『The Book of Economics』
At nine in the morning, when the Tokyo market opened, the numbers rose like prayers.
Shuji Amemiya stared at the indices displayed across the enormous monitors.
Bonds, currencies, commodities.
Everything moved in coordination, fluctuating as though guided by some invisible will.
"That's strange."
The analyst beside him muttered.
"What is?"
"There's enough news here to make the market fall, but it isn't falling.
Someone is 'supporting' it."
As Shuji tapped away at his terminal, he remembered the ancient manuscript he had read the night before.
An investment banker indulging in mystical theories might have sounded like a joke, but he couldn't get it out of his mind.
『The Book of Enoch』
An apocryphal text of the Old Testament.
A record describing how the fallen angels known as the "Watchers" gave humanity knowledge that had been forbidden to them.
Metalworking.
Astrology.
And "calculation."
"What if knowledge itself was a product of the Fall?"
Shuji murmured the words almost to himself.
Markets move on information.
Information creates forecasts.
Forecasts create profits.
But where did the first "knowledge" come from?
Before noon, breaking news spread that a certain hedge fund had accumulated an enormous position.
The trades looked as though they had been made by someone who already knew the future.
"Insider trading?"
"No. It's too early. They're reading the global situation before the announcements are even made."
A passage from the Book of Enoch flashed through Shuji's mind.
"They descended from heaven and taught humanity the movements of the stars and the secrets of the earth."
The movement of the stars.
Cycles.
Algorithms.
High-frequency trading driven by AI had already surpassed human judgment.
The designers were human.
But where had humanity learned the art of "reading the future"?
At two in the afternoon, the market surged.
No one could explain why.
The chart traced a beautiful parabola.
"Looks like a prophecy."
At the analyst's words, Shuji shook his head.
"No. This isn't a prophecy.
It's a design."
If the Watchers had once been beings who gave humanity forbidden knowledge—
then perhaps the modern market, too, was an extension of that legacy.
Equations were the language of angels.
Algorithms were the echo of the Fall.
Just before the closing price was finalized, anonymous data arrived on Shuji's terminal.
Attached was a graph showing price movements decades into the future with impossible accuracy.
The future market.
An impossible level of precision.
The sender was unknown.
There was only a single line written in English.
"WATCHERS STILL OBSERVE."
Shuji quietly closed the monitor.
The market would close today, as it always did.
But the origin of knowledge would not.
What had the angels taught humanity?
Metal?
The stars?
Or profit?
His own face appeared on the dark screen where the numbers had disappeared.
Humans move markets through their own desires.
And yet, from time to time, an inexplicable "will" seemed to intervene.
Perhaps the market, too, was part of the war of mythology.
It had simply changed its form into stock symbols.
The bell rang.
『The Book of Economics』 — The End