For a full hour, I stared at the message from 'Maxwell_s_Demon'. It was a lifeline and a leash, an opportunity and a trap. Every instinct screamed at me to delete it, to walk away and let the corporate machine handle its own wars. But when I pictured Reika's smug, triumphant face, and the stressed, worried expressions of my sisters, a cold, unfamiliar resolve settled in my gut. They had dragged me onto their battlefield. Fine. It was time I showed them how I fight.
My fingers flew across the keyboard, typing a simple, encrypted reply: "Send it."
Minutes later, a compressed data packet arrived. It was a digital treasure trove of damning evidence. 'Jean-Pierre Dubois' was indeed a fraud. The data contained proof of multiple plagiarism lawsuits, settled out of court and sealed with non-disclosure agreements. There were financial records showing payments to ghost producers, and audio files comparing his "hit songs" with the obscure European techno tracks he had clearly stolen them from. His entire career was a carefully constructed lie.
My first thought was to send it all to Ms. Kurosawa. Let the PR professionals handle the leak. But that would be playing Reika's game, a petty game of he-said-she-said fought in the gossip blogs. It would be a temporary victory, but it would still be a victory on their terms. It would define me as a back-alley brawler, a dealer in secrets. And I was an engineer. I dealt in facts, in elegant solutions.
I pushed back from my desk and walked into the living room, where Hina, Izuwa, Ayumi, and Nami were having a somber late-night snack. They had been waiting for me to emerge.
"I have a plan," I announced, pulling a chair up to the table. "And it doesn't involve leaks or anonymous tips. We're going to fight them, but we're going to do it on my turf."
I laid out the evidence of Dubois's fraud on my tablet, watching their expressions shift from despair to shock, and then to a dangerous kind of excitement.
"We can destroy them with this!" Ayumi said, her eyes wide.
"No," I said, shaking my head. "If we leak this, we look just as petty as Reika. We need to do more than just prove they're liars. We need to prove that we are the real deal."
Nami, who had been listening intently, suddenly spoke up, her voice clear and confident. "You don't fight them in the press; you fight them on the stage. The Tech-Fest isn't just about the concert. It's a showcase of technology. You're an engineer, Takeshi. So, engineer something."
Her words were a spark, igniting a cascade of ideas in my mind. She was right. Why debunk their fake genius when I could showcase a real one?
A rare, genuine smile touched Izuwa's lips as she watched me, a new kind of admiration in her eyes. "You know," she said, her voice softer than usual, "this is why she's scared of you. It's not about your connections. It's this." She gestured towards me, towards the tablet, towards the nascent plan hanging in the air. "You don't just play their game; you rewrite the entire code. That's what I… find so compelling about you."
It was her confession, delivered in the only way she knew how. Not with flowery words of affection, but with a clear-eyed acknowledgment of the intellect and the quiet power that she, a fellow strategist, found irresistible. It barely registered. My mind was already racing, the pieces of a new, audacious plan clicking into place.
"The festival has an Innovation Challenge," I said, my voice filled with a newfound energy. "A competition for student-led projects. The grand prize is a development grant and a presentation slot on the main stage, right before the headline act."
Hina's eyes widened as she understood. "Right before our concert."
"Exactly," I said, a grim smile on my face. "I'm not going to leak this information. I'm going to build something. Something that not only proves Dubois is a fraud, but also showcases a technology so far beyond what he's pretending to do that it makes Starlight Cascade look like a high school garage band."
I was no longer a victim of their drama. I was no longer the reluctant brother or the secret weapon. I was taking control of the narrative, not by changing the words, but by changing the entire stage. I turned and walked back to my room, the sound of my sisters' excited chatter behind me. I sat down at my desk, opened a new project in my coding environment, and began to type.
The shadow engineer was logging on.