When I walked my mental steps backwards, I found it. It was right there, in my grasp.
“Tousuke, when did you start getting those spam messages?”
“Three, maybe four weeks ago.”
“When, more specifically?”
Curiously, Tousuke swiped on his phone and then showed me a number of subject lines. “I think sometime around here.”
I compared the date against the calendar hanging in the front of the room. It was exactly as I had suspected.
“This was the week after that weekend of the barbecue we went to with Ten.”
“That’s true, but…”
“There had to have been some trigger for this increase in junk mail, right?”
“Hm? Wha, you don’t…”
Tousuke, savvy as ever, seemed to understand what I was trying to say. If what I was supposing was correct, if it was true…
Could this be the decisive blow?
“Just a minute,” I interrupted Tousuke, who seemed like he wanted to say something. I pulled out my own phone and logged into one of my burner e-mail accounts. After a few moments of loading, my inbox appeared on the screen.
I felt goosebumps rise on my skin.
“Nailed it.”
I showed Tousuke the screen. There, listed, were a number of e-mails, just like the ones Tousuke had been getting. The contents were probably the same as well.
“In other words…?”
I started to speak, gulping.
“Ten must be making money off of giving out the registry.”
“…How can you tell?”
“This e-mail’s a burner.”
Tousuke furrowed his brow; I explained.
“It’s a free account I signed up for, separate from my normal one. I always use burner accounts when I need to give out my e-mail to someone I don’t trust so my real information doesn’t get misused. I’m assuming you made a business address while you were job hunting?”
“No, I just use the same one for everything.”
“Seriously? You must get a lot of mail, then.”
“I do. That’s why the spam is bugging me so much.”
I found this surprising for someone as conscientious as Tousuke. Was he some kind of secret Luddite when it came to technology? If so, then this was likely something he was unaware of.
“Well, anyway, this burner account is one that I just made and started using recently. Which means…”
“Means what?”
“It’s odd that even though I only gave this address to Ten, I’m getting all these e-mails from businesses.”
“True. But that means it’s not just going to Moai members but us too.”
“I’m sure they’re just filtering out information for students who attend our school and sending them out to businesses indiscriminately or something. I think he slipped up. Just like you did with handling your e-mail address when you’re usually so diligent about things.”
As I spoke, I gave a shudder. I thought to myself. Finally, here it was. Depending on what we did with this information, this could be a means of weakening Moai. At the very least, we could drag Ten down, and perhaps if we were lucky, this might even extend into the upper ranks. In an era where personal information was such a large talking point, surely we could make an appeal to people’s morals.
That said, I still wanted more concrete evidence. I had no proof that Ten was the only one I had given this burner out to, so that wouldn’t be particularly damaging. Wasn’t there something else I could find?
“Ideally, I’d like to actually find this registrar that Ten and his crew are probably giving out to companies, but I have no idea how we’d go about that.”
“Mm, and I doubt he’d just give it to us.”
“And I can’t imagine Kawahara-san or Pon-chan having it either.”
“Guess we’ll just have to sneak into the higher-ups’ houses, huh?”
Obviously, I laughed.
We pondered this for the rest of our lunch break but could not come up with anything, agreeing to consider the matter during the mock exams as we both headed back to work.
I waited in the classroom until the test takers finally arrived, taking their seats with aplomb. Naturally, I kept my cool as I handed out the test forms, but my mind was churning furiously.
Finally, I had a weapon.
What we did next would be vital. We now knew a crucial fact—we held a deadly weapon. Now, how could I best strike the enemy with it in order to cause maximum damage? There was no time to waste. Now that they had gone and slipped up, I had to drive my wedge into that chink and burst the dam.
I sat in the chair in the front of the room, my thoughts racing. However, the more frantic I got, the more my thoughts just kept circling back to the same place. In the end, I got nowhere. I forgot to even keep watch on the classroom—before I knew it, the fourth period was over.
Next period would be the last one. In this classroom, the air was permeated with the test takers’ efforts, and their will to make their last stand. I would have to make my last stand as well and work my brain overtime. However, just being in the same room as these young people was not enough to give me the results I needed. Plus, my thoughts were clouded by my own jubilation. Perhaps finally, after so long, it had returned to me.
My joy was getting in the way of my own composure.
As I circled around and around the same points, my centrifugal force almost reaching its limits, for a moment it felt as though something sparked, and I was drawn back down to the purest form of a plan again. Would any Moai members give me the registry? Would one of the companies give me the registry? But then I realized again how absurd that was.
“What’s most important is that everyone is happy. It’s the simplest things that are always the most important and impactful.”
Just as I was about to circle back to square one again, I heard her voice. It had been years since I last heard it, but there it was, as clear as day. A voice that could not in fact make everyone happy and did not exist in Moai now.
I stopped in place. I just had to get the register. I thought back to the day of the meet-up, when I had waited outside, and well before that, on the day of my final interview, what I had witnessed in the elevator lobby.
Then, I thought, are professionals really all that impressive?
There was little difference in age between us and someone who had been working for only a few years. Just as there was no immense gap between myself and the students who were taking their mock exams right now, I could not imagine any working professional being much more experienced and talented than we were. I mean, such people probably did exist, but most people had only scammed their way into a job by creating a false self, just like I had.
By that token, were there not professionals who made missteps as well? Just like Ten, who had let us on to a very important clue. Just as I currently held contempt for those in the corporate world, there was a strong possibility that there were those among their number who held contempt for the students who were coming up along the same path that they were.
A singular idea came to mind.
It was the sort of sham of an idea that I was ashamed to even call an idea, but I didn’t think I was going to be able to come up with anything else. If Tousuke could not come up with anything better, I thought, this would do well enough.
Before I realized it, the time had flown by—the fifth period ended more swiftly than all those preceding. After giving the students a heads up on the exams they would be sitting for tomorrow, I released them. After that, I finished up my work, met up with the others again in the same room as that morning, confirmed the plans for tomorrow, and then we were dismissed for the day ourselves.
I immediately invited Tousuke to a nearby café. I picked as secluded a seat as possible, ordered an iced coffee, and launched into the conversation.
“You come up with anything, Tousuke?”
Tousuke grimaced and said, “Well, I tried,” shaking his head. “Was pretty tough. How about you?”
“Well, I came up with one idea.”
Just as I was about to start outlining my thoughts, our drinks arrived, and I shut my mouth. I put my lips right on the glass of iced coffee that was set before me, eschewing a straw.
“I mean, it’s pretty stupid though.”
“C’mon, let’s hear it.”
“Let’s ask one of the companies that sent out the spam.”