end, she slowly, inch by inch, unclenched those hands that had gone slightly white from the strain.
Then she lowered her head a fraction.
Fuyumi Irisu's voice was as light as a sigh, almost dissolving into the cold air.
"...All right."
Hearing this answer, a faint smile appeared on Seiji Fujiwara's face.
After Fuyumi Irisu's sigh-light "all right" fell, Seiji Fujiwara did not, as she had anticipated, immediately reveal any crude lust or rush to violate her.
He simply picked up a remote on the table and pressed it casually.
The enormous holographic screen at the center of the laboratory lit up instantly. Displayed on it was the very viral genome sequence map that Professor Suzuki's team had spent nearly a hundred hours and still failed to fully decode, alongside dense, in-depth analytical data Fuyumi Irisu had never seen before.
"Good. It seems we've reached an understanding." Seiji Fujiwara's voice remained level. He didn't even rise from his seat, merely pointing the remote at the screen, his posture like that of an instructor about to begin a lecture. "Then, the transaction begins."
He looked at Fuyumi Irisu, his gaze calm, but the words he spoke made her stiffen all over.
"I want you to stand in front of the screen and look at this data. I'll explain to you the true weakness of this virus and the principle behind the solution. At the same time, you will begin fulfilling your obligations as the 'price.'"
For an instant, Fuyumi Irisu's mind went blank.
This demand was more vile and crueler than any purely physical humiliation she could have imagined.
What he wanted wasn't merely her body. He intended to crush her in absolute terms within her most prized domain of reason, while simultaneously laying absolute claim to her body.
He intended to make her experience, in spirit and in flesh at once, what it meant to be "dominated."
This... is just a transaction.
In her heart, Fuyumi Irisu erected a final psychological line of defense.
Seiji Fujiwara provides the technology, and she pays the price.
That was all.
Emotion, dignity, shame... these were all superfluous, irrational things that would interfere with the smooth completion of the "transaction." They had to be excluded.
She took a step forward, walking with an almost rigid, robotic gait to a spot in front of the enormous screen.
Her gaze locked onto the complex data on the screen, forcing her brain to start running at high speed, trying to focus all her attention on these academic symbols she had once been so familiar with and so loved.
She felt Seiji Fujiwara step up behind her.
She could smell a faint, pleasant scent of soap on him, not the lust-laden, nauseating odor she had imagined. That clean scent only made what was about to happen feel filthier by contrast.
"Look here." Seiji Fujiwara's voice sounded right beside her ear, calm as a professor lecturing his students. "Suzuki's team had the wrong direction from the start. They were trying to find a target that could neutralize the virus's activity, but the core of this virus isn't activity. It's a kind of 'Information Mimicry.'"
His hand came to rest lightly on her waist.
The warm sensation transmitted through the thin fabric of her uniform shirt made Fuyumi Irisu's body instantly tense up like a slab of frozen steel.
But her eyes remained locked on the screen without blinking, as if she meant to engrave that data onto her retinas.
"Information Mimicry?" She heard her own voice, cold as ice. "What does that mean?" She forced herself to ask the question, trying to use the pretense of academic exchange to numb herself to the reality of being violated.
"It means it isn't aggressive in itself."
Seiji Fujiwara's hand began to slide upward at an unhurried pace, exploring the curve of the girl's slender waist through that thin layer of fabric. "It's only mimicking the 'communication keys' of human immune cells, then sending the immune system a 'self-destruct' false command. So patients aren't killed by the virus. They're killed by their own runaway immune system. A perfect 'suicide.'"
His words came clearly into her ear. Every syllable overturned everything she had understood over the past few days, sending an intellectual tremor through her.
At the same time, Seiji Fujiwara's other hand had already reached around to her front and undone the top button of her uniform shirt.
For the first time, the cold air met the warm skin below her collarbone.
Her whole body shuddered. She bit down hard on her lower lip, almost drawing blood. But her face still kept that expressionless, frigid composure. She didn't even flinch, calmly accepting all of it.
This is just a transaction... I'm receiving the technical information I'm owed... She repeated it in her heart like a mantra.
Fuyumi Irisu's long lashes quivered faintly with a tremor she could not suppress.
Her tightly clenched fists had nails sunk deep into her palms, sending up waves of pain.
"A nice reaction." Seiji Fujiwara's voice murmured by her ear with a faint, teasing edge.
Fuyumi Irisu ground her teeth in resentment, on the verge of breaking apart in this moment.
On one side, profound theoretical revelations she had never heard before, like a divine apocalypse.
On the other, a strange, tingling, mortifying sensation of pleasure.
Fuyumi Irisu forced her brain to spin at full speed.
Outwardly, she still maintained that cold, composed appearance.
But the lips going slightly pale from how hard she was pressing them together, the eyes squeezed tightly shut from humiliation while the lashes trembled violently beyond her control, and the fine cold sweat seeping from her forehead, all mercilessly betrayed the immense pressure Fuyumi Irisu was bearing in her heart.
Seiji Fujiwara observed it all with great interest.
He was admiring a one-of-a-kind work of art, slowly, inch by inch, fracturing in his own hands.
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