The next day, on the 8th of December, I saw Koyuki walk into the Great Hall: the pastel colors of pink were now pushing aside, and white and navy were in their place.
The room that was once reserved to dances and celebratory banquets now had a chilly utilitarian look. No cheerful banners, no lingering aroma of floor polish replaced them; in their place were spare white tables, carefully set up racks of servers whizzing close to the staging room entrance, and large signage declaring it to be a Silence: Academic Session in Progress. The entire arena was trembling with the power that could be a reference to a business center where brain work is valued.
Koyuki, in her smart navy jacket and smooth white blouse which Yuu had ordered, which, in his word, bore no relation to her daytime, gay wardrobe, was taken to the desk of the volunteer check in. There, she recognized her new group of accomplices: Kenji, whose expression seemed sated by the lack of his usual cheerful adornments; Haru, who was desperately arranging a pile of name tags; Miyu, who seemed to be drawing in her notebook an image which she was evidently attempting to express in nihilism; and a third year mathematics major, who was so stoic as scarcely to know Koyuki.
Through a voice, crisp and doubtless cold, the low buzz of activity smouldered through. "Himekawa san. You are five minutes late. Timeliness is the principle of effective logistics.
Before her stood Yuu Shirogane, dressed in a smooth dark grey suit which enhanced his height and air of cold indifference. He used his known silver tablet, which was the computerized command center of the Symposium. He looked the same as in the Annex meeting, and still possessed the same air of uninvolved brilliance and professionalism.
I apologize, Senpai, Koyuki thought, repressing a very strong reply to the five minute grace time. My crew is ready and prepared to go to work.
Yuu eschewed pleasantries. He quickly followed up with a briefing in rapid fire with allusions to KPIs and SOPs as lecture notes: Kenjikun, your energy will be redirected in directional routing. You are the human GPS. The speakers are required to find out their designated breakout rooms within thirty seconds. Harukun, Miyusan, you will be in charge of registration and badge security. Each badge is encoded. Unlicensed users make up an undesirable security violation. Math major, you will follow through on the input stream of Q&A of the main presentation track. Himekawasan," Yuu finished with his silver stare upon her, you are my Executive Liaison and Crisis Manager.
Koyuki blinked. "Crisis Manager?"
"Precisely. Any delays would be your prerogative. Noise, speakers put into wrong positions, technical failures, or errors done by volunteers they all will report to you. Your first task: Professor Ito, who is the keynote speaker, is missing. He came to Japan last night and had not reported to the hotel today. Locate him. At this moment he has an hour to start the Symposium.
Yuu provided her with a printed schedule and a burner phone. The staging room has the coordinates of the central server rack, and should not be bothered by the network engineers. Start, he said and walked away already discussing with a technological colleague the allocation of bandwidth.
Adrenaline suddenly flowed up through the veins of Koyuki. It was not just a stunting of a shimmering party; it was logistical first-degree manslaughter. She looked around the burner phone and then the time 55 minutes to the keynote.
Kenji, go to the HumanGPS mode and start surveilling the main campus entrances and the cafeteria. Haru, Miyu, watch over those badges, and no illegal entry is made outside of the ropes. I shall go the search out, said Koyuki, and her training set into action without so much as a pulse. Her pink hair appeared to scowl on the white walls.
She broke away out of the hall, and dialed the number next the name of Professor Ito. The number called out to the international landline of his university and she was answered with an automatic recording. Koyuki quickly changed to the tracking data Yuu had planted in the burner phone, a plain GPS tracker attached to the travel schedule of the professor.
The small green spot on the map was not a reference to the hotel, neither was it to campus grounds. Instead, it emphasized the Sakura River Park, which is about twenty minutes off, and it is next to the famous seasonal light show.
What in the world could a high ranking professor be doing at a tourist spot of this magnitude, just before his keynote? Koyuki hesitated and caught the first taxi passing. She knew she was entering a crisis situation head first, but she was for the first time since the agreement feeling a thrill in the same intensity as Yuu had been feeling it. She was not only playing a game; she was making a point less to say the least and in case she made it, she would retrieve her preparation stage, and besides, she would show the Winter Prince that her erroneous vitality was no trifling thing.